Barbel Bugging… Tenkara

[liphook]

Well put Grayson. I can't help but think that Tenkara is really just reinvention of the wheel in many ways - 'stick, line and fly dapping' - and a name for the tackle trade to create a new buzz and market us some new tackle! I know that as a technique it can be frowned apon for actively encouraging UK anglers to target the juvenile trout that tradition says we should leave well alone!

 

[Keith M]

As a small kid back in the late 50s and early 60s I used to fish for minnows & sticklebacks & Stone loach & bullheads using a thin garden cane with a matchstick as my float, and a size 16 goldstrike hook to cotton or if I could I’d pinch some of my dads fishing line; and I didn’t know that it would eventually be called Tenkara

And then back in the early 70s I used to freeline a section of lobworm downstream on a small stream in Helston in Cornwall catching Dace and small brown trout; with little more than one or two no.6 shot on my line and sometimes with no shot at all on my line and just let the current wash my worm further downstream before slowly retrieving it; and I always had a few trout in the fridge for my breakfasts.
So perhaps this was Tenkara?

I don’t think there is much in Angling that can really be classed as new, whether you just put a new name on it or not.

Keith

 

[John Aston]

Nope - that was upstream worming . Tenkara, just like LRF , is a new style with ancient origins but let's celebrate the fact that this long established sport can still take new twists and turns, rather than harrumphing that we've seen it all before. Did anybody say that about wagglers I wonder ? 'Nowt but bloody antenna floats ' ; or carbon fibre ' fancy new plastic , now where's me Milbro Enterprise? '

 

[no-one in particular]

Nope - that was upstream worming . Tenkara, just like LRF , is a new style with ancient origins but let's celebrate the fact that this long established sport can still take new twists and turns, rather than harrumphing that we've seen it all before. Did anybody say that about wagglers I wonder ? 'Nowt but bloody antenna floats ' ; or carbon fibre ' fancy new plastic , now where's me Milbro Enterprise? '

Who says there is nothing new, have you heard of the latest style of fishing, it's called exercise with a rod and line, I tried it yesterday but I cheated and put a hook and bait on.

I have been reading the Wikipedia account of Tenkara and it says:-

literally: "fishing from heaven", or "fishing from the skies") is a simple type of fishing practiced in Japan. Primarily used for mountain stream trout fishing, tenkara is still a fairly rare method of angling among fresh-water mountain anglers in Japan. Most use bait.

Tenkara was largely unknown outside Japan until 2009, when the company Tenkara USA,founded by Daniel Galhardo introduced and popularized tenkara outside Japan.

Although there are similarities between tenkara and traditional Western-style fly fishing, the two techniques developed independently of each other, with tenkara being purely Japanese in origin.

 

[bullet]

My mate got a tenkara rod a few years back and we took it out to try and get a few grayling.
I have to say it was hilarious watching him trying to land a 2.5 lb escaped Rainbow on it, I thought the little whippy pole wouldn't hold up, but miraculously it escaped unscathed!