Archive for Tenkara Art
October 31, 2019 at 2:17 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Philosophy ·Tagged caddisfly, Columbus Day, Fly Fishing, Halloween, Kebari, Manhattan, New York City, Pumpkinseed Sunfish, Tenkara
October Orange . . .
October Icons: Caddis and Columbus
(NYC 10 2019)
The sugar maples turn orange and blend with oak red and locust gold. The October Caddis, primarily orange, well imitated by means of orange floss.
Orange on the water in New York City is the space occupied by the pumpkinseed sunfish. Small, yet spirited, and still at times encountered in October when the trees hold onto their color just before the leaf hatch.
Pumpkinseed Sunfish (Lepomis Gibbosus)
Oranage everywhere. “Boo!” without the hoo.
Happy Halloween.
Portrait Of My Halloween Costume
(10 31 2019)
– rPs 10 31 2019
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July 4, 2019 at 8:48 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara News, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Reading ·Tagged Fly Fishing, Manhattan, New York, New York City, New York City Fishing, Small Fry The Lure of the Little, smallmouth bass, Tenkara
4th of July Fireworks. . .
How the Fireworks Started
(NYC 07 04 2019)
(* Excerpt from Small Fry: The Lure of the Little by ron P. swegman. 2009. The Whitefish Press.)
Fireworks!
Happy Fourth of July.
— rPs 07 04 2019
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December 23, 2018 at 8:30 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara News, Tenkara Reading ·Tagged Artwork, Fishing Books, Fly Fishing, Manhattan, New York City, Poetry, Tenkara, Tenkara Art, Winter Solstice
Cold Solstice Holidays . . .
December Brook
(NY 12 2018)
Open water remains. Cold, clear, high visibility no match for the fishes obscura.
Was that a trout? Was that a bass? Was it a reflection, of something else, something not even a fish? Daylight flies faster than the fisher.
Retired to the warm indoor, reading and the contemplation of visual art returns to front focus.
Moving Water by Dave Hall
Moving Water
by Dave Hall
hardcover, 50 pp.
Blaine Creek
Dave Hall, an artist of works in oil, has Moving Water give an illustrated meditation, poetry and brushwork combined, in a sublime 10-minutes of illuminated manuscript. Recommended.
Back Seat by Henry Hughes
Back Seat with Fish
by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 303 pp.
Skyhorse Publishing
Not to take a back seat, do take a Back Seat with Fish off the shelves and buy it. Don’t miss the opportunity to immerse with an American life lived in America’s northern corners, New York and Oregon, with the fishing haunting happily in its present attendance at all times in between. Recommended.
The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories edited by Henry Hughes
The Art of Angling
edited by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 256 pp.
Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf
The greater corpos (including, yet beyond the canon) gives a broad read in a pair, stories and poetry, presented in two attractive hardcover collected volumes edited by Dr. Hughes: The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories
Fishing Stories
edited by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 369 pp.
Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf
There are many, many literary angles as there are anglers, men, women, children who all still relish hours reading fish tales and rhymes pictured on the page in a quiet corner on a winter afternoon.
Happy Holidays.
— rPs 12 23 2018
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July 31, 2018 at 5:14 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara News, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Trips ·Tagged Fly Fishing, Fly Tying, Kebari, Manhattan, New York City, New York City Fishing, Tenkara
Shore and Stream . . .
Shore
(07 2018)
Photos are worth.
There is a Facebook user’s group named “Tenkara Where?” where one can see angling destinations speak for themselves in the thousand words of a single photograph.
So, then, so shall July be documented at TTM, not by pics of patterns or fish in grip, rather portraits of place, places angled in July 2018.
Stream
(07 2018)
— rPs 07 31 2018
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May 30, 2018 at 8:29 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged Bluefish, Fluke, Fly Fishing, Fly Pattern, Kebari, Manhattan, New York City, Striped Bass, Tenkara
Sparse Silverside
Swegman’s Sparse Silverside
(NYC 05 30 2018)
Spring warms toward summer. Tenkara takes to the salt again. Fluke on fly, bluefish off the jetty, schoolie stripers on top.
The pattern, a Sparse Silverside, size 2, bound to 3X, can attract all of the above when a little agitation through animation is employed along the water, often as the tide bottoms out, or at the top plateau of the high.
Schoolie Striped Bass
(05 2018)
– rPs 05 30 2018
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April 28, 2018 at 3:19 am · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Reading ·Tagged Artwork, Fly Fishing, Manhattan, New York, New York City, Poetry, Tenkara, Tenkara Art
Lefty’s Rod . . .
The TFO BVK: acquired in memoriam of Bernard Victor Kreh
(NYC 04 2018)
April is National Poetry Month.
* Poetry CORNER *
April at the Bluejays
Mist belts all of the towers
At the waist,
Zipped locked lid not of lead, but of white,
Enlightened.
Wind winded rests, sets in sky unscraped stillness,
All is could,
Not even the scat siren extremes sing, no,
Jazzbulance,
Do within such mists near trees are hung lamps,
Enlightened,
More or less to describe the vibe, window open,
Spring blessed,
The rest no rest beyond brief evenings in nest,
Relaxed crest;
We let the robins sing all the evening,
We give the morning to all of the doves.
* Poetry CORNER *
Along the Flow
(04 2018)
Along the flow,
With Lefty’s rod,
And by Ebisu.
Tenkara is, too,
Verses not vs. ,
Knew and new.
— rPs 04 27 2018
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March 20, 2018 at 1:37 am · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara News ·Tagged Chuck Ripper, Fly Fishing, Fly Pattern, Fly Pattern Art, Fly Tying, Kebari, Lefty Kreh, Manhattan, New York City, Tenkara
Lefty’s Stamp . . .
Lefty’s Deceiver
(NYC 03 2018)
Bernard “Lefty” Kreh left us at the age of 93 on Pi Day, March 14th, a date almost fitting given the man’s full circle of a life.
One of his many achievements occured just a month after the passing of his great colleague, Lee Wullf, in the spring of 1991. No less an institution than the United States Postal Service honored Krey with a 1st Class postage stamp picturing his immortal Lefty’s Deceiver.
Lefty’ Deceiver and a 1925 Standing Liberty
(what a quarter looked like the year Mr. Kreh was born)
That stamp, part of my extended collection, keeps a central special place in my pantheon. Chuck Ripper’s photogravures, which also depicted the Apte Tarpon, Jock Scott, Muddler Minnow, and Royal Wulff, were an early artistic inspiration like Dr. Burke’s plates found in Ray Bergman’s quintessential treatise, Trout, an inspiration for my own artwork.
I have two books in print full of my own fly pattern art, yet had never attempted Lefty’s Deceiver, until now:
“Lefty’s Deceiver (of fish!)”
(pencils and rubber rub on paper, 2018)
I never fished with the man, but in person in private we talked, and I am happy to report he liked my comparison of tekara fishing the fly for crappie to that of saltwater fly fishing for the awesome Megalops, the tarpon. Both fish share a similar shaped mouth and gulp a fly in like manner; we agreed!
Memories, good memories, and a lifetime of lessons documented in interviews, videos, and a number of wonderful, readable books.
Lefty Kreh – you inform us, involve us, and your words shall remain stamped in our hearts and minds and our fishing.
Lefty Krey With Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass
(from Tips and Tricks of Spinning by Lefty Kreh, c. 1969)
Lefty Kreh, 1925-2018
— rPs 03 19 2018
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July 21, 2017 at 7:03 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Gear, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara News, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Reading, Tenkara Techniques, Tenkara Trips ·Tagged Artwork, Black Bullhead, catfish, Fly Fishing, Japanese, Manhattan, New York, New York City, Taiko Josetsu, tenk, Tenkara, zazen
Josetsu in July . . .
Answer in Hand
(NYC 07 12 2017)
How do you catch a catfish with a gourd?
Tenkara
Catfish like the black bullhead will be a game opponent in summer if one waits for lower light and goes slow on the presentation speed. Evening lifts the direct sun off the lake and Ameiurus melas returns from the lake’s deeper places, the sinks and channeled centers, onto the flats, shallows where lily pads and branches attract diverse creature protein.
Bullhead Abode
(NYC 07 12 2017)
Places storied as the same of the bass and other sunfish. The approach best calm, cautious, the fly, for me my one fly; a Green Guarantee kebari pattern, one that earlier lured a bluegill from the same end of the lake.
This plump pond permit flattened my Green Guarantee.
(NYC 07 12 2017)
Slowed to a crawl, patience through repetition gets to be rewarded by a sudden tug, the shake of the head that compels the wrist to lift, set, find a fish on the line.
July evenings may find the finned to be a black bullhead catfish. Whenever I see this fish family’s end game wrestle about the surface, I see the whiskers, and smile.
We two, this fish and this fisher, are quite alike, even in the face.
Nature. Found. Naturally.
Josetsu and the elder shogunate clans, I hope, approve.
Black Bullhead the size of a zucchini . . . GOURD.
(NYC 07 12 2017)
Arigato gozaimas!
zazen . . .
rPs 07 21 2017
Postscript: Revisit my first reference to Josetsu here, at TTM, circa April 2012:
https://tenkaratakesmanhattan.com/2012/04/20/the-answer-tenkara/
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July 15, 2016 at 7:10 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara News ·Tagged Fly Fishing, Fly Pattern, Fly Pattern Art, France, Kebari, Manhattan, New York City, Nice, Pari, Tenkara
American for French . . .
One From New York City, USA to Nice, France
(NYC 07 15 2016)
A NYC daily newspaper headline stated the fact:
AGAIN
Here today this American’s Red, White, and Blue supports the Bleu, Blanc et Rouge.
— rPs 07 15 2016
.
Postscript: (Pictured: Blue Claw Clouser Kebari, size #1, arranged with assorted French and American coinage)
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April 4, 2016 at 8:15 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Philosophy, Uncategorized ·Tagged Fly Fishing, Fly Pattern, Kebari, Manhattan, New York City, Numismatics, Tenkara
Three of One . . .
One of Three: Green Guarantee! (NYC, 2016)
Tenkara = One Fly
Three of One? I can agree to that.
One pattern I may agree upon with allowance for three copies of said one. Three copies: one to fish, one as a backup if the first finds itself lost on fish or, to be most avoided, a snag. The third may be a gift for another angler met along a stream, or around the pond. That third one might also be the one to act as charmed third attached at last to a fish photographed and released humanely, else dispatched humanely, promptly, for shore lunch on or off the water.
Reasonable Compromise.
The one I carry most often remains the Green Guarantee, here displayed in trio with fun flea market finds. The American Buffalo nickel and Mercury dime circulated America in general when weighted hair streamers held simple and effective reputation. Archiving and philosophizing and tying attentive to all strata of the legacy from the vise remains complemented in parallel to the interest in the age of bronze, silver, and gold American coinage
Fly patterns and numismatics both share a small scale, a quality of materials rendered artfully within the frame of little physical space. Minor major wonder the two connect for me, this coming from the guy who penned Small Fry: The Lure of the Little.
Connected hobbies, activities: similar investments in a happy future on and off the water. The two tethered today make one happy indoors during a span of almost extreme weather; a cold rain drenches the city this day after sustained surface winds set at the speed of storm. Strange how the frigid air blew below an almost white sun above a bluebird sky filled with cloud of the purest white condensation, cloud marching as well, yet seemingly slower than the headlong gale off the Hudson River.
Actual angling must come later, sometimes.
– rPs 04 04 2016
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Tenkara Takes Manhattan 