Archive for Tenkara Techniques

Late Summer Salt

August 31, 2020 at 4:35 pm · Filed under Tenkara Gear, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Late Summer Salt . . .

A sweet spot for the salt tenkara experience.
(08 01 2020)

One rod. One line. One fly. Many, many ways and places to fish. One of these, the salt, continues to fascinate and engage a nascent facet of tenkara’s potential.

The more mellow environment of the sod bank back bay flats gives one a perfect place to wade and cast for game fish in close quarters in the salt.

The primary species remains the summer flounder, the fluke, although as August progresses, juvenile bluefish, called “snappers” by the locals, have returned to provide additional action.

The rigging could not be more simple; a Clouser minnow, Lefty’s Deceiver, or a Gotcha tied directly to the 10-20 lb. tip of a flourocarbon level line.

Fluke rig in the field.
(08 21 2020)

Practice in action reveals the best time to fish, and catch, is during a low tide when fish are more concentrated and feeding. In the case of the fluke and bluefish, feeding on spearing, mummichog, and other small baitfish.

Spearing.
(08 20 2020)

These fish fight exceptionally well on tenkara tackle. Fluke, even shorts, and bluefish, even snappers, fight like stream trout of the 20-inch class. Both species are built for strength and bursts of speed and provide a wonderful, sporting fishing experience during the freshwater doldrums of late summer.

A “keeper” fluke landed on a mudflat during low tide.
(08 19 2020)

 

Bluefish of “snapper” size.
(08 23 2020)

— rPs 08 31 2020

 

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Fluking the Flats

July 31, 2020 at 11:04 pm · Filed under Tenkara Gear, Tenkara Techniques, Tenkara Trips ·Tagged , , , ,

Back Bay Flat at Low Tide at Dawn
(07 2020)

Low tide around the back bays of the American Northeast allows hours of comfortable wading and in midsummer a chance to fish the fly for fluke, the summer flounder, on these sod bank flats.

Tenkara makes a fine fit for this kind of fishing. Stealth in waste deep water gets you up close, the fixed line allows methodical casts to cover the surrounding area, and the aggressive manner of the summer flounder assures a lot of chances for hookups in close quarters.

The rig for fluke is simple. A level line of 10 to 20 pound test, fluorocarbon preferred, a few feet longer than the fully extended rod, attached to the Lillian on the top end and a small Clouser Minnow, Lefty’s Deceiver, or Half & Half on the business tip. These standard classic patterns will mimic the bay anchovy, mummichog, and silversides upon which the fluke feeds.

Fluke Bait
(07 2020)

Fluke Flies
(NYC 07 2020)

The exagerrated twitch used in tenkara is a match with conventional fluke presentation. The takes are sudden and intense, and if you miss a hookup, a pause and continuation often brings a second or third strike.

Fluke Battle
(07 2020)

No other fish fights quite like a flounder. The nearly two dimensional body can slice through a current rip with ease, or plane in the water against the rod, creating a formidable bend.

“Gotcha!”
(07 25 2020)

And be sure to carry a net, fluke flutter and stay aggressive even out of the water. The sight of the fish, like a muse of Pablo Picasso during his Cubist period, never grows old. Nothing says “saltwater” quite like a flatfish.

— rPs 07 31 2020

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Carpe Mensis

June 30, 2020 at 3:48 pm · Filed under Tenkara News, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Carpe Mensis . . .

First Carp in the (Much Too Small) Net!
(NYC 06 12 2020)

Something new and exciting in my fishing experience has emerged from the extended lockdown that has kept my angling local. I have at last figured out how to catch carp on the fly with some consistency.

“Carpe Mensis” — seize the month — has been the pun in play this June.

Carpe Carp
(NYC 06 26 2020)
* photo by James Wu

Warm weather with little rain has permitted plenty of comfortable fishing time over the last several weeks. The theme has been expanded by a focused pursuit of Izaak Walton’s queen of the fishes, the common carp, which when hooked fight like a knight.

Many of New York City’s lakes have a solid carp fishery: Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn, Van Cortlandt Lake in The Bronx, and The Lake in Central Park. The best fishing of all may actually be found in Queens at Meadow Lake in Flushing-Corona Park as the carp is the dominant species there.

I had noticed cruising and tailing carp earlier this year when tenkara fishing for my regular trio of bass, bluegill, and crappie. I knew from past experiment that I could hook a carp on fixed line tackle. But the powerful run of these fish in hemmed in bank settings would also result in a quick snap of the leader, so I brought along my conventional BVK fly rod that Lefty Kreh designed and gave myself some slack as I learned to tackle a new and bigger fish on the fly.

Carp were the large fish catch in my youth when I caught several on doughball using spinning tackle. I have since read as many articles and seen as many videos on carp fishing as the next angler. What changed, perhaps, in late spring of this year was the desire for change, and some challenge, anything to distract my attention from Covid-19 and urban riots.

The carp obliged. The precise roll cast under overhanging branches to large wary fish I could see, and that could see me, was a big change from my usual subaqueous gamble of reading the water and twitching a fly blind in the hope of making a connection with a panfish below the surface.

I find carp are receptive to nymphs and patterns that imitate berries or bread. Presentation is most important. Precision is a must. One has to place the fly right before, or right on top of, the fish, almost bumping the beast on the head to coax a reflex strike.

Size 12 Sucker Spawn tied with white chenille that by pure coincidence resembles a cheesy snack found along the bank!
(NYC 06 12 2020)

Alone, or when paired or in groups, as long as the fish can be seen, and the fly can be landed softly with precision, there  is a good chance of an explosive strike and several long runs from a carp, which in every way remind me of the bonefish I have caught in the tropical salt.

Carp are very much “golden bones” and I have become, like the ones I have caught, hooked!

Carp in the 10 lb. + class are the average catch in NYC lakes.
(NYC 06 12 2020)
* photo by James Wu

— rPs 06 30 2020

 

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End of July Fluke

July 31, 2019 at 9:40 am · Filed under Tenkara News, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

End of July Fluke . . .

 

Proper Beach Fluke Release
(07 2019)

The find for a good start: an empty stretch of beach, early, sun behind, near a narrow point connecting back bay with channel, sand underfoot. It’s summer.

The small tungsten bucktail kebari with perhaps an especially long saddle feather may be swung off a line of fifteen to twenty feet in combined length. The tide incoming or outgoing swings the pattern on a current like a trout stream seam within the greater bay. Sometimes a striper, also short,  intercedes, but this season is ruled by the summer flounder.

Fluke Kandy
(NYC 07n2019)

Another summer morning, another sudden solid connection with a fluke on the swing.

A Beauty By the Jetty
(07 2019)

The left-eyed flatfish, the summer flounder, fluke, is game for fly patterns. The black crappie of the sea, perhaps, to my personal perception of parallel connection. The southpaw fluke stands as a visual stealth and surge predator that seeks smaller fish.

Width adds weight to the battle after the connection is made and a demonstrative tenkara rod hookset sets with success. Nothing else quite feels like a flounder on the end of a line: the uppercut take, the fluttering stand-off, the evasions the fish’s nearly two-dimensional form can achieve.

Shorts are the rule. True. Catch and release is not only fun saltwater panfishing; it’s the law. So many fluke caught are just below the legal length that one must assume keepers are in fact almost always kept.

I release all, with the option open to keep.

Path to Fluke Point
(07 2019l)

 

— rPs 07 31 2019

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Sparse Silverside

May 30, 2018 at 8:29 pm · Filed under Tenkara Art, Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

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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Xmas Prince

December 1, 2017 at 5:26 pm · Filed under Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Xmas Prince . . .

 

Four for a Dollar
(NYC 12 01 2017)

The kebari for the season is the Xmas Prince; my festive variation on the distinctive nymph with wing of white; my standard weighted with wire on a size 10 wet nymph hook.

Waters local cold, dark with tannins from nearby copses of oaks. Wind, sometimes sustained, can spackle the surface. The decision to dip deeper, forced, yet logical and a fun way to angle. The nymph finessed, hovered, just above the submerged bed of leaves, fished at a crawl with slow lifts in the manner of Leisingring.

 

Fishing the Xmas Prince
(NYC 12 01 2017)

The quarry for the season wears bars of dark green on gold. The yellow perch, Perca flavescens, colored like the last leaves branched on the nearby Norway maple, Green Bay Packers’ colors, autumn dressings under the blue and white New York Giants’ sky.

 

Manhattan Yellow Perch
(NYC 12 01 2017)

 

Fly and fish matched to the season.

Happiness.

“Ho. Ho. Ho.”

— rPs 12 01 2017

 

 

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The Leaf Hatch

October 31, 2017 at 1:57 pm · Filed under Tenkara Reading, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

The Leaf Hatch . . .

Autumn Pond
(NYC 10 2017)

Today is Halloween. The tree leaves of Manhattan have at last begun to change with the season. This situation can turn tenkara fishing into more of a trick.

Pond tenkara at all times requires animation of the kebari pattern. When the leaf hatch occurs, the problem of unwanted hook ups arises. The best technique, or strategy, to skirt shed leaves is to fish slow.

Creepy crawly rises and falls of a pattern on a tight line can usually pull through top or bottom leaf litter. Leisenring’s classic lift, developed in the 1940s for stream trout, is also a sure bet in still water, the trick to make the fishing more of a treat.

Find the Bass in the Leaf Hatch!
(NYC 10 2017)

Happy Halloween . . .

– rPs 10 31 2017

Postscript: You can read a new profile of Jim Leisenring in the current issue of Eastern Fly Fishing magazine:

http://www.matchthehatch.com/EasternFlyFishing

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Blue Trout

September 29, 2017 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , ,

Blue Trout . . .

Bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix
(09 2017)

Temperatures have held high in humidity after a cool valley where August met September. Days have become shorter of light.

The seas have been swollen, due to the newsworthy vortices from the south and east. The view is broad, dynamic waves, bass from the raw power of waves that tackle rather than slap.

Time for albies, but before the linesiders, the bigger striped bass of autumn, both fish far too much for tenkara designed for trout. There is from the same jetties some times of clear sky and slack tide in September when the cocktail, quite the snapper in tooth, makes itself vulnerable enough, as in close enough, for successful multiple cast-hook-catch landings in the net.

Number Two Fish, Bluefish
(09 2017)

Tenkara in the salt remains an experiment rewarded. Bluefish of this size fight, the manic headshake like a trout of twenty inches, a trout with teeth. Most small Clouser or Charlie type patterns will lure fish. To land fish, your own skill at the cast in coastal breeze, and in arm wrestling with fish, is up to you.

Silver lining; the view:

Blued View: Bluefish Weather
(9 2017)

 

— rPs 09 29 2017

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Josetsu in July

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 , , , , , , , , , , ,

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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TAE

May 19, 2017 at 5:26 pm · Filed under Tenkara Kebari, Tenkara News, Tenkara Philosophy, Tenkara Reading, Tenkara Techniques ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

TAE . . .

Thank You. Arigato.
(NYC 05 2017)

 

Tenkara Advertising Entertainment

 

-rPs 05 19 2017

 

Postscript: Featuring The Green Guarantee

by ron P. swegman.

c.2017 by ron P. swegman. all rights reserved.

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