October Surprise . . .
Autumn in the salt paints images of bluefish and striped bass in the fly fisher’s mind. So, imagine my October surpise when in the chilly rain my olive and white Clouser conjured up another new, and unexpected, tenkara species:
Hickory Shad
– rPs 10 31 2020
Waiting . . .
Waiting by the Bay
(02 28 2020)
February for the local fisher can be a time for fly tying, reading, or simply cleaning and organizing tackle in anticipation of the new season. Throughout all these pastimes is a central principal: Waiting.
Waiting for the thaw
Waiting for spring
Waiting for opening day
Waiting for fishing
Leap year adds one additional day to this, the shortest month of the year, so we’ll all be waiting just a little bit longer.
— rPs 02 29 2020
The End of the Regular Season . . .
Basepath Around the Pond
(NYC 09 2019)
Evening falls fast for the tenkara fisher now that the Autumnal Equinox has passed. The lingering, almost lazy, evening hours have been replaced by a quick race into darkness that can add a bit of urgency to a fishing trip taken after work.
The local ponds have begun to turn over, weedy waters turning clear, and the fish appear paler and more actively feeding, which, if one is lucky, can result in a grand slam:
Bluegill
Bluegill
(NYC 09 28 2019)
Black Crappie
Black Crappie
(NYC 09 28 2019)
Largemouth Bass
Largemouth Bass
(09 28 2019)
The largemouth bass came at last light, making it a grand slam, an appropriate finish alongside the final weekend of the regular MLB season.
— rPs 09 30 2019
Summer Flush . . .
Solstice Shower Passes Meadow Lake
(NYC 06 21 2017)
Meadow Lake, shaped like a peanut, perimetered by tall phragmites, has again proven to be a place where fish confounds fisher.
The fish of Flushing-Corona Park are there, but when and where, mystery remains. The bite becomes regular, as all fishes feed, still Flushing’s finned inhabitants hold the cards.
The southern end of this shallow brackish lake has undergone substantional reclamation. Indigenous wildflowers bloom now along its open bank and litter to one eye has been reduced by 80%.
Evidence of species other than carp and white perch can be found. Two large yellow perch, large enough to believe their passing was caused by natural older age, revealed the only fish kill found around the entire water body, one minor enough to cause no concern.
Retired Perch
(NYC 06 21 2017)
No snakehead species have been spotted despite a conscious attempt to find one. What was a scare in the spring of 2013 may well have been an isolated incident.
These fish are tough, and so can be the actual fishing. Wind has the ability here to foiled the best of casters. The lake seems to draw down the atmosphere, forming a vortex, a kind of reverse funnel, forcing, blowing air at once in all directions facing the fisher. There are breaks in this steady breeze, pauses measured in minutes, and this is when calm water may be read. Bubbles surface in scattered spots; turtles, a few, and carp, grazing the bottom in loose schools that resemble grazing sheep.
“Careful casts now!” is my whispered mantra at such times.
Numerous marsh birds, redwing blackbirds, cormorants, ducks, and gulls abound. Fishing birds are another good giide to the fishes’ whereabouts.
Mulberries have ripened with the arrival of summer. Flush with the fruit of the tree, birds are fed and so are their counterparts in the water. The tenkara carp challenge continues around an interesting and improved urban natural environment.
Solstice Sweetness: Mulberries
(NYC 06 21 2017)
— rPs 06 30 2017
Salad Days . . .
Modest Largemouth (NYC 06 2017)
. . . of June.
Pond shallows, turtle banks, all is lush.
The largemouths chase small fry.
Feathered bright as the white sky.
Herons all angle up modest luck.
(3) – a three-pound athletic bass was wrestled to the shaded green bank, the two of us tethered by 6X (4 lb.) monofilament tippet of a kind ideal for tenkara. Two runs had just bent the TUSA Yamaha rod into a bridge arch over turmoiled topwater. There had been a witness, Jesse Valentin, who earlier, with, together we watched the tall white bird spear pinch a brace of bluegill.
June = Bass
King Sunfishes.
Jesse; “Heron 1, Bluegill 0” (NYC 06 2017)
Heron Approved.
— rPs 06 05 2017
I learned of C.A.S.T. for Kids from my fishing friend named Morgan. My appeal to you directly regards the event, a morning of city fishing, to be held on Sunday, September 18 at Harlem Meer in Central Park.
My reasons are founded on several strong personal connections:
1) My wife’s twin brother, Louis, is a special needs citizen.
2) I am the author and illustrator of two books on fly fishing. The second, Small Fry: The Lure of the Little, includes a chapter on Harlem Meer as well as fly fishing with younger anglers.
3) I work part-time at Urban Angler, Ltd. on 5th Avenue and have independently guided several clients along The Meer, so I know the lake and how to fish there well.
4) I maintain an ongoing blog on tenkara, a simple form of Japanese fly fishing, great for Harlem Meer, which requires only rod, line, and fly. Physically challenged anglers have found the more simple style to be a godsend that allows them to keep fishing despite challenged limbs.
I’ll be there. Will you?
C.A.S.T. for Kids at Harlem Meer
8:30 a.m. -1:30 p.m. Sunday
September 18, 2016
Dana Discovery Center
Harlem Meer, Central Park
New York, New York
– rPs 09 14 2016
Tenkara Vegetarian . . .
Genus Fucus (NYC 07 2016)
One photo with one caption can at times tell it all.
Location: the salt waterfront of Manhattan Island.
– rPs 07 11 2016
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
One Fly for the Tenkara Holidays . . .
“Six Green Guarantee!” (NYC 12 2015)
1.
Gift giving. Among anglers the act can be a delicate wade on slippery surfaces. Some people may even take offense as far as viewing an offer as a hard press unwanted.
Gift giver I may be. The acceptance of a fly pattern example, a kebari, perhaps as a holiday present, a simple gift from a friend or acquaintance who ties is, when from me, an act and an artifact of interaction akin to a card: business, birthday, or holiday.
If the gift offered comes in duplicate, or more, fish the fly! Mix the gift pattern with your own for the classic swing or two in a flow’s current seam.
“Tenkara is One Fly Fishing” has been offered as a koan, as well as a sales absorbing orthodoxy, yet I have met masters who swing tandem soft hackles on a long furled leader with the grace of every other magician who has penned a trout treatise.
One Fly. The inquiry begs an absolute or other from every voice. Is there an answer . . . yet?
Meanwhile, fish that gift fly, or deconstruct the recipe for future fun with one fly on the water.
2.
When the good wine flows as fast as a pocket water flow, one knows many more than expected have arrived. Plenty of guests made a party for the NYC Tenkara Club in Manhattan, New York City. A table appointed well greeted the second floor guest at Orvis, 489 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY. Saddle hackles hung in rows and a white screen displayed slide show views of tenkara fisheries and fishers employed with a variety of matched tackle. Adam Klag displayed tenkara rods short and light along longer models capable of tangling with major Cyprinidae.
Respected voices filled the space with Q&A and useful demonstrations of tackle management.
“What About One Fly?”
There it was, then. The Question.
I refer to my Tenkara Fly Code first shared in May of 2012:
https://tenkaratakesmanhattan.com/2012/05/01/a-tenkara-fly-code/
That is my “Fly Box Flashback” for the close of December, 2015.
Time since New York City’s tenkara public meeting has since been spent with irony tying multiple patterns. So far from One Fly has been in part inspired by this recent gathering of tenkara angling kin. If I were a cub reporter and copy editor in attendance on December 8, I would have titled my reportage:
Tenkara Takes Manhattan
. . . the i-RON-y.
– rPs 12 14 2015
Postscript: My 2015 holidays season’s tenkara gift suggestions and recommendations in random order:
Crooked Lines by Dominic Garnett
http://dgfishing.co.uk/product/crooked-lines/
Nissin Flying Dragon Carp Rod at Tenkara Bum
http://www.tenkarabum.com/nissin-flying-dragon-carp-rod.html
Simple Flies by Morgan Lyle
http://www.amazon.com/Morgan-Lyle/e/B0196QS5OG/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
Tenkara Flies by Anthony Naples
http://www.tenkarabum.com/anthony-naples-tenkara-flies.html
fallons angler issue 4
http://fallonsangler.net/product/fallons-angler-issue-4/
Day Without Art 2015 . . .
(an oxymoron for Aristotélēs)
Sweet in sustenance
Swims this combustible
Carbon water brain.
This blob tells me,
Compels me,
Yells at me.
Scanning other computers
All commuters,
In unison, yeah.
Cloud composed, composer,
Lack of composure.
Just right, suppose, or.
Sophistry some-ocracy, yes,
Suppository idolatry, yea,
Each on purveys.
Hey!
Hey!
Hey!
This Is Politics:
Opinion. Rhetoric.
Not Poetry Poetic.
Reflecting Rain (NYC Late Autumn 2015)
— rPs 12 01 2015
ron P. swegman is an angler, artist, and author whose writing focuses on those times and places when and where nature and the city intersect.
