Tenkara Dreams

I haven’t been fishing much and I haven’t missed it. You see I worked my way into a place that I didn’t like and it has everything to do with you and very little with me. What you see here, my writing and photography about my fishing, my tenkara and how I got here, much in the same way as I’m doing now, I just do it and photograph, write about it.

It has been a long time since I’ve put my thoughts to words on paper, well, really the iPad. I haven’t missed it or fishing, um, or fishing the way I did it in the past. This is what I did, got excited to go fishing with a friend (or alone,) take a bunch of pictures, catch a few fish and write about it when I get home.

Just as I’m doing now, I’m even repeating myself.

Except this time, I’m doing it for the right reasons and the address is correct.

I’m tired of people, the online circus of noise, the crack pots, the jackasses, the idiots that can’t see the forest for the trees. …and that’s who killed my desire to share my enthusiasm for fly fishing Japanese style. I was honest, I worked hard at it and I’m still very proud of what I did and continue to do, go deep in the forest to find that one person I need to talk to.

I used to make a web site that is dedicated to a Japanese form of fly fishing. I was so excited to do it that I quit fly fishing! I just stopped and dove right in with one purpose, that I would not put my spin on what it was. So I went straight to the source, the Japanese experts on it. I was accepted with open arms and an invitation to visit Japan and fish with its masters there. I went and found myself in the presence of the experts. As I walked the streams and fished, listening to the advices, I was told that I already was an expert! And in a few seasons, I would even master it.

That was twelve seasons ago and a lot of tenkara since then, I’ve been back to Japan fishing with different experts in other locations.

A couple of years ago, I decided that it was time to pick up my fly rods again. I’ve always been smitten with them and the sea, the siren song of the sea is always pulling me. I made a decision to create a web site on beach fly fishing. An odd faction, very specific and not very popular yet I chose to do it more true to myself. Again I interviewed the experts, I meet and fished with them in ways that were so cool. I remember one that I was texting at the beach parking lot literally before first light. The fog so thick, everything just socked in past fifty yards or so, “Go ahead, I’ll find you.” And he walked out of the fog like a dream, into my area and that’s how we meet. I wrote about it. I interviewed famous fly fishers and I found myself burnt out.

I was giving away my soul, caring for the wrong people, nobody cared and I cared way too much to continue so I stopped that too. And I’m very proud of the work I did there, same same same.

I returned to my tenkara site and tried to write again but the words just came out wrong. I was done and I knew it. I looked at the site and reflected on what I had done and realized it was my best work. That I had placed on the front page, names of everyone that I could think of that loved tenkara. Many of them treated me very poorly yet I still appreciated what they do. I’ve always known that it’s far better to be polite than kind and I remained true to that. Within the pages are more than fifty interviews of tenkara experts all over the world but centered in Japan where it originated.

I shared the site with a Japanese expert on tenkara. He approached me to help him and we had an arrangement that he would write in English, detailed informative articles on tenkara and the culture around it. We produced fifty articles, absolute gems on the topic.

I wrote on all of my tenkara secrets as well as the tenkara secrets of the masters in Japan. I got together with experts everywhere and wrote collective articles on tenkara. They are all still there, being read, helping people learn their own true meaning of this minimal style of fishing.

But I haven been tenkara fishing in a while. I thought I was burnt out but really I was burned. 

I really have a wonderful life though. I have no complaints except observations and this story is one of self observation. I make critical decisions every day about the heart health of others yet I have not been taking care of my own.

It was late Thursday evening, in just a few hours I would be driving my Forester a few hours into our mountains in search of Apache Trout native to our alpine watersheds. I was paralyzed earlier, I could not decide what fishing equipment to bring. My one weight fly rod? My library box of dry flys? My fantastic little Loomis three weight? My chest pack? Should I bring a tamo? A gorgeous mini net?

I just couldn’t decide and it was already ten thirty, I had to get up at five and I still needed a shower and a shave before bed. So I decided not to decide. I grabbed a t-shirt, a pair of lightweight pants and underwear as well as my rain jacket. I threw those things in my backpack, grabbed my camera bag and put it by the front door.

Fuck it. 

I’m not going to think about it. I’m tired of making decisions…

On the drive up, we realized that there was monsoon moisture in the mountains, it was going to be raining. We live in the desert, it’s still hot but we are now on the good side of summer. Yesterday’s high was 107 degrees but there was a chill in the air at 5:30a, it was 85 degrees and it felt cool.

The magic happened, it rained early, we drove away but when it was supposed to be raining, the sky opened up in places all the way to the sun. We chose my favorite stream, the little Colorado. This is an amazing stream that starts at Mt.Baldy at over ten thousand feet and meanders for hundreds of miles across the desert to the Colorado River where it cuts the earth into the Grand Canyon. It’s dammed up but still makes its way to the Mar de Cortez or the Sea of Cortez for those of you…

I sat there on the boulder. Jim and I had hiked up the last couple of miles up the headwater valley. My friend was fishing the ox bows, I was fishing with my camera but I decided now was the time. I stowed my camera in the goretex drawstring bag I carry and reached in for my tenkara rod and little bag I carry. In it was a tiny flybox about the size of my thumb with three Japanese kebari that I designed. I had made a decision long ago, I even wrote about it to develop and carry my fishing kit where ever I go.

As I looped the line on the tip of the rod and unfolded it, I thought to myself about the experts in tenkara, that there was an expert out there, not even online that was practicing tenkara. 

It was me. I had become that person.

The masters in Japan know me by name. I’ve had meals with them far up steep valley streams in their country. The guy who brought tenkara out of Japan successfully knew me and had paid me to help him as his online expert, he knows me. You know me but as I sat there on a boulder, I was happy to be alone, far away from people. Far away from the crazy messed up unreal world online.

I had not fished in some tome but that three and a half meter rod was two meters shorter than the line I was using. 

I caught Apache Trout with no decisions, I didn’t think about my fishing, the act of it I just did what I knew, what I carried with me every day swallowed in my pack. At the end of the day I still had a hook left. 

I’m happy to report that I’m in a good place, not online but on fun, writing for me.

I’m free from all the craziness.

I’ve contributed and I did the best that I could do and not only is it good enough, it is good and it’s still there.

I read the other day about anti-influencers. I think I’ve been true to that. I didn’t pander to marketing. I thought about what I wanted to do, I planned my work and I worked my plan.

And now I see you, clearly.