A simple tip

Taking care of your tenkara rod is really necessary if you want to enjoy fishing with it for a long time. One can naively believe in the myth of rod breaking trouts or choose the side of common sense and admit that negligent anglers break their rods themselves.

If you do not take care of your tenkara rod that is not a surprise that one day you will end with stuck sections because of the dust collected within the rod. I have also noticed this winter that catching a big number of big trouts help the sections get stuck.

Many anglers think that they only have to take the stuck sections in their hands, press like a crazy and that the sections will collapse easily.

The pressure exerted on the segments is too high and you might have the bad surprise to break a section. Tenkara rods have a very small thickness of carbon fiber, they can resist to the band done by a trout trying to get free but they can not resist to high pressure on their walls. 

This is not the good way to loosen up stuck sections.

Get two foam rubber pads. These anti slip material will allow you to effectively hold each section and absorb a part of the pressure of your fingers on the rod. 

Put your ord on a table, place a rubber foam pad under the bigger of the stuck sections.

Put another pad around the smaller section that you want to collapse and close your hands on each section. 

Thanks to the pads of anti slip rubber foam you can now firmly hold each segment and make them slide. You can print a slightly twisting motion to your hands to make unwedging even easier.

I hope that you will find this simple tip useful in case you get stuck segments on your tenkara rod and that you will not forget how rod care is important. 

Kujaku Ken-bari

I had planned to go for a hike yesterday to check some creeks where I will perhaps fish next month but because of the wind and rain I finally spent the day browsing my tenkara library and I did find by chance, which sometimes make good things happen, in an old issue of Headwater Magazine on a picture of a traditional tenkara pattern. This kebari inspired me and reminded me of a recent exchange with Anthony Naples about traditional fly patterns and regionality.

The name of this kebari is pretty simple and means "peacock fly".

As there are more and more people new to tenkara and fly-tying I decided not to keep this pattern for my self and to share a step by step tying sheet.

1-Fix in your vise a VMC 9408 size 8 hook and wrap the tying thread around the shank.

2- Select 15mm of natural silk thread, fold it in two equal parts and fix it on the hook with wraps of         tying thread.

3- Here is the result you will have: 

4- Build a tapered underbody with tight wraps of tying thread. 

5- Select three fibers on a peacock saber.

6- Fix these fibers on the hook with the thread then trim the excess.

7- Select three peacock herls and fix them to the hook with tight wraps of tying threads.

8- Twist the peacock herls around the tying thread. This will solidify the body of the kebari.

9- Turn the twisted peacock herls around the hook shank, stop it with the tying thread and trim the           excess of peacock herls.

10- Select a cock neck hackle feather and fix it with the tying thread on the hook. 

11- Make two turns with the hackle feather around the hook shank and stop it with tight wraps of           tying thread. Trim the excess.

12- Make a few turns of tying thread to get a neat head to your kebari then use a whip finish to block    the tying thread. Then cast thread off. Secure with glue if you will. 

I sincerely hope this detailed tying sheet will make you want to tie a few of these traditional patterns and have fun fishing with them.

Kenbane kebari variant

When I go fishing, may it be for two hours or a full day, I always carry a ziploc plastic bag in which I collect materials I find on the walk to the stream or on the river's edge.

The next trout season will start in six weeks now and as I was tyding my fly tying stuff this morning I did find back the bag and opening it the first thing that I got in hand was a blackbird wing. Even though the trout season is coming soon I am not caught in a fly tying craze but this small feathers inspired me to tie a Kenbane kebari variant.

As you have probably understood if you follow this blog I am an avid traditional ties enthusiast and it did not long to decide to use these feathers to tie a variant of the Kenbane kebari. The original pattern

is tied using pheasant for the hackle but I am running out of it today. 

The process is not complicated at all. To start I crush the feather stem with the butt of a boxcutter.

The next step to clean the inside of the half stem with a bodkin. Be careful to do it gently not to pierce it because it would make the material very fragile. 

The tying has nothing particular besides the feather's preparation. I used a Tiemco 100 size 14 hook on which I tied zenmai, a fine golden wire, blackbird feather with a burnt orange 6/0 thread. 

I like more and more slowly tying a small quantity of kebari. For my personal use I rarely tie more than three or four at each session now. I am not interested by productivity anymore, I enjoy the simple pleasure of craft in harmony with my tenkara.

As I am looking at these Kenbane kebari I think that today I could sum up my tenkara by a statement such as "Built to fish". Like many fly fishermen I have long been attached to aesthetic details but now I have realized that the fact of judging the fishing capacities of a fly pattern based on aesthetic is a complete nonsense. A fish eye is not a human eye, a dry and immobile pattern on a fly tying desk is not a drifting insect and I do not think that a trout has even the slightest idea of what is a kebari. 

How do you think trouts look at you?