Tenkara Fest 2017

This year it was in Isère, more precisely in Pont-en-Royans, that we had rendez vous for the third edition of the Tenkara Fest which was going to take place in the Vercors massif.

As every year I arrived first and took rather quickly the direction of a stream that we had planned to fish during these three days ie the Bourne.

But before fishing I took the time to prepare an excellent lunch on the bank of this beautiful stream bathed in sunshine and took advantage of it to relax after the almost ten hours of my night time drive. It was very hot this friday afternoon, 82 F  in the shade to be exact, and so I did not expect trout to be particularly active. The Bourne is a beautiful stream where you feel incredibly good to look for trout even if this afternoon the conditions were hardly favorable to trout fishing. So I spent a good time observing another tenant on the premises.

Joined by Guilhem we decided to climb further up the river. The atmosphere began to feel strongly stormy but we were confident and wanted to start this weekend devoted to fishing by simply tenkara fishing. In spite of the stormy atmosphere then the wind started blowing but our fishing met the success. Our simple approach to tenkara, faithful to the basic principle of this sport fishing: a rod, a line, a fly, once again demonstrated its effectiveness even in difficult conditions and in my case on streams of which I knew only the name a few hours ago. 

This first fishing session completed, we did hit the road in the opposite direction to join our friend Edouard, who had just arrived at the guest house. We did spend an excellent evening which was followed by a good night of sleep for the day that was awaiting for us the next day. This second day began with our first encounter with a tenkara angler whom we knew only through social networks and I must say that as we had expected, we had the pleasure of meeting a very nice fisherman and really passionate about tenkara. 

After we met, we observed the river where some trout had been stocked for the "fishing festival" and decided to go fishing on the Vercors plateau. As we were driving to the plateau the sky darkened very quickly, and once we reached our destination, we could only see that a storm had swollen the surrounding streams, and we decided to drive back to the gorges of the Bourne where we hopefully found clean and clear waters.

We arrived in the middle of the morning and even at the bottom of these deep gorges the temperature was already very high. Despite the warm weather our morning of tenkara fishing in this magnificent place was crowned with success. We will observe many mayflies but it must be said that during this day they did not seem to interest any fish because only small black kebari were taken by trout. 

The weather forecast was correct and the afternoon ended in a violent storm, it was almost 7 pm when we stopped fishing.

The next day the temperature had dropped sharply and as we found when we arrived on the banks of the Vernaison the water was slightly stained because of the night rain. If the beginning of the morning was rather difficult the fishing became good around noon as the sky uncovered and the temperature rose.

Once again simplicity was rewarded and all trout were taken with zenmai-dou pattern.

In the afternoon I resumed the north road where dantesque storms awaited me and compelled me to cancel the visits and tenkara fishing that I had planned to make in Savoie but I had just spent a weekend with friends passionate of tenkara and that's the main thing.