Tenkara on La Beaume stream

I had planned to leave Ardèche area the day after the Tenkara Fest to visit a good friend of mine who lives at a several hours drives away so on sunday I woke up at sunrise and went on the stream flowing nearby the village of Lablachère where I lived during my stay in Ardèche. The closer stream to the house is La Beaume. 

I did hit the stream at about half past seven because like the days before the temperature was going to be around 95°F so I was convinced that it would be hard to find active trouts in such weather conditions. 

The water being gin clear and pretty low I did put my shades before getting the rod ready, I saw a few trouts but all of them were nestled against the stones in the rare shady spots of the stream. This section of the stream is what is considered in France as second category stream which means that the fish population is a mix of salmonids and cyprinids. There were a lot of fishes rising a few yards downstream from me and even I had only fished once in a local stream I guessed that these fishes were the same that I caught two days before. I tied a sedge on my line, a very basic pattern made of CDC dubbing and deer hair. 

The fishing was very simple: cast, catch, release. After many catches my sedge was totally soaked by mucus and I had to wash it and get it dry so I did a break and decided to go a little bit upstream. 

Sitting on a stone I was watching the stream flowing in front of me and I saw that fishes were rising in the mainstream. They were not discreet but fewer than downstream...Trouts? I did see several of them at rest in quiet areas in the outskirts of the mainstream but at nearly 9:00 a.m the temperature was already high, too high for a trout to move on a small bug like my sedge. 

My fishing was pretty simple: I was casting my sedge in the upper part of the mainstream, keeping it on the surface while lifting my rod to have a permanent tension on the line. This was very efficient and the catches were almost systematic. 

Chubs! I was not disappointed because I knew since the start that I had very little chance to find active trouts and an angler must be able to adapt to weather and stream conditions. I have just read an article by an American fly angler stating that his fishing experience is 90% frustration and 10% joy and that is really something I can not understand. If I was feeling the same thing I would without a doubt definitely stop fishing but this will probably never happen to me because I have been fishing since I was a kid and my enthusiasm is still unspoiled. With a several hours drive coming I had to save energy for the rest of the day and decided to stop fishing on this stream. It was very easy to catch the first chubs but it rapidly became more technical. A whole lot of fun. 

Around half past ten I collapsed my rod, spooled back my line and walked back to the hamlet where I lived during my stay in Ardèche. On the path I did come across a group of swimmers which made me think that I had well done to go fishing early. 

La Beaume is a beautiful stream but it probably offers better fishing opportunities earlier in spring and that means that I will go back there...

Tenkara Fest 2015

Several months ago Eric Robert and I decided after a phone call to organize a tenkara meeting in Ardèche because we thought that if we were doing a good job to promote tenkara with our respective blogs and the french tenkara forum that we have founded but that it would be really cool to meet other tenkara anglers. The french tenkara forum is cool, there is no "expert" and novice, absolutely no elitism from anyone and every one can express his experience and perspective about tenkara. We rapidly chose Ardèche because of the beauty of this area and it happened that the owner of a very famous fishing spot on a mountain plateau agreed to welcome the event on his property. 

The saturday morning I did arrive on the fest site at 8 o'clock after a one hour drive and I was not really surprised to be the first there because during my stay in Ardèche I had rented a house at about 20 miles from Montselgues and other people attending the Tenkara Fest, except Edouard, had to drive from further areas. As the participants arrived we had an interesting conversation about tenkara not only as a fishing technique but also a philosophy because most of us are ex-fly fishermen who are looking for a new perspective about fishing. We are not looking for gurus or experts but we just want to share our experiences. Like the day before the air temperature was high so we decided to start fishing before it was too hot. Eric caught the first fish of the day, a nice brook trout, on a small black wet fly. 

Christian, a tenkara novice with a long fly fishing career, rapidly got his first trout on his Royal Airstage rod that a few minutes before had never got out of its original carton. This was the perfect exemple of what tenkara can bring to experienced fly fishermen: a new perspective in simplicity and efficiency. 

I started fishing with a black wet fly but as the temperature rose fishes became focused on the water surface waiting for insects to fall on the water so I did skip to a black dry fly. Raindows, brownies and brookies were very active and showed great interest for my black bug. 

The Tenkara Fest has also been the opportunity to meet Jérôme Rolland, the sympathetic and talented designer who created my blog logo, and Manu Galiana. This young fly fisher has shown very good technical skills all day long. He is very interested by tenkara and as he has no prejudice about anything different from western fly fishing he can rapidly learn the basics of tenkara. One example of that is "hand-lining": I only had to show him once without saying anything for him to understand what it was and the interest of this netting technique. 

I had not fished on dry flies since several years and I must admit that it was cool to fish this way in these gin clear ponds that gives the possibility to watch fishes coming under your fly to bite it. 

The morning passed quickly, one does not see time passing by when catching a lot of fishes! Around half past noon I did feel that the temperature was really on the rise and as my comrades hunger and thirst led me to go the shaded veranda where we went for lunch.

We had a very interesting conversation about tenkara and the atmosphere of this lunch was very good and truly reflected that we all got along very well. Some of us are more experienced with tenkara but everyone could express his point of view, ask questions and share his feelings about tenkara. If one day you have the opportunity to visit this place you have to taste Mrs. Ayglon traditional dishes which are delicious.  

After the lunch Manu and I did a fly tying demo. I needed to tie more dry flies as the only one I had used the morning was in very bad condition after the big number of fishes that had bitten it. As usual I focused on general aspect instead of super small details and the afternoon fishing session will show that I was right because I caught even more fishes than in the morning.

Manu tied his fetish stillwater pattern called "tchernobyl grasshopper". 

We started fishing back around three in the afternoon, it was very hot but hopefully the wind was blowing an d it made the heat a bit easier to stand. Without the wind I think that fishes would have stayed in the depths where the water is colder than under the surface.

Each of us caught a lot of fishes during the afternoon and I must say that I was a little bit surprised by the strength of most of them, especially brookies.

At about half past six we stopped fishing as some of us has several hours drive to get back home. We had good times drinking an ice cold beer before saying goodbye to each other and we all agreed about one fact: there is going to be other editions of the Tenkara Fest.

I did leave this beautiful place with the feeling of having spent a very good day with other tenkara fans and that was the best reward Eric and I could get for our organization and webmastering job that we did a few months ago. There are going to be other editions of the Tenkara Fest and I hope that we will succeed in keeping the very good atmosphere we had this saturday because that is what the people want: having fun fishing with cool people. No one in the tenkara scene needs boring fake experts or dead serious assholes. Organizing this event was a great experience for me and I am sure that I want to do even more for tenkara in my country. 

Discovering the Drobie stream

The day before attending the Tenkara Fest my friend Edouard and I had planned to discover the Drobie stream which is a tributary of the Beaume stream that originates in Montselgues, at the south East of the Parc National des Monts d'Ardèche.

We did meet in the village of Joyeuse where we did buy local traditional food and then we had to drive on a small mountain road towards the village of Sainte Melany where Edouard knows a beautiful stretch of the Drobie stream that he wanted to share with me. 

We did arrive on the stream at 8:30 a.m and it was already pretty hot. I did not know this stream at all before going there and I was fascinated by the sheer beauty of this landscape. I was sure that fishing was not going to be easy because of air and water temperature but at least I was gifted to spend a day in such a beautiful place.

While we were walking down to the stream we were analyzing the stream to spot trouts that we could try to catch. I did catch the first one after about five minutes in a very tight raw of water. It was a small trout but I was happy because it was my first Mediterranean Trout that I ever have got in my tamo.

Edouard was fishing a few meters upstream and had already caught several "sofies" that were very active on food, rushing to anything falling on the water surface. These small fishes were taking advantage from the fact that trouts were not active on food and as I have observed many times in my streams of Normandy the intense activity of small cyprinids in a trout streams means that the local trouts are going to be very hard to get interested by a fly. The goal of this tenkara outing was not anyway to catch a lot of fishes but to go fishing with a friend. We had never met yet and only shared our passion for tenkara through the internet. We did fish upstream, trying our chance on every spot but all the trouts we were targeting only rushed to our flies without biting. Edouard was fishing with a black dry fly and I was using a grey wet fly. A lot of small trouts did rush to my kebari but I was not fast enough on hook setting when one of them did bite it. It was nearly noon and it was really hot. 

We were hungry and decided ti fish downstream back to the place where we had parked our cars and did catch lots of "sofies". As we saw in gin clear deep pools these "small" fishes can reach nice sizes but the bigger specimen do not mix with the mass of small individuals that rush to any bug falling in the water.

We took a long lunch break in the shades of trees while discussing about fishing and of course especially tenkara and we realized that we had many common viewpoints and analysis about many aspects this fishing technique. Refreshed by this break we decided to go fishing down in the valley even though we agreed to say that we had very little chance to catch any trout in the afternoon. It was about 3 o'clock p.m and the temperature was 95 F°!

I still had my grey kebari tied to my tippet but I did not catch any trout but lots of sofies did see the stream from above...

To catch these small fishes one needs good quality fly drifts and when the wind stuffed in the valley at about five p.m it became very hard to control our lines and we did not catch fish at all. Line control is really the key to success for tenkara anglers. 

Overwhelmed by the heat and convinced that we had very little chance to catch anything more Edouard and I decided to stop fishing and go back to the place where we had parked our cars. We were not disappointed as we knew since the start that this tenkara outing would be hard because of the hot weather. We just wanted to spend a nice day before the Tenkara Fest. 

Back at the parking lot we did take a wise decision: driving to the next village and drink some ice cold beer in a pub. I have spent a good day with a friend who thinks like me that a good fishing outing is all about fun and challenge. I had the opportunity to discover a stream I had never heard about a few days ago and I have to thank Edouard for sharing with me a gorgeous place.