Dr. Ishigaki’s Tenkara Flies
In my previous post, I told about my trip last weekend to the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum to see Dr. Ishigaki present and demonstrate tenkara. It was a great experience. After the demo, I presented Dr. Ishigaki with a replica of an 18th century fly I tied – complete with a horsehair snell. He was delighted and in return, gave me 2 of his tenkara flies – right out of his personal fly box! It turns out that he only fishes one pattern, in multiple colors, usually size 12. Tenkara is more “presentation” than “matching the hatch”. Here are the flies Dr. Ishigaki gave me:
As you can see, this is the same fly in different colors. It is an extremely simple but effective fly when fished tenkara. It only requires a hook, thread and rooster hackle to tie! Dr. Ishigaki always fishes barbless hooks (as do I). It is fished in all four tenkara techniques: on the surface, mid depth, deep, and “streamer like”. This last is a presentation where the fly is animated by twitching the rod.
I’ll be tying some of these and posting a simple step-by-step, so stay tuned.
CM_Stewart said:
Jun 25, 09 at 4:14 pmThere was a request on the Tenkara USA forum for a close up photo of Dr. Ishigaki’s flies so I posted a link to this page. How’s that step-by-step coming?
EclecticGuy said:
Jun 25, 09 at 4:19 pmHey Chris! I’ve been pretty busy in my other project
I can post a textual description of tying these very quickly. I’ll try to get it up later tonight.
EclecticGuy said:
Jun 25, 09 at 5:00 pmOkk Chris, I’ve posted the pattern!
John said:
Mar 01, 10 at 9:04 amthe swiss guys seems to make also some nice tenkara tackle;
http://www.tenkara.ch
sinceerly
John
craig said:
Mar 19, 10 at 5:30 pmjust happenned upon you site.
a couple of summers ago i watched an elderly gentleman using a 13′ telescoping pole and a dapping fly (spider) to take bass and carp out of the lilies.
i keep one in my truck, now. just use a heavy tapered leader and a box of flies.
seems to work.