EclecticGuy

I drove to western Ct yesterday to see my daughter off on her trip to South Korea and Japan. In the morning, I got to spend 1 1/2 hrs on Macedonia Brook in Macedonia Brook State Park. This is a great little mountain stream – no wider than 15′ in most places and very tight with trees and shrubs on both banks, lots of boulders, and cascades. I decided that this would be the perfect place to try out my new TenkaraUSA Yamame rod and the flies I tied on Friday night. The flies were all size 12 on Tiemco 100 dry fly hooks according to the pattern Dr. Ishigaki uses - I posted about that the other day.

In the past, I’ve tried to dab flies here with a conventional 7 1/2′ bamboo rod with limited success. The rod was too short to reach mid stream from the bank (there is really no reason to wade this little stream and scare the fish) and not good at casting a short length of line. The 12′ Yamame was perfect. Intuitively, you would think a long rod in such close surroundings would not work so well, but that was not the case. It was easy to push my way through the stream-side foliage and stick the rod tip out over mid stream. In a few places, I actually collapsed the rod before “going in” and then extending it out over the water. From this bank position I could easily cast the furled tenkara line using a side cast up and down stream. In some places, I could cast across the stream too. This is stealth fishing at its finest. The trout were not at all spooked like they would be by someone splashing around in their backyard.

On my 5th cast I caught a nice Rainbow Trout on a red-bodied, grizzly hackled fly. I cast the fly upstream from where I thought he was hiding, let it drift in to his lie, and pulsed it across stream. It proved to be irresistible! The first thought that went through my mind was “cool, that was fun”, the second thought was “eeks, how do I land this guy?”. Not surprisingly, landing was very similar to landing a fish with a loop rod. In fact, casting is also very similar. I hadn’t tried a loop rod on Macedonia Brook simply because the opportunity never came up. One big difference though is the lightness and suppleness of the graphite tenkara rod. It made for a very fun, fear-free (“omg, is my rod going to break?”) experience. Being able to collapse and extend the telescoping rod is an interesting advantage too.

Here is the Rainbow:

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Even he is trying to check out that tenkara rod – I am sure he has never seen one before! This photo also shows the rod – it is a really attractive olive-gold color, supple and fun. Here is where I caught him:

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He was hiding under that big boulder on the left. A little waterfall can be seen just to the right of the photo. I saw him dart out and grab something just before it went over the falls, so I knew where he was hiding. The water is so clear that even the slightest movement spooks these fish. 

Disclaimer on the following photo – I practice catch & release and take great care not to injure or stress a caught fish. I usually do not photo fish except for special cases – like the first caught on a tenkara rod. I do not like “flopping fish” photos where the fish is flopping around on the ground. After taking the photo above, this fish slid gently out of my hand (he was only 2″ above the gravel) and laid quietly next to my rod. He did not flop around. My photographer instinct pushed the shutter release and I carefully picked him up and placed him in the water 2′ away. He instantly revived and scooted off.

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I caught one more slightly larger Rainbow a little later. I really didn’t want to leave, but dad duties called!