EclecticGuy

Last month I posted a recipe on tying the simple tenkara fly that I saw Dr. Ishigaki use at his presentation in the Catskills.

This morning I got an email from CM_Stewart (the fellow who introduced me to tenkara and told me about Dr. Ishigaki’s presentation). Here is what CM_Stewart had to say:

I thought about sending this when I first saw your description of Dr. Ishigaki’s flies, but decided it wasn’t important.

I still think it’s not important, but decided you might want to know. Your instructions for tying one of  Dr. Ishigaki’s flies will produce a fly just as good as his, but that’s not the way he ties them. He starts the thread just behind the eye, wraps back to the point where he will attach the hackle and then back to the eye. He ties in the hackle by the stem, concave side up, without stripping one side, with the stem pointing toward the eye, reaching to just behind the eye. He wraps back and forth enough to securely attach the hackle and build up the head to his desired thickness. He pulls the hackle straight up and then takes a few thread wraps behind it. He wraps the hackle with five full wraps and traps it behind the hackle (toward the bend). He wraps thread over the base of the hackle enough to give the hackle a slight forward slant. He then wraps the thread back and forth between the bend and the hackle enough to build up the body to his desired thickness (neatness does not count here, it detracts from the segmented look of the body and also slows you down – he ties very quickly). He finishes with a couple half hitches and a spot of cement AT THE BEND. He says to tie off at the bend to make sure you don’t get any cement on the hackle (remember, he ties very, very quickly).

Your way is just as good, and even if you did see him tie and knew that your description is different, it still falls within the “poetic license” of how to tie a fly. Still, I thought that if you didn’t know how he tied them himseslf, you might want to know.

Actually, now that I think about it, there may be a meaningful difference in the two methods. You specify two or three turns of a hackle with one side stripped. He specifies five turns of an unstripped hackle. Yours is much more sparse, and his much bushier (assuming you both use the same hackle). Since he uses rooster hackle, the bushier tie makes a more effective “sea anchor” effect, creating more resistance in the water and allowing you to fish a slightly tighter line. I don’t know if it is enough to be significant.

So there we have it! CM_Stewart was there and saw how the fly was tied. I scrutinized the flies Dr. Ishigaki gave me, exchanged several letters with him, and did a little research on some Japanese Web sites on tying this fly to come up with my recipe. I am going to give this technique a try myself!

(email posted with CM_Stewart’s permission, thanks!)