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By Anthony Naples, on September 25th, 2011
 I am sometimes attracted to something – to an image, a song, a phrase, even a word – and my mind rotates this thing around and around. I’ll find myself thinking about it all day long – maybe not always on the surface, but maybe buried under the day’s dust and detritus. At these times I’ll try to decipher what this obsession means – it is not always possible. Sometimes however an idea comes into focus and differentiates itself from fuzzy background noise of my brain. That’s what happened with this photo.
When I looked at this photo it seemed full of meaning and metaphor – but I couldn’t quite put words to it. Then an idea began to incubate and finally hatched. This picture made me think of poise and potential; of initial and boundary conditions; of chaos and prediction. In short it made me think of the current and future state of tenkara in America. Is tenkara that erratic boulder, sitting on the edge, poised and improbable? Will it fall in to the lake? Will it remain on the edge? Is tenkara that scraggly Charlie Brown pine tree, growing on the inhospitable purchase of that rock ledge, doomed to a crooked and stunted life, but still somehow hanging on, still nobly struggling? Is it the melt water from the glacier, distilled on high in rarefied air, dropped on us from out of the blue, then melted into the greater lake of fly fishing? Who knows. It will be interesting to watch the development, one thing is for sure - it is impossible to know. But I’m glad to play a bit part in the movie.
What do you all think? Please let me know.
By Anthony Naples, on September 6th, 2011
 Tenkara is not just a style of fly fishing, it is a way of life. Just like our musical or cultural interests inform our clothing and hairstyle choices (I’m still trying to forget about my 1980′s new wave hair style), so tenkara affects anglers. The tenkara angler has an extra spring in her step and a attentive, piercing, hawk-like stare (think of Clint Eastwood as “the man with no name” ). If the tenkara angler’s wearing mirrored lenses then there are probably mountains reflected in them – or at least what passes for mountains in his neck of the woods (think of Eric Cartman).  He probably has a lighter load than your usual western angler – simplicity is after all a sort of mantra. It is a small club and we often find ourselves preaching the word and spreading the gospel of tenkara whenever we can - but to quote Mark 6:11 – “if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”, so I’m not going to get too upset with those that are not ready to accept tenkara. But if you come along while I’m fishing my with my tenkara rod and you show the slightest bit of interest you are going to get the full speech and demonstration.  The tenkara angler is likely to have something of the do-it-yourself going on too – maybe it’s a DIY rod holster or fly box or lanyard, or net. Maybe it’s just re-purposed items – I’m fond of my Altoids tin fly box, which says several things; 1) that I’m a rebel without a cause and want to be outside of the mainstream of fly fishing (I’ve always been a bit angsty); 2) that I like strong mints and fresh breath; and 3) that I’m cheap (or maybe I should say “frugal”). The tenkara angler is also likely to have strange notions. There is this idea floating around in tenkara circles that matching the hatch is not important (gasp!) – or at least not as important as some folks think. Also, maybe dead-drifting is over rated and imparting action to the fly is something that you ought to try. On these points I am not willing to go all in, at least not all the time. I do know that I’ve had great days fishing general attractor tenkara flies. I also know that I’ve had days when the fish demanded a hatch-matching emerger or nymph. So maybe the truth is this; you can simplify your fly selection, improve your technique and catch fish on general patterns more often than you believed possible. But also that sometimes you’ll do better to match the hatch – I suspect that as in most things, the truth is complicated and that it lies in a dark place, shrouded and unclear – and only in moments of clarity and grace do we see it. I can say this for certain though – I catch a lot of fish on my tenkara rods. Well let’s qualify that (a lot for me may be just a few by your standards)- I catch at least as many fish, and probably more that I did on western gear.  Is tenkara superior to western gear? Maybe sometimes – or maybe not. Those who are so confident of tenkara’s superiority may never have seen a truly expert western-style fly angler seemingly vacuum up every fish in a stream. The real question, in my opinion, is “Does it matter if tenkara is a more effective fish catching method?”. My personal answer is – no. It absolutely doesn’t matter to me whether tenkara is “better”.  Back in the day I decided to try fly fishing because it seemed interesting. I liked the idea that I could learn some new skills, learn to identify insects, learn to tie flies. Fly fishing seemed to be more in step with the natural world. Fly fishing is, to me, a more aesthetically pleasing experience. Tenkara is more so. So I chose tenkara for its aesthetics and its philosophy. Tenkara makes me more submissive to the fishing environment. The fixed line of the tenkara rod makes me evaluate the fishing terrain in a more careful way than I did previously. I need to move more. I need to position myself more carefully. The tenkara rod, without a reel is so light in the hand. It feels more like an extension of my body. The tenkara cast is slower and more subtle, more natural, easier to learn. You cannot power the tenkara cast – you need to work with what the rod gives you – the line is so light it doesn’t load the rod in the same way. If you try to force it you will fail. What about those crazy reversed-hackle sakasa kebari wet flies flies? Well – they work. Are they magic? No. I fished my minimalist sakasa kebari in Rocky Mountain National Park with great success. Would any other wet fly worked just as well? Who knows. It is not just about flies though. Obviously you need to know where to cast, how to sink the fly and how to detect the strike ( more about these things in a later post). I fished tenkara with a friend new to the method. I caught, with the same fly, 6 or 7 to every one that he caught. I’m not bragging (ok maybe a little). He is a experienced fly angler, but new to tenkara. What was the difference? – technique.
Tenkara can be used in a variety of situations – but it really shines it certain types of fishing. Specifically, high gradient, small to medium sized trout streams, with little overhead cover. These types of boulder strewn, rushing rivers harbor fish that must act quickly. The actively fished sakasa kebari, with its pulsating hackle attracts fish in the few moments before the fly rushes past the trout. The long rod makes picking the pockets on these streams an absolute joy.
The trick on tumbling, flashing, mountain streams that find themselves hurried on by excessive gravity is to get the fly noticed. That means two things – get the fly in front of a fish and perhaps add a little extra attraction. That attraction may be movement, flash or color among other things. Trout are pretty good at spotting a meal floating by, after all if they weren’t they’d starve – so I tend think presentation.
Rocky Mountain National Park has all water types though from smooth meadow streams to rushing mountain streams, to ponds and lakes. Tenkara is great on these meadow streams too – the lack of nearby overhanging trees is especially appreciated.
Oh one last thing – tenkara and RMNP are the perfect combo for new fly fishers. Tenkara casting is so easy to pick up, the kids will be fishing in minutes.
By Anthony Naples, on March 29th, 2011
I just started reading the 1999 John Gierach book Standing in a River Waving a Stick – I’m not all that far into it yet , but so far so good.
The first chapter is called, The Happy Idiot. In this chapter Gierach mentions a TV News program that he watched on which a monkey and an investment guru each chose stock portfolios – the monkey’s portfolio outperformed the professional’s. The comparision to fly fishing is of course the fact that no matter how much you read, practice, study, turn over rocks, cast in your back-yard, no matter how expensive your fly-rod or how many fly tying books you own, sometimes the monkey wins.
This got me thinking of those times when the monkey won. When, regardless how well prepared I thought that I was, my plans did not coincide with the fish’s – and dumb luck beat out my years of accumulated fly fishing skill and “wisdom”.
Most recently I remember a trip to Colorado’s Elk River not far outside of Steamboat Springs. A buddy and I were fishing up opposites banks of the river – I was catching fish here and there. I would have been having a pretty good time, but I couldn’t help noticing that every time I looked up my buddy was hooking, reeling in or releasing a fish. I know that I should have an internal locus of control, but…well it was getting to me. Every few casts I would turn back to the fly boxes, open and close one after another looking for that perfect fly. In between fly changes I tried to convince myself that I was just on the wrong side of the river – it was too sunny, all the fish were along the other bank.
Finally I cracked open a re-purposed Altoids container full of terrestrials that I’d gotten in a fly swap. I sorted through the ants, beetles, crickets, hoppers, and then in a sort of self-defeating irony and desperation tied on the biggest fly in the box – a fly that I would never use if anybody was watching. It was a multi-layered foam, rubber-legged affair about the size of a hummingbird, easily bigger than the rest of the flies combined. I tied on the monstrosity of trembling foam and rubber and cast it into the head of a plunge pool – it landed like a flip flop smacking the water. There was a second or two of placid drifting and then an explosion of fish and white water. I hauled back like I was trying to embed the hook into an the snout of an alligator gar – the 5x tipped did not hold. I am convinced that I would have really cleaned up with that fly. A fly that I would never have chosen based on any set of facts that I was familiar with, but a fly that a monkey would have probably picked in an instant.
Another time, I was fishing Pennsylvania’s Spring Creek in mid-summer. The section that I was on had grassy banks down to the stream with long stems of grass arching out over the water. I tied on a black LeTort Cricket and crawled up to the stream, pulled out some line, carefully rolled it out to the stream behind me before casting tight to the bank, brushing the grass. I had a nice long leader, I was careful not to false-cast over the likely bankside lies, the fly would bump into the grass and plop pleasingly onto the water. I felt like the cover of the summer issue of a fly fishing magazine. It was all so perfect…except for the catching fish part. Not a fish – not a flash, not a swirl…nothing. Time for a fly change, I let the fly line drift below me and went for the fly boxes. You guessed it, fish on. I brought in a nicely colored rainbow. released it and did what I wasn’t supposed to do. I cast the cricket downstream, let it drag, creating a v-shaped waked – bam! Another one, and another and another…the monkey won again.
I could go on. The monkey wins more often than I’d like to admit. It sometimes makes me wonder. All of those times when I did everything right and caught fish, when I was so self-congratulatory, was it all just self-deception? Is it all smoke and mirrors? Is it a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes? I guess I need to get a pet monkey and test it out.
By Anthony Naples, on October 25th, 2010
After yet another less than fulfilling experience with a major Fly Fishing periodical I find myself pondering the question of “What is the problem with Fly Fishing magazines?”
For the answer to this question maybe I should first take a look in the mirror. Is there something in me that’s the problem? Have I changed? Am I not bringing enough to the relationship? As silly as these questions sound, there is something to them, I believe.
When my relationship to fly fishing and the associated media was young, I was a voracious consumer. I read every “how-to” article that I could find, I wanted to try every new fly that was published, experiment with every new fly tying material.
But after a while my relationship with fly fishing has settled into a comfortable place, like the worn spots on the fretboard of my guitar for the chords of G, C and D. I’ve sorted through the opinions and techniques and flies and I’ve settled on my canon. Sometimes flies have entered the canon because of efficacy, sometimes because of sentimentality or stubbornness – a mix of reason and emotion really. I know what I like and I know what works for me – am I an expert that has reached the pinnacle of fly fishing? No, of course not (far from it), but I’m happy. As a result of this process, much of the offerings in the fly fishing mags, just aren’t that inspiring to me at this stage of the game.
But, I keep picking these magazines up, so I must be looking for something. What is it I hope to find? In a world, where I was the editor of a major fly fishing magazine, what would I publish? Well that’s a tricky question with too many considerations, too much pandering to the masses. Very probably, my ideal fly fishing magazine would not be very marketable to a huge audience – so if commercial success was not a concern what would my ideal fly fishing magazine contain?
Here’s what I’d put in My Ideal Fly Fishing Magazine:
1) Pictures of realistic fish: I don’t know about you, but I don’t always catch hogs. It may be hard for you to believe, but it’s true. All those glossy pictures of ginormous trout with kyped jaws, sagging bellies, and spots the size of quarters just create too much performance anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. Let’s have pictures of real fish.
2) Serialized Features: I’m thinking about things like “The History of the Dry Fly” or “Classic Wet Fly Tying and Fishing” or “Fly Fishing Literature: A Survey Through the Ages”. And these would not just be single articles, but they would be serialized for 3 or 4 issues, so that the subject could really be investigated in depth.
3) Regional Monthly Hatch Charts: Not much to explain here, but each issue would contain detailed hatch charts for the major rivers in each region of the country. This would be especially helpful to the traveling angler. Sure you can get this stuff online, but it would be nice to have it in a magazine. I don’t know about you, but I always get so distracted online. I go to the computer to find the current hatches for the Frying Pan River and end up reading recipes for Tomato Ricotta Tart. With the help of local fly shops this should be pretty easy to implement. It could be free advertising for the shops and free content for the magazine, a win-win.
4) Good Fly Fishing Related Fiction: The Magazine would contain awesome fly fishing related fiction. I’m not sure where it would come from, but it has to be out there somewhere. Again this would be serialized over several issues so that the magazine could present nice long pieces.
5) Destination Articles: Destination pieces are some of my favorites these days – it’s information that I can use. There would be at least four destination articles per issue. Even if I don’t plan go to one of the destinations featured, I feel like I could go, which is sometimes sufficient. But, there would never ever be articles about fishing for freshwater Dorado in South America – because I will never ever do that, ever. Never.
6) Fly Fishing Poetry: Because in the late hours of the night, when I can’t sleep, I sometimes imagine that I am a poet, and there aren’t many outlets for fly fishing poetry.
7) More Artwork: I would include more illustrations to accompany articles and less photography than the typical mag. I’ve got no problem with photography – but I love a nice pen and ink, watercolor, oil, acrylic, mixed media, artsy photo, etc. In an age when digital photography has made everyone a photographer (though we’re not all as good as we think) – I’d like to take it back to a simpler time. I want to see the hand of a creator in the visuals. I’d like to see more expression and less pure representation.
8 ) More Variety and More Experimentation: Let’s have more articles by more people, more types of articles, narratives, essays, etc. I don’t need perfection from the writers – just some more variety. Sometimes I think that by focusing on perfection the magazines publish mediocrity. You don’t get great by just being really good at average things. You need to take chances, you need to shoot for the impossible. Maybe you fail horribly and gloriously from time to time, but sometimes you get greatness, or at least something out of the ordinary. At the very least, by publishing more variety – you avoid boring predictability. Maybe, in this climate, the magazines feel threatened and so they’ve retreated to what feels safe – I feel this is a huge mistake.
9) Almost forgot…real reviews: I want actual gear, book, DVD, etc. reviews. I don’t just want to be made aware of new products, but I want honest to goodness critical reviews of media and comparative tests and reviews of equipment.
Well, those are some of my thoughts on what I’d like to see in My Ideal Fly Fishing Magazine. Are these things present in some of the magazines out there? Surely. One magazine is better at this – one is better at that, but I have trouble finding one that is everything together. Maybe what I want is a Fanzine for Fly Fishing – something that is a bit amateurish, but infectiously enthusiastic.
What are your thoughts?
By Anthony Naples, on October 13th, 2009
 Sometimes something gets stuck in my cranium, bouncing around like a super ball. And I can’t get a hold on it till it settles down a little, till it stops bouncing and starts rolling gently and finally settles somewhere where I can reach it. Well an overheard comment has been ricocheting around my brain for a few months, and it finally settled down so that I can pick it up.
A while back I overheard an off-hand comment by a fly fisherman, I don’t remember the exact wording but it was something like: “I’m not one of those stone turners.” It was said in a way that implied that there are two types of fly fisherman, Stone-turners and Not Stone-turners. And maybe those Stone-turners were just a step or two above “tree-huggers” and were just tolerated because they were, after-all, fly fisherman.
Well that comment has been with me ever since. Now that I’ve digested it a bit I think the reason it stuck with me is that it gets to the core of fly fishing for me and it serves as such a metaphor.
Obviously there’s the literal and practical notion of turning over stones to look for those macro-invertebrates that we fly fishers are always trying to imitate; mayfly and stonefly nymphs, caddis and midge larva, sowbugs and scuds. For me this is an essential part of any outing – at the very least it gives me a starting point and it grounds me in the moment. And who knows? It might just make me a better angler someday.
Along with this goes the idea of environmental awareness – not in the large sense but in the small and local sense. The type of awareness and sense of place that poses the question “What is around me now and how do I fit in?” It’s the pure enjoyment of being out in nature and and really seeing it, of seeing the World not just as a backdrop to the movie of Mankind but as something to be a part of.
I don’t want to get political, but turning over stones obviously leads to the larger issues of the health of the ecosystem and impacts on that ecosystem. Regardless of political leanings I’m sure that as fly-fisherman we all want clean and healthy streams. Fly fishing was an eye-opening experience for me with regard to clean and healthy waterways. I had never thought about it all that much before becoming a fly fisherman, but the quest for great hatches and wild trout, inevitably led me down the road to greater awareness of this issue.
And when you’re turning over stones you don’t just stop at one. I turned over stones that led to fly tying, and rod building and writing. And who knows what else I’ll find under those stones. I reckon I’m a Stone Turner and I’m proud of it. I hope I never stop turning those stones over because when I do that means I’ve finally lost that childlike curiosity and amazement that I’m desperately trying to hold on to. What about you? Are you a Stone Turner?
By Anthony Naples, on October 5th, 2009
 I am 38 years old. Which by my reckoning puts me in life’s Autumn years. How do I figure that? Let’s assume I live to be 80, that means I’m about half-way through the seasons of my life. I figure that life doesn’t begin in the dismal mid-winter of January, but with the spring-time promise of April. Is it just a coincidence that Pennsylvania’s traditional trout season also begins in April? So we add six months to April and we get October.
Autumn is the time to look back at a season’s worth of fishing. Sure there is some good fishing to be had – but it is melancholy fishing. Spring fishing is full of hope and anticipation – fall fishing is is tinged with regret (for places not fished) and nostalgia, and it is overshadowed by the looming specter of winter. In the spring anything is possible, but by the time Autumn arrives we realize there are streams we are not going to get to this year.
I recently went fishing on a small stream in the old mountains of southwest Pennsylvania. When I say small, I mean tiny, the kind of place where you can step across the stream in many places. It’s the kind of stream where you get the feeling that any hikers you see are probably thinking that you’re some sort of nut-job to be fishing there. They smile, nod and quickly move on – anybody fishing that trickle has got to be a little “off” and possibly dangerous.
Well, there are some fish there – small brookies. It amazes me that they are there at all. But it is even more surprising in the Autumn – to see these fish in full bloom is always a treat. Sometimes we fly fisherman can get complicated. But once the fish, sparkling and flipping, is in hand – we all become simple, taking in the colors, with wide eyes, with the eyes of a child. Marveling at the absurdity and audacity of nature. It’s proof that we were meant to fish – for surely mother nature would not array these fish in such fine dress, if we weren’t meant to admire them. Maybe that’s being a little anthropocentric, oh well…
Fishing in the Fall always brings out the melancholy side of me (okay it doesn’t take much to do that). I can’t help but to think, “Is this the last trip of the year?”
We can’t know the span of our days or the number of casts that we have left. As I get older I look back more and more and think of things past. Fall just seems like a natural time to do this. Of course there is always the anticipation of a new year and a new season. The spawning colors on that brookie are a promise of that. Nature has saved some of her most beautiful displays for the autumn, the fish, the leaves, the clear blue skies and golden, slanting sunlight. The best wine is brought out late in the celebration.
I want to mention the Fly Fishing Blog, Cutthroat Stalker. A couple of recent posts by Scott on his blog got me thinking about these things: Summer’s End and Monochromatic Interlude. Check them out for some great pictures and writing.
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Tenkara Bum Flies and More 
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