So I need to start off the first post of 2020 by thanking somebody; Past Me. And you should all do the same. I mean Past You has been a lazy so-and-so from time to time, but past you has also gotten his/her ass in gear and provided you with some awesome experiences. So thanks to Past You and Past Me.
Honestly though, sometimes Past Me screws over Future Me. I know him pretty well and he’s temperamental, scattered and mercurial at best and a lazy bastard at worst. But from time to time he comes through. In 2019 he was pretty good to me. In 2019 I pledged to dispense with ego and pride and just try to learn. And WOW! Did I learn.
I got out fishing with Josh Miller for a day and with George Daniel (see my Just One thing with George Daniel post). And geez … I wish I’d have done that years ago – though to be truthful I may not have been prepared for the lessons if I’d done it years ago. I’m thinking I need to do a post about those experiences … But let’s just say fishing with those guys was game changing for me. In addition to being great anglers and teachers they’re also great guys.
In addition to being good to me in 2019, Past Me also came through a few weeks ago. Plans had been made to go fishing when the weather report looked good. But the weather report started looking sketchy, and then sketchier yet… Now I know Past Me pretty well and he’s cancelled plans before when the weather turned – or when the day came and he just didn’t feel like going (he can be a real lazy bastard). But in this case he stuck to his guns and did me right. So thank you buddy.
I’m glad he managed to get out. It was a fantastic day of catching lots of fish and some really nice fish. It was a tremendous start to the season – and hopefully I can can keep it going.
But even as I was wadering up and getting my gear together in the drizzling rain under a #2B pencil lead sky, with misty little rain drops gathering on the lenses of my glasses I was thinking “Why am I here? Is this really supposed to be fun?” But plans had been made in advance and schedules arranged so on with it regardless. At any rate I would get a chance to try out the Tanuki Pocket Ninja (more on the rod later).
We had headed to a limestone stream for the day – figuring that it would be in good shape even in bad weather. And the last time there I’d had a great trip with wild browns and like a bazillion little rainbows. I thought that the little rainbows would work nicely with the Tanuki Pocket Ninja. Here’s a link to a blog post about the last trip to this stream –>> Limestone Explorations & Some Nymphing.
Rigging and Flies
As I was fishing a spring creek in the winter I opted to go with a nymphing rig rather than attempt more traditional tenkara style fishing. It’s not that traditional tenkara techniques cannot work on spring creeks – they absolutely can. But generally speaking I have much better luck nymphing spring creeks, unless it’s the time of year with lots of good bug activity and fish are more engaged with the mid to upper level of the water column. When fish are turned onto hatching bugs then traditional tenkara wet-fly fishing can be quite productive on spring creeks.
I rigged up the Tanuki Pocket Ninja with 11′ of #2.5 FC tenkara level line then about 18″ of 5X tippet to a size 12 deer hair caddis dry then about 2′ of 6.5X Fluorocarbon tippet ending in a size 14 tungsten bead-head muskrat nymph. The muskrat nymph is a throw-back nymph for me. Back when I started in fly fishing I was attending Penn State University and so my home river was Spring Creek. A go-to nymph for Spring Creek was the muskrat nymph. I reckon that the population of scuds and cress bugs has something to do with that. Of course back then it wasn’t a bead-head , but just weighted with lead wire. As I try to avoid lead I’ve updated it with a tungsten bead. I usually use silver or metallic pink beads on this fly, but it probably doesn’t matter one iota what color the bead is. The dubbing is just muskrat fur trimmed off of the skin and blended in a coffee mill.
I used beadhead muskrat nymphs a bunch in 2019 and caught a lot of fish on them. Progress has a way of happening in any field, both personally and globally if you know what I mean. New materials, new gear, new ways of rigging, new ways of tying flies, etc. And it’s only natural that as an angler you get pulled along in that stream of progress. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Though often newness or novelty is confused with progress. It’s not that the new stuff isn’t useful or good it’s just that it’s not necessarily better. It’s easy to get got up in the flow of novelty but it’s good to sometimes step out and go back to some basics like the muskrat nymph.
I decided to go with a suspension nymphing rig of a dry fly and a nymph below because I was anticipating concentrating on slower water where tight-line nymphing is not quite as well suited as suspension rigs – at least in my experience. I didn’t really have any expectation that the dry fly would draw any action – it was serving as a bobber …. err I mean a strike indicator and suspension device.
First Fish of 2020
Well, about three minutes into fishing I got a snag … wait … what ?! whoah !! that snag is moving. It’s got to be a foul hooked sucker, yeah that’s it …. no , wait … it’s a brown!
To be very honest, once I realized that it was not a snag and was actually a quite nice sized fish I did get concerned about the Tanuki Pocket Ninja. Luong Tam designed the pocket ninja for small mountain stream fishing where pan sized trout are the the expected quarry. This fish was bigger than that. Turns out it was about 21″ long. Not bad for a first fish of 2020. The Pocket Ninja handled the fish very well. I really wanted to land this fish so I was pretty careful to be sure. I went on to land many other browns in the 12-14″ range and several others in the 18″ range.
I also had another very large fish hooked briefly (looked to be 20+) – but a poor quality hook led to a poor hook set and a lost fish. I should have know better – but I’d tied some muskrat nymphs on some cheap hooks that I had and they just were not nearly as sharp as good quality hooks. Normally I’m not too worried about fish getting off early but when I fish in a place with the possibility of a season’s best fish I try to avoid the cheap hooks, and I was a bit sick about losing that fish because of a bad hook. The thing that kills me is that I should have seen it coming and made sure I had a good hook on. I was fishing a beautiful run and the fishing had absolutely turned off as I approached what looked like the prime lie. I had that thought of “gee maybe there’s a really nice fish in there that’s eaten all the little guys…” but it was only a passing thought. Lesson learned.
Some thoughts on the Tanuki Pocket Ninja
I no longer do “reviews” per se. But I’ll still talk about gear that I like. I bought the Tanuki Pocket Ninja for full price during the Kickstarter campaign. Luong Tam, the owner of Tanuki Tenkara, is a friend of mine and I’ve used a lot of the Tanuki rods and they’ve always impressed me as very high quality. So when I saw that he was coming out with a super compact “pocket” rod I figured I’d give it a try.
The Pocket Ninja is really targeted at smaller mountain stream fishing for pan-sized trout. So going to a spring creek and planning to do a day of dry-dropper fishing where I might run into some big fish was never going to be the ideal way to try out the Tanuki Pocket Ninja. But I was anxious to get out with it so what they heck.
Firstly, I really dig the look. Orange is Luong’s signature color and those orange trim bands really stand out. The rods fit and finish is excellent. It appears to be a very well made rod. But how does it fish? Like I said earlier I didn’t fish traditional tenkara yet with the Pocket Ninja – so that discussion will have to come at a later time.
I fished it with size 14 tungsten bead head nymphs (size 2.8 and 3.0 mm beads). And also use a dry dropper rig with the nymph dropped off of a size 12 deer hair caddis. I had no problem at all casting this rig on about 11′ of #2.5 fluorocarbon level line.
As you saw above I landed a nice big wild brownie of about 21″ on the Pocket Ninja. I’ve been fishing with tenkara rods for about 10 years now – and have some experience landing big fish – so with that experience I didn’t have any trouble landing a 21″ brown trout on a medium sized stream. The flex of the Pocket Ninja did a great job of protecting the 6.5X tippet. I landed several other fish somewhere north of 16″ too pretty easily and the smaller fish in the 12-14″ range came in with no fuss at all. I’m not going to suggest that you use the Pocket Ninja to target really big fish – but after my experience I’m not worried at all about the ability to handle the surprise bigger fish that I might run into on small streams where the Pocket Ninja is going feature in my angling.
I think it’s worth restating that hook sets were no problem at all while nymphing with the Pocket Ninja. The reason that I say this again is that I’ve had problems in the past with rods like this. I suspect that this is that keiryu rods designed for bait fishing, where a fish is actually eating bait don’t have the same design parameters as a rod designed for fishing artificial flies. That’s not to say all keiryu type rods are problematic with nymph fishing – but in my experience some definitely are. So though it looks like a keiryu type rod (that is no added cork or foam grip) it is designed as a tenkara rod to be fished with artificial flies. Just my thoughts.
The Intangible …
I had an unexpected mix of feelings while fishing with the Tanuki Pocket Ninja. I can only describe it as gleeful and reinvigorated. Last year I spent time trying to hone my nymphing chops with rod and reel; that can be challenging and confusing with so many rigging choices and set up options. Granted there is pleasure to be found in navigating those challenges successfully (and I’ll continue to attempt that). But getting out on the stream with a only stick and a string and a fly and catching a lot of nice fish was just so much fun. I’d really forgotten the pleasure of keeping it soooo absolutely simple. And the Pocket Ninja being so ridiculously small when collapsed almost made me laugh out loud. Being able to go to the stream with a fly rod that can literally fit in a pocket and euro-nymph with it very successfully and catch nice fish … well it just reminded me how fun and rewarding it can be to keep it really, really simple. The Pocket Ninja looks like a toy but fishes like the real deal and it took me back to the childlike joy in fishing.
If you’re interested in getting one click on the link –>>> Tanuki Pocket Ninja on Indiegogo.
Spec:
Open Length: 11’0″ / 335 cm
Collapsed Length: 13″/ 33 cm (with out end cap) about 13.5″ with cap
Weight: 2.1 oz / 60 gram without end cap (my scale said 58 grams)
Action: Slow
I enjoyed your article and am heading out Saturday and was planning on nymphing with my TenkaraBum40.
I have a question.
My strong hunch is that you chose to use the suspension rig in the slow water because tight-line nymphing would have resulted in sag/drag that would have made a slow, realistic dead drift difficult to keep ‘on course’. Am I on the right track? Thank you!
Charles. Yes pretty much right on track with the idea for the suspension rig. With the dry/dropper rig you can fish that type of slow water pretty efficiently – and an added benefit is less snags too. At times of the year when fish are more actively engaged with hatching bugs I might still try tightline tactics and look for fish to hit quickly right as the fly enters the water and begins to drop – but in the winter I was thinking they’d be slower to respond and suspension tactics would offer a better presentation for slower water. So who knows if my logic is correct – but I got into fish anyway 😀
Many thanks!