November 2024

By Zane Jacobs

Technique is a subject that will often arise when a discussion of fly fishing comes to the forefront. The focus could be any combination of casting, drifting, stripping and mending. There are likely other intricacies I can’t currently recall due to my time spent without a reel.

Fishing with a fixed length of line completely removes stripping and mending from the conversation. I also find the drift of the fly to be far less important with tenkara. Casting technique seems to be the only area to have any sort of room for interpretation, but I’m of the mindset that said room is a rather small one.

All users of a tenkara rod that I have observed cast remarkably similarly. It’s a short movement of the forearm and wrist to manipulate the rod in a whipping motion. The only real difference I have been able to make out is the speed of the movement. The slower the back cast is, the longer the pause before the forward motion needs to be. Without the full rearward extension of the line, you would be lucky to land the fly past the tip of the rod.

The technique, in my eyes, is more about where you put your fly in the water. If your fly hits the water in the right spot, it rarely drifts more than 6 inches before a fish strikes. If your drift is more than a couple of feet, you should probably cast again. Many of the holes I pluck fish from aren’t more than a few feet long. In my experience, tenkara is a fast style of fly fishing that covers a lot of water.

I intended to talk about techniques in this article, but ended up realizing I don’t really use many. I am making this sound far easier than it really is. It takes practice to get to a comfortable skill level, but the same could be said of most anything.