That probably would have been me. I think I'm the only one around here fishing with a tenkara rod. Actually, it's all Soft-hackle's fault. A couple years ago I saw some of his flies that he posted on another forum, was intrigued and tried to learn all I could about tying and fishing soft hackles. I came across Mike Connor's writings about fishing spiders with the long rod and realized I could not get the most out of the flies with my 8 1/2 foot rod. I couldn't justify buying an expensive new rod/reel/line setup, and the match rods Mike uses are not available here. I tried several inexpensive 12 and 13 foot crappie rods but none was quite what I thought I was looking for. I also couldn't find the polypro bricklayer's cord that Mike uses. I'd read Webster's The Angler and the Loop Rod and became interested in fishing a cast of spiders with a loop rod and horsehair line. I don't remember exactly how I came across tenkara (possibly searching for info on horsehair lines, since early tenkara lines were horsehair). Anyway, it only took a little research on tenkara for me to drop any ideas of trying to recreate Webster's loop rod. No one fishes with loop rods anymore, so there is no information. There is plenty of information about tenkara fishing, although nearly all of it unfortunately is in Japanese. A little over a year ago, in response to a post I'd made in another forum
http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/thread?id=704864 I was given a tenkara rod. All my trout fishing last year was with the tenkara rod or a Cabela's Panfish Pole, which was the closest thing to a real tenkara rod available in the US.
http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/threa ... 7#10062277
In another couple weeks Daniel Galhardo will have his TenkaraUSA site up and running, and will have tenkara rods available for sale. (And not very long after that I'll be able to give you a review.)
I can't compare the tenkara rod I was given last year to the Dorber rod you mentioned, or a Gray's Streamflex, which seems to be a lot of people's "go to" rod for fishing spiders or Czech nymphing, because I've never fished with either. My only fly rods are an 8 1/2 foot 5 weight and a 9 foot 8 weight, and the tenkara rod is about as different from them as they are from my spinning rods. I don't know what "weight" rod it would be comparable to, but last year my line was just 14# test mono, which it cast quite nicely. For me, the extremely light line is one of the main advantages of fishing with a tenkara rod. Because the rod is long (a little over 11') and the line is very light and relatively short, you can keep the entire line off the water so only your fly and a little bit of tippet is in the water. Worrying about drag from varying current speeds is a thing of the past. Mending line is completely unnecessary. Fishing a small bank eddy becomes possible. Since you are working with a fixed length of line, and all your casts are the same distance, you get to be very accurate with your casting. Also, since you are fishing with a tight line, takes are easy to feel and see (I use colored line - golden Stren mono last year). For that same reason, a tenkara rod is very well suited to fishing lightly weighted nymphs. With the long rod and short line, you can swim your nymph around rocks and down current seams while keeping a tight enough line to detect strikes.
Obviously, there are some disadvantages as well. You cannot catch big fish. You'll still hook them, you just won't land them. For that reason, you absolutely must use a light tippet. One day last year I was fishing with a 10' Cabela's Graphite Panfish Pole and a 4x tippet. I hooked the biggest trout of my life and when he decided to run, the rod broke before the tippet did. I now use only 6x. A real tenkara rod is better made and stronger than the Panfish Pole, though (to be fair, it WAS intended for panfish). Also, if your line is too long you cannot get a larger fish into the net. I found that the line plus tippet cannot be more than a foot longer than the rod because the rod bends so much that if the line is any longer you cannot reach the fish. In Japan they use longer lines but they only catch smaller fish. A second disadvantage is you have to get close, as your casting distance is definitely limited. I've found that isn't a problem when fishing ripples or pocket water, but I tend not to do very well in glassy pools. A third disadvantage is that if there are low hanging branches overhead, you'll get the rod tip caught in the branches when you hook a fish. You'll get that with the Dorber or Streamflex as well, but the extra 12 to 18 inches of the tenkara rod means you'll get caught more often.
On balance, though, I absolutely love the simplicity of tenkara fishing. And not just the equipment. The fishing is simpler. Drag free drift - simple. Detecting the strike on an upstream spider or nymph - simple.
I suppose if you fished the Dorber or Streamflex the way people do while Czech nymphing, with no more than a foot of line beyond the rod tip, or for that matter, mono or fluorocarbon all they way to the reel, and kept a fixed line length you could mimic a tenkara rod reasonably well, and still have the reel to allow a big fish to run. However, I think you would lose the essence of tenkara fishing. It is fly fishing simplified. It is to fly fishing what a north country fly is to fly tying.
