August 31, 2013

A nice Oregon vacation with a little Tenkara time thrown in...

In a couple of weeks our youngest daughter will be heading off to college. So, before she goes, we wanted to go on a little vacation with her to Orgeon. We lived in Oregon years ago (about 25 years ago) and ever since we left it has been a common target of our vacation dollars. Since we have our second oldest daughter living close to us, we decided to take her and her husband along as well.

We did the standard road trip around Portland, you know: go into Portland, drive to the coast, drive back a different way from the coast, go to the Cascades, see Mt Hood, see the Gorge, back to Portland then home.

We visited many of our favorite haunts in the Portland metro area, but two are Meccas for us: Mike's Drive-in and Powell's Bookstore. Mike's Drive-in has a few locations but we like the Oregon City one the best. We've been eating here since 1990. Mike's has the best hamburger in the world, the Mike's Special. But what makes the place timeless and special are the people; they are always friendly and treat you like family.

Powell's Bookstore is a Portland landmark. It is one of the last, great independent bookstores in the US. The downtown store is so large, funky, and "Portlandish" that they provide you with a map as soon as you walk in the door so you wont get lost. In fact, it is so unique that it takes many visits to get past that "shock and awe" of your first time there. We, like million others, love it; it is one of our Portland traditions.

Mike's Special -- food of the gods (the cholesterol gods!)

Inside Powell's -- home to all book lovers


The next day, it was out to the coast. There are many beautiful spots on the Oregon coast that one can visit (we've been to them all) but we had to visit Mo's at Cannon Beach -- really, it's at Tolovana Park, just south of Cannon Beach. After a wonderful lunch overlooking the beach we walked up to Haystack rock. The tide was out so walking around and exploring the tide pools was in order. A group of school kids were on the beach and were divided into small groups. Their assignment was to make something out of the sand that was from the ocean. It was fun watching their creativity.

The walk up to Haystack
Tides out

Grey whale in the sand




I had brought some minimal tenkara gear with me on this trip, just in case I got a chance to work a stream or two. I didn't fish any of the coastal streams, but I did fish for a a few minutes when we were at Silver Falls State Park, near Silverton. This is another of our favorite locations in northern Oregon. Years ago, when the kids were young, we visited this state park a lot. Every time we go back we have to stop and do some of the hikes.

This time, we started near South Falls and walked down to the confluence of the north and south forks of Silver Creek. I was wearing my wading shoes, was using my collapsible wading staff as a walking stick, and had brought along some flies, a line, and a rod -- I was ready!

My travel gear: wading shoes,  Suntech Suikei 39, Simms wading staff, and small pouch.

My flies -- minus the one tied onto the line.

The water this time of year is very low and clear. Scaring fish is easy to do so slow wading and careful casting is important. After just a few casts I hooked my first fish, a small coastal cutthroat. A few casts later I took another. All in all, I took about 6 fish over the next 35 minutes, the largest being about 8 inches. My wife and kids were looking on, and I didn't want to keep them waiting, so after just this short time fishing we finished the hike.  Still, I had done what I wanted to do -- catch a native, wild fish in Silver Falls State Park.

Me at South Falls

Lower South Falls

On stream -- pushing up my glasses. Can you say "nerd". 

A little cutthroat

A small, but beautiful, Silver Creek coastal cutthroat.


Behind, looking out.



The next day was raining; a perfect day to drive into the Cascades and do some hiking. We drove up the Clackamas river road and found the trailhead to one of our favorite trails -- it goes through old growth forest. I dropped the crew off and then drove up to the Oak Grove Fork to try some more fishing.

The Oak Grove Fork above Harriet Lake is a beautiful stream. It doesn't look that large but that is deceiving. The day I fished it was running at 250 cfs; it often flows into the 400's. It can be a tough stream to wade, due to flow rate and slippery rocks. Anyway, I chose a spot near the road and worked my way down to the river. I entered the water and immediately knew that this water was much different than Silver Creek. First of all it was much swifter. Second, it was much deeper. Third, it was much, much colder. I was wet wading, and it wasn't long before I was shivering. Wading up to my crotch in this cold mountain stream made my feet go numb in record time; that in turn made wading more difficult since I could no longer feel the stream bed!!

I fished for about an hour; that is about how long I could stand the water temperature. In that time I caught a few really nice fish, 10-12 inch coastal cutthroats. Since the water was ripping along, I used the beadhead nymph I had brought with me. I caught fish both with a dead drift upstream cast and a down and across drift.

The 10 incher

It looks easy, but it's not!

Clear water makes the depth deceiving.

The 12 inch coastal cutthroat

Oregon coastal cutthroat are beautiful fish. They are heavily spotted, compared to Yellowstone or Bonneville cutthroat, and at first glance look like rainbows. They have a nice orange "slit" under the gills advertising their cutthroat heritage though. In coastal streams, these fish often go into the salt water and live off the continental shelf for a few years, then come into the stream to spawn. They may repeat this cycle many times over their lifetime. Unlike their steelhead and salmon cousins, anadromous coastal cutthroats don't get very large, 8-16 inches being common. Since I was fishing more inland streams, the fish I caught were riveriene or resident fish, not anadromous.



Another day we visited other tourist sites, like Timberline Lodge. We hiked around a little, rode the chair lift up the mountain to watch the skiers; stuff like that. We saw the Gorge and it's waterfalls; we were good little tourists!







It was a wonderful trip. Best of all, we were able to be with two of four children, and one son-in-law. I would have liked to have fished longer and to have explored more streams, but that will have to wait for another trip. It's a great reason to go back to Oregon!!




August 25, 2013

Tenkara: August 12, 2013

It seems that I am getting behind in my tenkara reports. Maybe I've gotten a little lazy, sorry.  Anyway, here is a video of a recent trip that I took. I used both kebari and dries for this trip. I haven't fished with dries very often over this past two years, and it was sort of fun to fling one out and watch the fish rise.

I am aware that one of the downsides to my videos is that you can't see the line as it casts and drifts. I have been experimenting with various line options with the goal of making the videos a little more interesting. In this video I am using a more visible line -- it is really visible to my eye in real time -- but it still is not visible enough in the video. I'll keep trying.

Anyway, here is the video.





August 17, 2013

Oni Rod -- review

I recently received a rod from Masami Sakakibara of Japan. This masterful tenkara fisher is also known as "Tenkara no Oni", and therefore his custom made rod is called an Oni rod. I want to present my review of this rod and some thoughts on how it compares to more commercially available tenkara rods.

Jason Klass has reviewed the rod also. His thoughts are here, and here.

I ordered the rod after communicating with "Team Oni" via email. The rod was payed for via PayPal and shipped in a timely manner. It arrived in a well packaged and padded shipping tube covered in cool looking Japanese shipping labels.

The rod came with a rod sock and also included were some kebari, a length of #4 pink Sansui level tenkara line and a note.





I don't know if Tenkara no Oni wrote the note himself, or if it was written under his direction (by Team Oni), but it is very kind and thoughtful and brings an instant appreciation of how special this rod is -- and might I add, what an honor it is to fish one!





The rod is beautiful. It doesn't look like any other tenkara rod that I current own: I guess the best way to attempt to describe it is to say that it is beautiful in it simplicity.






The rod is charcoal black in color, with a 30 cm long black EVA foam handle. The handle is slightly and subtly shaped, although at a quick glance it appears to be just plain cylindrical. The winding check is chrome-colored metal and fits tightly against the top of the handle.







The graphite bank is also different than any other rod I have. Most tenkara rods that I own or have used have a smooth finish, either glossy, satin, or flat. But the Oni rod has a unique spiral texture that has to be felt to be appreciated. This spiral texture is present on all sections of the rod, excepting section #1, the tip section. The finish is gloss.

The lilian attaches directly without a micro swivel. The tip plug is black plastic - nylon? The butt cap is also black plastic and has a rubber bumper, so to dampen noise from the collapsed segments.










The overall length of the rod is 396 cm extended. Collapsed, it is 63 cm (with tip plug and butt cap). Without the tip plug the rod weighs 101.1 g.






The action of the rod is soft, but not as you'd expect. On the Common Cents Scale (CCS) the Oni rod has a rating of 15.5 penny. This gives the rod a Rod Flex Index (RFI) of 3.9. This places this rod's static flex action right in the same ballpark as the Tenkara USA Ito (390 cm configuration) and the Daiwa Sagiri 39MC (390 cm configuration). However, the Oni rod doesn't feel much like these other rods. Again, the CCD and RFI are measurements of a rod's static flex but they don't really tell you how it feels casting -- they only estimates a rod's action. The Oni rod section #1 is solid and is very flexible. Section #2-4 are still flexible but less than section #1. This allows the Oni rod to flick out a light line with almost no effort at all. If I had to pick, I'd say the Daiwa Sagiri is the closest to how the Oni rod casts.

RFI comparison chart



Casting is smooth; no tip oscillation that I can tell -- even on video review. Targeting is phenomenal! And here is the really surprising thing: although the Oni rod weighs 101 g it feels like a 75-80 g rod!  There is no tip heaviness, no, not any! I'm not sure how Tenkara no Oni did it, but this rod seems to defy physics! At 396 cm, you'd expect to have to "fight" the rod a little to keep it's tip up, but not with this rod. Sublime, absolutely sublime. It has to be experienced to know what I'm trying to describe.

Here are two videos of Masami Sakakibara casting the Oni rod. You can see the rod in action by its designer (these are not my videos; my apologies to those that published them).










Fishing with the rod is a delightful experience. Very little rod movement it required to load the rod. This energy is then perfectly transferred to the line, shooting the line towards its target -- all will very little effort. The Oni rod works perfectly with proper tenkara casting method -- arm bent, elbow down and tight against your body, wrist inline with forearm, and imparting little wrist flexion/extension -- a relaxed, unforced action. Again, the closest rod I have to doing this is the Daiwa Sagiri; it's not even a tenkara rod!

The Oni rod was described to me by Team Oni as a rod designed for advanced tenkara fishers targeting fish to 35-40 cm. I assume this recommendation is for fish in a mountain stream-type gradient - fairly brisk. I caught trout from 8 inches to 14 inches (20-35 cm) and the rod had no issues what so ever handling them. The gradient of the stream I was fishing was only modest however. BTW, I used 6X tippet to protect the rod, and fished with an unweighted #10 kebari.

Here is a video clip of me using the rod and catching fish. Both POV and 3rd person view are represented:




Conclusion: This is a phenomenal rod. I think I have now fished with enough rods to know when I am holding something special.  Although its dead weight is higher than I like in a 13 ft rod it doesn't feel heavy at all. Again, I don't know how this was accomplished but the rod is not tip heavy at all and is not heavy in the hand, even after hours of use. I'm going to make a statement here that is a little strong, but it must be said: This is the best rod I have used to date. That should not surprise anyone though. The rod is custom made, one at a time, designed and manufactured (or at least has direct over sight) by one of the best tenkara fishers of our lifetime -- certainly the premier tenkara caster of our time (I think this statement would be undisputed, even in Japan).  The rod cost me 32,800 Yen (with shipping). Because of that, I don't think that it should be directly compared to most other commercially available tenkara rods. It is what it is, probably the best tenkara rod on the planet.






August 13, 2013

Yellowstone Cutthroats and a new Canyon, part 2

This is part 2 of my recent trip into Yellowstone country. Part 1 may be seen here.

The next day, I decided to try a different part of the same river I had fished the day before. Access is difficult now matter where you try to go but I made it to the river and started fishing. Here, the river was wide and shallow; there were very few holding lies, unlike the water the day before. I did get into fish right away, but they were little guys 4 inches at most, and I knew there had to better water and better fish elsewhere.

So, after studying the map, I could see that the river exited a canyon just a few river miles upstream. Again, there was no direct access, but I could tell that if I worked my way through a serious willow-choked bog, up a very steep rock outcropping, I could cross country through the aspen and pine and cut off some mileage to get the the canyon. After studying all the options I decided it was my best bet to get into some respectable fish.

Getting through the willows was one of the hardest forays that I have done. It was like on Snow White -- the trees reaching out to grab me and bind me down. I made it through though, and with all my gear!!

Once I made it to the canyon I could tell that better water was in store. The river was a little more compressed, and there were occasional boulders breaking up the flow. Also, parts of the river were in shade -- that always helps.




As soon as I entered the lower end of the canyon I saw a nice lie tight against the north side of the river, just downstream from a boulder. I rigged up and starting working the fly through. Sure enough, in just a few drifts I hooked a 12 inch Yellowstone cutthroat. That was much better than an hour before!




The river was still pretty wide and low, but at least in this section there were some tight lies right against the north side.  It was these that I concentrated on. Over the next 30 minutes I took some beautiful fish.







I then moved upstream a ways because the water appeared to be more promising. At one reach I worked a spot where the river flow compressed against the bank. With the water being so clear, I didn't think there would be more than one fish under the riffle, but there turned out to be more! I'm always amazed how fish can hold in such clear water and not be able to be seen! I guess that's survival!

Anyway, here is a short video of that one spot in the river and the fish that came out of  it.





I'm glad I went the extra mile, so to speak, and hiked cross country to get to this new (to me) canyon. I'll be back for sure, as well as exploring other streams in the area.






August 10, 2013

Yellowstone Cutthroats and a Sweet Trico Hatch, part 1

Here's a brief entry of a recent day out on the river.  I fished two different reaches of the same river over two days. Here I present a quick video of some of the fish from day #1. I'm too lazy to write it up so watch the video and you'll see what kind of morning I had.




Part 2 coming up.......