Spring 2020 Issue of Tenkara Angler Magazine Is Live!

The Spring 2020 issue of Tenkara Angler Magazine went live this morning!  Many, many thanks goes out to our editor Mike Agneta, for his years of hard work on this publication!  Mike's contribution to the tenkara community has been immense.  I'd also like to send a big shout out to my fellow contributors, Rory Glennie, Bob Long, Jr., Jason Klass, Matt Sment, Steven Maichak, Chris Stewart, Alan Luecke, Jerry Tanner, and David West Beale.

Be sure to check out my article entitled "Social Distancing", a chronicle of a long walk in a tiny canyon.  Happy reading!

Gear I Use: Banks Fry-Bake Pan

You might wonder what in the world a lightweight fry pan and tenkara have in common.  They may seem totally unrelated, but in fact (in my world) they are tightly connected.  Bear with me, because tenkara and backcountry cooking keep me busy!

Well over a decade ago, my good friend and frequent wilderness companion, Patrick Smith, gave me a 5-ounce, 9" cake pan he bought at King Soopers.  I'll bet he didn't pay over three dollars for it.  Well, that pan, forevermore called the "fish pan", has cooked up literally hundreds of trout, made-from-scratch biscuits, sliced elk tenderloin, freeze dried hash browns, sausage patties, dried eggs...you name it.  It's been dented, scorched, washed with sand and creek water, and hauled all over creation in my backpack.  It was a really good pan.  However, it lacked a few things...durability, a fitted cover, and the ability to bake.

Enter the Banks Fry-Bake Pan.

I had been researching a replacement for the venerable fish pan for quite some time.  One day while I was actually doing some browsing online about backpack cooking, I stumbled upon the Banks Fry-Bake Pan.  As soon as I read the specifications and reviews I knew I had to order one as soon as possible!  To my surprise, there was also a good amount of information out there about cooking with it, including recipes, in the fine little book entitled "NOLS Cookery", produced by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) and published by Stackpole Books.  The Fry-Bake Pan is a cornerstone of NOLS' bacI kcountry cooking program.

The Banks Fry-Bake Pan comes in three different sizes - an Expedition (10.5" X 2" deep), an Alpine (8" X 1.5" deep), and a Deep Alpine (8" X 2 3/8" deep).  Each comes with a close-fitting cover specifically designed to hold hot coals or charcoal on top for baking.  Since most of my use would be for backpack trips and guiding tenkara trips with a large day pack, I chose the smallest and lightest pan, the Alpine.

Here are the specs for the Alpine model Banks Fry-Bake Pan from their website:

Outside diameter:  8"

Depth:  1 1/2" 

Weight:  Approximately 7 oz.

Total weight:  Less than 12 oz.

The Alpine Fry-Bake Pan is spun from .062" 60-61 "O" member aluminum and then given Uniform Anodic Coating of .002 inches of clear hardcoat.  (NOTE:  This hardcoat anodizing makes the pan what I would call "stick resistant".  It isn't stick proof the way Teflon might be, but you sure don't have to worry about Teflon particles getting into your food.  Just apply a light coat of oil and you'll be fine)

Pan measures:

8" in diameter x 1 1/2" deep

Total weight:

less than 12oz

I was impressed that several options were offered for the pan cover.  Standard lids, NOLS-style lids, and lightweight lids are offered.  Here are the specs for the three from the website:

Standard and NOLS-Style Alpine Fry-Bake Lids are spun from .050” 1100 “O” temper aluminum and weigh less than 5 oz.

The Standard Lid has an “L” shaped tab for lifting riveted with 2 rivets to the lid. This tab has a small hole in it to allow for insertion of a stick, “O” ring or “S” hook.

The NOLS-Style Lid has a wingnut installed with a bolt through a single hole in the center of the lid. This style is the easiest to customize with the addition of your own knob or handle for lifting the lid by replacing the wingnut.

The Lightweight Lid is spun of .040” 1100-0 temper aluminum and weighs less than 4 oz. The Lightweight Lid has a wingnut installed with a bolt through a single hole in the center of the lid.

Since I planned to use my new pan mostly for backpacking and guiding, and every once would count, I selected the lightweight lid.

As with most really good gear, the Banks Fry-Bake Pan isn't cheap.  I ordered my pan from the Banks website, and ended up spending $72.70, including shipping.  However, after using this pan for the past few months, I can safely say you truly get what you pay for and it's worth every penny.

After I got my new pan, my buddy Eric Lynn, who owns Mountain Ridge Gear, sewed me a custom cover for it.  He even surprised me by fashioning a deer antler knob for the lid.  Thanks, Eric!

Custom deer antler knob.

Custom cordura cover for my pan

I've used my Fry-Bake pan in various ways.  One of the really cool things I've done is baked pizza in it, and although I didn't use hot coals on top of the lid yet, baking pizza with only my old MSR Whisperlite Internationale stove worked just fine.

Getting ready to bake pepperoni and cheese pizza in the Banks Fry-Bake Pan.

Piping hot pizza!

I've also been using my Fry-Bake Pan for cooking up hot lunches for my clients on the tenkara trips I guide for Royal Gorge Anglers.  Whether it's a drive-up trip along the Arkansas River in Bighorn Sheep Canyon or an all day hike-in backcountry trip in the canyons, I always cook a hot lunch.  So far I've done bratwurst on my Coleman stove, and both pork and beef fajitas in the backcountry.  One day I even put the Fry-Bake Pan directly on hot coals to sauté fajita meat because of a forgotten fuel bottle for my stove.  The pan has worked well for all of this!

Pork fajitas, cooked on an open fire.

Hot meals in the backcountry are always a big hit with my clients!

Breakfast sausage cooked on top of a Kifaru wood stove.

Cooking up bratwurst on my Coleman stove.

Beef fajita mix, using my old MSR Whisperlite Internationale stove.

Well, there you have it.  The Banks Fry-Bake Pan.  It's a great piece of bombproof, simple gear that'll outlast its owner!  I hope you have a chance to try one of these pans out...happy cooking!

Tenkara Angler Magazine is LIVE!

Just a note to let you know that my article on tenkara in the Alaskan interior, appearing in the Fall 2016 issue of Tenkara Angler Magazine, is available online, and in print.  It's packed with a wide range of informative and entertaining articles, and our editor, Michael Agneta, has once again done a fantastic job of putting all of it together.  Enjoy!

Trip Report: Spring Tenkara in the Canyons

It’s pretty safe to say that spring has sprung in the canyons.  The ice has long since disappeared, the baetis are alive and well, and with the recent arrival of daylight savings time, I can fish longer and I don’t have to hike out via headlamp.  Even as I sat here yesterday in my office, with the woodstove cranked, while a spring snowstorm dumped several inches of late March slop, I knew that come Sunday it would be back up to near 60 degrees.  I just love spring snowstorms along the Colorado foothills!  It looks like winter one day, and it’s back to shirtsleeve weather the next. 

I just came off four straight days of guiding tenkara clients on one of my favorite streams.  With warm (albeit windy) weather, willing browns and rainbows, and the best clients on the face of the earth, it was a simply amazing week!  We spent each day on different water, and each day we tasted a different flavor of this canyon.  When my guys flew home to Utah yesterday, I knew they had experienced something special, and I’ll bet it won’t be the last time we poke up into deep cracks containing tiny blue lines together.

My clients this past week, brothers, fishing together.

Fishing a bend.

Another one falls to the reliable RS2!

As for the fishing, it was fairly consistent.  Japanese mountain water and Colorado wilderness streams may lend themselves to only fishing one traditional kebari pattern all day long, but these gnarly canyon trickles require opening your mind to other tactics.  These canyons contain fairly fertile streams with heavy doses of emerging blue-winged olives this time of year.  You have to pay attention to what the fish tell you, and the browns and rainbows in the canyons told us they wanted to munch on a slightly weighted two-nymph rig all day long, with the venerable #20 gray sparkle wing RS2 the clear winner.  That’s not to say that the fish wouldn’t take a #18 Nosepicker or bead head pheasant tail once in a while.   However, they wouldn’t give a sakasa kebari the time of day.  Even though the blue-winged olives were hatching in the late afternoon, the fish wouldn’t take a dry off the surface because of the wind.  The hatched adult BWOs just simply blew away.  That didn’t matter much, because our little nymph rigs were extremely effective.  We fished them on size 3.5 and 4 level line, with 12-foot (360 cm) rods.  We cast middle-of-the  road medium-flex (6:4) rods, and they did just fine.  The gusty wind oftentimes made the decision for us to switch over to heavier size 4 level line.

Fishing one of countless pockets.

Along with sharing spectacular landscapes and water with my clients, I also enjoy providing backcountry epicurean delights along the banks of the stream.  I nearly always pack a homemade, mostly dehydrated hot meal in on my back.  The highlight of our week was a hot meal of alfredo pasta with sautéed portabello mushrooms and Italian sausage (from the best butcher shop in town, Hilltop Market), rehydrated and warmed up on one of my backpacking stoves.  There’s just something special about kicking back in the middle of nowhere, savoring homemade Italian cooking, after a morning of tenkara!

Backcountry, homemade Italian cuisine.

Cherry cheesecake, hauled in on our backs!

The canyons never cease to amaze me, and recent trips have been no exception.  Some relatively big browns and rainbows weave their way up these creeks and end up living in some pretty obscure spots.  Targeting the deepest pools along rock walls on the outside of the bends in the creeks, and undercut banks covered in thick grass produced several fish over 16 inches.  That’s a trophy trout in water that’s only flowing at less than thirty cubic feet per second!

A nice 18" rainbow taken on a lightweight two-nymph rig.

I hope you have a chance to get out and fish very soon, because this is one of my favorite times of the year!  As I sit here on Easter Sunday, watching the sun rise, I’m already trying to figure out how I can sneak out of the house late this afternoon after things warm up and some of the snow melts.  Happy Easter and happy spring tenkara to you!

  

Arkansas River Fly Fishing Festival Tenkara Clinic

The tenkara events along the Front Range just keep rolling in!  I'm pleased to offer a half-day, on-the-water tenkara clinic with Royal Gorge Anglers in Canon City on Sunday, March 20th, 12:45-5:00 PM!  It's actually part of our weekend-long Arkansas River Fly Fishing Festival on March 19th and 20th (Saturday and Sunday).  You won't want to miss either day!

My tenkara clinic will cover the following topics...not in a classroom but ON THE WATER.

*  History and heritage of tenkara
*  Equipment (rod options, rod anatomy, line options, traditional and non-traditional fly patterns)
*  Deployment of the tenkara system
*  Casting techniques
*  Reading water
*  Specific technique (fishing the traditional kebari, fishing dries and terrestrials, nymphing, and
    multi-fly fishing
*  Landing and netting fish

If you've ever wanted a down and dirty, nuts and bolts tenkara clinic, this is for you!  It's going to be hands-on, experiential learning...and that type of learning is the most beneficial and the most fun!

Check out event details online,  call the shop at 888-994-6743, or email us at taylor@royalgorgeanglers.com for details.  Registration fee:  $75 per person

Feel free to bring your own tenkara rod and line if you have them.  We will have rods and lines on hand as well.

UPDATE:  As of Thursday, February 18th, we've booked nearly half of the spots available! Book early to take advantage of this clinic!  We have limited reservations available!

I hope to see you on the water in March!

Changes

It’s been said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  This has been especially true for me over the past several months.

In August I returned home from my annual migration to southwest Colorado, where, for four seasons, I had been guiding tenkara trips for RIGS Fly Shop and Guide Service in Ridgway.  You may know that they were the first fly shop in Colorado to offer professionally guided tenkara trips, and I was their first on-staff tenkara guide.  I had paid my dues as a guide, spending my first season in 2012 sleeping in my truck and camping among bears and vagabonds in pullouts along Owl Creek Pass and the San Miguel River.  Tim and Heather Patterson's amazing hospitality then provided me with much better accommodations during the next three seasons, and I'm forever thankful for that.  In between trips, I had also spent increasingly more time behind the counter in the fly shop, assisting customers and scurrying around as most shop rats do, as there’s never a dull moment when you have to squeeze 75% of your annual business into three summer months.  As I’ve said many times here and to everyone I meet, the RIGS team is an amazing collection of family business owners, fly fishing and whitewater raft guides, and extremely knowledgeable shop personnel.  We worked together, fished together, partied together.  I resigned my position with RIGS earlier this fall. I didn’t know until recently that the Pattersons had written this blog post on the RIGS website upon my departure.  I will never forget where I got my start as a tenkara guide.  Thank you, everyone, for a wonderful experience.  I’m going to miss you!

Throwin' down with the RIGS guide crew and owner, Tim Patterson,
at our favorite haunt in Ridgway...Colorado Boy Brewery.

One of the reasons I made the very difficult decision to leave RIGS was a need to stay closer to home to fulfill my responsibilities as the newest member of Zen Tenkara, a Loveland, Colorado, based company.  Zen made their public announcement of this recently, and I’ve been busy ever since!  I’m honored that Zen asked me to climb aboard, and I’m looking forward to what the future will bring!  Our team at Zen shares a common vision, focused on defining American tenkara and the enjoying the tenkara lifestyle.

Fishing in the San Juan backcountry with Zen Tenkara owner, Karin Miller.

Enter Royal Gorge Anglers.  I’ve known RGA’s Bill and Taylor Edrington for many years.  I met Bill at his Canon City fly shop when Taylor was just a kid back in the late ‘90s.  Taylor is now a grown man, and has taken over the business, while Bill still spends quite a bit of time at the shop.  Since we moved down into town from our mountain home a couple of years ago, I think I could throw a fist-size rock and hit Taylor’s house from where ours now sits, and the two of us have a running joke that we’re responsible for 90% of the wood smoke in our neighborhood.  During a recent conversation I had with Taylor at the fly shop, he asked if I would be interested in creating and guiding tenkara trips for RGA.  In the ensuing weeks, Taylor and I put together several exciting new tenkara trip offerings for RGA, and we’re pleased to be making them public now.  Guiding tenkara trips in the canyons of southern Colorado that I know so well, for my hometown fly shop, in the company of good friends and neighbors is a wholesomely satisfying feeling.  Full circle.

So there you have it.  Changes.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  New (but somehow old) fly shop and guide service, and new and exciting opportunities with a company that shares a common vision for American tenkara.  My tenkara has not changed, has not faltered.  My love for wild trout and lonely canyons is the same.  The same shining moon keeps looking down.

Fins and Fur

The first time I hiked up this trail in search of small game and trout was nearly 40 years ago.  It wasn’t even wilderness back then.  I had a single shot Stevens .410 shotgun on my shoulder, an Eagle Claw Trailmaster rod in my pack, and two cans of Vienna sausages for lunch, with visions of squirrels, grouse, snowshoe hares, and brook trout spinning around my head.  Things really haven’t changed all that much.  Old habits die hard.

This year marked the sixth annual weekend that my group of friends gather for an extended backpack weekend devoted to small game hunting and fly fishing in remote Colorado wilderness.  It’s especially rewarding because it’s the very same country I’ve been hunting, fishing, and backpacking in nearly all my life.  It’s my home away from home, my stomping grounds.

We always take this trip the first full weekend of October.  It’s a week after the close of big game archery season and a week before the beginning of the first combined rifle big game season.  It also coincides most years with the full color of the changing aspens.  The days are warm and the nights are crisp.  It’s perfect.

The Stomping Grounds, downtown Noneofyourdamnbusiness, Colorado!

The bottom third of the hike always provides the best pine squirrel hunting, and this trip was no exception.  We had barking squirrels just a half-mile up the trail, squirrels zipping across the trail ahead of us, squirrels running up tree trunks…squirrels everywhere!

The first pine squirrel of the trip!

I had recently gotten a new handmade squirrel call from Larry Gresser at Prairie Game Calls in Channahon, Illinois.  Larry makes some amazing squirrel calls, and I my new call got some barks.  However, pine squirrels will bark at just about anything, including human voices, dogs, thrown rocks, and the report from a .22 rifle.  Although the Prairie call produces some outstanding barks, the “chrrrr” of the pine squirrel is impossible to produce with any call I’ve found.  No other tree squirrel in North America barks like this.  So, my quest to find the perfect pine squirrel call continues!

My squirrel call from Prairie Game Calls.  Mine is made out
of a beautiful piece of Asian satinwood.

I carried my new Ruger stainless 10/22 Takedown, topped with a Leupold VX-1 2-7X28 Rimfire scope, in Warne QD rings on a Leupold Rifleman base.  What I had hoped would be the perfect backcountry small game rifle soon proved itself, and continued to do so all weekend, taking squirrels and snowshoe hares out to nearly 40 yards.  I dialed the scope in at 4X and left it there, and it worked great.  At a loaded weight of 5 pounds, six ounces, this rifle was easy to carry, made even easier because I had it cradled in a Kifaru Gunbearer while I was hiking.

A very capable critter-getter, my Ruger stainless 10/22 Takedown.

Once we hiked through the squirrel hotspot, we continued up to our hidden basecamp, nearly five miles from the trailhead, at an elevation of eleven thousand feet.  My good friend, Patrick Smith (founder of Mountainsmith, and owner of Kifaru, International) had brought his 12-man tipi, and we had distributed the shelter, poles, and pegs amongst ourselves at the trailhead, each man helping with the load.  Carrying a 12-man tipi may sound heavy, but its ultralight paraglider fabric makes it totally man-carryable.  Along with the tipi, we also carried in an ultralight titanium wood stove, another of Patrick’s ingenious designs.

A Kifaru 12-man tipi and titanium collapsible wood stove.  Our backcountry palace!

Speaking of ingenious designs, Patrick also hauled in a small rice cooker, which works wonderfully well as a tiny backcountry pressure cooker for small game meat.  One complaint that always comes up is how tough squirrel and rabbit meat can be when grilled over coals on an open fire, whether on a spit or on a grill.  The pressure cooker totally eliminates that problem, and after 40 minutes in the pressure cooker, the meat from the squirrels and snowshoe hares literally fell off the bone!  We were very appreciative of the testing that Patrick had done with this method of cooking small game meat, and that he had hauled this treasure in on his back!

Snowline Technical Mountain Gear pressure cooker.  Weight:  1 lb., 13 oz.

Halved and quartered pine squirrels, ready for pressure cooking.

The pressure cooker and the stew, cooking on the Kifaru wood stove.

A pile of falling-off-the-bone tender squirrel meat!

Our evening meal the first night consisted of the meat cooked in the pressure cooker and an assortment of fresh vegetables that I had brought in.  While the meat cooked, the onions, garlic, red and yellow peppers, zucchini squash, and baby potatoes simmered in chicken stock in another pot.  Both pots fit perfectly on top of the Kifaru titanium wood stove.  Once done, all of this was combined into a stew that I dubbed “Rodent Medley”.  To say it was delicious is an understatement!

The fresh veggies I hauled in my backpack.  Baby potatoes, peppers,
zucchini squash, and mushrooms.

Rodent Medley!  A backcountry epicurean delight!

Late the first night I awakened to the sound of snow sifting down the fabric of the ultralight tarp I was sleeping under.  Rising the next morning to fresh tracking snow, I was able to put the stalk on a nice snowshoe hare, which became food for the second night’s dinner.

A snowshoe hare, taken in fresh tracking snow.

The second day of our trip was devoted to fly fishing, more specifically to tenkara.  Several of us had brought our tenkara rods and a few simple flies, and we knew from past experience that the creek nearby was home to lots of 7-9” brook trout.  With a complete tenkara fishing kit weighing less than five ounces, the ability to take it anywhere you go in the backcountry  makes this a great way to feed yourself in the wilderness.   I arrived back at camp late in the afternoon on the second day with four trout to share.  Nearly everyone else had caught a few as well.  The “surf” in our “surf ‘n turf” meal was secured!  We ate the trout as an appetizer, and dined once again on Rodent Medley stew.   I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a meal more!

Grilling brook trout on the coals.

My tenkara rod and my .22 rifle.  Making meat in the backcountry!

Later, after dark on the second night, we were pounded with rain, graupel, hail, and wind.  It’s a good feeling, snug and warm in a down bag, inside a bombproof shelter, listening to heavy weather drum against the tarp while lightning bounces off nearby ridges.  I can really sleep well after a storm like that.

Late the last morning we pried ourselves from our campsite and started our hike back down.  It always amazes me how easy this hike is going out and how difficult it can be going in.  You really can’t appreciate it until you hike downhill for five miles going out.  After easing off our packs at the trailhead, shaking hands, and saying goodbye to good friends, we all drove home our separate ways, dreaming of next year’s trip in search of fins and fur.

Rob, on the hike out.

Ori, Randall, and I.

My sensei, Patrick Smith, and I.