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.

Gear I Use: HCD-Floater

Field Journal Entry (September 6, 2015)  I forgot to take my headlamp out of the truck and stick it in my waders.  It’s dark, it’s 8:00 PM, and I’ve stumbled my way back upriver to where I parked along the highway.  I got to the boulder garden at 5:00 PM, threw a hopper-copper-dropper rig for two hours with a 12-foot floating line, switched over to a single hopper pattern for the last hour, and caught around twenty browns.  I didn’t count.  This is what September in the canyons is all about!

September and October on the Arkansas River...one of my favorite times of the year!  Just right for a HCD-Floater rig and a tenkara rod.

Over the past 30 years or so I’ve come to realize that there are very few, if any, absolutes when it comes to fly angling.  However, there ARE some things that work undeniably well, and John Barr’s three-fly system, the hopper-copper-dropper (HCD), is one of those, and there’s no reason why this can’t be done with a tenkara rod!  There are times and places for going trad, and my full-flex rod, 3.5 level line, and eyeless sakasa kebari patterns are what I go for.  Some days I’ll fish that way with only one pattern, and it’s very enjoyable.  Then there are other times and places when it’s equally enjoyable to test the capabilities of a tenkara rod.  That’s what this article is about.

In an article on flyfisherman.com I read a while back, co-written by Barr and Charlie Craven, they had this to say about the HCD…

“Barr’s three-fly method removes most of the agonizing gamble that comes with deciding what trout might choose to eat on any given day and where. John Barr, who conjured up the solution from his tying bench in Boulder, Colorado, calls it the ‘Hopper-Copper-Dropper’, an alliterative way to describe a setup that is as risk-free as angling ever gets.

Barr didn’t invent the three-fly method. Anglers have been tossing–and tangling–multiple-fly rigs for years. But he has refined that approach into a system that has not only proven itself on Colorado’s hard-fished waters but around the United States.”

I’ve been pushing the envelope of what tenkara is capable of doing for quite a while, so I thought why not give the HCD a try?.  I’ve basically taken the “traditional” HCD used by western fly anglers, refined it for use with tenkara, and the results couldn’t have been better!  This isn’t an approach for ALL mountain water, but it is an approach for a LOT of mountain water, especially if your personal adventures take you to rivers like the Arkansas, my local “big” river.  

THE FLIES:

A classic (western) HCD setup includes a #10 BC Hopper strike indicator/top fly, a relatively heavy  #14 Copper John dropper, and a smaller midge emerger, caddis pupae, or baetis emerger bottom fly.  I started out with the pattern sizes that would be used with a typical 5 or 6 weight western fly rod, and found them to be too big.  So here’s one tip…go down one size on all three, if you can.  This will make the three-fly rig a little more wind resistant when casting or when it’s windy, and it’ll work with the more flexible tenkara rod (more on rods later).  Here are my favorite HCD-Floater combos for tenkara:

Hopper/Indicator Patterns:

#14 Baby Boy Hopper

#14 Moorish Hopper

#14 Hippie Stomper (red)

#16 Yeager’s Trude Neversink (peacock) (FAVORITE)

#14 Amy’s Ant (red)

#14 409 (red)

#16 Chubby Chernobyl (tan/tan)

Copper John/Mid-size Droppers:

#16 Copper John (red)

#16 Rubber Legs Copper John (FAVORITE)

#16 Poxyback PMD

#16 October Caddis Larva

#16 Psycho Prince (purple)

#16 Montana Prince

#18 Two Bit Hooker

Bottom/Smallest Dropper:

#18 Gunkel’s Shot Glass Emerger (FAVORITE)

#18 RS2

#18 CDC Pheasant Tail

#18 Gold Ice

#18 Jujubaetis

#18 Jujubee Midges

A #10 BC Hopper.  A classic top fly for HCD with a western fly rod,
 but a bit too big for a tenkara rod.

#14 Hipper Stomper (red)

#14 Amy's Ant (red)

#16 Chubby Chernobyl

Classic #16 "coppers" for HCD-Floater
on a tenkara rod.

#14 Moorish Hopper

HCD-Floater "droppers", all #18

THE LINE/TIPPET:

The HCD-Floater method works best with a floating line, and RIGS FLY SHOP MAKES THE BEST ONE OUT THERE!  Yeah, I’ve got it, I work for RIGS, but they don’t pay me to push lines.  The RIGS lines speak for themselves, and we sell a ton of them, and for good reason.  I’ve taken the RIGS floating lines from the San Miguel, Big Cimarron, and Gunnison all the way home to the Arkansas.  They just flat out work for the HCD-Floater system (among others).  Here’s why.  First, these are (in the tenkara world) big, brawny rivers.  Most native flows are around 400 CFS in the shoulder seasons, and the water is often 75 feet across.  The wind almost always blows, especially in east-west running canyons like the Colorado and the Arkansas.  You need a line that’s functional in the wind, floats so you can drift that big, floaty hopper drag-free, and one that can effectively cast a relatively heavy three-fly rig.  The line material on the RIGS lines makes all of that possible, with a buoyant, comparatively heavy line.  The addition of a tippet ring makes threading tippet and changing out tippet material infinitely easier.  As a guide who threads a tippet ring hundreds of times each season, I find that a selling point.  As a middle-aged man who wears bifocals constantly, I find that a selling point!  The addition of a large connection loop and an in-line high-vis strike indicator make this a highly functional line for non-traditional tenkara.

With the largest usable tippet for tenkara set at 5X, that’s where I start from the tippet ring on the line down to the top fly.  I use mono for this section of tippet.  I use flouro tippet material from the top fly down to the first dropper, staying at 5X.  The section from the first dropper down to the second gets 6X fluoro.  Going with fluoro on the bottom two sections of tippet keeps visibility down in the water, and fluoro is both denser and stiffer, which helps turn the cast over better than with mono.  I will typically run around 5 feet of tippet from the line down to the top hopper/indicator fly.  The droppers are each run about 16” below the preceding fly.  So, from tippet ring to bottom fly, this setup is just shy of 8 feet in length.  Add a 12-15’ floating line into the equation, and you have 20-23 feet of line from rod tip to bottom fly.  That’s a lot for a tenkara rod to handle, and you really need the right rod to make this work best.  Rods are next.

THE ROD:

The rivers are usually “big” on the tenkara scale, the canyons are usually windy, and the HCD and floating line are comparatively heavy.  You don’t want to take a 5:5 level line tenkara rod on a trip like this.  What you DO want to take is a rod that flexes toward the tip (a stiff 6:4 or a 7:3) and is at least twelve (360cm) feet long.  Rods that have performed well for me fishing a HCD on a floating line are the venerable Amago by Tenkara USA, the beautiful Nissin Zerosum 400 7:3, and my current favorite, the now-discontinued (but still available, if you look hard) Daiwa LT39SF.  I much prefer the lighter weight, better balance, and casting performance of the Daiwa, although my Amago sure did catch a lot of browns on the Arkansas.  In a pinch, the Iwana by Tenkara USA would do, and if you have the Daiwa LT36SF it would do even better.  Both rods are a little short at twelve feet and 390 centimeters respectively, but they’ll work.  I think you get the idea…a 12-foot-plus, tip-flex rod.

You’ll need a rod like this because of the weight of the line and flies, and the ever-present wind.  A mid-flex rod simply can’t keep up with either very well.  A third factor that a tip-flex rod will handle better is current.  Bigger water means heavier flows, and turning a 16” brown trout in 450 cfs water takes a robust rod.

Casting an HCD-Floater rig requires a slower cast, a little more pause at the end of the backcast, and a bit of a push going forward to deliver it to the water.  It’s not complicated, but it’ll take a few casts to get in the groove.  Once you get in that groove, it’s pretty easy to nail the same seam, the middle of the same big pocket, or the mid-current glass that you’re aiming for.

Well, there you have it, non-traditional tenkara at its best.  Some may even say that it’s not really tenkara.  Matters not to me.  What I do know is that I’m using a tenkara rod, and it’s a whole lot of fun!  So, if you want to experience the possibilities of non-traditional tenkara, or love fishing the HCD with a western fly rod and want to try it with a fixed-line rod, give it a try!  

  

Catching Up!

I’m finally home from a long, busy summer in Ridgway, Colorado, where I work full-time as a professional tenkara guide and fly shop bum at RIGS Fly Shop and Guide Service.  There really wasn’t much time for anything else, with days off few and far between.  I’ll guess that RIGS does two-thirds of their business between June and August, so drinking from the fire hydrant is the norm.  I was fortunate to be surrounded by fellow guides and shop folks who take hard work to a new level.  We have a solid team at RIGS, led by co-owners Tim and Heather Patterson.  The two of them set a high standard for hard work, flexibility, and perseverance during a busy, stressful time of year.  I couldn’t ask for a better place to work!

Closing down the fly shop on my last day behind the counter in mid-August.

The busiest place in Ridgeway, Colorado!

In all, I guided 25 trips, and spent the rest of the summer working in the fly shop or shuttling whitewater raft trips.  Combined with the two tenkara weekend clinics I put on each year, that puts my guiding up above 30 days per year.  Not too shabby, if you ask me!

Happy clients, happy guide!  

Most of my guided tenkara trips take place in the Cimarron Range, which is a northern extension of the San Juans.  Ridges, spires, turrets, and hoodoos form a line, running north from Uncompahgre Peak all the way to Cerro Summit.  This is stunning country!  The drive from Ridgway over Owl Creek Pass is arguably one of the most scenic anywhere in Colorado.  We’re permitted in the Uncompahgre Wilderness, so my trips can be done from the extreme southern headwaters of the three forks of the Cimarron River all the way up to the northern boundary of the Uncompahgre National Forest, just below Big Cimarron Campground.  At the fly shop we call this entire area “The Cimarrons”, and it provides a vast, diverse region that’s absolutely perfect for tenkara.  Each drainage above Silver Jack Reservoir holds its own special qualities, and is unique.  Each one of them requires different strategies and techniques, ranging from the wide-open lower end of East Fork, to the brushy and intimate pools and pockets of West Fork, and the twists and turns of Middle Fork.  One of my favorite places to guide in late summer is the Cimarron River tailwater below Silver Jack Reservoir.  It’s technically a tailwater, but it looks much more like a freestone.

The Cimarron River above Silver Jack Reservoir. (Photo courtesy of Stephen and Melissa Alcorn)

Once or twice a summer, if the water is lower and clear, I guide on the San Miguel River between Telluride and Norwood.  This summer “The Miguel”, as we call it, turned out to be very fishable, and my clients caught some really nice rainbows.  There are few things more fun than drifting a #14 Crystal Stimulator or Puterbaugh Caddis on the far edge and having a nice sixteen-inch rainbow crush your fly and take you for a ride.  A fish like that on a tenkara rod is simply amazing!

The San Miguel River below Telluride.

In all, it was a great summer season!  It’s always fun to head 200 miles southwest to Ridgway, and it’s equally good to return home to my family each August.  To my clients this summer…THANK YOU!  I had some amazing days standing beside you in wild water.  I hope you learned a thing or two.  One of the most rewarding things about guiding is spending quality time with such interesting people.  To do so in such magnificent country makes it all that much better!   

My last two clients of the season, Tim and Mona.  We had a stellar day fishing the Cimarron River backcountry!

Thinking About Winter

"There are three reasons for becoming a writer:  first is that you need the money; second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings."  --Quentin Crisp

Mid-November snow in the backyard.

It's nearly mid-November.  Dusk came at around 5:00 PM this evening, it's 2 degrees above zero, the windchill is at minus 13, and it's snowing.  It's hard not to think about winter.

Contrary to what Quentin Crisp had to say about winter, I can think of plenty to do with the long winter evenings!

First, my vise has been neglected to the point that I recently found myself scrounging around in the only little fly box I take in my chest pack, searching for the one fly that always produces in my canyons…a Killer Kebari.  So, one thing I can think of doing on long winter evenings is refilling my go-to backcountry fly box.  I started last night, tying up some bodies for future Killer Kebari finished patterns.

An unfinished Killer Kebari pattern…an ongoing project for months to come.

Secondly, I think about what Crisp said about having "something to say that you think the world should know".  Winter nights are for writing.  They come early, giving me ample time to pound on the keyboard, think, research, and revise, revise, revise.  As Dave Peterson says about revision…it's "where the real writing begins…and ends".  There's plenty of time to do that when the mercury drops with the sun and hours go long into the night.  Winter is a time to catch up on all the writing that summer guiding didn't allow.

Ground zero…The Desk

Lastly, winter is a time to recharge my tenkara batteries, doing so through events like the Fly Fishing Show in Denver each early January, and the newly-created Tenkara Winter Series by my friends at Zen Fly Fishing.  Zen co-owners Adam Omernick and Karin Miller were tenkara clients of mine through RIGS Fly Shop this past summer.  I guided them on a backcountry headwater and the downstream wild tailwater on the same small river.  We slammed rainbows all day long with tenkara, and a lasting friendship was formed in the process.  Adam and Karin are good people.

Join me for the Tenkara Winter Series!

I was honored that Adam and Karin asked me to provide a presentation at the inaugural January installment of the Tenkara Winter Series!  I'm completely humbled to be in the company of well-known journalist, editor, and author, Kirk Deeter, and Tenkara Bum owner and tenkara guru, Chris Stewart, as presenters.  Each of the three months of the Tenkara Winter Series, Zen has paired up a tenkara presentation with the work of an accomplished artist.  I'm looking forward to presenting on the evening of January 24th with my friend and tenkara photographer extraordinaire, Kevin Fricke.  Other artist/photographers in the series are another good friend, and Three Rivers Tenkara owner, Anthony Naples, and widely-renowned fly angler Mark Boname.

I hope winter treats you well.  I also hope that those "long winter evenings" involve a fly vise, some introspection, and your attendance at events like the Tenkara Winter Series.  Stay warm, my friends.