Tenkara Bricolage: Trade Shows, New Guide Trips, Alaska, and More!

A nice tenkara rainbow on the Gibraltar River in SW Alaska

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.

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!