Ep 118: Tenkara and Being at Home in the Backcountry, with Paul Vertrees
Paul Vertrees is a guide at Royal Gorge Anglers in Cañon City, CO. He specializes in leading backcountry trips, often overnight, and using lightweight tenkara gear. In this episode, we discuss thriving vs. surviving while on remote trips, the myth that tenkara is only for small fish, how to handle larger fish on a tenkara rod, the pros and cons of using tenkara vs. western fly fishing gear, and much more.
Blog: Tenkara Tracks
YouTube: link
Instagram: @tenkaratracks
Facebook: /TenkaraTracks/
Email: paul@royalgorgeanglers.com
-
Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed podcast, your home for fly fish in the backcountry. This is episode 118 with Paul Vertrees on Tenkara and being at home in the backcountry. Well, if you've heard any episodes, you know how I start. I like to get a background on how my guests got into the outdoors and into fishing. So, it sounds like you've been fishing for a long time. Tell me how you got into it.
Paul
Well, Katie, thanks for having me on the show to begin with. And I appreciate spending some time with you. We were talking about this before we started here. You know, I've listened to several of your episodes, really enjoyed all of them. So thanks for having me on here. You know, I've been very fortunate in that I was raised by parents who encouraged me to spend as much time as I possibly could outdoors right from the get go. I grew up on the front range in Colorado in the mountains in a really small town. Bailey, Colorado is my hometown. And we had a trout stream very close to our property when I was growing up. So I could literally walk down to the creek and explore and eventually fish and just spend all this time outdoors. And I couldn't have been a luckier kid, I guess, in that respect. My parents didn't fish, but they encouraged me to do that. I actually had an older gentleman that lived down the road from us, very close to where we lived, and he took me under his wing and taught me how to fish. And his name was Sid Brainard, and he lived right down the road. And so, you know, as a 12-year-old, my best friend was a 75-year-old man. It was, we were the odd couple. He taught me so much and on the same creek that we lived on. It was the headwaters of Deer Creek, if any of the listeners are familiar with that part of Colorado. And so, parents encouraged me to get out there and do that. When I was very small, I belonged to Cub Scout Pack 400 in Collarford, Colorado. And I remember distinctly, seven or eight years old, Cub Scouts, we would We would have a fishing derby each year and it was on a pond just up the highway from Meyer Open Space Park, which is what it is now. And I won that fishing derby with live grasshoppers. And it's just been a long, very rewarding ride since then. Started backpacking when I was in high school. You know, we, I think we're going to talk about backcountry fly fishing this evening, but, uh, started backpacking when I was in high school, I did my first overnight backpacking trip when I was 15 years old, which as a parent now of, you know, grown children, but as a parent, I don't know if I could, I don't know if I could turn my kids loose like that, but my folks did, and, you know, that, that was really the start and the catalyst for everything else that happened. Uh, after that, um, I grew up, like I said, fishing Deer Creek. I spent a lot of time on the North Fork and South Platte River, Tarryall Creek, and I'm sure people recognize some of these places. Eventually, backpacking. I spent a lot of time fishing high lakes in the Mount Evans Wilderness and Lost Creek Wilderness. And all that was prior to graduating from high school, so I packed a lot into those years, for sure.
Katie
We'll get back to the fishing, but you mentioned Bailey. The two things that I think of when I think of Bailey are world-class disc golfing and the Bigfoot sighting capital of Colorado. So I have to ask, are you a disc golfer and have you ever seen Bigfoot?
Paul
Yes and no. I think I've heard Bigfoot a couple of times at night. But yeah, so yeah, disc golfing certainly not for a while. I've kind of wrecked my shoulders pulling bow strings and casting fly rods. So disc golfing is kind of not, I haven't done that for a while, but yeah, I am a disc golfer. Not with Bigfoot. [laughs]
Katie
Unfortunately.
Paul
Disc golfing with Bigfoot. [laughs] Yeah, Bailey is a very small place, as you know, and it's really a community of subdivisions. Bailey itself is just a wide spot in the road, although it's wider than it was 50 years ago when I was growing up there, but pretty cool place to grow up, let me tell you.
Katie
Yeah, you had really great access to the Lost Creek Wilderness. I think you mentioned it there. Was that a common place you'd go to backpack when you were younger?
Paul
Yeah, it was. Ben Tyler Trailhead, which I think is actually in later years has been actually been moved. But the trailhead to Ben Tyler Trail was right off of Highway 285. I spent a ton of time and probably more time in the Mount Evans Wilderness than any any area simply because I could walk or hike from our house to the wilderness. That's how close we lived to it and And it was not a designated wilderness area when I was growing up. It wasn't designated as wilderness, I don't think until 1980. I was 17 years old by that time. But we lived within walking distance, probably a mile from the wilderness boundary. But the first trip I took, backpacking trip, overnight trip, my mom dropped me off at the Abyss Trailhead on the other side. So this is on the road connecting Grant with Georgetown, Guanella Pass Road. She dropped me off there and I backpacked over all the way down to Deer Creek Drainage and walked home. It was pretty cool. Nobody picked me up. I had to walk home. (laughing) So that was how I grew up. It's a pretty cool way to spend time as a kid.
Katie
Yeah, and how did you get introduced to Tenkara then? 'Cause it sounds like that's kind of your main thing at this point is Tenkara. I'm sure we're gonna get into that, but how did you get introduced to that?
Paul
Well, it's kind of a long story in a way. I mean, I did not, I mean, Tenkera, nobody even knew about it in the United States, you know, when I was younger. And so, um, I probably started off, if you want to call it fly fishing, like a lot of kids did back in the 1970s with a spinning rod, actually, that, you know, I used a casting bubble and, um, added tippet to the end of the casting bubble and have three flies with it. My parents absolutely refused to spend the money on a fly rod because they thought $75 was too much. And so, you know, I had a, actually I had a spinning rod that you could convert to a fly rod, although I didn't really do that much. That's how I started fishing. So this whole Tenkara experience for me started much, much later. So I spent a bunch of years with a Western, what we call a Western fly rod, which is what everybody thinks of when they, when they think of fly fishing. That's how I fished for decades. Um, you know, once I became a very young adult, I had the means of my own to, to get a real fly rod. So, so that's what I did. And so my introduction to Tenkara really didn't launch until around 2009. So, I mean, by that time I was, you know, I was in my late forties by that point. And so, um, it was kind of a, kind of an accident on how it happened. Um, I had been reading and following a lot of things that related to ultralight backpacking, because that was a, you know, it was a passion of mine. It was an interest. It's things I did. That's what I did. And, uh, there was a gentleman named Ryan Jordan who owned a company called Backpacking Light. And I read a lot of, um, his content and I respected him as a a backpacker and an outdoorsman. And, uh, around 2009, 2010, another, uh, young man, Daniel Galhardo, he owned a company called Tenkara USA. He actually collaborated with Ryan Jordan on a rod, a Tenkara rod project. And I was reading about this the whole time and keeping up with these guys and learning about how they were fishing. And, you know, as a back country angler, fixed line fly fishing or Tenkara in particular made all the sense in the world to me because it was so compact and so light and so effective on the water that I, I spent a lot of time fishing. So that's really where, where that all kicked off for me. Um, respected both of those, those, uh, those men a lot. Um, and, and it's, it's been, um, man, it's been crazy ever since. Uh, and one thing that caught my attention was that Daniel was, is actually catching some larger trout in some pretty cool places like Bear Trap Canyon on the Madison River in Montana and some other places and backcountry fishing usually doesn't involve really, really big fish, but I like to catch really, really big fish sometimes and so that caught my attention as well. So, kind of fast forward from there, I became one of the first Tenkara guides, professional Tenkara guides in the United States, 2010-2011. There were other folks got started on that before I did, but one of the early tenkara guides in the U.S. I was blessed to spend some time guiding over in southwest Colorado, and that's really where I got my start as a guide as well. It really wasn't with a Western fly rod in my hand or on the part of my clients. So that's in a nutshell, that's kind of how I got started with all of that, with what I call the tenkara experience.
Katie
When you say a tenkara guide does that mean that you know a hundred percent of your clients to come out or try to fish Tenkara and you that's what you use or is it just that a large percentage of people come and they're doing something Kind of ultra light backcountry and that lends itself well to that.
Paul
Yeah, that's a great question. And and so a Fraction a portion of the trips that I guide on a on a yearly basis Are tenkara specific trips or their backcountry specific trips and tenkara usually? um, makes an appearance on, on those trips because it does make so much sense. And so it, it, you know, the backcountry and, and guiding backcountry trips, which I've kind of specialized in, you know, my entire guiding career, it makes perfect sense on those trips. And, um, you know, without fail handing someone one of those rods and showing them how to use it. Um, it, it, it's like this giant light bulb, you know, coming on. So, um, but, but no, it, it accounts for a portion of the trips I guide, a fraction. I would say the majority of my trips are not Tenkara trips, just simply because of the size of the audience with Tenkara. It's not new now. I think its newness has matured into something else, but it's still a niche within the fly fishing world. So I'd say a fraction of what I guide.
Katie
I want to know more about your backcountry guiding, because I feel like most guides I I talk to are not backcountry focused and some of them don't even really do much backcountry at all. There's a lot of, you know, the bigger rivers, when you think of guided trips, people are paying a lot of money to go catch big fish on the big rivers that they know. Maybe they're paying for a drift boat, they're paying for all kinds of things, but it's usually not backcountry focused. It's usually like the handful of rivers that we've all heard of. You know, what do you find guiding people in the backcountry? You know, what surprises you? What catches people off guard? what do you find valuable as a guide to share with people about about fishing in the backcountry?
Paul
Well, first of all, I think that basically what I did was took a passion and turned it into something I could share with someone else. And, you know, by the time I, you know, I was in my late 40s when I started guiding and immediately started, you know, started off with tenkara trips, but then also offered backcountry tenkara trips and backcountry trips in general. It was already something I was comfortable with. I had a passion for it. I feel as at home in the back country as I do in my own living room. So, um, you know, I wanted to share that with other folks. And so what I discovered was there's a, there are folks out there who want to do that and it's not everybody. And, you know, it's not, um, again, it's a, it's a fraction of what I do. Um, I'm still guiding on big rivers. I'm guiding on tailwaters and doing all that stuff. But I think people, and I've talked about this at some presentations I've done at fly fishing shows and in other venues about, you know, why do people want to get out into the backcountry? And one of the things I talk about is that just in Colorado, the population of our state has more than doubled in my lifetime in almost 61 years. I think people are looking for a remote setting. I think they're wanting to get away from, you know, the crowds and spend time in a challenging environment and learning about that in the process. So, you know, it's and I have people come from all different walks of life at all different levels of experience and everything when they when they book a backcountry trip. And, you know, we we can tailor those trips to everybody's ability level. We do half day where I'm guiding. We do half day and full day backcountry trips as well as overnight backpacking trips. So we've got something for everybody and, um, there's, you know, and there could be a progression to that, you know, once you, you, you do a half day trip and you feel comfortable doing that and you want to do more of you, you know, then you can head off with me for a full day, full day trips are a blast because we actually get to do some back country meals. I like to cook and I like to cook in the outdoors. And so do a lot of hot meals and folks get a chance to see, you know, how to do that. And I guess, you know, in some senses, uh, guiding, you're almost there to work yourself out of a job because a lot of the time, you know, my goal is for people to spend some time with me as a step toward becoming self-sufficient. And I think a lot of guides would tell you that, um, some people never will be because they, they want to go on a guided trip and, and they, they want to have that type of experience and that's, that's really cool. Um, there's other folks that are out there to learn more so they can do more on their own as well. So, you know, I found that there's something for everybody in it. It's, it's, it's not for everybody. Um, it's a lot of work. I can tell you as I get older, um, it's more work than it used to be. So, uh, but it's, it's still a great way to get out and enjoy the outdoors and enjoy fly fishing for sure.
Katie
Do you, most of your backcountry clients come to you wanting to do that? Or do you find yourself kind of encouraging people? Like they come to you and they're like, I'd like to go fishing. and you can kind of sense that they would do well and are physically capable enough and you say like, "Hey, I know you wanted to do this thing, but have you ever considered doing this instead?" Do you find yourself convincing people that that would be a fun thing to do or do they come to you seeking you out for that?
Paul
I think it's a bit of both. We screen our clients carefully because it is more physically challenging than fishing in other ways in other places. I have a lot of folks who are interested in backcountry trips come to us. Um, you know, I do, um, presentations from time to time and I talk about exactly what we're discussing right now quite often and, um, and, and explaining to people what a guided backcountry trip looks like. I think folks sometimes there's, there's an intimidation factor with, you know, wow, you know, this is going to be a wilderness trip and we're going to, you Some things like that. And, and, and it's not the case. And, um, I think once they understand what that trip looks like, yeah. And let's, let's try that, you know? And, and, uh, once they're out there, it's the best thing in the world, you know, to, to get those folks out there, especially if it's for the first time and they haven't really done anything like that, it's amazing to watch, uh, their comfort level grow and, uh, how much they can learn even in a half day. You know, going out with me for a half day, how much they'll actually learn learn about the landscape. And it's interesting because even that, the landscape itself and not necessarily the fishing, there's so much geologic and local history. Just by looking at the landscape, it's amazing. And we talk about all of that on the trip as well.
Katie
How do you gauge what kind of trip people are capable of? Obviously, something is-- there's some really easy concrete things like, hey, have you ever hiked five miles before? Things like that you can gauge. But maybe someone comes in and they overnight trip and they've never done an overnight trip before. How do you gauge somebody's comfort level? Do you encourage them to come out on a smaller trip first and see how they do or is there a more clear-cut way to decide if an overnight trip is right for somebody?
Paul
There is a more clear-cut way and I ask a lot of questions. And when I talked about screening clients, we do. Everybody at our shop, we screen those clients carefully. Number one, it's a safety concern, but we'd like to get a of, um, you know, how much experience they have with fly rod, how much experience they have in the outdoors in general, and, and we ask a lot of questions, um, regardless of what trip I'm, what type of trip I'm guiding. One of my first questions to any prospective client, even if I'm at a trade show or doing a presentation or whatever, is, uh, what do you want to get out of this trip? Okay. And everybody's going to give you a different answer, but I think important that, you know, as a guide that I address that because it's their trip. It's not mine. I'm just loaning myself to them for the day. It's their experience. And, um, and I want to, you know, as a guide, I want to try to, to, uh, to, to meet, you know, that expectation of theirs or those goals that they might have. I've had some people I've asked them that question and I've had some folks say, you know, I don't care what we do. I just want to have fun. And that's a pretty easy one, 'cause it's pretty easy to have fun doing that. Yeah. But other folks want to work on a certain technique because they are experienced or they want to be in a landscape that they've never been in before, that type of thing. So we just ask a lot of questions. We try as best we can to work with that client, to meet that experience that they're looking for. And that's what we do.
Katie
I think that as folks who go out fairly often it's easy to start to take things for granted. You know, I don't remember the last time I went on a, you know, backpacking fishing trip with somebody who was not just as experienced as I was. You know, I don't even think about checking with them to make sure that they, you know, remember their sleeping bag or whatever. But what things do you notice as somebody who personally, I bet you take these things for granted, but you work with people who may be new to the outdoors or to overnight trips to the backcountry, what things do you noticed that remind you like, "Oh yeah, I should probably cover that because it's something that I don't have to think about." But I bet these clients often bring things to your attention that a lot of us take for granted. Can you think of anything off the top of your head that you've noticed as a guide that people don't just know if they haven't been outdoors a lot?
Paul
Yeah, I think one thing, it's kind of funny, but one thing that I've noticed is they overestimate the capacity of a backpack. Um, yeah, and, and, and here's where I'm going with that. And, and trust me, we, you know, I spent 20 years in the army and, um, I, I know how to run a checklist. Okay. And so I do have checklists. I have a gear checklist that, um, it's actually in the trip description on, you know, here's what you're responsible for as a client, here's what I'm responsible or we're responsible for as, as an outfitter. And it's very cut and dried and very clear. But yet, you know, when you tell somebody that, you know, they need to have at least a 4,500 cubic inch, if not a 5,000 cubic inch backpack, I have seen, you know, a lot of beginners really overestimate how much stuff they can, what that means, you know, what, what the, the, the cubic inch capacity of that pack. What does that look like? And so because there's sleeping bags out there that can fill that entire 4,500 cubic foot backpack. Okay, so, um, but we, we do, we go through, we have gear checklists. Um, I, I have a routine on those trips where, you know, when we meet, you know, before we depart to drive to the trailhead, they dump everything out that they own, um, on the tailgate of my truck. We sort through it. We don't want any redundancy. I don't want to carry something that they're going to carry and so forth. And they know exactly what they're going to be responsible for carrying in their pack. So it usually works out great. I think that, you know, if anything, it's like, man, I have all of this stuff and it has to go in that backpack. You know, that type of thing. And just what things weigh or what things should weigh that you're going to carry on your back. It's a great learning experience for folks in that respect. Just the simple, you know, going through the motions of selecting gear and then figuring out how to transport it on your back. That's a whole very valuable learning experience for them in the first place. because, you know, and we get a lot, we get clients who I would say probably most of them who would love to have that kind of experience, but they don't have the equipment or they don't have the know-how, you know, boots on the ground know-how on how to pull that off. And so they don't have that confidence level. And I think that's one of the coolest things about that trip, that particular trip, is that by the end of that trip, their confidence level is way beyond where it was when we started.
Katie
Without throwing anyone under the bus, are there any funny things you can think of that people have tried to bring on a trip that you get to the tailgate and you're just like, "No, we can't bring this stereo system with us," or whatever? Anything come to mind?
Paul
Yeah. A lot of the backcountry stuff, it's either half day or full day. Carrying a lot of water, and I carry a filter which reduces the load on, on water, you know, and, and so, you know, I've had folks that, um, and it never entered their mind that they're standing in a bazillion gallons of water, but they're carrying a whole bunch of it too. Um, you know, I, I refuse to carry water, uh, when I'm backpacking in a canyon with a drought stream running down the middle of it, because I'm always either near the water or I'm in it. And, um, so filters make a lot of sense. I really haven't had anybody bring anything outlandish to speak of. I think most of the time they're a little paranoid about bringing too much stuff. So that really has not been a big deal. I have a lot of funny stories, but I don't have anything related to weird stuff in backpacks.
Katie
Well, share a funny story if you've got one off the top of your head.
Paul
I've, I've, I've pulled my, uh, removed my share of, uh, cactus thorns. Um, and, and if you guide in semi-arid canyons, that that's going to happen. Um, and, uh, you know, we, and the conditions are always changing as well. Um, and so you kind of have to be prepared for the unexpected. Uh, I've been blessed that I haven't had any really any serious, you know, um, medical stuff go on, been a few things happen, uh, you know, few cuts and and scrapes and bruises and cactus. But that's about it. I don't know if you want to call it a humorous thing, but a really cool experience we've had on numerous occasions being in the canyons, catching fish on small water in the bottom of a tiny canyon and having bighorn sheep watch you fish. That's pretty cool and very close proximity. I mean, he's, you know, 30, 40 yards, 50 yards away. You've got bighorn sheep watching fish. That's pretty cool. We had one backcountry trip and we were in for a, it was an overnight trip. And, you know, these canyons are remote. They're very rocky. They're, you know, there's no flat ground anywhere except exactly where your tent's at. And we had an airplane, a small plane, almost like a bush plane. little single engine plane. I'd never seen any single engine planes fly into that canyon, um, at low altitude. And this pilot came in right above our camp and we were fishing just, just upstream from camp. And I thought he was going to try to land in that opening that we were in. It was pretty crazy. He was very low. And, and, uh, I've been in Alaska enough to know, you know, how it looks when pilots are, are looking over a spot. Usually, you know, checking it out. They'll do a couple of passes before they land so they know it's safe. And that's what was going on. And, and, uh, never seen anything like that before or after, uh, that happened. Uh, I have no idea what that, what that pilot was up to, but I thought he was going to put that, that plane down right in front of us. Uh, and then we've had, you know, we've, we've had the, the, uh, the bumps in the night and things like that, but, um, it's, it's all been good. It's been, they've been great experiences.
Katie
Well, switching a little bit to Tenkara itself, I've actually never done a Tenkara episode and I kind of just want to pick your brain as the resident Tenkara expert here. Maybe we can start by just, you know, if somebody has never heard of Tenkara or picked up a Tenkara rod in their life, explain a little bit about what it is and what it's good for.
Paul
So yeah, and Tenkara is fixed line fly fishing. So there's no reel, your line attaches to the tip of your rod. The rods, modern Tenkara rods or fixed line rods are telescopic, usually, um, between eight and 10 segments. So they collapse very short. Um, they're very lightweight, you know, a heavy rod weighs, you know, three and a half ounces or whatever. Um, most of mine weigh around two ounces, uh, very lightweight. Uh, it's very simple, elegant way to fish. Uh, it, you basically have, have reduced fly fishing down to its simplest form with, with Tenkara. Uh, you have a rod, you have a line, uh, you have tippet, you have a fly. And that's what you have. It's very intuitive. It's very easy to learn how to use a tenkara rod and to deliver a fly to the water properly. And it has ancient origins. It's only been popular in the United States for, like I said, since around 2009 or so. But tenkara has been practiced in Asia for hundreds of years. I actually was privileged to hold an ancient tenkara, or fixed line rod from Japan, Uh, bamboo rod, very heavy compared to what we have now, but it has, it has some very simple, very, um, utilitarian roots. Uh, a lot of very small scale commercial fishing was done in the mountains of Japan with fixed line, um, rods. And, um, so it really wasn't even a sport. It was more of a vocation. Yeah. Very interesting history to it. Uh, it looks very different now than of course, you know, hundreds ago, like all fishing does, but, um, and, and, you know, for backcountry fly fishing, and again, that's, that's was really the, the thing that attracted me to Tenkara and fixed line fly fishing is how much sense it made for a back, as a backpacker, it takes a very little space. I, it, it's very lightweight, you know, and is, and I'm not a big person. So, um, every ounce counts and, uh, it's very, very effective. I found it very effective on small water. Um, most of the time prior to that fishing a three weight rod all the time. Uh, I was, I was never using my line. I was always fishing with my leader and you know, like a seven foot, seven and a half foot leader. That was it. I mean, my fly line was, I don't like having my fly line behind the tip of the rod, but that's where it ended up most of the time. And yeah, you know, you know the drill, so that's all I was using anyway. And so that's really, you know, what, what got me hooked on it. No pun intended. But, um, then I started playing around with it and exploring different ways to use fixed line fly fishing. And it took me to some different places. Um, it put me on bigger fish, uh, and, and, oh my gosh, we, another guest of yours has been on your show, Sean Larson. And I made a trip to Alaska in 2016 and I had trophy grayling on my mind and started catching these fish and it's like, man, this, you know, Tenkara can do a lot. And, uh, then I started fishing tailwaters here at home where, where those big fish are and, uh, just kept going with it. And so, uh, it's kind of been an out of the, out of the box experience for me. But, um, and I've probably, um, I've done a lot of things that wouldn't be considered traditional with it, but, uh, it, it sure is a lot of fun. And, you know, and I tell people this all the time that it, you know, Tenkara is not the answer to everything, but it's an answer to a whole lot of things and, uh, I still, you know, I fish saltwater with rod and reel, fly rod. I'm making a trip to, um, next year to Labrador to catch some big brook trout. and I'm taking a Tenkara rod, but it's not the only rod I'm gonna take. But for the vast majority of what I do, it's just fine. And that includes, you know, I live on a very nice free stone river with the Arkansas River. My house is sitting about a mile from it right now. That's how I fish that river almost all the time is with the Tenkara rod. So there's a whole lot you can do with it.
Katie
I've heard many times that it's a myth that you can't catch big fish with a tenkara rod. Are there any special considerations that you need to do to make that successful? For anyone who hasn't done it, the line is fixed so you can't let line out in the same way that you can with a reel. How do you handle a large fish? Is it in the rod management? Is it you're moving around physically to keep up with the fish? Or am I just maybe making it more complicated than it needs to be?
Paul
Well, it's a great question and it's all of that. And so it's an adventure. I'm not going to say it isn't, but you have to be able to move yourself. You have to have that ability. If you stand in one spot on a lot of big fish, it's not going to go well. And you could ask a dozen experienced tenkara anglers, you're probably going to get a dozen different answers. like asking anybody else what the right answer is to anything, right? There really isn't one. There's things you can do to, to, um, better your odds. But I think one of one thing, and I've talked to a lot of clients about this. I, I have one client in particular, a good friend of mine who, um, has done trips with me and he wanted to focus on big fish and, uh, and he caught big fish and he learned some things in the process. Um, one of those is, is you really need to formulate an exit strategy, right. For both yourself and that fish. Um, because you have to get that fish into easier water. You have to be able to move yourself with the fish because you don't have, you know, an 80 foot line and 150 yards backing and there's fish that will run you down the river. There are, there are, um, particular rivers where the fish do that almost all the time. Um, you can almost predict with how they're going to react to after they eat that fly. So, uh, there's things you can do to, to, to help yourself in those, uh, situations, the ability to move, having control over that fish, keeping, keeping big fish in the bend of the rod, keeping the, the, the, the butt of the rod pointed at the fish. I mean, these are all things that you would do with a Western fly rod as well. So there's a lot of parallels there. Having somebody net for you is a plus. One of the biggest fish I ever caught on tenkara, actually Shawn Larson was there and had he not been there, I don't know if I could have landed that fish. It was a sockeye salmon on the Gokona River in Alaska. And it was a surprise when I caught it, but it was a big fish. We got it in the net and it was fine, but I really don't think I could have landed that fish without Sean running the net for me. So there's things you can do. You can catch big fish with Tenkara fixed line fly fishing. And it's quite an experience for sure.
Katie
So it sounds like it wouldn't be a good technique to perch yourself on a boulder that you're not going to be able to move off of. Sometimes you find some little overhang like that that you can stand on and cast with a traditional Western fly rod with the idea that if you got a fish on, even if you couldn't land it in that position, you could let it run. you could kind of let your line go while you're then maneuvering yourself down to a place where you could land that fish. That would not be a good place for Tenkara if you were to hook a big fish, because you have to be able to move now to keep up with that fish. If you then have to climb down over some rocks and stuff and kind of take your eye off things, that's not going to work with this fixed line. Is that a fair assessment?
Paul
It's a very fair assessment and I've actually put myself in those situations before. And yeah, so I can tell you from experience, you know, just being able to move, not every fish is going to take off like a freight train and you don't know. And I do some writing as well on my blog and magazine articles and so forth. And one of the things I always wanted to write about was that period of time between when you set the hook and when you figure out what kind of fish you have on. That span of about two seconds or less. Just that anticipation of, you know, what exactly is going to happen here? What do I have here? You have to be ready for that. And I think that's one of the most wonderful feelings in the world actually is when you don't really know what's going to happen.
Katie
Oh, I agree. I love that part.
Paul
You know, and it's only a very small piece of time. I think that's one of the things that keeps people going back and doing the same repetition, casting, drifting over and over again is they're looking for that little one to two second space and time where they don't know what the heck is going to happen. I think it's the coolest feeling in the world.
Katie
I feel like it's more exciting to catch a big fish in a place where you don't expect to find one than it is to go out and fish for big fish and then you catch one. If you go to a big tailwater and every fish is 18+ inches, then it's not that exciting to catch an 18-20 inch fish, because they're all like that. But when you find one of those big fish sitting in a place that feels like it shouldn't, feels like it spilled over from somewhere upstream and washed down a couple miles. It's among a bunch of 8-10 inch fish. Those giant ones suddenly mean a lot more and are way more exciting when you don't know it's going to happen. I feel like it's kind of what you're describing there, where you hook something and it doesn't feel right. You're like, "I've been catching little brook trout all day, why is this thing pulling so hard?" It's so much more exciting than when you go out and you're like, "I'm going to go catch big tailwater browns today." It almost makes it feel more run-of-the-mill then.
Paul
Irrigation ditches are great places to fish. Because they can have big fish. Um, yeah, it's a great feeling. And, and, you know, um, fixed line fly fishing is, is, it's a challenge. Um, and it's a challenge. I made a lot of parallels between tenkara and, and bow hunting. Uh, and I do both. Um, and, and, you know, you're, you're purposely lessening your odds. You know, you're, you're, you're putting yourself at a, at a little bit more of a disadvantage in some ways, in some ways you're, you're actually bettering the odds, but you're creating a challenge and, and, and that's cool. You know, I, I think that people are gravitate towards that. I know that, you know, when I started to recognize the parallels between bow hunting and especially traditional archery and Tenkara, it was, you know, they're very, um, closely aligned in that in that way that you actually create your own challenges and your own set of circumstances that you know you're a little bit outside of your bubble sometimes and you know that's part of the adventure of it and that's why I think that's part of what interests people in it is it's different but very enjoyable I've had a great time with it.
Katie
I think another similarity between those is the proximity you know how close you have to get and how intimate you have to be with your quarry to both be able to take one with a bow and to be by necessity a tenkara rod has a limited length that you can you can limit a distance that you can be from from your fish you know you can't be a hundred feet from the fish if you're gonna be tenkara fishing so I think there's there's other similarities there too just in how intimate the whole process is.
Paul
It is and and and I recognize that right away I'd been bow hunting much longer than I'd been involved with tenkara so but um yeah that those are a lot of correlations between the two and yeah it keeps you coming back for sure.
Katie
Now tell me about the variety of techniques you can do with Tenkara because I'm genuinely not sure. Sure. You know I think of regular fly fishing you could have an indicator rig with three flies on it you can dry fly fish you can your own you can do all these different things. With Tenkara I typically think of a dry fly or maybe like a tight line nymph rig but tell me you know what what can you do with it can you do anything you can do with a regular rod or is it little bit there's a couple you know specific things that you would do with a tenkara rod?
Paul
I would say that you could do most of those things now you can't can't let me tell you what you can't do it's easier than telling you what okay so you can do a lot of a lot of those things and again I you know I've taken kind of an outside the box approach to what started out as a pretty traditional thing with with tenkara so now and this in it and this has been in in a span of, you know, like 14 years or whatever, 14, 15 years. I am throwing dry flies or dry droppers, same flies that I would use with my Western fly rod. I'm tightline nymphing or contact nymphing, which is, you know, there's a bazillion different titles for that. You know, you're a nymphing or whatever. I'm tightline nymphing with no indicator, multiple flies with weight, um, doing that. You, you can't strip a streamer with a fixed line system. However, you can manipulate smaller, uh, beadhead streamers like woolly boogers and leeches and some things like that with a lot of success. And I've done a lot of that on still water on high lakes with a single, you know, like a, um, a semi seal leech or a mini leech or a woolly booger. Uh, you can manipulate that, that fly with a ten karat rod. Uh, you can't strip line, you know, I guess is what I'm saying, but you can still, and you can't throw a, you know, a, um, a gonga, you know, it's not going to work well for you. Um, the, the, the delivery system is just too lightweight to do that, especially once that fly's wet. So, um, you know, fly selection matters, but you know, still water, same thing. I've done a bunch of still water fishing with, with Tenkara on reservoirs out of my kayak worked pretty well, uh, but there's, but there's things you can't do as well. And stripping streamers, you know, proper, like you would do with the Western fly rods, not going to happen that way, there are limitations, uh, that I've recognized with, um, some of my saltwater experiences. Um, you know, I've, I've hooked, I say, and I still want to catch, I haven't done it, but I still want to catch a bonefish on tenkara rod, but man, I don't know what's going to happen when I do that. Um, I just don't know. Even small tarpon, you know, like 20 pound, 25 pound tarpon, 15 pound tarpon. I don't know what would happen. There's folks out there that have done some of those things. I don't know what it looked like when it happened. Um, I'm interested in it, but I also recognize that, you know, and I, I tell people this all the time about backpacking gear and all sorts of things, that there is no one perfect tool or no one perfect piece of gear. They all have pros and cons and that's why golfers don't carry just one club. And so, you know, you can do a ton of things with it. It covers a lot of bases for me. Um, doesn't cover all of them because I still like going out and throwing meat on the Arkansas river for brown trout, you know, and I like having a fish hammer a streamer when I'm stripping it. Um, but there's a lot of things that, that a fixed line system can do as well, a whole bunch of things. Um, nymphing very, very effective with, uh, weighted nymphs or with added weight to a nymph rig, very effective. So, and I, and I do a lot of that. I was just out on a tailwater just a couple of days ago, and that's all I did was contact nymphing or tightline nymphing, because it's wintertime. But they weren't eating, they weren't rising. So yeah, very effective there.
Katie
Have you ever done any swinging?
Paul
I have. Again, smaller, same small streamers that I was talking about, but I've also swung a of traditional kabari, which is a traditional tenkara fly pattern, reverse hackle, sakasa style flies. You can swing those. I've swung a lot of wet flies. Very effective for that as well. Absolutely.
Katie
And how about the difference between small streams and alpine lakes? Because I know you mentioned that you've done it out of a boat before, but one of the limitations that I can think of is just, and some of the alpine lakes, especially if there's like a shelf or something, they're all different but sometimes you really want that distance to get out there on those lakes and is a boat kind of a boat or waiting out kind of the only two ways to overcome that for tenkara or how do you deal with things like alpine lakes that sometimes benefit from having that longer cast?
Paul
Yeah here's the paradox though if you're gonna wait out there you got to hold those suckers out there in a backpack you know that's the wrinkle and and and and I've had a a lot of experiences like that where, um, you know, my, my backpacking partner has, uh, you know, a four weight, an eight and a half foot four weight, and I've got a 13 and a half foot Tenkara rod with, uh, you know, another 16, 17, 18 feet of line and tippet on it. Uh, so I'm getting out there, you know, 30, a little over 30 feet or so, and just not being able to reach fish. And, and, um, it happens. And, uh, I get stubborn and it's like, by God, I'm only going to take one rod and it's going to be a Tenkara rod. And, and, uh, and I've got out fish before. Um, however, you know, there's approaches to fishing high lakes that, that can help. Um, because fish do, fish are attracted to certain, um, places on an alpine lake. And so you can, you can work that, but yeah, it, you know, again, it, there's no perfect piece of gear. Everything has its limitations. The limitation on that eight and a half foot 4-weight was that it weighed more. So you had to carry it all the way up there. There's always gonna be a wrinkle. I've taken two rods before. So you know there's a limit to what a rod, any rod can do. I'll put it that way.
Katie
Yeah I guess one of the big things to remember is that we're already limiting ourselves. You know if we wanted to we could take three different spin rods and two fly rods up there and catch all the fish in the lake and then we'd be happy, I guess, to have caught that many fish. But we're already acknowledging that we're probably going to catch fewer fish than we could by taking whatever rod we're choosing, whatever flies we're choosing, and maybe we forgot the right fly or whatever. And a successful trip is not always just can you catch as many fish as physically possible. Most people are fishing for some other reasons as well. And sometimes that's just the enjoyment of what you're doing.
Paul
Yeah, you're creating your own limitations. And, uh, and, and I've gone, I've hiked many miles to high lakes just to see what I could get away with up there, you know, so, you know, just to see what happens, I mean, you know, I'm going to take one rod and I'm going to, I'm going to see if I can get this done, you know, and I, and I It's all about setting those limitations and then having an adventure with those. You know?
Katie
Yeah. Well, just to wrap up, tell me about your blog, Tenkara Tracks. And you mentioned you've done some writing, so just tell me more about that.
Paul
My blog is a bit dusty. It has been hard to keep up with. So there's not a lot of recent content on there. And I've retired, not from guiding, but from careers. and have more time to devote to it. I want to devote more time to it. I've found that social media tends to pull you away from blog writing. I don't know if, and I'm sure there'll be bloggers out there that maybe have way more time than I have or are blessed with that. But I've found that social media tends to pull me away from blogging. And one of the goals I have really for the future is to spend more time on that blog because having your information come at you in these little tiny pieces like social media, nothing against social media, but it doesn't give you that depth that an article or a blog post gives you. And as you know, you can work with a blog post to actually send people in all kinds other directions and learn way more than they could with a little tiny snippet of information in a different format. So I'd like to spend more time on it. There's a bunch of cool content I think on my blog on Tenkara Tracks and that's at tincarattracts.com. It is sprinkled with an ample dose of hunting. It's really, it's not all about fly fishing. It's not all about hunting. It's kind of about the whole thing. It's about being comfortable in the wilderness, something I call "thrival" as opposed to "survival." You know, thriving in the outdoors and being very comfortable out there. That's something I'm gonna talk about it at Denver Fly-Fishing Show coming up is "thrival" and how to be comfortable out there fly fishing in the wilderness. There's a lot of that on on the blog. It's been around for a while, so hopefully folks can look forward to seeing some newer content there for sure. As far as articles, there are some really great publications out there, fly fishing publications, and you never know when or where things are going to pop up. It's pretty cool. I've done a number of articles for Tenkara Angler Magazine, and I got to plug those guys, Mike Agnitta and his team at Tenkara Angler do such a great job. They've got an online e-magazine and print, great content. I've been blessed to provide some content for them over the years. Outdoor life actually, out of the blue. And it was facilitated by a good friend of mine contacted me and so I was able to, I didn't write the article, but I was able to provide them some things about, actually it It was about Tenkara, "Frozen Outdoor Life" magazine. That's been a number of years ago. Yeah, so Tenkara USA used to produce a magazine. I'm not sure if they still do, but I did some writing for them as well. So yeah, it comes up, you know, ever so often, once or twice a year, I have an opportunity usually to do something like that. And I enjoy it greatly. Just being able to share experiences with people. I'm not really a how-to writer. You will see on my blog, I do spend some time talking about what kind of gear I use, but it's not really, you know, you should use this piece of gear. It's just like, hey, here's gear that I use and it works well for me. But there's not a lot of how to. Most of it is shared experiences, things, places I've gone, things I've done, trying to take people maybe along on that trip with me through reading an article. That's been most of what I've done. And it's, I find it, I have a lot of fun with it.
Katie
I know you and I talked a little bit before we started here about the potential future return of your podcast, your fledgling podcast.
Paul
Yeah, I would love to see that happen. It was, and as you and I spoke about this, as a less than a young guy, right, an old guy, not super, super tech savvy. I mean, I do okay, but that was a whole other level of consciousness to figure out how to engineer a podcast episode myself. And I would predict that the vast majority of podcasters are their own engineers. So I had to figure that whole thing out. It was like putting a jigsaw puzzle together in the dark. I got it done. I think it turned out, I was happy with how it turned out. I had a great group of guests on the show. It was really based on a trip I did to the Driftless region of Wisconsin. And a great trip, a lot of fun, met all kinds of great people. And it was mostly about that experience. And I had some of the folks who were on that trip with me on the, on the show. I would love to do more with it. You know, first off you have to, I guess, try to figure out is a room for one more podcast out there in the universe. And if there is, do you have, you know, valuable content for folks? I never really wanted to just throw out episodes for the sake of doing episodes. You know, I wanted to have meaningful content. So we'll see. A lot of what I would envision having on the podcast would be experience based. And to do that, you have to go out and have experiences. So that's that's the upside to the whole thing.
Katie
What was the name of it?
Paul
It's Tenkara Tracks. Everything's got the same name. Yep. So I could remember.
Katie
And is your blog the best place- like, can people reach out to you on your blog? Or should they reach out a different way? My approach was to just have Shawn harass you enough to sift through your inbox until you found me. But how could other people do that?
Paul
Well, you knew enough of my cronies that you got it done. We got ahold of each other. Yeah, they can contact me on the blog. They can email me. My email address is paul@royalgorgeanglers.com where I guide. I answer all my emails. Either way is fine. I answer all the emails, all the messages that I get. And sometimes I get them in bundles. So I have to, it takes me a day or so, but I answer them all. Totally accessible to folks if they want to talk about anything that I'm doing, I'm happy to and look forward to talking to folks about those things.
Katie
Awesome. Well, Paul, I appreciate you taking the time this evening. I feel like we'll probably cross paths at some point, either through our mutual connections or maybe just running into each other in the middle of nowhere. It could be fun.
Paul
I imagine we will.
Katie
I appreciate you doing this and thank you again.
Paul
Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me on the show. I appreciate it.
Katie
Alright, that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find the contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram @fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody.
Note:
These transcripts were created using AI to help make the podcast more accessible to all listeners, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or anyone who prefers to read rather than listen.
While I’ve reviewed each transcript to correct obvious errors, they may not be 100% accurate. In particular, moments with overlapping speech or unclear audio may not be transcribed word-for-word. However, every effort has been made to ensure that the core content and meaning are accurately represented.
Thank you for your understanding, and I hope these transcripts help you enjoy the podcast in the way that works best for you.