Smaller Stream Tenkara; April 4-5, 2014

In my last post I discussed some of the challenges I have of fishing small streams or creeks. I received some good feedback from you; some good talking points. One such talking point was do I ever fish shorter rods. My answer was yes, on occasion. In this post I'll show you a smaller creek with shorter rods used.

I have fished this creek before; I generally prefer to fish it when there are no leaves on the trees. I find it a little easier to fish when the branches are bare than when the riparian foliage is all leafed out. This creek averages about 3 feet across. It is of moderate to high gradient and has but a few sections where there are no branches obstructing your casting. Because of this, I use 240 cm rods whenever I fish this creek. I have used slightly longer rods and/or lines here before, but I find them more of a hindrance than a help, at least on this water.

Because this water is such a challenge to fish, I start downstream and walk upstream only pausing to fish likely lies where there is at least a little open sky. I often have to cast between overhanging branches, through gapes of only a few inches. I lose a lot of flies fishing this creek.

The fish are browns. The largest I've taken on this water was 14 inches; that's a monster for here. But today the largest was 12 inches. My dead reckoning of fish size is pretty accurate, but today I used my Measure Net so the fish could be quickly measured and you can see how the net works. The net has marks on it and you note the mark at the fish's head and tail, then add them together. It's that easy. It's fast and accurate.

Head 6, Tail 6 = total 12 inch brown.

Here is a video of fishing the creek. I fished a few hours over two days. The first day I used a Shimotsuke Kiyotaki 24 and the next day a Daiwa Soyokaze 24. I used a 7' #3 line both days. The line had an additional 24 inches of 5X tippet. The fly both days was a #10 Utah Killer Bug.