August 24, 2023 - Fishing with Brent Auger of DRAGONtail Tenkara

I am fortunate to live fairly close to the headquarters of DRAGONtail tenkara. This gives me the opportunity to stop by from time to time to see what's new and how they are doing. Over the years, I’ve developed a friendship with the owners, Brent Auger and Brandon Moon. Not long ago, I spoke with Brent about taking him to a remote stream just outside of the Yellowstone border. He said that he would like to go, so we scheduled it.

Getting to the stream requires traveling on a dirt road for many miles, and then reaching a point at which you have to hike down into a canyon. There is a rudimentary trail, but it’s rather hard to find, as it sees minimal used. After hiking some distance, we arrived down at the bottom of the canyon at the creek.

The creek we fished is remote, and receives little pressure. Browns and rainbows predominate, but there are brook trout and cutthroat in it as well. This makes for the possibility of a grand slam, something I've never achieved in any one outing. The water is beautiful, with a moderate gradient as it flows out of the Yellowstone backcountry. The fish are small, but they are wild. 

We geared up and started fishing. I used the Tanuki XL-1, combined with a 380 cm #3 level line. To this I added 80 cm of tippet. Brent chose to use a prototype rod, one that he has been working on for a while and the one that will be the successor to the Nirvana 400. He's loaned it to me in the past, and it is a fantastic rod. He combined the rod with a DRAGONtail Shogun furled tenkara line. 

The day was sunny and only had a light breeze. We worked our way upstream, picking apart the pockets and other fishy lies. The catching started out slow, but as the sun got above the canyon walls, the fish started hitting more consistently, and the action increased. After a few hours of working our way towards the Yellowstone border, we decided it was time to head back downstream, find the trail, and hike up out of the canyon. 

It was fun fishing with Brent. He's an excellent tenkara angler and his casting is particularly good. We plan on hitting some other waters soon and trying out other rods, lines and flies in our quest to exercise wild Idaho trout. 

Here is a video of our trip: