A Little Pause

The rivers are on their way up. One stream that I normally fish at 50 cfs is now nearing 230 cfs, and I expect it to go much higher over the next week. The South Fork of the Snake (a tail water river) jumped from 4500 cfs to 14,500 cfs in just a couple days. What's this mean? It means that I'll have to get a little more creative in finding water to fish for the next couple of months.

The South Fork. It will probably get into the 20,000+ cfs shortly!

But this pause in fishing gives me the opportunity to reflect a little on what I've tried to do with this blog and where I see it going.

I started this blog in January of 2012 and it is mainly a personal journal or diary of my "tenkara adventures in the shadow of the Tetons", as the subtitle says. I've tried to document my investigation of, successes and failures in, and evolution and exploration of tenkara. I've also tried to share my love of gear, particularly rods, in a way that would be of some benefit to not just me but the tenkara community in general. I possibly have been successful in some of this, but I'm sure have failed miserably in other aspects of blogging.

From the blog title

My goal for Teton Tenkara is not to be the "everything tenkara" blog or even the "premier" tenkara blog. For that, I would point you to Jason Klass's Tenkara Talk or Chris Stewart's Tenkara Bum sites. These sites are far more inclusive on all things tenkara (or in the case of Tenkara Bum tenkara, keiryu, seiryu and any other fixed-line method of catching fish of any type or size). My site is just my own, personal experience.

Teton Tenkara is also not designed to be a forum.  It's not that I don't like sharing through forums, but I got too consumed in astroimaging forums in the past and that wasn't good for my health, mental and physical. Therefore I only participate in one forum, Tenkara-Fisher, and I lurk in a few others (Fly Anglers Online and Tenkara USA). If you haven't participated in any of these I'd recommend it. Come join us at Tenkara-Fisher. It's open to everyone. We are pretty open minded and like to share all sorts of experiences. Adam Trahan (he has been to Japan and fished tenkara in their streams) owns the site and does a great job of facilitating the discussions. We may not always agree with each other's views but in general we all respect each other's opinions.

Tenkara Fisher sticker by Adam Trahan -- join Tenkara Fisher and contact Adam to buy one!

Even though Teton Tenkara is not a forum, I still love to hear from you -- especially if any of my tenkara investigations have helped in your personal tenkara adventure. I know I've made it a little hard to contact me directly but there for a while I was getting a lot of spam. Don't be dissuaded, contact me. I'll do my best to answer you back.

Anyway, my goal for the future of Teton Tenkara is more of the same, but with fewer rods reviews. Why? Because I'm running out of rods to review! I'm not interested in reviewing the myriad of "me too -- copy cat" tenkara rods that are flooding eBay; I'm only interested in cutting edge rods or those that have stood the test of time. Also, I can't afford to buy every single tenkara rod out there! If a rod supplier has done a lot of research and design for a new rod, and has come up with an innovative rod then I'm interested, like Oleg Stryapunin's Tenkara Times has done. But the "I made some calls to a Chinese rod company and now I sell tenkara rods with my logo on them" type of a rod is not where my interest lies.

All the rods, so far. More to come.

So there you have it. The future of Teton Tenkara. More reviews, but selective. More fishing reports to journal what I've been up to.  And more of my (hopefully helpful or interesting or marginally entertaining) fishing videos.

Thank you to all of you who read and follow this blog. It's been a fun ride. Let's keep going!

-Tom