4th of July Fireworks. . .
How the Fireworks Started
(NYC 07 04 2019)
(* Excerpt from Small Fry: The Lure of the Little by ron P. swegman. 2009. The Whitefish Press.)
Fireworks!
Happy Fourth of July.
— rPs 07 04 2019
Archive for Tenkara News
Summer Sunnies
Summer Sunnies . . .
Bluegill: the Summer Sunfish — This one lured by a Woolly Bugger tied by Dennis Feliciano.
(NYC 06 2019)
The longest days of the year offer an extended opportunity to “fish local” even after a busy weekday at work in the big New York City.
No excuses. There is always time to tackle with some sunnies around the summer solstice!
— rPs 06 30 2019
Spawning Season
Spawning Season . . .
A Gathering of the Tribes: (bass, bluegill, crappie)
(NYC 05 2019)
Shoals of small bluegill gather just below the surface of the open water as the very long shadow of a largemouth bass passes nearby. A large crappie holds guard over a cleared nest within an opening in the weeds near the bank.
It’s May, when all the fish of the pond are active and in sight: Spawning Season.
What a delight it was to see so much piscatorial action in the good company of Garrett Fallon, publisher of Fallon’s Angler, this month. He was in town on business, but found a few hours of time to go fishing in the center of New York City.
He was not disappointed.
First Fish for Mr. Fallon
(NYC 05 2019)
Tenkara offered a new twist in his seasoned hand, which managed to pluck a feisty bluegill from Central Park’s Harlem Meer after just a few casts.
The golden shiner, so much like the European rudd to which he is well acquainted, also rushed to the artificial fly in the bright morning sun.
Golden Shiner, Golden Sunlight
(NYC 05 2019)
Our little trip ended with the big one. The shaded banks and weedy waters held some very large black crappie, the kind some like to call a slab.
A Slab: black crappie dressed in spawning colors
(NYC 05 2019)
May is spawning season; a great time to fish, alone, or with a fellow angler.
— rPs 05 31 2019
Earth Day 49
Earth Day 49 . . .
The author of Philadelphia on the Fly celebrates Earth Day “by the book” . . .
(Planet Earth 04 22 2019)
Earth Day has reached the cusp of a human’s middle age. The planet remains older, larger, and more important than all of us people put together. Let us try, at least try, to be stewards and gardeners and protectors rather than mere users of our one and only green, white, and blue home.
— rPs 04 22 2019
See Bass?
See Bass? . . .
Line on the Water
(NJ 04 2019)
Tenkara rod yamame tethered to a small sparkled shrimp kebari found no willing herring or striper schoolie to tempt. The floating 8-weight line on a reel reached farther into the solunar peak and still found no takers, no curious passes from bass in the deeper water where the current’s piled sand flat dropped off into dark gray.
Water calm, a pass of squall coal gray cloud and on wind holding a spatter of rain. Calm times felt in a zone, fishy, and at that when came the yank, a strong physical stop below the surface. Hot Tail Half and Half, my own fly from a box full of talented friend’s, fooled a fish, too.
One hand managed one shot on the phone fly from the battle middle when eyes saw a dark form sprinting from a puff of sand in two feet of estuary water. See bass, see not a bass, but an early fluke, a fine one flipped off with a smile as flatfish fled.
Sand Trail of a Fluke in Flight
(NJ 04 2019)
Water too cold at 47 degrees Fahrenheit ( 8 Celcius) for the striped bass where I have been to fish The search continues. The season is early.
Fishing is not catching, yet, in or out of net, there is always a view.
(NJ 04 2019)
The saltwater season of 2019 has begun.
— rPs 04 17 2019
Happy (7th) Anniversary
Happy (7th) Anniversary . . .
Ebisu tenkara rod tipped by an Olive Woolly Bugger tied by Urban Angler’s Dennis Feliciano.
(NYC 04 2019)
The best way to celebrate seven (7!) continuous years of tenkara in Manhattan was to fish, photograph, and write all about it.
April, still mostly cold and gray, offers the local season’s most consistent angling for black crappie and the golden shiner, Notemigonus crysoleucas, a hard hitting, fast sprinting fish that in almost every way resembles its European cousin, the Rudd.
My first, and favorite, TUSA Ebisu rod retains it’s fine 5/5 action and good luck. A few overcast afternoon hours spent along the banks of Central Park’s ponds produced the two key species of the season:
Black Crappie
Black Crappie
(NYC 04 2019)
Golden Shiner
Golden Shiner
(NYC 04 2019)
Tenkara continues to take Manhattan seven years on, and counting.
Happy Anniversary, TTM . . .
— rPs 04 09 2019
Postscript: Revisit the first post of TTM by following this link: https://tenkaratakesmanhattan.com/2012/04/09/hello-world/
Tie Up Loose Ends
Tie Up Loose Ends . . .
Partridge & Orange, Deer & Orange
(NYC 03 2019)
Trout season in New York state opens April 1st. Time to tie up loose ends and whip finish those kebari fly patterns . . .
By Ebisu
Patterns go
In a stream’s flow.
Fishers,
Men and women,
Tie together
As feathers and fur do
When wrapped
By thread and floss;
Their names, embossed,
Become floating sculptures.
Optional Author’s Note: Ebisu is the Japanese god of fisherman, good luck, and workingmen, as well as the guardian of small children’s health. He is one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, and the only one of the seven to originate in Japan. This poem, about the legacy of fly tiers and their namesake creations, was composed while sitting by an image of Ebisu, thus the title.
— rPs 03 26 2019
Icing on the Lake
Icing on the Lake . . .
Open Water = Hope
(NYC)
Punxsutawney Phil predicted on February 2nd an early spring. He has been correct but for two spells of clear, cold artic gale.
The ice left behind the windswept spells retreats by half after just a day or two warm enough to compell the morning doves to coo.
One can walk the pond’s bank, hear garrulous bluejay’s, and the polite tufted titmouse can be seen in the park’s bare deciduous trees. A streamer shuffled across the ice until it drops with a wake into open water can at this time of year lead to a large largemouth on the line.
Winter Bass
(NYC)
Black Crappie, too, the icing on the lake.
Crappie in the Cold
(NYC)
Thanks, Phil.
— rPs 02 27 2019
The Winter Vice
The Winter Vice . . .
A Fly Tying Vise In Winter
(NYC 01 2019)
To tie the artificial fly is a proper way to spend fishing time when winter water runs under ice. Still water, too, so still as to be stiff, under ice. Time to read and write and tie the fly.
Why yes.
When winter warms, by whatever reason, the result is a new, almost opposite, reality: time when fly tying can be viewed as a vice, a vice practiced at the vise when you could instead get up and out and fish a rare treat — open water in winter.
Open Water In Winter
(NYC)
EARLY Season Largemouth Bass
(NYC,)
Winter water with active fish = tenkara happiness
— rPs 01 29 2019
Cold Solstice Holidays
Cold Solstice Holidays . . .
December Brook
(NY 12 2018)
Open water remains. Cold, clear, high visibility no match for the fishes obscura.
Was that a trout? Was that a bass? Was it a reflection, of something else, something not even a fish? Daylight flies faster than the fisher.
Retired to the warm indoor, reading and the contemplation of visual art returns to front focus.
Moving Water by Dave Hall
Moving Water
by Dave Hall
hardcover, 50 pp.
Blaine Creek
Dave Hall, an artist of works in oil, has Moving Water give an illustrated meditation, poetry and brushwork combined, in a sublime 10-minutes of illuminated manuscript. Recommended.
Back Seat by Henry Hughes
Back Seat with Fish
by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 303 pp.
Skyhorse Publishing
Not to take a back seat, do take a Back Seat with Fish off the shelves and buy it. Don’t miss the opportunity to immerse with an American life lived in America’s northern corners, New York and Oregon, with the fishing haunting happily in its present attendance at all times in between. Recommended.
The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories edited by Henry Hughes
The Art of Angling
edited by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 256 pp.
Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf
The greater corpos (including, yet beyond the canon) gives a broad read in a pair, stories and poetry, presented in two attractive hardcover collected volumes edited by Dr. Hughes: The Art of Angling and Fishing Stories
Fishing Stories
edited by Henry Hughes
hardcover, 369 pp.
Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf
There are many, many literary angles as there are anglers, men, women, children who all still relish hours reading fish tales and rhymes pictured on the page in a quiet corner on a winter afternoon.
Happy Holidays.
— rPs 12 23 2018
Tenkara Takes Manhattan 