I am very excited to be able to attend the Oni School this year again after weeks of rescheduling my business around it. It is going to be a very short trip for me this year but it is worth every penny for me. Over the years, Oni and I have become good friends because we both share the same passion in rod making. I have been going to the Oni School since it first opened here in the US hosted by Tenkara Guides in 2015. Oni is a nickname of the world renowned tenkara master, Masami Sakakibara. Every time I go to Oni school, I learn a lot more than the year before. I am looking forward to learning twice as much as last time. The Oni School is very special for me. It is the birth place of Tanuki
Lifting test on Tanuki XL-1 prototype Building bamboo rods is my hobby. I made my first hand-crafted fixed line 4 ft bamboo rod when I was 9. Many years later, I built my first bamboo fly rod in 2001. I love to land fish with bamboo rods. I like to fish with a rod less than 7’3”. I rarely fish with bamboo rod longer than 8 ft because it feels heavy. Tenkara rod is a fixed line rod like a bamboo rod. In order to cover more water, we use a longer rod. A longer rod put more pressure on the wrist. Tanuki XL-1's length is 13’3”. it is considered a honryu rod (honryu means main stream in Japanese; in this case it means long). Making a long rod that is 13 ft (4m) or longer makes demands on rod make
I have always believed more brains are better than one. First I would like to thank Luca Matteo Mainardi, the lead designer, Gianluca Bonomi, Italian as well as other European fishers and rod manufacturing engineers who design, select blank and build it. It is a true collaboration among users, designers and manufacturer. Spring 2016, I began to experiment to design and build a rod with community input and localization. There are two parallel tracks, one for design and aesthetics, other performance. Tanuki 275 prototypes got input from Appalachian Tenkara Group on Facebook and the result was posted to the public on FB. Italian Facebook community will get involved with the design this time bec
Mill Creek is about a half hour south of Livingston, MT Strategy for big cutthroat on Mill Creek What tenkara rod length, line and flies? I spent a solid day fishing on Mill Creek in Livingston, Montana, preparing my seminar about fly fishing at the Fish Fest in Livingston. I was giving classes in "Fly Fishing with a Tenkara Rod" and a seminar on "Modern Fly Fishing". Mill Creek is packed with Yellowstone Cutthroats, and it was my first time fishing on cutthroat water. It took me about two hours to figure out a fishing strategy for bigger fish. Most of fishers I talked too were using small grasshopper or MadamX. Since I was preparing for the seminar, I wanted to try out both western fly and
