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, Ma

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 pres

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 aesthet

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 to