Tenkara circa 1500

[gulfgreyhound]

Some time back I was given : The History of Fly fishing in Fifty Flies by Ian Whitlaw. I finally started to wade through it and found there was references to rod building. A rod not unlike today's Tenkara Rods.
Dame Juliana Berners describes a three piece rod that collapses into itself. The 9ft. bottom section was hollowed out willow , haze, or ash. The middle section was willow while the tip was crabtree,blackthorn,medlar? or juniper. The top two sections slid inside the hollowed out 9ft base. Not quite as collapsible as Tenkara.
An interesting read which included making lines from horsehair and hooks from needles. Leader strength was based on a single horsehair ,from the tale of a male horse, having the breaking strength ,lb. test ,of 1 pound.
I can see modern man going through this just to fly fish. GG

 

[moon1284]

That's impossible. Everyone knows fly fishing was invented in Asia and it was a respectable and honorable sport until us western capitalists ruined it with our insensitive and arrogant reels.

 

[redietz]

Several hundred years later, Sir Charles Cotton recommended that your rod be no more than six yards long, and no bigger around in the butt section than your wrist -- otherwise you could get tired fishing for a full day. (Tenkara rod are definitely an improvement.)

Reels had been invented by then (late 1600's) but they were thought to be gimmicks and nobody actually used them. They didn't truly catch on until about 1800, and rods sans reels were still being recommended in print as late as 1885. (cf The Angler and the Loop Rod by David Webster.)

Tenkara has much more in common with most of the history of western fly fishing than many anglers today realize.

 

[Bamboozle]

redietz wrote:
Tenkara has much more in common with most of the history of western fly fishing than many anglers today realize.

If it makes the haters feel better, Italians were using a similar method called "Pesca alla Valsesiana" which is still practiced in Valesia, Italy.

The technique utilizes horsehair lines attached to a long multi sectioned rod with no reel and a multi-fly rig.

Tenkara was developed independently by other folks that realized a reel is an unnecessary extravagance and not needed to catch fish with flies. ;-)