Spent the last 2 days pretty much just working hoppers for the vast majority of the days. Always nice when you can fish big dries and the fish come eat them. Hopper fishing has been good to very good for me for about 10 days now. Today's bite was good on the Yellowstone.
Fishing with The Hawaiian Hammer and his sidekick Tenkara Timmy the next few days. If you don't know what Tenkara is...read about it online or attend their conclave this weekend in West Yellowstone.
It's a telescopic graphite rod fished withe a butt section to tippet configuration. The typical rig has a braided leader type material as the butt section in 8-12 foot lengths with a few feet of tippet. There is no reel in Tenkara fishing as the style was developed for small streams with small fish. It's basically a glorified dapping technique. I would have thought there is very little practical application for around here but it definitely accomplishes one thing that every fly angler should try to do everyday on the water. Namely, it makes for some fun on the river.
It really is an ideal technique for fishing everything from small streams up to something say the size of the Gallatin from shore. We've been messing with it from a drift boat the last couple of days and a few days last year too. The hardest thing to deal with from the boat has been landing the fish as there is a tendency to have a longer leader than you can really deal with minus a reel. Today, the ninja master used a shorter leader and everything worked great and the 10-16" fish eating hoppers were a blast on the rod.
Anyway, fishing is all about the fun and although Tenkara fishing is not the end all or be all. Actually, it's hardly anything at all if you want the honest truth. But, as with all things it's something different that can add some flavor to the day and usually catch some fish too.
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