About Our Contributors

CHRIS KUHLOW

Chris has enjoyed every aspect of being outdoors since he was a child. Hiking, camping, kayaking and the study of the natural world have always been part of how he spent his free time growing up in the Hudson Valley of New York. He has practiced tenkara in the traditional manner as it was developed in Japan hundreds of years ago as well as non-traditional ways such as using a tenkara rod to catch juvenile bluefish in the tidal saltwater marshes of Long Island Sound. Tying flies has slowly evolved into a very enjoyable and mildly obsessive past time for Chris. As a commercial fly tyer, Chris has developed the greater sense of satisfaction in knowing that many of his flies have been successfully fished in waters across the country. He lives on Long Island with his wife Claudia and their two little girls who are the greatest joys in their lives. Check out Chris on his blogs:

www.americansakasakebari.blogspot.com www.thenorthriver.blogspot.com

JASON SPARKS

Jason Sparks is a leading ambassador for tenkara fly-fishing and is a current Editor for Tenkara Angler (www.tenkaraangler.com) He founded the social media community “Appalachian Tenkara Anglers” and established “Tenkara Jam” as the first multi-vendor tenkara educational exposition in North America. Previously contributed articles to “Blue Ridge Outdoors”, “Southern Trout” and “Tenkara Talk”. Jason is a Navy Veteran that has fished the world in waters from the Azores to the Appalachians. He carries a tenkara rod with him everywhere he goes.

TOM SADLER

Tom Sadler is the deputy director of the Marine Fish Conservation Network. He has an extensive history of promoting conservation through advocacy and communication. He is an award-winning journalist with awards from the Outdoor Writers Association of America and the Virginia Outdoor Writers Association. He has served on the boards of numerous fly-fishing, conservation and journalism organizations. A lifelong fly fisherman; in his free time, he guides and teaches for Mossy Creek Fly Fishing in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He lives with his wife Beth in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

JASON KLASS

Jason Klass has over 30 years of fly fishing experience and has worked in the outdoor industry as a fly tying instructor, casting instructor, commercial fly tyer, and professional guide throughout his life. He converted to tenkara in 2009 and has produced hundreds of articles and videos on tenkara techniques, gear, and philosophy. Jason has worked for Orvis in Denver, CO and was previously the Fly Fishing Team Lead at Bass Pro Shops. He has a deep passion for tying and is often quoted as saying, “even if every river and lake in the world dried up, I would still tie flies”.

ROB WORTHING, MD

Rob has had a rod in hand for over 20 years. An avid angler, world traveler, backpacker, and wilderness medical professional, he enjoys going off the beaten path to find the beset fishing Utah and other places have to offer. Rob is passionate about fishing traditional tenkara in remote mountain streams. In addition, Rob takes great pride in combining techniques learned while fishing six continents and four oceans to create hybrid styles that simply catch fish. You can check out his website at www.tenkaraguides.com

CHRIS STEWART

“Hi. My name is Chris and I’m a Tenkara Bum. I didn't want to be a Tenkara Bum when I grew up. It just happened. I love tenkara. It's not that it is a traditional Japanese art, I am not drawn to the exotic. I am, however, drawn to the effective and the efficient. I love the light rod, unencumbered by a reel; the light line, uncaptured by a conflicting current. I love the direct connection you can only get if the fish can't take line.

I learned about tenkara by accident. I had seen a photo of a North Country soft hackle fly on the internet and was struck by its simplicity and it's almost austere beauty. I tried to find out all I could about soft hackle flies and how to fish them. Through reading both early and contemporary accounts, I decided that a rod much longer than my 8' Phillipson Premium was needed to get the most out of them. I have been to Japan. I have fished with and learned from Dr. Hisao Ishigaki and Meijin Masami Sakakibara, the "Tenkara King" and "Tenkara Demon." Their flies are different, their rods are different, and their methods are different.” Check out Chris’s website: www.tenkarabum.com

ANTHONY NAPLES

Anthony Naples has fished as long he can remember. He took up fly fishing in the early 1990s while attending Penn State University in the area of some of Pennsylvania’s finest trout fishing. In 2009 he began to explore the world of tenkara angling and fishing with tenkara gear has become his main mode of trout fishing on the mountain streams and spring creeks that he loves. For a few years he operated Three Rivers Tenkara selling tenkara gear and flies. You can read about his exploits at his blog Casting Around: Check out Anthony’s website: www.castingaround.com

Daniel Galhardo

Daniel Galhardo is the first person to introduce tenkara outside of Japan and is the former owner of Tenkara USA, a company he founded in early 2009 with the aim to introduce this simple style of fly-fishing to the world. Daniel has made it his mission to learn all he can about tenkara,

a method of fishing that is very simple on the surface but, as we see, can reveal a lot of fascinating layers below it. Daniel was “adopted” by the most prominent tenkara anglers in Japan as their student, most notably Dr. Hisao Ishigaki, who has taught him the nuances of the method. In several trips to Japan since discovering tenkara, Daniel has shared with the world the fascinating technical, philosophical and cultural layers of tenkara through his company’s blog (www.tenkarausa.com/blog).

Paul Vertrees

A fifth-generation native Coloradoan, Paul grew up in the shadow of the Mount Evans Wilderness, in Colorado’s Front Range. From an early age, he started exploring remote backcountry and chasing trout. Paul has been fly-fishing for more than 20 years. A few years ago, he embraced tenkara. He has extensive experience in lightweight backpacking and backcountry angling on remote streams and high lakes. In 2012, Paul became one of only a handful of certified professional tenkara guides in the state of Colorado. Paul lives with his wife and three daughters in the rugged hills northwest of Cañon City, Colo., within a stone’s throw of the Arkansas River. His writing and photographs have appeared online on his personal blog, Tenkara Tracks (http://tenkaratracks.blogspot.com), on the Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers website, and in Backcountry Journal.

Paul Gibson

“I have been fishing all my life. It started at a very young age and has been a continually developing progression to my current passion for tenkara. As a child I fished alongside my father in the mountain streams and rivers throughout Idaho often with a spinning bait rig. As a teenager in high school I was introduced to fly tying. I began to grow interested in putting use to the flies I had been tying. I acquired my first fly rod and reel from my grandfather and with less than 10 minutes of instruction set out to learn to cast. But, with no real training, my interest soon waned.

“Several years later a friend that had been working at a camping equipment/fly-fishing store encouraged me to take a backpacking trip to an alpine lake to do some fly-fishing. With my hand-me-down rod in hand I hooked into a large cutthroat – my first fish on the fly. It was an amazing sight to witness the fish come up and take the dry fly off the

surface, something I had never witnessed before bait fishing. It was a moment that would change the way I looked at fishing. “As I continued to refine my backpacking fishing equipment I began to hear of tenkara. I immediately felt that tenkara would be very well suited to my style of fishing both on the lakes where I was very intrigued to see how it would perform and on the rivers and streams where I grew up. With countless hours of research I finally made my first tenkara rod purchase. On a cold and grey January day I rigged up the rod and set the fly on the water. With ice on every rock and temperatures hovering in the upper teens I hooked my first fish with tenkara on my third cast. Needless to say the euphoric feeling of that cutthroat out of the lake rushed back and I was hooked on tenkara more so than I had been on traditional fly-fishing. It was on that very day I decided that I wanted to share tenkara with more people and immediately set about working on www.Tenkara-Fishing.com.”

Karel Lansky

Karel started fishing with bobbers and worms as a kid back in Switzerland and rediscovered his passion for fishing and fly-fishing in particular in the mid-’90s in the Austrian Alps. After moving to the U.S. in 2000, he spent a lot of time fly-fishing in the Catskills and the New York City Tri-State Area. In 2008, he moved to the Denver area where he enjoys the many opportunities the Rocky Mountains offer. In 2010, Karel discovered tenkara by accident and has been hooked on the simplicity of ultralight fly-fishing without a reel. He is the guy behind a tenkara fly-fishing blog at www.tenkaraonthefly.net.

ERiK Ostrander

ERiK loves to fish, and if he weren’t married he’d fish seven days a week. He began using Western fly-fishing techniques but fell in love with the simplicity and effectiveness of tenkara. ERiK enjoys exploring new waters and applying fishing techniques from around the world to tenkara and the waters of Utah. He is passionate about tenkara and wants to share tenkara with you – all for the chance to catch big, beautiful, wild trout. You can check out his website at www.tenkaraguides.com

John Vetterli

John grew up in the high mountains of Park City, Utah, and has been fishing the mountain streams of Utah since early childhood. He has been developing a new form of fly-fishing he calls “Urban Fly-fishing.” There are waterways in almost every urban environment that hold healthy thriving fish. John is using tenkara techniques to discover unknown fisheries in the most unlikely places. He believes you can fish in almost any city in North America within a few minutes of travel from where you live or work. You can check out his website at www.tenkaraguides.com.

Morgan Lyle

Morgan Lyle has written about fly-fishing for The Daily Gazette of Schenectady, N.Y., since 1996 and for the New York Outdoor News since 2004. His work has appeared in Trout, American Angler, Fly Tyer, Fly Fisherman and other magazines. He is an assistant director of public relations for Long Island University. Morgan fishes an 8-weight switch rod for striped bass in the Long Island Sound and a 5-weight fly rod for rising trout on the Delaware River, but he most enjoys fishing the small streams of the Catskills with a tenkara rod. His blog, The Fly Line, is at

www.theflyline.wordpress.com.

Books:

Tenkara Fly Fishing: Insights & Strategies By David E. Dirks

tenkara by Daniel Galhardo

Simple Fly Fishing By Yvon Chouinard, Craig Matthews and Mauro Mazzo

Simple Flies By Morgan Lyle

Tenkara Today By Morgan Lyle

Tenkara, Radically simple, Ultralight Fly Fishing By Kevin C. Kelleher, MD with Misako Ishimura

ABOUT DAVID E. DIRKS

David Dirks was the weekly outdoor columnist for The Times HeraldRecord (www.recordonline.com), which is based in Middletown, N.Y., from 1999 to 2013. He is the host and producer of the DirksOutdoors radio show on WTBQ in the Hudson Valley (www.WTBQ.com) – one of the only outdoor radio shows of its kind in New York State. His outdoor videos are produced for the DirksOutdoors YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/dirksoutdoors). Dirks is a long-time member of the New York State Outdoor Writers Association. “I’ve been fishing and hunting for over 35 years,” he says. “During those years, I’ve had the opportunity to teach and take many friends into the fields and streams throughout New York State. I’ve also taught the skills of angling and hunting to each of my four growing children, who are now my best outdoor partners.” Dirks is a lifelong resident of the Hudson Valley and fishes all over the United States. When taking a break from his work, Dirks can be found in the fields, streams or hiking paths with one of his children and other great friends.

Web: www.dirksoutdoors.com Email: dirksoutdoors@gmail.com YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/dirksoutdoors