Taking Tenkara Off-Line

It occurred to me this year how many people live their “Tenkara Lives” online. Somehow, even after 8 years of being online for tenkara I missed the fact that most people seem to barely get out even once or twice a month, and they aren’t able or willing to commit the necessary time to get to the headwaters and fish them.

Because of that reality, we really don’t have many tenkara anglers here in the USA. We have lots of people fishing with tenkara rods, but very few actual tenkara anglers. This has always been an important distinction that gets overlooked.

The amount of effort and time required to get to the best water for tenkara is daunting to some, and as such, it appears easier to spend that spare hour or two online or in some local flatwater fishing for whatever species is available.

In beginning to recognize this better, I have been able to understand more about the “Tenkara Community” online and what the motivations of different groups and individuals are all about. And, frankly, the more I think about that, the more I recognize the value of getting off-line and remaining in real life for my tenkara experience.

Besides the strange psychologies in which everyone believes posts or memes are directed at them personally, no matter how little you know them, how rarely you talk to them, no matter if you specifically said who and what you were aiming your post at… or if you even knew they were in your friends list… people just seem to want to argue more than to learn or listen. That is a frustrating pill to swallow and takes a lot of patience.

Many automatically think you were talking to them even if you weren’t… they get upset or defensive if you just expressed something opposite of their beliefs, then they move to either A) defend themselves because they feel challenged or B) attack you for no reason out of frustration. And chances are this person just started fishing with a fixed line rod last week… Oy vey!

I have spent a good amount of time discussing this with different psychologists at parties and I think it’s just time to move on for so many reasons. There is no cure for ignorance, and you can’t communicate effectively online with no tone. Tenkara goals mostly cannot be accomplished online.

So instead of attempting to solve this problem for the internet, I’ve been moving towards signing off way more often. My attempts to help bring positive points, education and motivation to the community online have been mostly a failure and mostly received with this same pattern ofangry, defensive or confused response from people who just don’t “get it” or simply don’t want to “get it.”

And you know what? If they don’t want to get it, they can’t be helped until they come around. For a while I figured it would be good for tenkara to help people think differently by being repetitive, predictable, and by delivering the facts without hesitation. I figured, as imperfect as I was in my methods, that at least most would see the passion for helping others, to understand, and to know what was being taught correctly and what wasn’t. Instead, I’ve realized most people don’t want to think differently. Instead they found every opportunity to be offended, get upset, lose hope or energy, or whatever else. I can’t fix that either.

For all of us that care about representing, teaching and caring about Japanese tenkara, shifting attention to people who are eager to learn in real life is a much more effective method of sharing knowledge and teaching. The reception rate and learning rates seem much higher with people who take the time to engage more in real life.

In going out and helping others on the stream, in attending local small-scale tenkara learning events and just in engaging with curious strangers on the water, I’ve found a whole world of people who are not only willing to learn, but who want to learn correctly, and who want to listen in order to understand tenkara and become good at it.

I am not sure why so many people in the online “Tenkara Community” want to reject or ignore the education part, the listening to others who are more experienced part, and why more people don’t want to spend time mastering existing styles and methods. But it is certainly clear that I cannot help the online community with this, and that they are mostly uninterested in this personal mission of mine anyway. C’est la vie.

So, I have begun to feel differently about things. Tenkara does not need to be broadcast to the world. Tenkara does not need to be spread. Tenkara does not need to grow. Especially if that mission destroys or alters what tenkara is all about and gets in the way of what makes it great in the first place.

Mostly the owners of the American “tenkara” rod companies have either personally given up, burned out, or just not been able or willing to contribute to anything other than sales-based marketing and cheap Chinese rod designs. Yet still they feel jilted or angry, taking it personally whenever they are criticized or called out on their quality control, their flex profiles, lack of Japanese mandrels, etc... Many of them have gone a step further and taken it upon themselves to control the narrative of what tenkara is here, altering it to serve business needs but not to represent reality.

Those people have also banned, publicly shamed and ultimately dismissed the more hardline Japanese tenkara anglers – the very people that were their early customers and who were most devoted from day one - leaving them feeling abandoned and rejected; meanwhile spending as much time as possible shielding bass and bluegill anglers from feeling hurt online by the realities of the definition of the very sport they have chosen to make a living on in real life. How does that add to the story of tenkara - in any positive way at all?

I find all this a combination of disappointing and not useful for the industry. Rod companies getting very angry when people try to challenge them to be their best probably won’t get tenkara anywhere at all, will it?

To cap that off, it is also a little bit of a let-down that many tenkara rod companies here have owners which, regardless of their deep connections to English-speaking Japanese anglers or professional tenkara ambassadors (who are openly willing to hooking them up and showing them the time of their lives…) still refuse to spend a few thousand dollars to fly to Japan and learn about what they are supposedly “teaching” and selling… save a select few…. even though these are business and education expenses. Cheers to those select few who do. Thank you for doing what you do.

Instead of taking those connections and turning them into life experiences or learning opportunities, some people seem to reject them - defending their choices with silly excuses (there’s always a good excuse for anything in life.) They continue to remain in the proverbial dark on what tenkara is really all about…. And choose instead to attack those that have embraced these very same educational experiences, and those that have made the investment in learning and growing as both tenkara anglers and human beings.

Tenkara is now more like an underground style for those in the know, and what we call “tenkara” here, online in the USA, is mostly just mixed styles of fixed line angling. Tenkara is, in real life, a set of specific techniques and tackle that when embraced, gives the angler a leg up on everyone else for many reasons.

I prefer to look at tenkara now as a well-kept “secret,” and I think the handful of others in the country that truly possess the skills and the knowledge are moving in this direction too. Not going under-ground but going off-line and back to the realworld version of tenkara.

Many are slowly realizing that “tenkara” online is not tenkara in real life. Yet this is important, because for me tenkara is all about what you actually do in real life… trout fishing, mushroom hunting, and mountain exploration… not what you talk about online. Take some time to be on the water or just be off-line. Tenkara is way better in real life - I think you’ll find the same.

Editor's Note: While this opinion piece from Adam may strike a few nerves of our readership, it is definitely food for thought about what "we" are (or are not) practicing and teaching with our tenkara rods outside of Japan. If you have any thoughts you'd like to share - in support or in contradiction, send them to mike@tenkaraangler.com. We may feature them in the next issue.