A thought provoking article from the guys at Discover Tenkara about the one fly philosophy
The increasing popularity of tenkara in the west has brought with it a range of fascinating flies and the often talked about “one fly philosophy”. In the short time tenkara has been around outside Japan there has been a lot of hybridisation of fly patterns and many attempts at adopting the one fly philosophy… some anglers having more success than others. As with tenkara as a fishing method, the flies of tenkara offer a much richer reward if you take the time to understand their history and origins. In the same respect, the one fly approach is more than it first appears and is not just a personal challenge to see if the angler can “get by” with just a single fly but also a highly evolved and efficient system used to harvest fish in the sorts of numbers per day that would take many of us weeks to match.
We touched briefly on the restrictions of cost and availability of materials to the original Japanese tenkara practitioners in last month’s article. Before we look at the traditional fly patterns of tenkara it actually makes more sense to try and understand the origins of the one fly philosophy and the fishing conditions from which the flies were developed. It can be hard to imagine how isolated the mountain regions of Japan would have been in the pre industrial era and with most of the peasant classes being unable to read or write, face to face verbal communication was the only way any information would be transmitted. It’s likely most information was passed on from father to son over successive generations but there is little evidence that any of the flies or techniques were freely shared among regions until the modern era; this fact speaks to the effectiveness of tenkara as a commercial method as it seems to have evolved as the preferred method independently in most of the mountain regions of Japan. With no outside source of information on fishing readily available and no shops to buy anything resembling fishing supplies the original pioneers of tenkara were free of any influences on how they should fish.
Starting from the “business end”, obtaining hooks for fishing would be the first problem to overcome. This was not a problem unique to the Japanese and the same solution was used by many anglers the world over… the humble sewing needle. A hook made by bending a needle would then need some way of attracting fish. The dilemma of using bait or dressing the hook as a fly would have boiled down to efficiency rather than worrying about any sense of the most sporting way to fish. Gathering bait could be time consuming and perhaps needing fresh bait for each fish capture would sometimes mean spending as much time searching for bait as actually fishing. Dressing a hook as a fly would mean never needing to waste time searching for bait resulting in many more hours fishing and assuming you could catch plenty of fish on a dressed hook this would have been the obvious choice for a professional fisherman. Hooks would be dressed with the same thrifty mindset using the simplest of materials tied in the hand without a vice. A simple bed of sewing thread often with just a feather hackle would be enough to catch fish with (most of us in the UK are familiar with the effectiveness of such simple types of flies through the use of North Country spiders).
The other critical factor in the development of the one fly philosophy was tippet material. As far as we are able to tell the early practitioners of tenkara could have used silk tippet material; compared to modern monofilaments this was very delicate and the price and availability would have made it a rare and valuable commodity to a rural Japanese peasant – repeated changes of fly would quickly use up valuable inches of tippet. In combination all of the above information points toward the one fly philosophy being more of a good business practice than any desire for artistic simplicity.
The flies of tenkara come in a variety of styles but all seem to exhibit the same attributes of economy and simplicity. Most, if not all, traditional patterns are unweighted. This, again, has more to do with economics than anything else. A weighted fly would be much more likely to snag while fishing and, as mentioned, the cost of tippet together with the cost of needles and thread to make flies would mean repeated fly losses would be very damaging to the profitability of a working fisherman. One other consideration in the evolution of unweighted flies would be – where would a Japanese mountain dwelling peasant get the weight from? The idea of adding a heavy bead or a few turns of lead to a fly seems simple enough to the modern fly tyer but imagine how difficult it would have been to find anything suitable in an isolated mountain region. Add to this the fact that hooks made from the sewing needles of the time would probably have been heavier than their modern counterparts; an original tenkara fly probably had just the right amount of weight for the fishing conditions it was intended for.
Every motive for the single, simple, unweighted fly approach can be attributed to thrift and efficiency on the part of a commercial angler. The modern embracing of the one fly philosophy is driven by a myriad of motives and every modern practitioner could cite their own reasons for adopting it. It makes a great personal challenge to try the approach for yourself but many western fly fishers overlook the simple fact relating to the actual circumstances of the original one fly practitioners. Most upland streams (not just in Japan) tend to be “hungry” environments with fish being highly opportunistic feeders; this coupled with the fact that most commercial anglers would fish only one stream (or system of streams and tributaries) meant that the one fly developed by each angler from each region was the product of generations of rigorous daily “field testing”. Such trials and refinement would tend to result in the development of the “best all-rounder” pattern that suited an individual tenkara practitioner and their presentation skills - as well as sufficiently reflecting the size and shape of predominant “food” items in their stream. The turbulent water, need for opportunistic feeding in an unpredictable environment and relative simplicity of a fish’s visual acuity in recognising prey (researched and published by noted tenkara master Dr. Hisao Ishigaki) all promote the success of relatively simple and generic fly patterns.
Most modern fly fishers travel to a wide range of river types and what works on some rivers may be hard going on others. To simply pick a fly, call it your one fly and go out fishing that fly can bring mixed results; on many lowland “hatch-driven” rivers fish can become locked onto certain flies at certain times and fishing the wrong fly in these situations can be very difficult. On the other hand some of the more obliging fish in the hungry upland waters can (at times) be willing to take almost any fly you care to try. Some modern tenkara fishers can also be found using a mix of traditional tenkara flies with a few western patterns in their fly boxes too so it’s clear that a strict one fly only approach is not a compulsory part of modern tenkara.
We would never advocate a dumb, dogmatic adoption of the “I must only use one fly pattern” approach to tenkara. Rather, we realise that we can profit by taking on board a more general underlying secret about fly fishing. Namely, that there are so many things that we need to master and correct in our reading of the water, approach, casting, positioning and movement of the fly etc. before a change in fly pattern would make any difference to our catch rate. This is particularly true in rivers with a degree of fast flow and/or slightly lower nutrient levels – although it is also remarkably apt even on rich lowland rivers! Essentially, making a decision to (at least) greatly reduce the variety of fly patterns that you carry will force you to become a much, much better stream angler. It is also very liberating to reduce the amount of anxiety that you might feel from that nagging itch of “maybe there is a better fly in my box that I should be tying on now”. In essence, we are highlighting that to simplify down to one or two generic patterns in a couple of sizes should be an exercise in liberating our other skills – not a masochistic sacrifice of success for lofty and unrealistic moral principles!
The secret weapon in the one-fly tenkara angler’s arsenal is something that is often overlooked by western fly fishers… multiple presentation techniques. This can range from the most perfect of dead drifts to the heaviest of manipulations and every conceivable step between. We’ll be looking at this more in future articles but put simply; most skilled and successful tenkara practitioners have a range of fly manipulation and presentation techniques aimed at inducing a take from fish. This is a massive subject area and it is also the main reason that the original tenkara anglers could sustain such high catch rates of active, predatory char and trout – even with unweighted patterns. Fly manipulation is also a major reason that simple, generic fly patterns (often dressed with mobile materials) can be made to imitate a broad range of prey items. As we are fond of saying – a tenkara fly is not finished when it leaves the vice; the final part of the “dressing” is how a fly is manipulated. Applying the final step of the “dressing” when the fly is on or in the water is the reason that one fly can imitate many things. This last point is what ties together the “fly-tying” to the “fly-fishing” aspects of the greatly misunderstood umbrella term “one-fly philosophy”. It ain’t particularly what you’ve got – it is much more what you do with it that matters.
It’s impossible to know what the fish are thinking but there is no denying the success rate of flies manipulated with a tenkara outfit; we’ve been fishing this style almost exclusively throughout the 2012 trout season and have had fantastic numbers of fish in the process. We’d like to share some of the things that we’ve learned in some of our subsequent articles.
PS – you have more flies than you need!
For more information on Tenkara fishing please visit the Discover Tenkara website