East Verde, Arizona

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Horton Creek, Arizona

ストーリー

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A Story

The forest is my friend. She listens and speaks to me. “Adam, be who you are.” And ultimately I am. I walk along a stream picking lines between trees, some of those lanes are natural while others are made by inhabitants. The smells are amazing, the sounds are relaxing, I can understand and make sense of her moods while she helps me make sense of mine.

I feel like Jonathan, a seagull that a great writer detailed in a old book about a individual in a community. Jonathan loved flying where the others simply looked at flying as something seagulls just did. He would practice flying until he knew it well, pushing the envelope of his wings until one day, his flying lead him away from the other seagulls.

The concept is not unique, it’s how the idea for a popular book that is widely read came about.

The suggestion to fish this new to me stream came from a friend. I sent him back pictures of the same jewel like fish he caught. He began texting me back, while on a flight to Japan, his family lives there. “...probably the same fish I caught.” 

Probably.

A week ago, John told me about his dry fly fishing here. Using a fine short rod (by Japanese designers) he sampled the pools in the stream collecting the jeweled fish photographs and his own moments flying free. He sent those photographs to me in a text. “We should go here.”

I was born in Arizona, I believe John was too. We are the same age and we meet nearly forty or so years ago flying free. We have common interests, friends and separate memories of the same friends yet we flew our own flights.

John reconnected with me while I was on my first tenkara trip to Japan. “We should meet”

John did not fish but I did. I had many moons of casting flys in the streams, rivers, lakes and sea. I had gathered fly fisherman from around the world together with the many web sites and forums that I created.

John could read and write in Japanese so we explored the history of tenkara through my library. I introduced him to fly tying and he showed me the differences in the language and meaning between the two countries. John lived in Japan for thirty years before returning home.

Never fishing before, he had no preconceived ideas. His learning was from the old Japanese tenkara books. I never held back when I was fishing and taught him tenkara and while he was a beginner, he taught me tenkara as well. 

John and I together meet Hisao Ishigaki for the first time. He briefly translated our introduction and put things at ease while we spoke in sensei’s native language. Later he helped translate interviews for both communities, making sense of the meaning we wished to convey.

And then one day John began to catch as many fish as I did, sometimes more and I knew he was flying free.

I began to receive pictures of monster fish caught with Japanese equipment and techniques. Fish that I could have caught but didn’t. The friend I took to our new stream agreed, we would buy him a bottle of Japanese whisky for turning us on to this stream.

I wrote this story while releasing a tiny jewel like fish.

I want to convey how simple and at the same time, how complex fishing can be.

Fishing a small stream helps me to put my ideas into a medium that I could share with John, Jim and anyone else that I resonate with.

But I feel like Jonathan Livingston Seagull. 

Free to fly (fish) the way I want and write about it the way I want.

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This particular stream was well suited to a 3.2m Zerosum. I really like the 7:3 flex profile. I use a 3.3m Fujino White Tenkara tapered line terminated with a tippet ring, I use Stonfo. For tippet, I use Trouthunter 5.5x.

At 3.2m I can usually see the fly. On this day I used a Parachute Adam’s size 16. I use floatant, it keeps the fly high up on the meniscus like a real fly. Most of the time the line is not on the water and I am using techniques like suttebari where I might peck the surface gently a few times before setting the fly down.

Japanese tenkara anglers use dry fly techniques for tenkara as well as sub surface wet flys.

The white line is a must in these invisible streams. It appears clear. If you can’t see the fly, you can use the line as an indicator. Or you can strike at movement.

All my fish this day were by sight using suttebari and accurate casting to 5 gallon bucket sized micro bucket pools.

fishing water wheel 8/11/19

When ever you read "fishing water wheel" at tenkara-fisher, it is the East Verde just North of Payson, the closest stream to my house. Today took 65 minutes to get there by car. Not bad.

What is bad is this is the confluence of Ellison Creek and the East Verde River, in a canyon that is popular with swimmers. This is the place where in 2017, ten people in one family were killed in a torrential flash flood. Out of respect, I did not take pictures of the memorials along the stream where they found the bodies. It is very morose...

Moving on, it's close to home and there are plenty of fish to be caught, even in high and chocolate water. We moved up the canyon to third crossing and walked the road back down the canyon to the car.

I've been using the Wrong Fly with a small tungsten bead tyed in and today it was the ticket. I caught a couple of types of rainbow, about a dozen fish in all. Super happy with this pattern, I've caught fish with it everywhere, it is my go to fly for sure.

Bendo in my Furaibo

As you can see, the water is chocolate brown and high from the run off from recent storms. The flash flooding that occurs is when there are active storms in the area. The last storms in the area where greater than 12 hours before and I am always careful about fishing here. I know about flash flooding from early on when I was a kid.

We caught a lot of fish today, just what Jimmy and I needed. It's a nice place to run up to, and escape. It is noon and I've been back for a while collecting the images and writing down my notes.

Brookville and Gold Valley Day Trip

Brookville and Gold Valley (450 miles)

The last couple of months have been stressful. I attended a school on the weekends, Saturday and Sunday and in addition to this, we had to learn a new management system and software at work. In short, I was super busy and stressed about it. Life is good at home, my family supporting me but still, very little time off and lots of studying. 

Last weekend was Father's Day and I spent it in Glen Canyon packrafting with my boys. It was a lot of fun but again, as much fun as it was, it was stressful too. I was worried about my boys learning to paddle on the big cold river. We were alone, a 9 mile paddle from our car, overnighting on a beach of the Colorado River. I didn't even bring a fishing rod, I wanted to keep focused on my boys making sure they had a good time and didn't get into trouble.

They didn't, they had a great time.

So today was a day trip starting at 4a, a 220 mile one way to our stream. My friend picked me up and we talked on the way.

I taught him tenkara and he took to it on a pretty intense level. We went to the summit, meet Ishigaki sensei, we have fished together quite a bit and he is a fly fisher that took to tenkara as a method. He recently bought a Czech nymphing fly rod, a 10' 3-weight and was excited to fish it in our home fishing grounds in the White mountains.

The trip went pretty fast, before we knew it, we were at our little stream stringing up and casting. Quickly falling into a fishing rhythm that only fisher people know. The stream was in good shape after a banner fall, winter and spring of snow.

We fished the lower section pretty quickly. We caught a few fish, the action slow and back at the car, we slowly decided we didn't have enough fishing.

"Lets go to Gold Valley" and we got in the car and started back the way we came.

The browns at Gold Valley were HUNGRY! I used my pattern to catch more than a dozen nice sized small stream trout. We were only supposed to fish for an hour but it ended up being 2 or 3.

I really enjoyed the moments together. I use a box that Sebata san helped me with my hanko and Richard Setina put together. I love pulling it out on stream and picking out a fly I designed and use as my "one fly."

Each riffle and bend pool held trout. The wind was up blowing up to thirty yet you could wait for a lull and get an accurate cast in. The wind pulled the line making strikes difficult to detect but it didn't matter, the fish were eager and if you put a pool down, there was another one just around the bend.

I think we walked (fished) downstream more than a mile and we knew it was time to turn around, we still had a four hour trip home.

All in all, it was a great day of fly fishing and tenkara. The stress is gone, I'm back into the rhythm of life, fishing with a great friend.