I’ve read about Robert Worthing since I knew about the Tenkara Guides, Robert Worthing, John Vetterli and Erik Ostrander. Early adopters of tenkara, the three guides are responsible for introducing, teaching and advancing the skills of many tenkara enthusiasts. I interviewed John some years ago and now we are completing Robert’s interview. I'm going to ask Erik next. But this is all about Dr. Robert Worthing. Let’s get started with the interview.
Dr. Worthing, thank you for taking my interview. I appreciate what you do for tenkara and it has been my intent all along to be able to find out about your tenkara fishing.
Please feel free to introduce yourself or anything you want to say.
Dr. Worthing: Thanks, Adam. As you said, I’m a fly-fishing guide and founding member of Tenkara Guides LLC. Our guide company has been dedicated to tenkara and fixed line fly fishing for about 10 years now. Masami “Tenkara No Oni” Sakakibara is my primary teacher. I’m a devout student of and passionate ambassador for the Oni School of Tenkara. I do as much traveling, lecturing, teaching, writing, and anything else that keeps me engaged in the outdoors as possible. I’m an avid climber, backpacker, physician and Navy Veteran. I love my wife, my dog, and my Tacoma camper. In that order. I live in Lexington, KY, these days. When I’m not traveling to hit new waters, I enjoy chasing native Southern Appalachian brook trout around the southern highlands. Still haven’t seen a hellbender in the wild, but I keep looking.
Adam Trahan: I’ve been to Japan a couple of times now and I’m not done visiting my friends there. Now, from my understanding, it is not necessary to go to Japan to have a deeper understanding, especially since there are people like you and the Tenkara Guides. On my first trip, I visited Itoshiro and spent a day fishing with Masami Sakakibara. It was quite a day of fishing. Masami spent some time with me taking the western casting motion and helping replace it with tenkara mechanics. It was exactly what I was looking for.
“You have spent quite a bit of time with Sakakibara san, can you tell us what he taught you?”
Dr. Worthing: Tough question. I’m thankful to Masami Sakakibara for so much! His style really revolutionized my fishing. Early on, Erik Ostrander and I were beginning to develop a different sort of approach to casting. We were doing a lot of aerial mends, or what we called “four dimensional casting”, to improve our fly presentation. We weren’t aware of anyone else that was casting like us at the time. We started to wonder if what we were doing was just crazy. Then we met Oni. We immediately recognized the same sort of approach in his casting, only he had 40 years of practicing it under his belt. He called it “Oni loops”, and he was worlds apart from where we were back then. We couldn’t believe some of the things we witnessed him do on the water. It was so exciting. We threw ourselves right into the deep end. It took years of practice to see real progress toward bridging that skill gap. I must have 4 or 5 field books full of notes and diagrams from that time, on top of however many hundreds, maybe thousands of hours casting on dry land. Casting style is still the easiest way to recognize a student of the Oni School of Tenkara. But there is a lot more involved. The best I can do to summarize it is this. The Oni School starts with developing a deep understanding and appreciation for the trout and the water it lives in. It ends with combining the cast, current, and any manipulation into a single act of fly presentation shared between the trout, the water, and the angler. The result is a serene sense of comfort, peace and real joy when I step on the water. I never would have expected that. If I had to pick one thing for which I was most thankful to Masami Sakakibara, it would have to be that feeling.
Adam Trahan: Masami taught me to teach, he didn’t give me lessons on teaching, I simply observed his approach at helping me. I use some of his exact techniques in helping people learn to cast and sometimes catch their first fish or first fish on a tenkara rod. There are many other Japanese keiryu experts that have helped me as well.
“You have spent quite a bit of time with Sakakibara san, can you tell us what he taught you?”
Dr. Worthing: Tough question. I’m thankful to Masami Sakakibara for so much! His style really revolutionized my fishing. Early on, Erik Ostrander and I were beginning to develop a different sort of approach to casting. We were doing a lot of aerial mends, or what we called “four dimensional casting”, to improve our fly presentation. We weren’t aware of anyone else that was casting like us at the time. We started to wonder if what we were doing was just crazy. Then we met Oni. We immediately recognized the same sort of approach in his casting, only he had 40 years of practicing it under his belt. He called it “Oni loops”, and he was worlds apart from where we were back then. We couldn’t believe some of the things we witnessed him do on the water. It was so exciting. We threw ourselves right into the deep end. It took years of practice to see real progress toward bridging that skill gap. I must have 4 or 5 field books full of notes and diagrams from that time, on top of however many hundreds, maybe thousands of hours casting on dry land. Casting style is still the easiest way to recognize a student of the Oni School of Tenkara. But there is a lot more involved. The best I can do to summarize it is this. The Oni School starts with developing a deep understanding and appreciation for the trout and the water it lives in. It ends with combining the cast, current, and any manipulation into a single act of fly presentation shared between the trout, the water, and the angler. The result is a serene sense of comfort, peace and real joy when I step on the water. I never would have expected that. If I had to pick one thing for which I was most thankful to Masami Sakakibara, it would have to be that feeling.
Adam Trahan: Masami taught me to teach, he didn’t give me lessons on teaching, I simply observed his approach at helping me. I use some of his exact techniques in helping people learn to cast and sometimes catch their first fish or first fish on a tenkara rod. There are many other Japanese keiryu experts that have helped me as well.
“I understand that you lived in Japan for a while, can you tell us about that?”
Dr. Worthing: I lived in Japan for about two years while on Active Duty as a Naval Flight Surgeon. I was stationed at MCAS Futenma on Okinawa, traveled the outlying islands in the Okinawa chain for fun and spent a ton of time developing local cliffs and boulders for rock climbing. I also traveled the main island quite a bit playing lacrosse for the Marine Corps. Fishing fit in between the rest. I followed the lead of local friends I’d meet, surf casted for a meal of fresh sashimi washed down with awamori (the island’s saki), learned to hand line giant fish out of the depths off sea cliffs with a 100 year old woman (longest living women in the world), even did some fixed line bait and lure casting for strange species in the freshwater mountain streams (both on Okinawa and the main island). But I didn’t do any tenkara fishing. I didn’t start fishing tenkara until I separated from the military and moved to Utah. The plan was to spend a year on the road, following the rock climbing and fly fishing seasons around the lower 48. I bought one of the original model Tenkara USA Iwana rods, caught a 6” brown my first ten minutes or so fishing, and never stopped.
Adam Trahan: My father is a cardiovascular surgeon, he is now retired but for several years, I was able to work with him helping to operate the heart-lung machine. For a few years after, I worked at an osteopathic medical university, I was hired to help organize a college within the university for cardiovascular perfusion, our students sharing a lot of classes with students that would go on to be physicians. I have worked in cardiology for the last 15 years. Every day I work with physicians, working with them to help people live longer and a better quality life.
“I understand you are a physician; can you tell us about your caregiving?”
Dr. Worthing: I’ve worn a few different medical hats over the years. Wilderness and Operational Medicine was always a big passion, especially where it touches on human performance in austere environments. After life as a Naval Flight Surgeon, I spent some time in the Race Medicine world. I completed a Fellowship in Wilderness Medicine while in the military and for a long time sought out ways to combine my love for the outdoors with my medical career. Organizing and executing medical coverage for ultramarathons, adventure races, expeditions and the like seemed a great way to do it. Ultimately, I realized something got lost in the mix. The experience of both the wilderness and medicine just wasn’t the same, like I couldn’t be fully present for either. At the same time, I recognized a subset of patients that just didn’t seem to get good care. There was a 19-year-old who laid his bike down after returning from deployment, broke both femurs, and was sent home alone from a civilian hospital to his second-floor apartment with both legs in external fixators. I found him lying on his couch, using a Gatorade bottle for a urinal and a bucket for a commode, surviving off Chinese takeout and Tylenol #3. Then there was a deployed Petty Officer who came to me with a weak ankle. He had clear evidence of a nerve injury with risk of functional limb loss, so I sent him home from Africa for advanced care. 6 months later I returned and nothing meaningful had happened to diagnose and treat the guy. So I became a Physical Medicine and Rehab physician (AKA Physiatrist). Rehab docs have the ability to diagnose and treat, only we do it with an emphasis on long term function. We don’t leave you to fend for yourself on your couch after surgery. We aren’t satisfied with masking pain from your nerve injury; we try to recover what was lost instead. Rehab docs are involved in a lot of subspecialties. I landed in Musculoskeletal Medicine and Amputation Rehabilitation. I truly love the clinical work I get to do. Sometimes I still mix my passions and take a group of patients climbing or fishing. For the most part, I’ll stick to enjoying life one passion at a time.
Adam Trahan: My gym at home, Ability 360 is a state-of-the-art rehability facility. I find it inspiring to work out there. I see people with tremendous challenges giving forth effort, way more of a challenge than I have and they are so inspiring. Thank you for helping people with their challenges, it takes a special person to do that, I appreciate your skill, thank you.
True human endeavor is what I enjoy. Fact over fiction, my favorite movies are in the genre of “Free Solo, the Alpinist, Step Into Liquid and others like that. I’m a hiker, I used to climb as a young man, but now I’m an armchair mountaineer.
“I’ve seen some of your social media posts of you climbing, please tell us about it.”
Dr. Worthing: Climbing has been a big part of my life since my first introduction to it while attending med school in North Carolina. At times, it has served as a great escape. It keeps me outdoors. I’ve always been active. Climbing gets the wiggles out and keeps me in good athletic shape. It presents unique problems. And it’s haaard. That’s probably what keeps me at it. I’m not very good at it. I have to try really hard, both physically and mentally, to hold my own. And it pairs with tenkara fishing perfectly. Tenkara’s natural environment is the freestone mountain stream. Mountains are where you find rock. You can climb until you’re tired and torn up, then jump in the water and fish. Right now, most of my rock climbing centers around developing new boulders in and around Kentucky. I break bouldering up with some trad climbing here and there. The climbing community tends to be a pretty tight knit group of fun and friendly miscreants and malcontents. A lot like tenkara, really. Great friendships come out of wrestling pebbles and waving sticks at the water.
Adam Trahan: As a young man, I learned to fly hang gliders. Although I did some tandem flying, it is a sport that you teach yourself by experience. My favorite thing to do was to fly cross country. I remember a lot of flights where I thought to myself, “just stick with the Hans, Jim and Bob and you will fly farther than you ever have.” These three pilots where friends and world champions at hang gliding. But often I found myself in situations that I was far and beyond my skill level. Climbing up inside inverted cloud canyons or in the convex dome of a strong cloud climbing faster than I could glide forward. I learned that I had to learn at my own pace and to stay within my own experience. I learned quite a bit from my hang gliding and paragliding that I can apply to my life as I live it on the ground.
I’m in the last part of my life, nearing retirement age and the next several seasons will be the peak of my fishing life. I’ll have the experience and the ability to be able to catch a lot of nice fish in the rivers of my area. I’m creating my kit, the gear that I use and the techniques that I’ll use. I’m very much enjoying honryu tenkara. There are very few people using big tenkara rods in western rivers. Most fishermen and women fishing big rivers for trout at using fly rods and the rest are spin fishers. I fish the Colorado River in Glen Canyon, I never seen anyone use a tenkara rod. Recently I was introduced to the San Juan river, it was just my friend John Sachen and I fishing Honryu.
I use a 5m rod, 7 - 10m clear soft fluorocarbon lines and a big Ayu tamo. I’ll pick apart a big river like I do a small stream.
“I’ve read about you guys fishing rivers, can you tell us how you fish honryu tenkara?”
Dr. Worthing: You hit the nail on the head when you said, “…pick apart a big river like I do a small stream”. That’s honryu in a nutshell. Utah has fantastic freestone mountain streams. Visiting Japanese tenkara anglers tell us the mountain streams we cut our teeth on are nearly identical to their home waters (only with more fish). A lot of Utah’s designated Blue Ribbon waters, like the Provo and Weber, are big in comparison. We worked to become adept at tricking fish in those waters, too. But the first really big water we fished using tenkara techniques was probably the Green River. Our early honryu experience on the Green involved a lot of experimentation and self-teaching. We got a big boost from Oni, who is known for his long line casting. I’ve also tried to study up on traditional European wet fly techniques in bigger rivers, picking the brains of people like Davy Wotton. One of my primary passions in fishing is visiting new waters. Experience on diverse waters, from headwaters through honryu, means I have more new water to fish. I’ve fished the San Juan, too. Great river. Even on rivers like the San Juan, I tend to keep my rods around the 4m mark. I really like the aesthetic and interplay between cast and current that comes with Oni School Tenkara. Rods longer than 4m tend to start feeling heavy in hand to me, making it harder to control the single handed aerial mending strokes that have become such an integral part of my fishing. I will use a rod like an Oni Type I or Oni 395 to cast a line in the 5-10 meter range. When using lighter, single flies and honryu tenkara methods, I most often use a #2 fluorocarbon level line. On the rare occasion I get an itch to throw a cast of flies, like when fishing slower, less featured rivers, I might use a heavier, tapered line like a Fujino Soft Tenkara in 8-10m lengths. Masami Sakakibara uses the Fujino lines for practice. If you can cast an 8m Fujino line on a 3.4m Oni Type III rod, then casting a few meters of level line with super tight loops into a head wind is no big deal. With all that practice, it was an easy jump to employing the Fujino lines for honryu waters.
Adam Trahan: Although early on, Masami helped replace my western cast with eastern one, I did not learn honryu from him. I basically taught myself. I already was quite an accomplished river fly fisherman knowing where the fish were, I simply needed the upsized tenkara equipment to catch them. I learned from emulating the styles of Koken Sorimachi and Kei Kobayashi. I read about their approach, watched videos, I learned from their experience, from their sharing in the media. Masami did show me the mechanics of tenkara casting which I am grateful for, the lessons in fishing are from my own practice and study.
We exchanged some messages prior to our conversation here discussing our connections to Japan, I appreciate some of what you told me there.
“Dr. Worthing, how do you look at tenkara? Is there a Japanese connection? Or now that tenkara has left Japan, is there any responsibility for us to adhere to any of its conventions there?”
Dr. Worthing: In order to really understand a thing, I’ve always found it valuable to dive into its history. To be a better tenkara angler, I enlisted the help of a lot of friends, both in Japan and elsewhere, and dove into its history as best I could. Perhaps the most enlightening was a study of the literary history of fishing in Japan. The earliest and for many decades only native literature on tenkara came from Kiso Fukushima, Nagano prefecture. In the beginning, Tenkara was a term specific to Kiso. There were similar methods of fishing scattered throughout the Japanese Alps. But since the crew from Kiso were the ones doing the publishing, it is now “tenkara” that we employ. Most of the recognized masters living in Japan today were connected to that Kiso crew in one way or another, including Oni. For better or worse, the word “tenkara” seems to have undergone another linguistic evolution outside of Japan. Tenkara and Japan remain inextricably connected in my mind. When I talk about tenkara, I talk about a method of fishing, born in Kiso and passed down through Oni. That’s my experience of it. I don’t know how much of a responsibility any of us have to play the game of fly fishing one way or another. I do know I found a new sort of joy in tenkara by learning about its history and practicing it as influenced by my friend and fishing father, Masami Sakakibara. It makes me happy to share that experience of tenkara and see a similar joy well up in other anglers. I also get a real joy out of the natural sciences. The native trout to the mountain streams of the Kiso river valley is Salvelinus leucomaenis japonicus, a subspecies of white-spotted char, or iwana. Most salmonids like rainbow and brown trout have a variable number of chromosomes. But some char, like S. japonicus, have a set number of chromosomes. Every one of those iwana subspecies you catch has 84 chromosomes. It just so happens the native Southern Appalachian brook trout I love to chase so much has the same set number of 84 chromosomes. Two char isolated on opposite sides of the world that are the same. That’s a beautiful thought.
Adam Trahan: I sample social media for trends in tenkara but I do not practice tenkara as I understand from the crowd there. For me, if you take 100 people and ask questions individually, you will find that the answers from a crowd of 100 are much different. So that I do not have to explain it any further, there is a term, “herd mentality” that is, individuals alone will act and believe much differently. In a crowd, an individual will conform to the crowd behavior.
I’ve had the experience to have studied Japanese angling 26 years ago. I became friends with Yoshikazu Fujioka in 1996 when we began exchanging e-mail about small stream fly fishing. We shared this common interest. I found out about tenkara back then but I was too deep into ultra light fly fishing small streams than to explore the world of tenkara. I had viewed their community from afar but now, so many years later, I am able to see the effects that the west has on the community of fishing there.
Initially, with Daniel Galhardo’s company and his bogging about his Japanese trips, the friends he made and his fishing experiences, tenkara outside of Japan had a large Japanese component to it. Now some 12 years later, you would not know that. I visit social media sites titled Japanese Tenkara and there are very few Japanese tenkara anglers contributing. By far, Japanese tenkara influence has become dilute to the point where all of the experts in it have little to no current voice.
It is difficult for me to find translators to help me for free. I am constantly in debt, not monetarily but to my Japanese friends that help me with translations. So I owe a debt of gratitude for this wonderful way of spending time in the mountain forest stream environment.
I started fly fishing streams about 50 years ago, sharing fly fishing with the Japanese 25 years ago, tenkara 12 years ago.
“How long have you been fishing? What is your timeline with fly fishing and tenakara?”
Dr. Worthing: I grew up on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t fishing. Every day after school. All kinds of fishing. I dabbled in fly fishing through college, but I didn’t have as strong a rod and reel background as many going into tenkara. That was a blessing in the sense that it left me pretty open to new ideas, methods, patterns of movement and such. Like most of us in the States, I owe my tenkara introduction to Daniel Gallhardo and Tenkara USA. Shortly after I bought my first rod, Daniel gave an evening talk and demo at my local fly shop in Salt Lake City. Erik Ostrander and John Vetterli, my partners in Tenkara Guides LLC, were there. I think Erik, John and I were the only ones to take Daniel up on an offer to grab sushi that night. It was the first time any of us met. It didn’t take long to become pretty close friends. We spent an absurd amount of hours on Utah water that year. We used to fish together, not spread out on the water, but right next to each other. We would swap holes, compare notes, throw out a few well-timed insults and just have a good time. Most tenkara anglers in the States back then were isolated and fishing alone. Whatever success we’ve had over the years is in no small part owed to the fact that we could stir three tenkara heads in one big pot.
Adam Trahan: I continue to write about mountain stream fishing because it’s something that I enjoy. I’ve been at it for a long time and as long as I have fun doing it, I’m going to keep at it.
“Have you written anything on fly fishing or tenkara?”
Dr. Worthing: I love to read and like to write, too. I suppose it’s a bit of a love-hate relationship with writing at times. I’ve written a bunch of tenkara material for magazines, newspapers, and a few books. Those usually flow relatively fast. About five years ago, I decided to tackle a bigger project that demands another level of dedication and discipline from me. At times, I’ve had to walk away for long stretches to get my head straight. The amount of yourself you put into a project like that is where the love-hate thing comes into play. I’ll finish it someday soon, though. Long as I don’t give away too much too soon . . .
Adam Trahan: I practice quite a bit of “untenkara” or urban pond fishing with tenkara gear and techniques.
“Do you do anything like that?”
Dr. Worthing: I’ve tried all kinds of “untenkara”. But for pure pleasure of fishing, I always return to Oni School Tenkara. The only other type of fishing I do with regularity now is Tactical Nymphing. We used Toyota-esque systems design techniques to sort of crowd-source a project that sought to identify common elements among the most successful fly fishing techniques through history. A real kaizen sort of thing. We ended up with Tactical Nymphing, a philosophy of fly fishing that centers around five discrete tactics. Since it’s a way of thinking about fishing as opposed to a recipe for fishing, Tactical Nymphing manifests in different ways for different anglers on different days. My own manifestation involved use of a fixed line rod and sought to apply lessons learned from Oni School Tenkara to the nymphing game. Mixing in some nymphing taught me a few new things about currents. In that sense, I think it helped my tenkara practice.
Adam Trahan: In almost all of my attempts to look forward into the future, I find this one thing to remember that really helps. “In order to know what will happen in the future, look at the past.” I find that this view works also for tenkara.
If I look at the history of tenkara, I see two distinct paths. One is the equipment, the other is the person that is practicing it. The equipment continues to get better and tenkara continues to be discovered outside of Japan.
I believe the future of tenkara is a continuing in equipment innovation and the population of people doing it will fill in.
“What do you see in the future of tenkara?”
Dr. Worthing: Agreed, Adam! A quick stroll through the literary history of fly fishing will quickly teach you that not much new has been said or done in this game for centuries. Materials technology evolves and the equipment changes with it. The trout and the stream remain basically unchanged. The part that evolves in real time is the angler’s skill. I’m enjoying the opportunity to play some small hand in equipment innovation. The part about the person practicing it is what I really love, though. My vision for the future of tenkara involves the spread of tenkara the method. That means increased knowledge of trout and the water they live in. It also means placing an emphasis on what an angler can do rather than what an angler carries. When Tenkara Guides LLC started offering three day Oni Tenkara Schools in Utah, we were really limited to the basics. That’s just where the U.S. tenkara world was at the time. The schools enjoy a high student return rate. A few years into it, we saw a huge shift in the skill level of those students. The last two schools, we’ve covered material way more advanced than we could have touched in the beginning. I hope that’s an indication of what will come.
Adam Trahan: If I were to return to fly fishing, I would focus on freshwater rivers. I believe that is where fly fishing shines. I like inshore and beach fly fishing too but in my area, rivers present a much easier path than crossing the border or fishing the beaches of the West coast of the United States.
I would apply my tenkara honryu knowledge to my fly fishing equipment and use of. If I had to describe it, Euro nymphing would be easier to understand for the herd. But for me, it would be honryu fly fishing.
Or something like that.
I don’t see myself fly fishing ever again, I’m happy where I am at only doing tenkara.
“I bet you still fly fish, do you do any Euro nymphing and can you tell us about it?”
Dr. Worthing: Closest thing I do is Tactical Nymphing. Competition nymphing methods were among the successful fly fishing techniques we analyzed. We decided to share the Tactical Nymphing philosophy that resulted in an open platform on tacticalnymphing.org. We also worked with Jeff Lomino at Riverworks and Luong Tam at Tenkara Tanuki to refine nymphing specific fixed line rods. The result was the Riverworks ZX3 360cm nymphing rod. It ended up with a bit of a cult following, and might end up resurrected as a Legacy model. We just launched a new Riverworks ZX4 395cm nymphing rod. 395cm is a magic length for a lot of my fishing. I’ve waited a lot of years for that rod to get just right. It sold out before the blanks could ship out for assembly at Riverworks. Now, we are at a point where the Tactical Nymphing project has attracted enough attention to encourage offering schools. We will have our first two Tactical Nymphing schools in 2022. Other than that, it’s all tenkara for me too.
Adam Trahan: I tye flys and fish a pattern that works for me wherever I go. I call it the “Wrong Kebari” because I feel that accurate casting is paramount to fly choices. I would rather cast the wrong fly to the right spot than the right fly to the wrong spot hence the name of my fly. I like the idea of “one fly” although I start there, often at the end of the day, it isn’t what produced the fish count. I tye other flys though and as much as I don’t tye, I do enjoy it when I have a big pile of feathers in my waste bag under the vice.
“Can you tell us about your fly tying? Have you developed any flys that you call your own?”
Dr. Worthing: Like writing, I have a love-hate relationship with fly tying. I love the creative aspect of it and view it as an extension of the relationship I’ve built with the trout and the water. The volume of tying you have to do to replenish a fly fishing guide’s box sucks some of the fun out if it. I’ve developed a number of patterns and variants. The Red Assed Monkey is a kebari inspired wet fly that I have a lot of confidence in fishing. That would be my pick for a signature fly. The Grave Digger, Utah Killer Bug and Utah Killer Kebari, and Golden Ticket are a few others I would call my own. All of the above had some base in existing patterns from other anglers. Giving a nod to those that came before you is an important part of maintaining a student’s mind.
Adam Trahan: I appreciate your contribution to the tenkara community. My interview of you is testament to that. Thank you.
I would like to give you the opportunity to ask me any questions you may have about what I do.
Dr. Worthing: I loved my time living in the Mountain West and go back regularly to fish, teach, and see friends. But there is something about the highlands around North Carolina and Tennessee, the Blue Ridge Mountains and Smokies, that always calls me back. You swim through the humid air in the summer and the dampness chills you to the bone in the winter. Good luck ever getting your fishing gear dry. But I just can’t leave it. I know you’ve spent a lot of time in the Southwest.
“What draws you to those landscapes? Do you feel the same kind of pull to a place?”
Adam Trahan: The sun. The weather, the stark beauty of a desert is quite appealing to me. As I pilot, I got to know it even better from the ten-thousand-foot view. I love the solitude of the desert mountains. I think I enjoy being alone with my thoughts whether it be in the forest, the ocean or the desert. The idea of being comfortable in large places, alone, I like that. But I also love my family and the hustle of one of the largest cities in America.
Dr. Worthing: Agreed, Adam! A quick stroll through the literary history of fly fishing will quickly teach you that not much new has been said or done in this game for centuries. Materials technology evolves and the equipment changes with it. The trout and the stream remain basically unchanged. The part that evolves in real time is the angler’s skill. I’m enjoying the opportunity to play some small hand in equipment innovation. The part about the person practicing it is what I really love, though. My vision for the future of tenkara involves the spread of tenkara the method. That means increased knowledge of trout and the water they live in. It also means placing an emphasis on what an angler can do rather than what an angler carries. When Tenkara Guides LLC started offering three day Oni Tenkara Schools in Utah, we were really limited to the basics. That’s just where the U.S. tenkara world was at the time. The schools enjoy a high student return rate. A few years into it, we saw a huge shift in the skill level of those students. The last two schools, we’ve covered material way more advanced than we could have touched in the beginning. I hope that’s an indication of what will come.
Adam Trahan: If I were to return to fly fishing, I would focus on freshwater rivers. I believe that is where fly fishing shines. I like inshore and beach fly fishing too but in my area, rivers present a much easier path than crossing the border or fishing the beaches of the West coast of the United States.
I would apply my tenkara honryu knowledge to my fly fishing equipment and use of. If I had to describe it, Euro nymphing would be easier to understand for the herd. But for me, it would be honryu fly fishing.
Or something like that.
I don’t see myself fly fishing ever again, I’m happy where I am at only doing tenkara.
“I bet you still fly fish, do you do any Euro nymphing and can you tell us about it?”
Dr. Worthing: Closest thing I do is Tactical Nymphing. Competition nymphing methods were among the successful fly fishing techniques we analyzed. We decided to share the Tactical Nymphing philosophy that resulted in an open platform on tacticalnymphing.org. We also worked with Jeff Lomino at Riverworks and Luong Tam at Tenkara Tanuki to refine nymphing specific fixed line rods. The result was the Riverworks ZX3 360cm nymphing rod. It ended up with a bit of a cult following, and might end up resurrected as a Legacy model. We just launched a new Riverworks ZX4 395cm nymphing rod. 395cm is a magic length for a lot of my fishing. I’ve waited a lot of years for that rod to get just right. It sold out before the blanks could ship out for assembly at Riverworks. Now, we are at a point where the Tactical Nymphing project has attracted enough attention to encourage offering schools. We will have our first two Tactical Nymphing schools in 2022. Other than that, it’s all tenkara for me too.
Adam Trahan: I tye flys and fish a pattern that works for me wherever I go. I call it the “Wrong Kebari” because I feel that accurate casting is paramount to fly choices. I would rather cast the wrong fly to the right spot than the right fly to the wrong spot hence the name of my fly. I like the idea of “one fly” although I start there, often at the end of the day, it isn’t what produced the fish count. I tye other flys though and as much as I don’t tye, I do enjoy it when I have a big pile of feathers in my waste bag under the vice.
“Can you tell us about your fly tying? Have you developed any flys that you call your own?”
Dr. Worthing: Like writing, I have a love-hate relationship with fly tying. I love the creative aspect of it and view it as an extension of the relationship I’ve built with the trout and the water. The volume of tying you have to do to replenish a fly fishing guide’s box sucks some of the fun out if it. I’ve developed a number of patterns and variants. The Red Assed Monkey is a kebari inspired wet fly that I have a lot of confidence in fishing. That would be my pick for a signature fly. The Grave Digger, Utah Killer Bug and Utah Killer Kebari, and Golden Ticket are a few others I would call my own. All of the above had some base in existing patterns from other anglers. Giving a nod to those that came before you is an important part of maintaining a student’s mind.
Adam Trahan: I appreciate your contribution to the tenkara community. My interview of you is testament to that. Thank you.
I would like to give you the opportunity to ask me any questions you may have about what I do.
Dr. Worthing: I loved my time living in the Mountain West and go back regularly to fish, teach, and see friends. But there is something about the highlands around North Carolina and Tennessee, the Blue Ridge Mountains and Smokies, that always calls me back. You swim through the humid air in the summer and the dampness chills you to the bone in the winter. Good luck ever getting your fishing gear dry. But I just can’t leave it. I know you’ve spent a lot of time in the Southwest.
“What draws you to those landscapes? Do you feel the same kind of pull to a place?”
Adam Trahan: The sun. The weather, the stark beauty of a desert is quite appealing to me. As I pilot, I got to know it even better from the ten-thousand-foot view. I love the solitude of the desert mountains. I think I enjoy being alone with my thoughts whether it be in the forest, the ocean or the desert. The idea of being comfortable in large places, alone, I like that. But I also love my family and the hustle of one of the largest cities in America.
Fly fishing is my time machine, it instantly brings me back to who I am inside, a young boy exploring and the waters? So different from the desert that I know.
Dr. Worthing: One of the things that keeps me in the fly fishing game is the fact that as soon as you think you might have it figured out, nature goes and changes the game on you. Each day, each fish, and each new water presents some new problem to solve. The anglers I admire the most never stop learning. You mentioned approaching the peak of your fishing life.
“Any goals for your fishing in retirement? Anything you hope to learn more about?”
Adam Trahan: I think I'm doing that right right now. I want to learn everything about tenkara now, I want to learn from you now. I want to keep doing the fuck what I'm doing right now. I'm spending time fishing only tenkara, learning from the best people I can find, sharing what I know right now. I just want to keep going, doing what I'm doing now. No change in plans.
Dr. Worthing: One of the things that keeps me in the fly fishing game is the fact that as soon as you think you might have it figured out, nature goes and changes the game on you. Each day, each fish, and each new water presents some new problem to solve. The anglers I admire the most never stop learning. You mentioned approaching the peak of your fishing life.
“Any goals for your fishing in retirement? Anything you hope to learn more about?”
Adam Trahan: I think I'm doing that right right now. I want to learn everything about tenkara now, I want to learn from you now. I want to keep doing the fuck what I'm doing right now. I'm spending time fishing only tenkara, learning from the best people I can find, sharing what I know right now. I just want to keep going, doing what I'm doing now. No change in plans.
To answer you properly, I want to know what it is to spend the better part of my fishing life in pursuit of Japanese style fly fishing. I want to know what that fishing life is like.
Dr. Worthing, thank you so much for spending some time with us here at tenkara-fisher. I appreciate you.
“Please feel free to say anything you want, nice chatting with you.”
Dr. Worthing: Always a pleasure, Adam. Hopefully we get the chance to hit the San Juan together this year!
Dr. Worthing, thank you so much for spending some time with us here at tenkara-fisher. I appreciate you.
“Please feel free to say anything you want, nice chatting with you.”
Dr. Worthing: Always a pleasure, Adam. Hopefully we get the chance to hit the San Juan together this year!
