I've covered so much about fishing this year, and not a lot about flies. This is intentional. I don't think that fly selection in tenkara is as important as other aspects. But, that doesn't mean that the right choice of fly doesn't contribute to one's success.
I would like to share a few of the flies that I used the most, or found the most success with. But, I want to keep it as just kebari.
Where this get's a little funny is that I'm going off of the journal entries and the numbers that I had the foresight to detail. I can't confirm what pattern every fish was caught on, but I do have some entries that detail "x" amount of fish on a certain pattern. There are other entries where I just list the flies used, but didn't record how many fish were caught on each one. So with that said, let's look at some flies...
The kebari that had the most uses and confirmed catches was the "Blue Dream" futsu. This is one of my go-to patterns for smaller creeks. But, being that I spent so much time on the river this year, I find it hard to believe that this had the most catches. Again, I'm just going off the numbers I can verify.
The kebari that I would wager caught the most fish is my "Ume" futsu. This one always seems to perform well. It has become a confidence pattern for me, and it was my second most used pattern (according to the records) of 2024.
The spot for the third most used kebari was the "Wren" futsu. This was a confidence pattern for me in the past, but in the past few years I feel my success on this one has fallen off. I had only 1 confirmed catch on it this year out of the 7 times it was recorded being used.
One kebari that I wanted to give an honorable mention to is the akiyamago kebari. While it wasn't used the most, this one saw quite a bit of success. This caught the attention of the majority of golden trout that I caught on my trip to the Southern Sierras. It also caught a few brook trout, and a couple rainbows as well. It seems maybe this is the one for those slow, meandering meadow streams, as that's where I found I had the most success with it.