The Shokuryoshi Experiment
When I first learned to fish with a tenkara rod, I remember spending plenty of time watching videos of Dr. Ishigaki and “Tenkara no Oni” casting. I admired the accurate and smooth casting stroke as the line delivered the fly to the water. It took me some time to get casting down, but once I had realized how to get the fly moving further away from me, I started practicing more and more in hopes to “perfect” my cast.
I, like many anglers, enjoy casting. Which is good, because we spend a lot of time on any given outing with the line zipping around in the air. Over the years my own cast has gotten better and better. There’s always constant refinement happening in the cast, and I’m always learning new tricks and different ways to deliver the fly. While being able to do different tricks in casting is fun, it’s not always productive.
From the time management standpoint, all this aerial mending adds time to a cast. It may be a fraction of a second, but think about how many times you may do it in an outing. Over a season, you could be spending a lot of unnecessary time with the fly out of the water. This is fine from a purely recreational standpoint, but within this experiment, there came more thought on how to maximize efficiency of the casting stroke.
Simply put, the cast should be short and quick. While there are fish that become very picky and only strike on a certain presentation, the truth is that I’m not looking to hook up on fish with that disposition. I’m choosing waters where I know the fish are advantageous and willing to take a fly that maybe hits the water a little too hard, or comes in from an odd angle - fish that are tolerant of an “imperfect” cast.
The Casting Stroke
With time being the big thing on my mind, I was looking to change up my casting stroke in hopes to find a way to deliver a quick, and somewhat accurate cast. I started observing how people cast a little more closely, looking for inspiration. Thinking back on times when I’ve seen others casting a tenkara rod, I recalled seeing someone with a very snappy casting stroke. I thought it was odd at the time, I didn’t quite understand how he was able to cast so quickly and still get the line to roll out without tangling.
It all started to click when revisiting a course on the Discover Tenkara website (the specific course comes up again later). Instead of trying to load the rod with the back cast and following it up with the forward cast, one could load the road with brisk, fluid movement in different directions. While maintaining momentum to keep the rod tip loaded, making a small, elliptical movement with the rod tip would allow an angler to finish the movement in a way that would propel the line toward the target as the rod released the energy stored from the movement.
Now, this isn’t quite as accurate as the normal back and forward casting stroke, but it’s fast - and with that, saves a little bit of time. Along with that, it also helps in another situation…
Last Second Strikes
We’ve all had times where the fly reaches the end of the drift, and just as you go to cast again, a fish comes up at the last moment to try to get the fly. I often find the fish misses, but on the occasion that it does grab a hold of the fly, it’s hard to get a solid hook set and the fish more than likely goes free.
A few observations throughout the years from this type of situation is that you’re unlikely to get a second bite. Also, the splashing around from a launched fish can sometimes scare other fish in the pool.
Last year, I really started to think about it. “What can I do to secure the fish in this situation, and prevent it from scaring away others?”
There was the option to add a few seconds on to the drift, but again, from a time management standpoint, these extra few seconds add up. Also, this doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t encounter the same situation as you go to make the next cast.
One thing I have found is that positioning on the river can help to fix this. Casting from downstream of where you're drifting helps to ensure better hooksets when you go to make your next cast. This is fine if you have the opportunity to constantly cast upstream, but there are many times where I fish at more of a cross stream angle.
Utilizing some of the knowledge that I picked up from Discover Tenkara’s course featuring Hisanobou Hirata, I started employing his style of “push cast” when fishing those cross stream lies. In short, sweeping the line downstream and using that movement to load the rod with a more elliptical casting stroke offered a solution similar to that of recasting from a downstream position.
Taking it a bit further, the casting stroke that I use is tailored to the spot I’m fishing. I guess what I really should say is that the direction in which I start my casting stroke is whichever way is “down-current'' from the fly.
This is based on the idea that fish face up-current, and will often strike as the fly drifts by them. In setting down-current, I have found a better hook up rate - and adjusting the angle of your casting stroke to the drift lets you take advantage of that.
Taking just a moment to think about the way I was casting based on the spot in the current I was targeting helped to increase my hook up rates.
Creative Solutions
I’m going to reference another one of the Discover Tenkara courses, but this one is with Kazunori Kobayashi. I found this one interesting because Kobayashi is known for his expertise in honryu fishing, but in this course they follow him as he picks apart a small stream. In this course, one of the bits of information that I took away and grew the most from was how he adjust his casts in different areas. Aside from hand placement, I started to realize how positioning can improve your approach in tough areas.
This can be either how you position your body to cast, or where you position yourself in relation to where your target is. I would like to revisit this in the future, but due to its very nuanced and situation-specific nature, I won’t go too far into it right now.
Regarding the subject of casting, I want to encourage anyone reading to get creative. Change your hand placement, change the casting stroke, introduce line manipulation, or change where you’re casting from. Fish will hold in spots they find safety in, and sometimes a lot of fish will group in spots that others can’t cast to.
Practice Makes Better
In order to really get the most out of your casting, you will have to practice. This is true for all things, and fishing is no exception. Take a few minutes of free time out of your day and practice your casting at home or at a pond - ideally not in a scenario where you’re trying to make the most out of your fishing time.
It’s here that I’m going to contradict myself…
At the beginning of this post, I had brought up all the little tricks - aerial mending, line manipulation, etc. - aren’t always productive. I still stand by that statement. There are very few times where I needed to really complicate the cast to deliver the fly in a way that a fish would take it. With that said, knowing how to manipulate the line during the cast does pay off. Take some time to practice different ways of getting the fly to one spot, and as I said earlier, get creative.
Having the experience and knowledge to execute a cast into a small, brushy pocket from an angle that hides your presence from a spooky fish can be a very gratifying thing. The best way to be able to pull off difficult casts is to practice them in your free time.
Over the past year, I have experimented a lot with casting. I don’t always get it perfect for the situation, and of course fatigue sets in after fishing for a while, and I can see my casts starting to fall apart. Through my observations, casting is something that seems to expand on one’s success. Whenever there’s a change in the fly presentation, there's a good chance that it comes with a change in the cast. Utilizing different casting strokes and line manipulations offers a quick way to tailor your fly presentation to the situation, without having to change lines - or even your positioning in some cases. It can even help to take those sloppy, fatigued casts, and with some adjustments, bring back the accuracy and ease needed to keep putting the fly in front of some fish - and if everything goes right, those fish in the net.