The Shokuryoshi Experiment
Time: 4:15pm - 5:45pm
Weather Conditions: 78F with high clouds and occasional breeze
Water Conditions: Gin-clear, lower than average, 58F
On this day, I challenged myself to catch a fish on three different types of fishing rods. My main focus though was on the tenkara rod, and the experiment. I only gave myself about 45 minutes of fishing with a spinning rod, and 45 minutes of fishing with a fly rod before I made my way to the spot I wanted to fish with the tenkara rod. Being that this post is about The Shokuryoshi Experiment, I plan to keep it about that.
I started at the lowest point of the access, targeting the slow water on the outsides of the main flow. I had a few bites in this area, but they were pretty small fish and popped right off.
Continuing my way upstream, I hit a section with a lot of shallow pockets. Again, a few bites, but nothing brought to net in this section.
Where things really started to pick up was in a long stretch next to some big boulders. The water was fairly calm, and the stretch was separated into two big levels by a small patch of rocks. The upper pool had a bit more turbulent water than the lower pool, being that the water in the upper section was focused through a more narrow path with larger rocks breaking up the the riverbed.
I decided to switch my tactics and focus more on nymphing in this section. As I've spent more time fishing a tight-line setup, I've been getting more confident in my abilities with it, and with the lack of rising fish, this seemed to be the right choice as I approached this stretch of river.
Indeed, it was. I quickly picked up a handful of what would be my largest fish for the day. They seemed to strike one right after the other, and a few of them seemed to be holding in the same bucket.
After working though this stretch, I had one more encounter with a bigger trout that darted around the structure in the section I hooked into it, ultimately running the tippet along the rocky ledge and breaking the tippet. I took this as a sign, and with more shallow water ahead, I switched back to a kebari to finish out the afternoon.
In the next section, I landed a few more rainbows, these ones on the smaller side of the scale for the day, but still fun catches.
Admittedly, the numbers weren't as good as I was hoping for, but I was still able to bring 8 fish to net in the hour and a half I fished this stretch of water. The numbers really weren't bad, but if I planned to break 4 fish per hour on my average, I needed a little more.