Monday, June 03, 2019

Fishing

I've never been a big fisherman, my brother held that title in my family. However, in the past year my younger daughter has really gotten into it. I've gone with her several times and mostly used either a Zebco 202 spincast setup, or a Zebco Dock Demon spincast rod.

I've always liked spincasting reels because I wound up getting fewer tangles. My brother and daughter like spinning reels, while my brother also has some bait casting and fly fishing rigs.

Last year I learned about Tenkara fly fishing and the simplicity appealed to me. Tenkara rods have no reel. Instead, the line is attached to a short piece of cord attached to the end of the rod, called a lillian. The line is about the same length as the rod. A lightweight leader, or tippet, is then tied to the line, and a fly is then tied to the tippet.

Last Fall I bought a Wild Water Fly Fishing Tenkara Starter Package. However, I didn't get a chance to try it until last Saturday when I took my daughter fishing in a local creek. Using a "Killer Bug," I caught my first fish ever on a fly. It was a small bluegill but it was a neat experience.

I like the WW Tenkara package a lot as it includes pretty much everything you need to get started. However, I don't like the line winders they include, which are of two types. First is a foam disk that slips over the rod. It's easy to use but prevents the rod from fitting into the storage tube. The other type is two doohickeys that are held on with O-rings. They weren't very well made, one of them broke, and in any event, they are a major PITA to put on the rod.

So, I got this Seaquest set of 3 clip-on line winders, lines, and tippets, which came today. You can see one of the line winders on my rod below, with the other two laying next to the rod on the right. On those the green is foam which is there so you can stick a fly into it.



You can also see the Killer Bug fly I put on tonight. It is stuck into the foam part of the line winder.

Also shown in the pic is the day glow green paracord I added to the plug for the telescoping rod. The main reason for that is to make it harder to lose but it also makes it easier to pull out the plug.

Setup as shown it fits nicely into the dark green storage tube so that I can just grab it, held to a local creek, and start fishing immediately.

1 comment:

Paul said...

Interesting. It sounds kind of like the way I used to fish with a fly while growing up in the Amazon basin. Just a bamboo pole with a length of fishing line with a fly tied to the end. You're limited to the distance you can reach with the pole outstretched and the line completely extended, but one can catch fish this way in the right conditions. Didn't know anyone else did anything similar. For me it was simply doing what I could with locally available items, with the exception of the flies which were brought to me when my grandparents visited one time. Thanks for the memories!