An ‘International’ Fly Fishing Expedition

Today I spent the morning fly fishing tenkara style with a friend of mine visiting the USA from South Africa. Graham is a great guy that I connected with on LinkedIn a couple of years ago over shared passions as dads of sons with special needs and exit planning for business owners to make successful transitions of their companies to the next generation.

Graham is in the States for the next week or so and we were able to meet for the morning about 1/2 way between where he was in Washington D.C. and my home in Roanoke, VA.

Graham was a little rusty, but with some semi-expert coaching from me on tenkara we hit the stream. I set him up with my very first tenkara rod the Tenkara USA Iwana and off we went.

Graham is the tall handsome fella…Not sure what happened to that short guy though.

I have joked about my GAS syndrome (gear acquisition) and this time it paid off because I was able to hook Graham up with everything he would need. He did hook one trout but was unable to get it to the net.

I did better and actually landed what I think might be my PB brook trout.

At any rate, it fought hard and was a joy to land on my Tenkara Bum 36.

My most successful technique was a dry dropper rig and as the sunlight hit the water the stream came alive. I love using foam body flies for dry dropper and if you haven’t tried them…you will love them for high gradient creeks.

All told I think I caught around 6 in 2 hours and hooked a few more. Great day with great company.