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Published on 07-16-2013 12:04 AM
Number of Views: 32128
“Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?”
- Confucius, China, 551-479BC
In the first week of June, Adam and I fished streams in the central mountain area in Japan together. He fished with tenkara and I with western style fly fishing. On the first day, we fished Nagawa (in Japanese, “gawa” or “kawa” means “river”). This stream is flat and flows through a small village. The major road of the village runs all the way along the stream and there is usually no danger in wading. This is why I chose this stream for our first water to fish, because I thought Adam must have been very tired from jet lag as well as from the long journey to Japan. He was, indeed. The other reason is that Nagawa is less than 10 minutes from the inn (ReRise) where we stayed for the first 4 nights. Nevertheless, wading seemed very difficult for him with his rubber-soled wading boots. Snow run-off had been over for weeks, and the surface of rocks or stones in the stream were covered with dark brown moss (mostly diatoms, actually), which made the stream bottom extremely slippery even with my felt-soled shoes. Most of the Japanese trout waters are small, steep, free stone streams, and it is dangerous to wade without felt-soled wading boots. I had suggested Adam to bring felt-soled shoes, but he told me he couldn’t buy them. I didn’t know felt soles were disappearing from the shelves of the fishing tackle shops in the U.S. Besides, he had not fully recovered from his ankle injury.
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