• Satoshi

    by Published on 07-16-2013 12:04 AM  Number of Views: 26413 
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    “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. ...
    by Published on 04-01-2013 10:09 AM  Number of Views: 17528 
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    I had never thought I would have a bamboo rod in my life. They are heavy, cast too slow for windy days, and can’t be broken down to 4 pieces. On top of that, they are ridiculously expensive. At least that’s what I thought.

    A few years ago, however, I suddenly became a bamboo rod owner. Not one, but two! The rods are gifts from two generous friends. One rod was a secondhand rod, 7.9 ft 3wt, with the name of a friend on it. Along with this beautiful rod, he gave me a Hardy Flyweight reel. A perfect combination. According to his advice, I bought a #3 silk fly line from a Chinese shop through e-bay, and took care of it for 6 months before beginning to use it. Now the rod is my first choice when I go amago fishing around here. I already posted fishing with this rod before.

    This time I’d like to talk about the other rod. This two piece rod came to me as a blank with an extra tip section, with a reel seat, guides, and silk thread for wrapping. The ferrules and tops were already put and fixed, so all I had to do was to finish the rod. But it had been more than 20 years since I built my old graphite rod by myself. I started to study how to finish a bamboo rod. After looking at several web pages on the internet, I came to the conclusion that I needed a rod wrapper/dryer. ...
    by Published on 07-27-2012 03:52 PM     Number of Views: 9808 
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    Monday, July 16 was a national holiday in our country and consequently we had 3 consecutive day offs on that weekend. I had been wondering if I would go fishing in those holidays. We had heavy rain every day, which is the norm in the end of the rainy season, meaning that rivers might be too high to fish. Also, I was tired. My father fell ill and he has been in hospital since last November. My mother died 10 years ago and he lives alone. I go to the hospital and see him every two weeks, alternately with my younger brother so that either my brother or I see my father every weekend. There are things that have to be done for him, but it is especially hard for me to see my old man, who taught me the joy of fishing, who looked so mighty and powerful that it seemed as if nothing could beat him when I was a kid, deteriorating physically and mentally. I was also busy with work. So, I was tired, but the urges for fishing, the thought of me standing in a cool mountain stream where iwana dwell, finally overcame my laziness. ...

    Flood 

    by Published on 09-27-2011 10:45 AM  Number of Views: 10258 
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    Editor's note: As is sometimes the case, this is a two part story that Satoshi shared with us. This first part is published to the front page. To read the rest that follows in his next post, become a member of smallstreams.com and join us in the forums!



    The right hand photo was taken just a few hours after the left was taken in the same stretch of a stream. Do you believe if I say the change in the water level from left to right occurred within almost 5 seconds?
    That’s exactly what I saw.

    From September 11 to 15, I went to Tohoku region for fishing, staying at my regular inn, Kubota lodge. The trip has been one of my annual events for these several years.
    ...
    by Published on 07-08-2011 07:05 AM  Number of Views: 12320 
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    We are now in the rainy season, which started early June this year. When this short rainy season is over, the true summer ...
    by Published on 05-06-2011 09:28 AM  Number of Views: 10263 
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    The other day, I put up a post about some nice fat trout on this forum. I went to the same stretch a week later and caught only 3 amago then. Two weeks later, I went again, and caught no trout but a small dace like fish. Last week, I decided to go further upstream of the river.



    To go to the headwater of the river, you have to walk along a trail, which parallels the stream all the way up to the top of a mountain. The trailhead lies on the upper end of the backwater of a reservoir. For the first 500 meters from the start, the trail is made by cutting a rock face that you can see in the right side of the stream in this picture (looking upstream). ...
    by Published on 04-06-2011 04:42 AM  Number of Views: 9675 
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    More than three weeks have passed since the unprecedented disaster of 3.11. The mental health, as well as physical health of refugees from the disaster is much concerned. Strangely, many cases are reported that people who did not directly suffer from the disaster also fell sick. Those people are mentally depressed by being exposed to grieving media reports about the tsunami disaster or nuclear crisis every day for 3 weeks. Women seem to be more susceptible than men. A woman working next to me in our office also told me she felt almost sick by seeing those news reports on TV or newspapers, though she is usually a very easygoing person. I told her to make herself enjoy by doing something like having a gourmet dinner or picnicking under cherry blossoms (which is a tradition in this country), but she said she just wasn't in such a mood to enjoy something.
    Just worrying about the disaster never makes any differences. So in these days, TV is often turned off in my house, because channels are still much occupied by programs about the tsunami aftermath or news of ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis.
    My family and I do what we can do. We donate money. We write to friends living in Tohoku region. We spend daily life as healthy as possible.
    ...