hi from new member

I want to say thanks for having smallstreams.com up and running again.
I live in the Golden state in the SF Bay area. Born and raised in San Francisco, I now live north of San Francisco. I have been fly fishing for 25 years, mostly in northern Calif., including the Sierra Nevadas east and south of the bay area. Since I took up fly fishing, it has been my only method of fishing. If you can't catch it on a fly, then it's not worth catching.
my learning curve has been slow at times, mostly because I wasn't lucky enough to have real good instruction from someone. I love to read to learn things and then take that to the stream and see what happens. Since I didn't have any buddies/relatives to go fish with me, I basically learned most things solo. That and somewhat limited stream time because of family slowed things up a bit.
After some years, the kids get older and my opportunities increased to enlarge my experiences. I even have both my daughters fly fish with me now. The wife, bless her heart, likes to gold pan, sit with the dog, or watch me and the girls. Because of certain limitations, I usually take 1 daughter with me at a time so each of us has proper waders, staff, boots, and fly rod. Good quality waders are expensive as many of you know already. I also like being able to concentrate on 1 daughter at a time, allowing me more fish time as well.
Living where I do allows me to fish many types of rivers/streams. Large freestones that empty into the Pacific Ocean, medium and larger Sacramento Valley streams, and most importantly, small to medium size mountain streams. They get smaller as you go higher in elevation, larger as you get back to the valley. Up at mid to high elevations is where I enjoy fishing the most, by a large margin. There is nothing on God's green earth that compares to fishing for trout in a med to small mountain stream. About 12 years ago, I reintroduced myself to backpacking in the Sierra's. Only this time, a fly rod went with me. A short while later, backpacking became a means to get me in the mountains just to fish. Eventually I met a buddy at work who also fly fished, and we have made6-7 trips into the high country just to fly fish for beautiful wild trout,10-15 miles from road end. Just this last summer, I took my oldest daughter into the backcountry for her first backcountry trip, and she caught her very first Golden trout!!
This summer has been a very exciting one for me. I recently retired, allowing more fishing time and more opportunity to fish with my daughters. I still do solo trips as well. The biggest event for me was "discovering" Tenkara fishing. I am at a loss for words to describe how that has changed my approach and fishing tehniques, as well as my overall outlook at things on a trout stream. It took me a while to get familiar with things, but I am thoroughly enjoying everything each step of the way. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks??
I am very excited to be able to post on this forum. I am looking forward to learning things from everyone here, as well as post my thoughts and feelings on gear, flies, techniques,etc. I fear that it will be mostly Tenkara favored, hoping to hear from like-minded fly fishers. However, I also feel that fly fishing, in general, and Tenkara specifically, will be to everyone's advantage.