May 2009

[Satoshi]

I don't know who should I thank for making this great forum come back... Gus? Adam? or Nick? Anyway, I thank who have done the job very much. It must have been a lot of work.

I love small stream fly fishing (This is the single most important qualification to be a member of this forum, I believe). Certainly, one major reason is that we have virtually only small streams (for flyfishing trout) in Japan. Many of the trout streams in the U.S. would be called "a large river" in our country.
After the old forum went down, I have kept taking pictures as usual.
So, I would like to share some of the fishing experiences with people here.

I live in a rather warm place, and we seldom have snow here. We have some small trout streams in the mountains around, but fishing season is very short; usually from late March to June, with April being the best, though trout fishing is legal from March to the end of September.

From April through May, I went fishing to my home waters every weekend. This year, we had a lot of rain in Japan. We have a rainy season from the middle of June to the middle of July every year, but this year, the rainy season seemed to have extended to the whole summer.


A small village in the rain on the way to the stream.


When the weather is overcast with occasional trickles of rain, it's the best condition for fishing dryflies for these streams. Seeing this picture, you might think that the water level is low. It is on the contrary actually. Water level is a little higher than usual. You see no vegetation to a certain height from the stream bed in the picture. This is because water goes to this height when a big typhoon comes, which occurs every year.


I caught several chubby small amago (we pronounce it "ah-mah-go") in each outing. This is the only native trout in this area.


As I wrote before, this is the landlocked form of a subspecies of the masu salmon. Masu (Onchorhynchus masou) is one of the Pacific salmons but live only on the Asian side of the Ocean. Most of the populations of amago is landlocked.


As the season deepens, mountains become green everywhere. Even the water seem to be stained green. This is the season I love most.


When it rains a little heavier, nymph fishing is truely rewarding. One day, in such a condition, I had almost "one cast one fish" fishing. On that rainy day, fish didn't often come to the surface, so I switched to nymphs. Every time, no sooner had I put a nymph in the water than trout eagerly snatched it. This is one of such fish.


We had some bright sunny days still.


OK, who blotted this fish with orange paint!?


As the water temp rose, some unwelcome guests also start to appear. This cyprinid fish is very surface-oriented, and bite anything floating on the surface. Though the size of the fish is small as you see, it has a large mouth and easily grab a #10 dryfly. It's still OK, but the worst thing is, once a dry fly is taken by this fish, it is impossible to regain the buoyancy of the fly by any magical floatant because of the strong mucus of the fish. The appearance of this fish tells us the trout fishing is slowing down. Well...., you can't blame the fish, which is certainly a part of the ecosystem in this area.

In the next post, I will show some of my summer fishing experiences in northern part of Japan for yamame and iwana.

[rayfound]

YEAH!

You're pictures of those Masu Salmon may be the one thing I've missed the most about this forum while it was down. Thanks for the post!

[palewatery]

I'll second that.... Those bright orange spots on the last one are stunning.

I love seeing the different fish species but as well as that I love to see the scenery and read about how the fishing works in your part of the world.

Thank you for sharing. Always a pleasure to read your posts.

Jim

[edeltrouts]

Welcome back!

Missed your posts & pics.
I enjoy your fish pics very much because of the exotic looking creatures in your streams and the great landscape.
Maybe I'll catch one some day. Its a little dream to come to Japan.

Thomas

[ofuros]

A beautiful marked fish species. Can't say I've ever heard of an amago, but I can imagine myself slowly wandering along banks of that serene looking stream. Great pics & a interesting insite into another country's stream fishing.

Thanks for sharing, you have me very intrigued to see your yamame and iwana species too.
Good post Satoshi.

Cheers,
Ofuros

[LMarshall]

Satoshi,

Those amago are beautiful! I was under the impression they were a charr, not a salmon. What about Iwana and Yamame? Good info on these fish is hard to find in English.

Do you ever fish tenkara? Even if you don't I'm sure the folks over on the TenkaraUSA forum would love to hear from you.

http://www.tenkarausa.com/forum/

[jdm5047]

Beautiful pictures, satoshi, it is great to hear from you again. The mountains in the first two pictures look amazing. Fishing in such deep, lush gorges and valleys must make for quite a setting to catch those beautiful trout in.

I am intrigued by the parallels between the trout fishing in worlds so far apart.

As the season deepens, mountains become green everywhere. Even the water seem to be stained green. This is the season I love most.

This is one of my favorite seasons, too. Green tinted water always meant great fishing to me.

As the water temp rose, some unwelcome guests also start to appear

These sound exactly like what I call chubs, or creek chubs. The description is spot-on the same. Can't wait to see the summer adventures!

[mikeytwoshoes]

great to see you back satoshi. as usual your pics are stupendous. great stuff.

[terry]

Awesome! I love your pics and those trout. Thanks

[Satoshi]

Thank you for your kind comments guys!
I'm really happy to know that people in some different continents enjoy my post.

LMarshall,
I've tried tenkara once, but I soon moved to flyfishing. So I don't have much experience about it. I'm surprised about the fact that some people in the US are enjoying tenkara. I wonder it might be difficult to play a big fish with tenkara, because you don't use a reel for this fishing, which is no problem in Japan where you don't worry about hooking a very big fish. On the other hand, it is extremely effective in small streams of a certain size. I know a tenkara fisherman who always catch more fish than other fly fishers. Because tenkara rods are much longer than ordinary fly rods, it is easy to control the fly directly by the rod. But because the length of the line is fixed, and because the rod is long, you have difficulty in extremely small streams, or in large rivers. This is why I prefer fly fishing. It's far more flexible. While tenkara is principally a wet fly fishing, you can fish dries, wet flies, nymphs, streamers in fly fishing. You can cast long, or you can just dip your fly from your rod tip. So, if you just want to catch as many fish as possible, tenkara might be a better way at least in Japanese streams. But fly fishing is more appealing to me.