Tenkara Angling for Snake River Smallmouth

Since discovering tenkara fly-fishing a few years ago, I don't travel much without a tenkara rod. Tenkara rods are telescopic, collapsing down to about eighteen inches and only require a fly line, leader, and a handful of your favorite flies. Minimal gear and super simple. Absolutely unfettering after years of lugging a minimum of four fly boxes, two reels to accommodate floating and sinking fly line, fly line sink tips, split-shot and strike indicators for nymphs, a variety of leaders and tippet strengths, dry-fly float coat, and the list continues.

This third-generation fly-fisherman seeking squishy-finned, speckled trout and salmon almost exclusively, had convinced himself to carry every possible method and fly pattern in the pack at any given time. We all know trout can be picky. But with the burden of gear selection removed from the equation, fly-fishing is once again magical, comparable to my single-digit years casting from the red clay, muddy margins of a forgotten farm pond. Back when I was a normal-sized human, able to snag my line in the tall fescue on the back-cast.

Given the simplicity of tenkara gear, its easy to toss the necessary items in the truck or pack for any occasion as you never know when you might find yourself in a situation where a fishing rod comes in handy. One such occasion was a recent trip to the Snake River to still-hunt Eurasian collared doves.

A tenkara fly rod on the Snake River is about like hunting grizzly bear with a straw and spit-wad. The gear doesn't quite match the task. Nevertheless, I tossed the tenkara rod into the back seat with my CZ Bobwhite double-gun and hit the field. I figured once I had missed a few birds, I could sneak around some backwaters with the tenkara rod to try and pluck a few bluegill from their spawning beds.

If you have never hunted collared doves, I recommend it as a challenging bird hunt to be had at any time throughout the year. Collared doves are considered an invasive species and not regulated to a season or bag limit. Watching, listening and sneaking through cover, closing the gap on their raspy coo is nearly as thrilling as crawling through starthistle and yellowjackets to get a bow shot at a dandy four-point muley buck. And the table fare is exquisite.

Hunting collared doves is a story for another time, suffice it to say that on this particular day, I scattered eight-shot to the wind, simply making a racket with my little twenty-gauge side-by-side and educating the doves to heighten the challenge on my next attempt. Disappointed in having failed to add the appropriate choke tubes to the shotgun, I strolled over to a small riverside pool and reached for the tenkara rod.

Bluegill were stacked into the shallow margins of milfoil beds and guarding nests with hostility. Casting ahead, I began slowly twitching a hideously-tied prince nymph through the shallows and into the beds policed by the feisty gendarmes. Readying myself to deliver a one-man clinic on the proper techniques for catching panfish hand-over-fist, I experienced crushing fail number two of my cast-and-blast adventure.

Amusingly, the bluegill that I was certain would eagerly run down and engulf the fly, fled hastily as if the nymph were noxious. A first for me in thirty-five-years of angling panfish. While switching to a smaller fly would likely have done the trick, I decided to change tactics, casting beyond the weed bed and letting the fly sink. On the second cast, the line jerked as if someone reached out and flicked it with a finger.

Popping the rod tip and sinking the hook into what I thought was a bigger bluegill turned out to be a smallmouth bass about eight-inches long. While I wielded a rod I had built for salmon, I was surprised at the small fish's power against the heavy backbone of the thirteen-foot broom stick. Marveling over its bronze striping and deep red eyes, I eased it back into the semi-turbid waters, excited at the opportunity.

Thinking it a fluke, a few casts later found the fly embedded in the upper jaw of another smallmouth, only this one a bit bigger. A solid twelve-incher that worked the tenkara rod impressively. Growing up on the Shenandoah River in Virginia, I had landed literally countless smallmouth of this caliber in my youth. The moment reinvigorated the excitement and admiration for the fight of the bronze-back that never fades from memory.

A momentary flashback to a sultry summer evening with a few of my best friends wading deep into remote ag-land reaches of the South Fork Shenandoah sparked a chuckle. While the Shenandoah was a blue-ribbon smallmouth river, I still rarely caught fish much bigger than I was seeing this day on a pocket water to the Snake River, 2,700 miles west.

Returning to reality and the immediate problem of daydreaming of fishing past rather than capitalizing on fishing present, I laid out another cast to the edge of the weed bed. Working the shoreline, about every fourth cast enticed another willing smallmouth. The bluegill scurrying from my shadow now completely forgotten.

The Snake River is a bit of a stretch to recommend as a fly-fishing destination, but if you find yourself in the position to give it a shot, go for the backwaters. Every boat basin and drainage mouth provides a unique environment much simpler to fish and teeming with bass and panfish, not to mention common carp, if you seek true adventure.

The wisdom of using big baits for big fish holds true for bass, but don't over-do it. Nymphs, streamers and dry-flies, sizes eight to twelve are my preference. Ironically my personal best bass have all come on some of the smallest baits, and always while fishing for panfish.

Warm-water fishing for a cold-water evangelist is a back-of-the-mind prospect, yet each time I give it a whirl, I am pleasantly reminded of the merits of such an endeavor. It's a great opportunity in a pinch requiring little time and the most basic gear to realize the value of keeping it simple and simply catching scrappy smallmouth in the marginal waters of the infamous Snake.