How to Make Tenkara Fishing Rod
With the tenkara being the latest trend in fly fishing, I have found many anglers longing to get to know every single detail about it.
I am lucky to have learnt about it earlier and perfected my skill, thanks to my father.
Before I proceed, I will let you know what a tenkara is. Tenkara is a trend in fly fishing, used in fresh water fishing, quite common in Japan. It involves fishing using a telescopic reel which has no reel.
The tenkara method boasts a more simplistic approach, where only a rod, a fishing line and fly, are used.
Believe me it is very easy. The biggest challenge you will encounter is that you will have to really spend a lot of money to get started, but the good news is that I have quite an appealing secret that I am willing to share with many anglers freely.
Just read on, and you will get to learn and love my secret.
How to Make a Cheaper Tenkara
Careful anglers, here is my secret. I realized that to shop for the right equipment for tenkara, I needed quite some dollars, which I truly didn’t have. My budget for fishing was way too low to give me the luxury of acquiring a tenkara. I desperately needed to find a way out, and that was when I decided to purchase a telescoping rod which could perform as a tenkara. Research came up with simpler and cheaper methods which would give me maximum results at quite a cheap price. I modified a telescoping rod which became a perfect substitute for the tenkara rod which costs about $30.
Step by step procedure on how to make a tenkara fishing rod
Make a wine cork grip
Materials
- Wine corks
- Something to make a winding check, brass grommet is preferable
- A piece of thread used to make a winding at the front part of the grip
Procedure
- Determine the length of your grip by measuring the diameter of the rod at the top and bottom area where your grip will be. This will help you to determine the size of the hole you should make in the corks.
- You can now bore holes in the corks. To find out if you got the diameter right, fit the first bored cork on the rod before making holes on the rest.
- Remove the beveled ends of the corks. You can choose to sand the ends off.
- Stick the corks and the blanks together
- You can choose whether to make a winding check or not, having it decorated is also optional.
Extra steps on decorating winding’s grip with a paracord. You can follow this video:
Add a line keeper
Materials
- Stainless steel wire
- Polyester embroidery thread. Should be of high quality
- Epoxy
- Pair of pliers
Procedure
- Shape your line keepers. You can use pliers to bend the wire to the shape of your liking. Just ensure that the ends will be tapered.
- Fix the keepers to the rod, temporarily though.
- Wrap your keepers onto the rod. At this point, you use the high-quality embroidery thread.
- With epoxy, cover the keepers and the rod so that they can remain permanent. This process requires a lot of practice.
At this point, you are done. You will have done quite some meaningful work at a fair price.
Butt Cap Keeper Loop or Rod Plug for Looping the Connector.
In making the keeper, simply enlarge the pre-existing hole in the butt cap and then add a hole at the center of the rod plug.
You should make sure that you drill the holes as large as required for accommodating the paracord loops having a smaller diameter.
After installing the loops, go ahead and attach the butt cap loop to the rod plug loop by simply using a loop to loop connection.
Making the Handy Carrying Case.
Procedure
- Use the Tenkara Rod to measure and mark the PVC before cutting it to the required length.
- Find a way of pressing the end cap onto the PVC by simply gluing it or pushing it hard into the PVC
- Gently slid the tenkara rod into the PVC before adding the top. It is advisable to mark the top so that it can be opened from the same end whenever you want to do so.
End product, the tenkara fishing rod is now ready
Having done all this, you will have your tenkara fishing rod at a very cheap price.
It could be termed as free since you might end up not buying any of the materials.
You will also have made it suit your specifications, which means that it will eventually be quite attractive.
GO FISHING!!!
I hope that this article has been both enjoyable and educative. You can now make your own $10 tenkara fishing rod rather than buying the expensive one which costs approximately $30.
You will have had fun from the activity of assembling the requirements to create one quite useful fishing equipment. Enjoy your fly fishing spree.
Make any comments which you may find to be important and let me know of anything that I could have left out.
Seek clarification on anything that could be an issue to you. I will be glad to assist where I can.
