In over a decade in business we have received many questions on all aspects of tenkara. This is the first episode trying to cover as many questions as we could compile on tenkara rods.
00:03 – This is Daniel Gallardo and you’re listening to the Tenkara Cast, the podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly fishing, tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast I’ll be sharing information with you on techniques, history, gear and philosophies as well as tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It is only possible we create content such as this podcast and all the videos that we create, because of your support, so we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara USA rods, lines and flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple Japanese method of fly fishing, tenkara.
00:46 – Hello everyone, this is Daniel at Tenkara USA, welcome back to another episode of the Tenkara Cast. First of all, I wanna thank everyone for joining in on our sale, taking advantage of the really good prices that we have been offering on the Tenkara USA rods and not postponing your purchase. It’s been incredibly helpful to our team to have the purchase from you coming now as opposed to later, because things are a little uncertain. We had a possibility of the warehouse potentially closing. Luckily, it never did. We were able to keep shipping product throughout the sale and we are really grateful to have your support at these times. Our team is breathing much easier, and hopefully you have a rod in your hands that you’re able to use now as things start opening up and you’re able to go fishing in the waters close to you. So thank you so much for making a purchase now as opposed to later.
01:43 – So today, I wanted to do something I’ve been meaning to do for some time, which is to cover the most commonly asked questions about tenkara and some not so commonly asked questions about tenkara perhaps. And I’m gonna have to split this episode up into at least two parts. So you’re gonna see the tenkara Q&A part one, which is gonna be focused. It’s gonna have a couple of questions, kind of general questions about tenkara, but then I’m gonna focus exclusively on questions about tenkara rods, and that’s gonna be a fairly long episode, roughly about 40 minutes and then I’m gonna have the tenkara Q&A part two where I’m gonna start getting to tenkara lines and hopefully also tenkara flies and the other questions. So, I’m gonna split up this episode, there’s gonna be part one exclusively focused on tenkara rods. If you have questions or are interested, look out for Q&A of tenkara part two, focused on tenkara lines, tenkara flies and other questions about tenkara. But I just kinda wanted to get us all on the same kind of page and make sure that we try to cover bases and there’s not too many misunderstandings about tenkara.
03:00 – So it’s more of a, it’s a Q&A. These questions are questions that my team especially TJ and John doing customer support have shared that they get very often, but also questions that if you go to our blog, tenkarausa.com/blog, the first post that you see which is pinned to the top of the page is gonna be a Q&A post. And I’ve left that there for a long time, so people can ask questions directly. And so, I compiled some of the questions that have been asked over time from there and then some other questions that have come through Facebook and other means over the years, so hopefully, this kind of gets us a chance to cover everything. It could be a long episode, I’m not sure, I’m gonna try to go through the questions relatively quickly. So some of them may be a little bit superficial as opposed to trying to go super into depth about everything. And if you do, if you are left with any questions at the end of this, don’t hesitate to reach out either through the podcast page for this Q&A or through that Q&A blog post that I just mentioned. So I’m gonna start from the beginning, I’m gonna cover some kind of general questions and then I’m gonna go, kinda try to break it up into sections to organize the episode a little bit.
04:23 – So the first one is just gonna be a couple of general questions, then I’m gonna try to cover questions that have come to us about tenkara rods over the years and then about tenkara lines, including rigging and that kind of thing, then I’m gonna cover tenkara flies. And then lastly I’m gonna cover some of the things that have come about how to learn about tenkara and that kind of thing, and related to general questions as well. But one of the most common questions we get to begin with, is whether tenkara is good for beginners? And yes, it’s great for beginners. So tenkara is this really simple method of fly fishing as we always talk about, involving rod, line and fly. A lot of people think that it resembles the good old cane pole fishing that people might have done as kids and a lot of, a big part of the reason that a lot of people might have grown up doing that is because there’s not a whole lot to it. So tenkara kinda takes that, the advantage of the simplicity of the cane pole, even though it does have to teach you how to fly cast ’cause you’re making the line move and that kind of thing.
05:31 – But all around, very very good for beginners, for kids as well, so tenkara is a very good method of fishing for kids because it keeps things simple, there’s not a whole lot of things to mess up, if you will. And the casting itself doesn’t take long, you learn how to cast in a couple of minutes, it’s a little bit like picking up a pebble and throwing it. You kinda have a very similar motion, so there’s not a ton there. It’s a very intuitive way to fish. And then later, I’m gonna talk about rods, but the entire method of tenkara is really good for beginners. So I wanna address that right now. It’s not really about the rods, all the rods are good for beginners, but because the method itself is really good. Next one, is tenkara good for backpackers or for backpacking? And yes, absolutely. The first thing that’s gonna come to mind when people look at tenkara, in terms of thinking about backpacking is that the whole set up is very portable, very compact and there’s not a whole lot to it. You have a rod, line and fly, the rod’s telescoped down to 20 inches, and you have this little kit bag with you, so it’s not a whole lot of space that it’s gonna take up. You can build a whole kit, a whole tenkara kit, if you’re a minimal, a very strong minimalist for about six ounces of gear roughly.
06:57 – And/or even potentially less, but six ounces I think is a good number to shoot for if you’re a super minimalist where you have the tenkara rod, about three ounces, you have a keeper with line and tip it and flies in it, that’s another probably three ounces. It may be a little nipper which is point something ounces, so very light weight. But my favorite thing when it comes to tenkara for backpacking is not so much the portability, as it is the speed of putting things together and that’s something that sometimes people don’t think about, but when you’re backpacking and you have the set up with you, if you have a conventional western fly rod, especially one that is set up for backpacking for trips, like a seven-piece rod for example, it takes quite a bit of time to line all the guides in a fly rod and then you have to not only line the guides up and put all the pieces together, you have to run the line through it and sometimes the line kind of comes back out, but you run the line through it and then you have to attach your fly ’cause it’s hard to kind of pass it on through the guides and so forth. So that takes a few minutes to get rigged up.
08:07 – Whereas with tenkara, you literally girth hitch your line to the tip of the rod, you unspool it out of the spool, extend the rod and you can be fishing in about 40 seconds or so, that’s how long it takes me to extend the rod with a line, and from there on, you’re fishing, you wanna put the rod away, another 40 seconds to collapse the rod, wind the line around the spool. So that’s my favorite thing about that. Now moving on to tenkara rods. What is a good tenkara rod for a beginner? And again, all tenkara rods that we offer at Tenkara USA are excellent for beginners. The method itself is really good for beginners, so I wouldn’t get too caught up on thinking of which rod is gonna be best for beginners. Mostly, you wanna look at the features in the rods. There are, I will say, there are two rods that are what I would consider as more general all around kind of rods that cover a variety of situations really well and that’s if you’re unsure of what kind of waters you’re gonna be fishing, you might be going to small streams, bigger waters and you just wanna have something that does it all really easily.
09:18 – It’s two easy rods for us to recommend are the Iwana, which is a 12-foot rod. 12-foot is the average length of a tenkara rod by the way, and the Sato which is from 10’8″ to 12’9″. So those rods cover that average length of 12-foot which is the average length of a tenkara rod. The other rods are slightly more specialized. The Rhodo being a small stream kind of rod, if you’re fishing very tight waters, the Ito being our longest rod, the Hane being a really good rod for backpacking for taking along in your little adventures. But all of them can be used by beginners really easily. So that’s kind of the the gist of it about tenkara rods. The next question that I would say that we get very often, how big of a fish can I catch on a tenkara rod? And that’s another question that there is not that much of a specific answer to it. So tenkara is not designed to go after very large fish species. If you’re targeting steelhead, if you’re targeting pike, if you’re targeting just very large species, we don’t necessarily recommend tenkara for that. However, we have seen pike up to 29 inches being caught on a Tenkara USA rod. I think we have that on our blog. Definitely have that on my book. Shaun LeZotte out of South Dakota caught that a few years ago and sent us his photo with this beautiful pike, like huge.
10:53 – So that might have been the largest, possibly the largest fish I have seen caught on a tenkara rod that I’ve seen a photo of. I have seen also like a couple of fish in about seven-pound range. There was a bass, I think that was caught in California that I remember and a video of somebody catching, I forget who he was now, but somebody catching a seven-pound brown trout in New Zealand. So as long as you’re targeting, I’d say, for pretty much most trout, most pan fish in lakes and ponds, bass, all these kind of average, what I would call average kind of species, you’re likely gonna be fine. Even carp, for example, I have caught some carp. If you’re seeing like a super large fish, maybe you have to think a little bit about how you’re gonna handle it, how you’re gonna land the fish, but if you’re fishing for these kind of average sized fish species and you happen to hook into a large specimen of those, you’re probably fine. So that’s kind of the gist of it. For the most part if you’re targeting that 10 to 22, 23-inch trout, you’re good. If you’re targeting the panfish and you happen to hook a five-pound bass, you’re good.
12:19 – Now, the next question that comes along with that is which rod do we recommend for catching a large fish on tenkara? And at Tenkara USA we have two main rods. All of the rods at Tenkara USA can catch and land a large fish. They are very strong material, they are made of carbon fiber, they’re designed to play fish really well, the main difference is gonna come in terms of which one is gonna make it easiest to bring a large fish in kinda quickly, so you’re not over-tiring the fish and the two main rods that we recommend in our line up are gonna be the Ito. That’s my favorite rod, I’ve used the Ito for catching carp, large carp, for catching bass and for catching very large trout. And there’s videos of pretty much all of those on our website, and the Amago is another one, it’s a 13-and-a-half-foot rod with a lot of backbone to it. I personally prefer the Ito because it’s got a better, a nicer feel to it, it’s a smoother casting rod, doesn’t feel quite as heavy on the hand and it will handle those large fish really well. You have a lot of leverage, but the Amago is a, it’s a stouter or heavier rod that does a really good job of bringing the fish in a little bit quicker, and it’s also a little less expensive. So that’s in terms of the large fish.
13:43 – Next question that we get pretty often about tenkara is what about, I’ve heard about throwing the rod in the water when you catch a large fish with tenkara, is that for real? [chuckle] So that’s a quote somebody asked me a question.
13:57 – And there’s… [chuckle] I always laugh at that question a little bit. I always like to say that maybe somebody’s trying to sell you more tenkara rods than we are. Because, no, you don’t have to throw the rod in the water. But I will cover where that comes from. So, there is a little bit of truth to that. Primarily, that’s a historical thing. Way back in the day, when rods were made out of wood in the west, like in Europe. And I should say tenkara and western fly fishing started in a really similar way where you had a long rod, fixed length of line tied to the tip of the rod, and they looked the same, except that in Europe you’re using wooden rods, in Japan you’re using bamboo rods. But regardless, back in the day, before modern materials and so forth, if you happened to hook a very large fish and you’re fighting the fish and it really feels like the rod is about to break, your last resort is gonna be throw the rod in the water because you have a chance to go and retrieve the rod but it’s gonna be really, really hard to fix it, replace it and so forth. And at the same time if the rod were to break back in the day, the part of the rod might go with a fish anyway, so might as well throw the rod in the water.
15:13 – But that’s old stuff that might come from some historical texts and that kind of thing. Or perhaps it is just a fact that Tenkara USA rods are really strong and we design them to fight large fish really well. So, modern rods are made of carbon fiber. If you happen to hook into a large fish, your first large fish, you’re gonna swear that the rod is gonna break ’cause it’s bending so much. But you can rest assured the rod is designed to fight a large fish that way. So, at least with Tenkara USA rods, you don’t have to throw the rod in the water, so ignore that. Other brands, I’m not sure.
15:53 – Now, another question we get very often is: I can’t see the rod tip. It’s stuck somewhere in there and I can’t see it, maybe it didn’t come with it. So, sometimes that happens. If you’re not familiar with the tenkara rod, you remove the plug that keeps every segment inside and you kinda tilt the rod down to expose the segments. The first thing that should come out is the tip of the rod where you’re gonna be tying the line. And you can see the lillian, it’s like the flower. The lillian is that red string material that’s on the tip of the rod and you should be seeing that coming out first. Occasionally, the tip of the rod, the very tip of the rod may go in and it gets stuck in there and you don’t see it ’cause it’s just the way it’s working. All you have to do is gonna be tilt the rod, expose the tip, and the first part that you see essentially, the thinnest part that you see, you hold that between two fingers as the rod is tilted down and you shake it very hard, point it down, you shake it, you make this punching down motion while holding that segment and usually that force of the shaking down is gonna shoot the tip out. If you do not see it, the next thing you can do is just unscrew the cap on a base of the rod and remove the tip segment from the back and then re-insert it back in. So, that’s the way you can deal when you don’t see the rod tip.
17:28 – What rod, what tenkara rod do I use in a small stream with a lot of trees around? So, I mentioned earlier that the average length of a tenkara rod is 12 feet long. It’s a very intimidating length for a fly rod in general if you’re not used to it. So, 12-foot, people look at that and they’re like, “There’s no way I can fish in a small stream especially if there’s trees around me.” And the main thing that I will mention is that you get used to the length of the rod really quickly. So, don’t be too intimidated by that. Don’t be too caught up in that. I can say that I fish very small streams with a lot of trees around me with a 12-foot rod on occasion. I go up to Indian Peaks Wilderness near my home here, very tight streams with a lot of trees around and I use a 12-foot long rod. So, first thing is, don’t be too intimidated by the length of the rod.
18:27 – However, if you are almost exclusively or primarily fishing very small streams, yes, a 12-foot rod is gonna feel long. So, what you have to do when you’re using a long tenkara rod, like a 12-foot rod, you have to use different techniques. First, your casting stroke, you’re not gonna go as far back as you would with a western fly rod or even when the terrain is very open. Typically, your casting stroke with a tenkara rod is gonna be your back cast. You move the right up to 12 o’clock, pointed straight up. Your forward cast you go to 3 o’clock or so. But when you go up to 12 o’clock, you’re shooting the line primarily up and there might be a canopy and that kind of thing.
19:13 – So, the first thing you do is you modify your casting stroke, either not going as far back as you would otherwise or casting over the stream or using different casting techniques and also making a faster casting stroke. So, that’s the first thing about technique. But in specifically which rod would I recommend for fishing a small stream with a lot of trees? The Rhodo is our main rod that we have designed for that. Because, yes, you wanna have a short rod in the Rhodo you can fish that one at eight feet 10 inches to 10 feet six inches. So, I will mention, the 10 feet six inch is already a very short length for a tenkara rod. It’s hard to find. It’s not particularly common to even find those in Japan. I mean, they usually come to around 11 feet or so. There are some 10 and a half feet, but that’s a short tenkara rod.
20:09 – We kind of took an approach of making it, giving you the choice to fish it even shorter if you really feel like you need to. So the rod you can fish it at three different lengths, 8’10”, 9’9″ and 10’6″ and that covers the basis for all small streams. Now, keep in mind that if you do have a longer rod, like say you have a 12-foot long tenkara rod, you can always choke up on the grip of the rod, so if you hold the rod, let’s say you have the Iwana, which is a 12-foot rod and the rod also collapses to about 20 inches or so, if you just hold your rod at the end of the first segment as opposed to on the handle, you’re effectively shortening the rod by a foot and a half roughly, or even two feet if you go a little bit more. So let’s say two feet, you’re choking up on the grip, all of a sudden, you’re fishing your rod at 10 feet in length which is very, very short. Now, if you really want to, you can also collapse one of those segments even though the rod is not particularly designed to do that but you have the option to do so.
21:18 – The main recommendation there kinda getting a little bit ahead of myself is maybe try pairing the rod that you have with a shorter length of rod. And it’s becoming clear to me that I’m gonna have to break this episode into two parts because it looks like I’m gonna have to take some more time. So in the future, pretty soon here, look up for another episode on tenkara lines and the other parts of it as well. But in the tenkara lines part, I will cover the common rigs and different things that you can do for managing different situations in terms of rigging your rod. So, look out for part two, which I might put out at the same time, will see if I can do both of them at the same time, but I’m gonna break this up. Now, the next question besides the small stream is the opposite way, which rod, which tenkara rod do we recommend for a large river? And that’s kind of like when you have a larger river, especially a place that is more open, you don’t have quite as many trees around and overhead, it’s really easy to maneuver a long rod and a long rod gives you a huge advantage because you can cast on the other side of many currents, you can keep the line off the water. You don’t have to quite move in as far, you can pair it with a longer rod more easily and so forth.
22:46 – So just go for the longest tenkara rod you can. Our longest rod is the Ito which you can fish actually at two different lengths. You can fish it at 13 feet long which is already a long tenkara rod or 14 feet 7 inches. Personally, the Ito is actually my favorite rod by far, you see that in my hands more often than any other rod even in small streams, because I know if I go to a bigger water, I have the length that I want, but if I get into a small stream, I can always do different techniques to have a shorter rod with me as well. So with one rod, I can fish in a variety of conditions, but the Ito is our primary suggestion for large waters, and the Amago perhaps at 13 and-a-half-foot, that’s a good option as well. Now, we also get asked very commonly, what are the differences between Tenkara USA rods and other manufacturers? What are the differences between Tenkara USA and Tenkara Rod Company, and so forth? So first let me mention this. So there’s been a lot of confusion in the marketplace about the name to Tenkara Rod Company. It’s one of our competitors. Unfortunately, they chose to use a descriptive term to describe their company and really have taken advantage of the confusion that it has generated.
24:11 – And I wanna get that out there because I see advertisements on Google and it’s making me really upset where they say the original Tenkara Rod Company which is absolutely super misleading, they have, of course, used the Tenkara Rod Company as a brand originally, but we were in the market several years before they came on and they decided to use that confusing term and you see a lot of advertisements that they put out, trying to mislead people in my opinion. So Tenkara USA, at this point, we have been around for 11 years. We were the first company to take tenkara outside of Japan. We were also the first company to put all the pieces together under one brand. We make the tenkara rods, we have designed our own tenkara rods, we have designed, worked with manufacturers to make our tenkara lines as well and we have made our own tenkara flies and we have put all these pieces together as well as a couple of accessories. So, specifically in terms of the Tenkara USA rods, those 11 years have given us a lot of chances to improve our rods a lot over the years. So that’s all we do, we just work on Tenkara USA branded product and we improve them over the years.
25:30 – There’s this Japanese concept called kaizen which is continuous improvement. I’m a strong believer in that. If you have been following Tenkara USA for some time, you probably have seen different iterations of our rods being released. Some of the changes that we have made to some of our rods have been big enough where we felt it warranted a re-release of the rods. For example, the Iwana, we have gone through multiple iterations but some years ago, we decided to make the Iwana 2 which is the current one, we don’t call it the Iwana 2 but we did mention it at that time because there’s enough tweaks there to make it different enough. So the first thing is we have designed our own rods. A lot of the tenkara manufacturers that are marketing tenkara here, they take off the shelf rods that are in the factory, sitting around, put their brand on it, don’t do any work, they just market tenkara. We have taken the approach from the very beginning to produce, design and produce original rods, that’s the first one, and over time we have improved them, quite a bit, significantly actually. A lot of the changes have never been announced, because we just do it because we want to.
26:53 – And that’s kind of the, just the way that we do things, we wanna continuously improve. Most batches of tenkara rods that we make we make some improvement on them and we don’t call it out because we just wanna make the rod better. The other thing too is sometimes people do say our rods are a little bit pricier than others, but I will mention that there’s a reason for that. The, any fly rod, but tenkara rods also, the most important component which makes the entirety of the rod, it’s also one that it’s difficult to gauge the quality because it’s hard to see what’s going on in there, but it’s the carbon fiber. And carbon fiber, if you look at a low grade one versus a high grade and when I talk about low grade and high grade, I’m not talking necessarily about high modulus versus low modulus, which some people refer to. I’m also talking about the weave pattern and the combination of resins that we have to put on with the carbon fiber, the way they’re rolled, the pattern, the cut pattern as well and so forth.
28:07 – So there’s a lot of differences in the carbon fiber and you can make a rod less expensive by skimping on that. And unfortunately, there’s a lot of compromises that start happening, where the rod can become more brittle, it can break more easily, the rod might feel heavier, and there’s all these kind of compromises you have to figure out to make a good tenkara rod at a lower price. Most of our rods are a little bit more expensive because we do spend a lot of money on the carbon fiber, it’s a huge part of the cost obviously, the biggest part of the cost of making the rods. And we believe in strongly in keeping the quality of the carbon fiber that we use at a very high level, because that’s your rod, that’s what’s gonna fight the fish, that’s gonna prevent breakages very easily and so forth. So that’s the second difference, in terms of Tenkara USA rods and most other manufacturers. And the other one I would say, well, maybe another big one is the features and designs that we have made. We have some patents still pending on a couple of our designs but we do have very well thought out features that make the fishing experience very good with Tenkara USA rods.
29:22 – And so those are, I’d say the biggest differences. And then obviously, Tenkara USA rods come with a full lifetime warranty and that’s actually something that sets us apart from every company out there, is our customer service and the warranty that comes with Tenkara USA rods. First of all, there’s a couple of things that we do. If you ever break a Tenkara USA rod, you don’t have to send anything back to us, we were the first company to just start sending a segment out as needed. Occasionally, we may ask somebody to send a rod back if they really want to keep the rod and there’s something that we can work on, but 99.9% of times this time, you don’t have to send anything back to us, we just send you the replacement parts that you need. And that’s for the life of the rod. We’ve been in business for 11 years now, you can ask anybody who’s ever worked with us about our warranty and how we follow through on those and we’re really good about that. I personally have always believed that the way to grow tenkara is to have people sharing their story with each other.
30:37 – You have a good tenkara story, you’re gonna share it. If your rod breaks and you put in a closet because you can’t fix it, then you’re not gonna share tenkara with others or you’re gonna share some disappointment stories. So from the very beginning, we have had really, really good warranty on the rods and to make that easy, we have an incredible team doing customer support. So you can call us at 888-ITenkara, 888-483-6527, you’re gonna get somebody on the phone either immediately or they’re gonna call you back right away. TJ and John do a terrific job at getting back to customers. You can try it. Maybe that’s something you wanna do, try getting a hold of companies that you wanted to work with before you buy a rod and see how fast we get back to you. So that’s the other big difference to support the warranty that we offer. So that’s enough, I think I, sometimes I can get really caught up on that but I feel very passionately strong about the service and the quality of the rod that we make at Tenkara USA, so I kind of sometimes focus too much on that but it’s true.
31:45 – Now, the other question that comes with that is what do I do if I break a tenkara rod? What’s the warranty procedure for fixing a tenkara rod made by Tenkara USA? The other question is, do I need to register my rod with Tenkara USA once I buy it? And that kind of thing. So those are questions that we get in terms of the warranty and let me just kinda go through our process. If, first of all, we have the thing that we, TJ actually put the name on it, but we call it the Tenkara Care Guarantee, which just tells you that if it’s a rod made by Tenkara USA, we’re gonna take care of you. You don’t have to register a rod that you buy if it’s got a Tenkara USA brand on it, we made the parts for it, the parts are typically pretty much never interchangeable with other rods, unless just by coincidence one part is, but Tenkara USA parts are made for tenkara rods. If it has a brand, Tenkara USA brand on it, we trust that it came from us and that we’re working with somebody who bought it from us and we’re gonna make everything that we can to make it easy to take care of your rod, so you can be fishing again pretty soon.
32:51 – So you don’t have to register the rod with us. If you break one of the top three segments on the tip, the tip and the two segments below it, all you have to do is you go to tenkarausa.com/rods and we do have the parts section in there where you can order a tip. And when I say order this is what’s gonna happen for any part that you need, or sometimes multiple parts, we don’t actually charge you anything for the actual part. So the only thing that we charge currently, it’s $17, but that’s literally our shipping and handling cost and we use a fulfillment house, it costs money for them to go pick the part up, put in a box or tube, package it up and get it out the door and for storage, and so forth, so we have that legitimate cost for the picking and packing of the part.
33:56 – And then there’s the shipping cost, so it’s $17 out the door. If you look up shipping costs for your location from either Colorado, where actually our fulfillment house now has moved to Dallas, Texas, you’re gonna see that that’s pretty much our cost. Actually oftentimes, the $17 doesn’t quite cover it, so we get kind of close, but that’s whether you break the tip or any other segments and occasionally, even multiple sections. So all you have to do for the tip segments, go to tenkarausa.com/rods, so you get the tip rod for the model that you need. For the other parts, you can also go through the website to essentially order the $17 warranty, but then just send an email to our team with which rod segments that you need.
34:49 – And we want to communicate with you about those because we wanna make sure we’re sending the right part, but just know that the way we number the parts of tenkara rods, we go from the handle up. So the handle is segment number one, segment above it, the second thickest segment is segment number two, three, four, and so forth. Some of them go up to eight, some of them are seven and then the top three are just gonna be tip sets. So that’s how all you have to do for dealing with warranties with Tenkara USA. Now do Tenkara USA rods come with a case in a sock or a case and a sleeve, if you wanna call it that? And yes, all Tenkara USA rods currently come with a hard case and also a woven cloth-bag, really nice quality cloth bag. And maybe I’ll add to this one. Do I need to use a case with a tenkara rod? And no. So the cases that we sell or that we send out with the tenkara rods, they are primarily extra protective, shipping quality case that’s gonna protect the rod really nicely in rough, very rough conditions, when it’s kind of moving around, perhaps if you throw it in the back of your trunk of your car and so forth, but typically speaking, you don’t need to use the case because the rod itself, the tenkara rod that you have in your hand is its own case.
36:25 – Rod’s made out of carbon fiber, the handle segment is gonna serve as a case where everything else is nested inside. Usually, if I’m backpacking, if I’m traveling, all I do, I either wrap my tenkara rod, my own tenkara rods inside of a some cloth or putting between shirts and that kind of thing in the suitcase, or maybe at the most, have it inside the woven cloth bag. If I am throwing my rod in the trunk of my car with a bunch of other stuff and there’s a higher chance of it breaking, then I’ll use the case, but… So yes, the rod comes with the cases, comes with the socks, all of them do, but you don’t really need to use it if you’re trying to save weight. I think that’s what I was trying to say. Other question that we get recently, been getting recently is I see the Sato and the Rhodo coming as a set on the website. Can I buy different tenkara rod models also as a set? So yes, absolutely. So the way we have built our website at the moment is that we have, because the Rhodo and the Sato tend to be our most popular rods and we just wanted to have one option there for just click on one thing and you’re gonna get all you need to go fishing.
37:48 – So we put those sets on our website for the Rhodo, Tenkara USA Rhodo set and the Tenkara USA Sato set as well. And all that does on our current website, is when you add that to your cart, it’s also gonna add, it’s gonna add the rod and the kit separately, so it just kinda gives you the convenience to go to one place on our website, add it to your cart, but our website is just doing this thing where it adds both products to the website. So it’s not like they’re packaged as a set currently. And you can do that with the Rhodo and Sato, but the other ones all you have to do is you add the rod that you want and you add the kit. We only have one kit that serves really well to all Tenkara USA rods and you add those two items to your website and you have a set. I am debating right now potentially just redoing a little bit of the tenkara rod page to have every rod first available as a set where it’s gonna add the rod and the kit individually to the cart, so when you’re in the checkout process, you’re gonna see the rod and the kit. Make sure to leave both of those in there.
39:03 – Sometimes we see people, because the cart is just gonna show you tenkara rod set and it’s gonna show you $0, it’s gonna show you the rod and it’s gonna show you the kit and the rod price and then a kit for $44. Occasionally, people get confused and they wanna remove one of those items. Please don’t, our website is just adding all those items for you. If you try to remove one of them, customer service is gonna have to contact you to sort out what you wanted to do. So, I’m kind of debating putting all of those as kits on the website and also having a rod separately as well, so we’ll see if that shows up on online. I’ve gotta play with it a little bit. So at 38 minutes right now, that’s the most common questions that we get in terms of tenkara rods that I could think of. If you think of any other questions specific to tenkara rods, please come to tenkarausa.com/podcast and you look up the episode for this page, which is gonna be Q&A or FAQ tenkara rods, or FAQ… I’m gonna probably call it FAQ, Tenkara Q&A part one, tenkara rods, right? And now I’m gonna work on the next part to this episode, so I’m gonna split this up into two parts, the part two of the Tenkara Q&A is gonna be focused on tenkara lines and hopefully, I can also cover tenkara flies and other questions that we get very often.
40:44 – So thanks for joining me on this episode. Hopefully, I answered most of the questions that you might have had about Tenkara USA and tenkara rods in general, if you have other ones, let me know, maybe I’ll do another part if there’s enough of them or I’ll try to answer it in future episodes. Alright, so check out the part two coming up very shortly here. Thank you.
41:28 – And as always I’d like to specially thank Nick Ogawa Takénobu. You can find his music at takenobumusic.com, as well as our Spotify playlists, in Spotify, just look up Tenkara and you should find tenkara tunes with a lot of Takénobu’s music. Find any information referenced in this podcast at tenkarausa.com/podcast. Just find the link to this podcast episode and you’ll find any photos, links or other information referenced right there. This song is called Voyage Across The Sea. Thank you.