Tenkara techniques: Landing fish with long lines

Sometimes to improve our technique we must watch examples of how something should not be done. Yesterday a video showing a tenkara angler in Japan using a very long line was brought up in our forum. The angler is probably using some 30ft of line, which is on the very long end of the scale for tenkara lines but still manageable. However, the video shows very poor landing technique for landing a fish with such a long line. In the Japanese video shown at the bottom of this post, the angler plays the fish much longer than necessary and instead of grabbing the line to bring the fish closer to him, he walks back up the bank and beaches the fish.

 

So that you know better, when you decide to use a line longer than your tenkara rod, the proper technique is pretty simple and consists of simply lowering the rod tip towards your back so you can bring the line closer to you, then grab the line and hand-line the fish closer to you. The video we produced last year and posted  below shows decent technique, I have improved it since making the video: do not lift your arm high as I do in the video below at 1:40, you can keep your elbow bent while you calmly do bring the line and fish closer to you. Then, try bringing the fish to a place with calmer water so you can subdue him closer to you and calmly net the fish OK technique for landing fish with long lines can be seen here (should have kept my arm lower, this gives more control of the line and of the fish and is less tiring):

17" Brown recently landed using about 28ft of line:

THIS SHOWS BAD TECHNIQUE: REPEAT, BAD TECHNIQUE - DO NOT TREAT FISH THIS WAY. READ REST OF POST ABOVE!