About Us

Dr. Hisao Ishigaki, Daniel Galhardo and Chris Stewart fishing for golden trout in Yosemite National Park.

LearnTenkara.com emerged from a feature-length documentary about tenkara that is still in active production. While shooting this movie since September 2010, we have acquired hours and hours of great fishing footage and interviews with tenkara luminaries such as Dr. Hisao Ishigaki, Daniel Galhardo, Chris Stewart and Ryan Jordan. A lot of this material happens to be instructional in nature, and for that reason it is not likely to make it into the final film, which will focus on the overall tenkara phenomenon and not so much on the nitty gritty of “how to.”

But it’s still some great stuff. So rather than hoard and possibly never even release this valuable instructional material, we created LearnTenkara.com to share it with the world. Ashley Valentine, a production and editorial assistant on the documentary, is culling some of the best instructional footage to make short videos and transforming some of the interviews into written articles. Formerly a Western-style angler, Ashley has become a tenkara convert since working on the movie, and she will chronicle her own attempt to master tenkara on her blog.

To be clear, these are the two projects:

1. The tenkara feature-length documentary: Still in active production, release date undetermined, it will have its own website eventually. The documentary will explore the introduction of tenkara fishing to the United States, with a particular focus on Daniel Galhardo.

2. LearnTenkara.com: A separate project focused on high-quality tenkara instruction from the masters. Watch how-to videos, read interviews with tenkara experts, and follow along with Ashley as she endeavors to master this simple but challenging style of fishing.

Please let us know what you think of this site so far, and what you’d like to see on it.