Would a coarse anglers' whip be suitable for Tenkara-style fishing? And if not, why not?
Angus

Also about 10% of the cost....

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Just My Tuppenceworth!!

There is a photo on page 5 of this thread: Birthday Tenkara grayling about 3/4 of the way down the page that shows the tip of a tenkara rod and the tip of a whip for comparison. It pretty clearly illustrates the difference in sensitivity.

A tenkara rod has a very thin, very flexible tip so that you can easily cast a very light line (.285mm fluoro works nicely) and also protect a light tippet. People catch 20-24" trout on 5x tippets.

Since your question was about "tenkara style" fishing, the answer is yes, but...

You can fish "tenkara style," but you will not be able to do it as successfully. Using a whip would almost certainly require using a heavier line to be able to cast well. A heavier line will be harder to hold off the water's surface, so drag will be much more of an issue. One of the biggest advantages of tenkara is that the light line can be held off the water - producing very little drag. Also, I suspect a whip will not be as forgiving when using light tippets.

The question (and answer) is about the same as asking if you could use a _____________________ rod for __________________ fishing (where the type of rod and type of fishing are not the same. The answer is yes you could, but why would you?

CM,

It's very hard to scale, but the pole whip tip in the picture look much thicker than whips I have owned. I had a Leeda alborella a few years ago, the tip was only just over 1mm thick at the end.

The tip in the picture also looks hollow, I recall the tip section of my old whip was solid and tapered, probably about 18" long. You could bend it double with very little effort.

I'll have a root in the garage.

I have some whips in the garage from my coarse fishing days and the tips are as thin as the tenkara tips and solid carbon
When i used it on the canals I used 0.06 hook lengths and landed some quite large fish (perch) and didn't suffer from lines snapping
so I would say yes they would be more than suited to the job

Thanks folks.
Angus

Hi - its physically possible to use a whip but for me the feel is entirely different. Also, if you look at the method for landing fish when your leader+tippet length is greater than the rod, you need to be sure that your whip can be bent back on itself as pictured below (you'd never bend a fly rod in the same way for example).




---------- Post added at 09:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:42 AM ----------

PS, Simmo asked me to do an article for his site on Tenkara (link below if you are interested).

I Fly Fish Tenkara