Tenkara is included in the art of fly fishing: a hypothesis on the origin of the word suggests that it means “from the sky” (ten = sky and kara = from), referring to the fly that is dropped on the water and that indeed comes from the sky. It is an ancient technique of fly fishing, practised in Japan since the eighth century, and which makes use of only a rod, a fishing line and an artificial fly.

It is a very simple fishing system, but very exciting, especially in the pre-alpine torrents of Friuli Venezia Giulia. I wanted to experiment with this technique in a fishing outing on the Pontebbana torrent, which flows into the river Fella running to the side of Pontebba, dropping down from the Val Canale.

Here, you can find colourful native brown trout and marble trout in its final stretch; the setting is natural and very beautiful. We caught many trout and the practice here is exclusively catch and release (as should always be the case).