GEAR | The Patagonia Tenkara Fly Rod

When I came back from a fishing trip to Wyoming, I wrote a bit of a satirical piece for Vogue.com about the role Instagram plays in our lives, using a frustrating float trip down the Snake River as a perfect example of how reality can be so wildly imperfect and stand in direct contrast to our virtual lives on Instagram. It's called Fly-fishing for an Instagram. It is (hopefully) funny and just slightly sarcastic, and was a lot of fun to write.

The real surprise of the trip wasn't that we (spoiler alert) didn't land any fish, but how much I enjoyed using the new Patagonia Tenkara Fly rod ($200-$225). We broke it out well into the day just for fun, thinking there'd be no chance we'd be knowledgable or practiced enough to score with a whole new style of fishing that was completely foreign, but this simple zen-like Japanese-style fishing rod is so simple and so uncomplicated that we all instantly fell in love. It's easy to use and easy to understand, it's completely intuitive, the way fishing, arguably, used to be. The book that goes along with rod, Simple Fly-Fishing ($25) is not only instructive, but it completely changed my outlook on the sport. It's must read for any fly-fisherman or fly-fisherwoman.