Oni Blog
Iwana Spawn Watching Event Report: Itoshiro River Day 2
Posted on | December 4, 2012
It’s ”kanpai” time！
The second night we all stayed together at a lodge and
enjoyed “sukiyaki” with Hida beef.
Hida is a mountainous region close to Itoshiro and also known
for their tender and exquisite fat marbled beef much
like the Kobe beef.
Exquisite Hida Beef.
It is cooked in broth made with soy sauce, sugar and sake,
the Japanese rice wine.
How it is cooked though is different in eastern Japan and west.
In eastern Japan, sugar is put directly on top of beef in the deep pan,
and the soy sauce/sake poured in after.
In Western Japan the meat is cooked in readily blended sauce.
I personally don’t see the difference, but us Japanese like
to follow the traditions.
Lot of vegetables could go into sukiyaki as well.
After diner was a lucky draw raffle event!
Everyone chanted “rods, rods,” but the prized were hats,
stickers and local rice…
Time for the lucky raffle game!
The next morning Ishigaki sensei took off with Mr. Kimura.
As soon as they departed… guess what, the sun came out.
Thanks to all for coming!
Can you see the fish?
It was incredible. Even came with a rainbow in a distance.
In terms if Iwana spawning, I suspect we were about 1 week
too late.
They all had separated. Iwana survive multiple spawning,
unlike many other cousin species of trout.
We still got to see some of them in the water.
That’s enough to keep members of Team Oni happy and smiling.
On the way home, we all had soba together again.
We cherish food that are “in season” in Japan.
They are the most nutritious and give you the energy you need.
We got to see snow covered hills, mountain sides covered with c
olors of autumn on the way down, had some great soba noodle
s and won some rice.
It’s 10 hours round trip, but I shall visit Itoshiro again.
Some nice scenery on the way back.
Had soba again on the way home. This time in warm broth.
Soba-gaki (buckwheat flour dumpling) and grilled Mino
COMMENTS
2 Responses to “Iwana Spawn Watching Event Report: Itoshiro River Day 2”
Leave a Reply
December 5th, 2012 @ 5:38 AM
Very nice to see the pictures and share in the spirt of your gathering. The food and friends in the scenic places all make for good feelings. I think visiting the Fish during the spawn and not fishing but instead observing is a very nice tradition.
Thank you for sharing the event.
Jeremy
December 6th, 2012 @ 11:23 AM
Jeremy,
Thank you for your comment. We believe in connecting with people and sharing information as much as possible and this event in Itoshiro was just another occasion that allowed us to do so. Events like this give us an opportunity to watch together where fish like to hang out, how they feed, talk about how one should approach them, how to present a kebari, and such. I’d highly recommend watching the spawning to anyone serious about stream fishing because it really does improve how one would fish. Once you understand how fish behave, it gets much easier to figure out the “how”.
We look forward to hearing from you again Jeremy.
Happy Tenkara Fishing!
Masami Sakakibara & Team Oni