At our Friday breakfast I showed what I had done to the group (minus Augie) to which Chester published the following:

Al just couldn't stand it that Murray bought a Tenkara rod. Ever since Al heard about it, he has been obsessed with all things Tenkara. He's spent hours scouring the web for any information on the available Tenkara rods, the manufacturers (including but not limited to Shimano, Gamakatsu, Nissin, Suntech, Daiwa, Shimotsuke, Yokoshima, Motsugo, Wakata, Kamasu and others), the history, the construction, the materials, the finishes, the lines, the flies, the techniques, you name it and Al looked into it.

After our Friday the 13^th FBF session at HC (sorry you couldn't make it Augie), Al proudly displayed his version of a Tenkara rod which included a new patent pending line attachment function and a newly branded "Alkara" name. Note in the Al Describes The Alkara Rod photo, the rapt attention being paid as Al describes his Alkara rod to the highly skeptical, I mean interested Murray, Mike and Rudy F.

In truth, Al's Alkara rod is his old Courtland 6 weight fly rod with no attached reel. As you know, Al managed to mooch a 14 foot section of 5 weight fly line from Augie after our Royal Wok outing before last Wednesday's BAS club meeting. What Al has done is tied a large perfection loop on one end of the fly line and on the other end his tied a more petit perfection loop.

As seen in the Alkara Rod Line Attach Point photo attached, Al slides the larger perfection loop around the rod butt handle and slides it up to either the first or second guide. In the attached photo he's attached it to the first guide and he then threads the line through all the remaining guides, and out of the rod tip. He then attaches tippet only to the smaller perfection loop of the fly line using a loop to loop connection, then attaches a fly to the end of the tippet.
According to Al, this is a much better system than the centuries old Tenkara rod as it gives more flexibility in retrieving caught fish and doesn't rely on the tiny lillian attachment (small braided cord) coming out of a Tenkara rod tip.

Al's Alkara rod highlights are:
1) You don't have to buy anything extra. If you have a fly rod, you too can convert it to a (as yet to be highly acclaimed) Alkara rod. This thinking is similar to thinking that if you have a $180,000 Mercedes, you can remove the tires and have a nice camping tent.
2) You have more flexibility in quickly adjusting the length of your line. You also are more likely to piss away a large portion of your day whilst undoing the set up you've just gone through in order to change things up to be ready "quicker" to changing conditions.
3) You have better options on line handling on retrieve. In other words you will have yet more way to have your fly line wrapped around your body at the most critical time of attempting to land a caught trout.
4) You have delusions of grandeur. No wait, that goes for ALL fishing rods and techniques.

We'll have to make sure on our next outing Al gives us the 100 point rundown on why Alkara is better than Tenkara and for that matter any other form of fishing.