A Little Bit About Me

Welcome to my tenkara journey…

Where every time I see a body of water you will hear me say…

“I’d fish that”

My name is Amanda Hoffner and I am LadyTenkaraBum…

Firstly, I’d like to introduce myself as a lady angler who possesses the schooling and training as a critical care registered nurse. I prefer to be on a mountain stream, but also realize I need to be productive in other areas of society than inspiring and pushing others into the mountains, creeks, and tenkara. So, when I am not fishing tenkara style, then I am in either a cath lab or cardiac icu keeping people alive or trying to. I love what I do as a career and also in my spare time. Alongside of my fiancé and love, Rachael Rosenstein, I live and hang out in the Catawba Watershed of the United States with our black cat, Vega. Rachael is usually chasing me down as I bushwhack through brush to get to water and taking my picture. When she isn’t with me, then she is being a bird nerd and chasing waterfalls. My own personal paparazzi, check out her photography here.

I currently work in the southern states of the US, but will always be a Pennsylvanian at heart. I grew up fishing in Northeastern Pennsylvania and it is where I got my fishing shoes wet. My heart will always be drawn to those mountains and those creeks. However, traveling and seeing most of the Appalachia up and down the East coast of the US has been lovely and inspiring. My goal in life is to catch a brook trout in every state that they currently inhabit natively. So far, I have caught native brookies in the states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. So, the few states I have left are Georgia, West Virginia, Michigan and Maryland! I look forward to this tenkara adventure in the future.

I am fortunate enough to have been involved in a community on Instagram called the “Fixed Line Freaks”. This has lead to making friends in the tenkara-verse and connections to people around the world who do tenkara or would like to experience the style of fixed line fishing. Most of my fishing since starting fixed line fishing has been with a tenkara rod. I enjoy being outside and in nature, but because of the portability and compact travel size of a tenkara rod, I am most likely packing a rod, line, and some flies when I am hiking and exploring the outdoors.

I also like to make sure people have the opportunity to do what I do since I enjoy it so much. So, I have been known to lend a rod or several to people in order to spread the good word of tenkara. Since there are rarely any fly fishing shops with tenkara gear on hand, let alone people who might not have much knowledge on the fishing style or the want to push the product, there is not much exposure to the sport itself. I would encourage everyone to fish a small blue line or wild trout stream with a tenkara rod if I could…and I do! 🙂 That is where the Heritage Tenkara Project comes in. You can read more about that on this website somewhere too!

For the past year or so, I have been the vice chair of the Native Fish Coalition of South Carolina and am looking forward to increasing my conservation knowledge and encouraging others to value our waterways in order to enhance our land, water, and ecosystems. Being a native Pennsylvanian and having the opportunity to travel with my job, I am fortunate enough to have traveled and fished every New England state and caught native fish in each. This exploration has inspired me to want to share my adventures with people on social media and record my journey on this platform in order to document important findings and pass on information that I find interesting and important.

Please feel free to reach out to me via instagram or facebook if you have any questions regarding anything tenkara related. You can find me by searching “ladytenkarabum”. If I dont have the answer, then I can point you to somebody who does. Looking forward to talking tenkara and fishing with you!