Harvesting and Tying with Zenmai

Jay Guarneri wrote a great article in the 2026 edition of Tenkara Angler about collecting zenmai from ferns and tying kebari with it. He inspired me to go out and collect some of my own zenmai this spring.

Read Jay’s article here, (page 80!) then come back.

Tenkara Angler 2026 is Now a Free Flipbook!

What is zenmai? My Best Streams calls it “cotton of flowering fern” and has this pop-over info box:

Flowerring Fern “Zenmai” sprouts about from April to June and those sprouts are covered with cotton. Zenmai is distributed in the Korean Peninsula, China, Taiwan and the Himalayas. The same kind of Zenmai is distributed worldwide except Australasia. There are Yamadori Zenmai / Cinnamon Fern (Osmunda cinnamomea), Yasha Zenmai (Osmunda lancea), Oni Zenmai (Osmunda claytoniana), Royal Fern (Osmunda regalis), besides Zenmai (Osmunda japonica). The cotton of zenmai is often used to the body of traditional tenkara fly. The people who lived in the mountain village spun the cotton of zenmai into thread and made the winter clothes in the old days because this material has performance of water proof. It can be said that it is a wisdom of the mountain village’s people. It is also well known that the sprouts dries and becomes food.
http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/amago/b-streams/flytying/tenkara.html

Jay recommends looking for Royal Ferns, Cinnamon Ferns, and Interrupted Ferns here in the eastern US. I had a hard time finding them in the woods by our house. Almost all of the ferns I see regularly are not species that make the cotton.

I finally found a patch of Cinnamon Ferns today near a brook and collected about a dubbing pack’s worth of zenmai.

I found the stuff fairly easy to dub with a little wax on my thread. Though as Jay pointed out when I was messaging him on Instagram, I was lucky to get some nice straight fibers, which makes dubbing easier.

I chose to tie futsu-style kebari in size 14 with orange thread and grizzly hackle.

I’ll probably tie some hen pheasant soft hackles next.

I also want to go out and collect some more. I collected from maybe 1/20th of the patch I found. Another bunch similar to what I collected today should do nicely.

Want to buy some zenmai kebari? Go check out Jay’s Kebari Shop on Etsy. He sells them and they look better than mine.