Quote Originally Posted by CM_Stewart View Post
If that is what you have read, you have been misinformed. Tenkara fishing very definitely involves casting. The cast is very much like a fly fishing steeple cast, in which your back cast is high and you forward cast is down towards the water so that the fly lands first. If you do not haul (or double haul) the motion of the hand, arm - and line - is almost identical.
I'm in total agreement with Chris; when fishing a fixed-length line set up such as we discuss in this forum, the use of an actual cast is definitely involved, on par with any fly fishing related set up using snake guides.

Now please excuse me for going off on a bit of a tangent. Perhaps my biggest tenkara related pet peeve is the terminology we use for the stringy things involved in tenkara. I personally don't think it makes sense to refer to the main portion of the stringy stuff as a leader. I think it causes nothing but confusion.

The confusion it causes for me may be more pronounced, since I primarily fish a furled stringy, and the stringy stuff set up I use consists of three distinct parts -

+ A main line which provides mass in order to carry along the near massless fly
+ An intermediate portion designed to transition between the main line and final termination of the stringed stuff
+ A terminal piece of small diameter string to which the fly is attached

So for me, I need three names to talk about my string stuff - main line, leader and tippet. I can see how this might not be an issue for folks who fish a single strand line and tie it directly to a tippet. Even then I would argue that the single strand is there not to provide a transition (as is implied by the term leader), it is there to provide mass in order to deliver the weightless fly. I'm not sure there may not be good reasons to include a intermediate transition between the main line and tippet when using a single strand line.

Calling the whole thing a leader may not hurt, but it certainly doesn't help to explain it's purpose. It seems to lend itself to the idea that since there is no line involved, one must just be dappling.

Sorry for the rant.