Pro Tips: Secrets of a Knot Junkie

Written by: Drew Price

It was on my first saltwater trip to the
Everglades that I came to understand the importance of tying good knots. I had
made the long trip from northern New York to Flamingo with one of my college professors
(and fishing buddies) to chase snook, tarpon, and redfish from a canoe.

We were working Coot Bay, a fairly good-size piece
of water, by casting bunny flies to the edges, just like we would for pike back
home. Many hours had passed, but we’d seen little more than needlefish, small
snappers, and the occasional alligator or crocodile in the mangroves. We got to
the far end of the bay, close to Tarpon Creek, when I learned the lesson I had
so sorely needed and have never forgotten since.

A huge snook came charging out of the mangroves
and smashed the yellow bunny. More than two decades later, I can still see it
clearly. I am willing to bet the fish was close to 40 inches, the fish of a
lifetime. I set the hook and can still feel the horror as one of my blood knots
parted effortlessly. Being a poor college kid, I had tied my own leaders out of
heavy mono. I thought I had tied good blood knots . . . but I had not checked
them.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf
says to Frodo “The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes
to the heart.” I got burned badly, and the lesson stuck. I worked on my knots
and frequently tested them.

Knots are your connection to the line, the fly,
and ultimately the fish. Knowing what knots to tie, how to tie them well, and
how to check them will help you land more fish. There is no question that knots
can be a challenging part of fly fishing, but there are tricks that will help
make a big difference.

The best place to learn a new knot is sitting at
home. When I am guiding, I am happy to show a client which knot I am using and
how to tie it. After that, I tell them that I will gladly tie that knot for the
rest of the day. A new-to-you knot is not likely to have the strength of a
practiced knot. Muscle memory is very important, and after you have tied a knot
several dozen times, your fingers become used to the movements needed to
successfully tie a strong knot. After my snook incident, I started tying knots
while sitting at home watching TV or listening to music.

When I am trying to learn a new knot, I do the
same thing. Sometimes I still sit down and just tie knots for practice. Get an
inexpensive spool of monofilament to practice with, and keep tying the knot
over and over again. See how much faster you get between the time you start to
practice and when you finish. You will also likely see that the knots get
smaller and test stronger.

There is a wealth of information available—books,
magazine articles, videos and tutorials online, apps, and fishing buddies—to
help you learn fly fishing knots. At times it can be overwhelming to see how
much is out there, making you feel like you need to know a hundred knots to be
successful. Nothing could be further from the truth. In all the fishing and
guiding that I do, I use about a half dozen knots regularly. I know them, trust
them, and they have served me well. I have my own preferences, and you will
surely develop your own, as well. The key is to find which knots work for you
and then to practice tying them efficiently and well.

The number of turns in your knots matters. In Fly
Fisherman Magazine years ago, the late, great Lefty Kreh wrote that he had
developed a knot-testing tool and tested hundreds of knots of different turns
in the same tippet material. My biggest takeaway from that is that, for most
knots, 6 turns is the magic number, especially with fluorocarbon. More turns was
just wasted effort. In my experience, this holds true except when you get into
heavier line. Usually, 4 or 5 turns does the trick for mono and fluorocarbon
over 20-pound-test, and you might need just 2 or 3 for bite wire.

Another key to knots is lubrication. With
most knots, the final pull produces a fair amount of friction, which heats up
the line and can cause it to lose strength. Wetting the line in your mouth with
some spit helps to reduce the friction.

There are a whole lot of knot-helping tools on
the market. Some of them work really well, while others not so much. Much like
tying the knots themselves, it pays to practice with the tool and know how it
works before you get to the water. There are subtleties in using the tools that
are much easier to learn at home than while you are watching a feeding trout 30
feet away.

Another trick I have found myself using a fair
amount these days is the tippet ring. I don’t use them for all types of fishing
but they come in really handy in a couple of situations. The first is where I
am using a long straight piece of tippet as a means to get and keep my flies
deep. A straight piece of 8 or 10 lb fluorocarbon to a tippet ring with the
terminal knot of your choice and then tying on the lighter tippet to the ring.
This rig helps sink things fast and provides a stopper for any shot you might
put on the line.

The second situation is with wire or heavy
mono/fluoro. Most of the time I prefer an Albright knot but there are times
this connection just doesn’t seem to be working for the materials I am using or
I might just want to be able to replace the bite without losing much leader (a
must for busy spring pike fishing). It also helps if you have a really light
leader to connect to the bite tippet (I have a client that chases line class
fish and this method has worked wonders). I tie my leader to the tippet ring
with a Trilene knot then tie a clinch with the bite and finish with a non-slip
mono loop to the fly.

Testing your knots helps a great deal too. There
is no worse feeling than making your first cast and seeing the leader or fly
part because of a poorly tied knot, except of course losing a fish to that same
connection. After seating the knot properly I like to give a steady pull on the
fly and connecting knots. With a heavier fly and tippet for larger fish instead
of holding the fly I will put it in a hole in my pliers, hemostats or a
carabiner and really reef on it. In those situations, especially if I am using
a bite tippet connection I will often give it a really hard sharp tug to
simulate a strike. If my connection can’t handle that it definitely will not
survive a big pike or musky smashing it.

Thinking about knots before you need to use them
makes a huge difference. Learn them, practice them and you will start turning
the odds in your favor to land more and bigger fish. Hopefully that will help
prevent you from seeing the notorious tippet pig tail of shame.

For the record, here are the knots I use:

Trilene Knot