knots knots are an intimidating part of fly fishing and they really don't have to be
i'm going to show you the three knots that i think are the essential knots that you have to know
when you're on the stream these are my favorites these are also the knots that i have found in
years of talking to guides that most guides use and guides are on the river day in and day out
or on a lake or on the ocean day in and day out they want reliable knots so these are the knots
that most people use again there are other knots if you want to explore lots and lots of different
knots sometimes it's fun have at it go nuts but i'm gonna show you the knots that i believe in
and that i use on the water one of the things i'd suggest is that pick a knot and practice
it at home practice it at home with good light so that you can almost tie it with your eyes closed
don't practice snots on the river when you want to go fishing do it at home or do it in a nice quiet
place where you can concentrate because you will have to develop some muscle memory in your fingers
to tie these knots properly so just like casting a little practice is going to help another thing
is to always test your knots before you throw your fly out there you always want to test your
knots because even a knot that looks great can fail and so you got to test them the other thing
to do is you want to wet your knots you want to moisten them with saliva or water just you know
lick them but you want to moisten your knots they'll seat better and eliminate friction that
can heat up the tippet material and weaken the knot so those are the important things to remember
about knots now i'm going to show you those those three knots that i recommend for tying on a fly
the first one is the clinch knot and the clinch knot is very very simple but all you do is you
pass the end of the tippet or leader through the eye of the fly and it doesn't matter which way
you go up or down sideways just pass it through the eye and you form a loop in front of the fly
just by keeping your fingers there in front of it and then you just wrap the tag end the tag end
is the the end that you're going to end up cutting off so you just take this tag end and you wrap it
around five or six times and again you'll develop muscle memory so that your fingers will
do what you want to do eventually and then that loop that you've been holding in front of the
eye should stay open and then you can pass the end of the leader through that loop and then you
want to hold the fly and the tag end together and tighten now you don't want to pull on the tag end
you just want to keep it from slipping through that loop you just want to hold it there in place
and you want to apply pressure on the fly and the standing part so you're going to wet the knot
and then the best way to tighten all these knots is to just give them a quick firm
pull just like that that will seat those barrels on the knot always test your knots make sure that
they're strong make sure that they'll they'll hold up they're not going to slip out and then just
trim the tag end easy knot you probably if you've fished it all you probably use the clinch knot
that's the knot i use to tie on all my flies well most of my flies there are some exceptions but we
won't talk about those here ninety percent of the time i'm using a clinch now the next knot you need
is you need to attach two pieces of tip and material you're going to break tip it you're going
to have to extend your tippet you're going to need to tie two pieces of leader material or tip
it material together you need to know how to tie a surgeon's knot it's important and this is the
knot not only is it this the knot you would use to attach two pieces of tip and putting a new tippet
on your leader but it's also a great knot for adding droppers so if you're adding a second fly
onto your leader you can also use this same knot so it's very very useful this is a triple
surgeon's knot this is the knot i like to use for for tying on tipping so let's do it so i
got two pieces of material here what you want to do is overlap these two pieces i don't know
about three or four inches go a little bit longer when you're starting out and then i like to wet it
it just helps keep the ends together when you're tying this and this is going to be this side is
going to be my tippet okay this is the this is the piece that's going to attach to the fly the other
side is going to go to the rest of my leader and my fly line so all you do is you first form a loop
just a simple loop like so and then you take that tippet and the short strand that goes with it
and you go around the loop three times so one you got to make sure that both ends go through
two
three
now very important although this is an easy knot to tie it needs to be tightened properly as all
knots and to tighten this properly you need to make sure that you're holding both long ends and
both short ends tightly if you lose control of one of those ends the knot can fail it's not going to
seat properly not going to tighten properly so again just like with all knots you wet it
and then you hold all four ends making sure that you've got a good grip on them and then as with
all knots give it a quick firm pull to tighten like so and that is the triple surges and then
of course you're going to snip both of the short ends off but that is the surgeon's
knot there's one more knot that you might need and that's a knot to tie a loop into a piece of
leader material you don't use it that often but it's a good idea to know how to put a loop in
the end of a leader and so this is the perfection loop and this is a little tricky or not but you
start and you bring the short end back around the long end behind it and then you take a loop around
again you go completely around so that you have a big loop and a little loop and then
you take this tag end and you flip it over to the far side between the loops and then you pull
the short loop through the long loop
you have a perfection loop so don't agonize over knots they're not that hard
pick one pick the one that you like if you want to use different knots than i do that's perfectly
fine try them out try them all out see which is easiest for you to tie but you need to have some
knot to attach a fly and some not to attach two pieces of leader material practice them at home
get comfortable with them and you'll have a lot more fun and be a lot more relaxed on the water
you