Your Questions About Fly Fishing Knots

Joy answers:

I don’t much like the blood knot — I used it for a long time, too, but I think it just has too many turns in it, especially for delicate tippet. It’s also really hard to tie and it’s somewhat easy to tie wrong. Sometimes I would avoid changing out my tippet just because I hated that knot so bad — who knows how many fish I lost? What I have been using for the past few years is the surgeon’s knot, which you can see here:

http://www.killroys.com/knots/surgeon.htm

(You can also see it elsewhere on the Internet — that was the first link I found and it looked good.)

This is a bomber knot and it’s super easy to tie. Cold fingers, tiny tippet, bad eyesight — doesn’t matter. If you can tie a granny knot, you can tie a surgeon’s knot. It’s so easy I’ve always been confused how I never heard about it earlier.

I will add one thing, though — be SURE to lubricate ALL knots before cinching them down! Never, never skip this step when working with fishing line, especially with knots that have lots of turns and twists. Spit on the knot or dip it in the water — fishing line really needs that lube so that it doesn’t burn or crack when the knot is tightened.