THE LATEST NEWS and advice on fly fishing, fly fishing gear, fly fishing trips, and fly fishing books and media.It's Not the Knot
The more one reads about knots and more practice one has in tying them, the easier it is to understand why how well a knot is tied makes as much -- or more -- difference in its strength than its purported "percentage." So whenever I read an article that touts a particularly suspect knot -- in this case the Improved Clinch -- I try to quickly lose my Knot Professor's grimace.
Truth be known, I still use an Improved Clinch sometimes, and I have never had one fail. Does that make it a good knot, or is it a bad knot because if I put it on knot-testing machine it fails at 74% of labeled line strength? As with flies and most things fly-fishing, it's often about confidence and technique. But if you are teaching someone terminal knots, do them a favor and chose the Palomar or Trilene or some variation of those. GlobalFlyFisher has one of the better sets of "2D" instructions for tying these and other knots.
