Why I make you learn the knot first
Okay. New module, and I feel like this one's going to annoy some of you a little, because you came here to cast, not to sit at your kitchen table tying loops in a piece of string. I get it. But I'm going to make you do it anyway, and here's why.
A beautiful cast with a bad knot loses you the fish. Every time. I don't care how pretty your loop looks in the air or how far it lands out there past the riffle. If the knot slips, the fish takes your fly and swims off with it, and you stand there holding a limp line wondering what just happened. I've watched it happen to grown men who've been casting for years. It's not a beginner problem, it's a knot problem, and it's completely avoidable.
So this module is going to feel backwards. We're not casting yet. We're tying.
The one knot you actually need
There are a lot of knots in fly fishing. Guys will tell you about the surgeon's knot and the nail knot and about six others, and honestly, some of those I still can't tie right myself (the double surgeon's, I fumble it every single time, I've made my peace with it). But there's one knot that does most of the work for a beginner, and that's the improved clinch knot. It's the one that ties your fly onto the end of your leader.
Learn this one cold. Not "I can do it if I go slow and nobody's watching." Cold. In the dark, in the cold, with your hands shaking a little, because that's honestly what conditions on the river can feel like sometimes.
Here's how to practice it at home, no fly rod required:
- Get a length of leader material or even just some fishing line, maybe two feet, and something small to tie it to. A safety pin works. So does an old hook if you've got one, just be careful with the point.
- Thread the line through the eye, leave yourself about six inches of tag end.
- Twist that tag end around the main line, five or six turns.
- Bring the tag end back through the little loop you made right next to the eye.
- Then through the big loop that made, cinch it down slow, wet it with a little spit before you pull it tight (this actually matters, it keeps the friction from weakening the line).
- Trim the tag.
Do that fifteen times tonight in front of the TV. Then do it fifteen more tomorrow. You want your hands doing it without your brain fully supervising, because on the river your brain is going to be busy with wind and cold fingers and a fish rising twenty feet upstream and you won't have the bandwidth to think hard about a knot.
Why I'm stubborn about this
I mentioned reading water beats fancy gear, back a few lessons ago. Knots are the other half of that same idea. It's not about what you're holding, it's about whether you actually understand what you're doing with it. A guy with a forty dollar rod and a knot he trusts will out-fish a guy with a beautiful rod and a knot he's not sure about. I'll say that until somebody believes me.
Jennifer and the eleven minutes
I had a friend from the ward, Jennifer, ask me once at a dinner what fly fishing was even for. Just genuinely curious, not being snarky about it. And I did what I always do, which is over-explain. I went eleven minutes. The rolls got cold on the table while I talked about drift and presentation and how a trout reads current. Tricia was giving me a look from across the table the whole time.
Jennifer signed up for the class anyway, bless her, and when she got to this exact lesson, the knot lesson, she told me it was the first thing that actually made her feel like she was doing "real" fly fishing instead of just listening to me talk about it. Something about having something in her hands to work on. I think that's true for most people. You can hear me explain the theory of a good drift for as long as you want, it won't stick the way tying the same knot thirty times will.
A quick, real caution
When you're practicing at home with an actual hook and not a safety pin, pinch the barb down first, or better yet just practice on a barbless hook or a bent paperclip. I hooked my own ear once on a completely different occasion, barbless thank goodness, and still had to explain it at church the next morning. Don't give yourself a reason to explain anything to anybody.
Before next time
Tie that clinch knot until your fingers know it without your eyes helping much. Bring your practice line and whatever you tied it to, we'll check hands on next time before we go anywhere near a cast.