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Knot again!

Saturday, 29 September 2007

One knot to rule them all

I've been paying a lot of attention to knot tying lately and through trial and error (a lot of error) the results of my experiments have changed my thinking completely. Several months back I wrote a brief article describing the knots that I was typically using and the reason I gave for adopting them wasn't because I thought they were the most reliable, but because I thought they were the easiest to tie. Admittedly, that was a very lazy approach to take, even if it did make some kind of sense to me at the time. For the most part I was tying the full blood knot (or whatever you want to call it) but since then, I've had more than my fair share of bust offs. In almost every case it was the knot that failed to hold true. Not just with joined line knots (braid to mono) but also at swivels and lures. Although the knots I was using had served me well in my home turf of Victoria, they simply weren't good enough to hold tight on some of the fish I've been hooking up further north.

At a recent soft plastic lure training night (held by pro angler Scott Mitchell) the subject of knot tying came up and I took a lot of notice of what was said. It was pretty clear that Scotto was rather partial to the Uni knot , partly because it is simple enough to tie and also because it's generally quite reliable. Curious about what he thought of the albright knot I asked the question and a deep frown etched across his face. His response was that he'd only ever resort to using it if he had to connect a main line to a wire trace and that he simply wouldn't trust it under any other circumstances. This surprised me a bit, because I've found that the albright does do a pretty good job of holding true on lighter rigs, with braid joined to mono. Despite this, given his credentials I thought I'd change tact and start using a double uni knot to join the main line to the leader and so far it's working for me pretty well.

It goes without saying that I no longer tie the full blood knot and have now replaced it with the uni knot. So far I haven't had any problems with it either and based upon a few simple tests I've done, there's a good chance I'll be sticking with it. Not only is it very easy to tie, it certainly seems to be more reliable than the full blood knot. I've even used it to replace the Perfection loop (or Rapalla knot) which is what I was using for swimming style lures (such as minnow soft plastics and bibbed lures). Instead of sliding it down to the eye of the jig, I just pull it tight a cm or so in front of the eye. I wouldn't have ever thought of doing this if Scott hadn't pointed it out, but I definitely have more confidence in it than I do the perfection loop (which when you think about it, isn't likely to hold any better than a full blood knot). In the event that a fish does pull the knot from it's secured position, the worst that is going to happen is that the knot will slide down and stop short at the eyelet.

So the uni knot has pretty much replaced every other knot I was tying. I'm willing to bet that I won't be losing quite as many fish as a result. They say that if it isn't broke, don't fix it, so if you're using alternative knots and they work for you, by all means, keep on using them. But if you are having breakage issues give the uni knot a try. It seems to be working for me.

Click here to see an animated diagram of the uni knot.

Click here to see Geoff Wilson's knot diagrams at Fishnet