knotted leader/tippet help

I thought I'd interject a little fly fishing topic.

After turning my nice new tapered leader into a much shorter version due to
wind knots, I've learned how to tie the brutal blood knot, which I suspect
was named after legions of anglers who blew the corresponding vessel while
trying to tie the damn thing. Anyway, I've lost several feet off my
formerly 4X taper and am now up to a 2X. A couple questions:

Q. Is it practical to drop a couple mils at a time on an all-knot leaders
or should it always be 1 mil at a time?

Q. What are good "rule of thumb" lengths for each size from butt to tippet
for a med trout stream? I've seen some hair-raising equations, but am not
interested in getting quite that fanatical at this point.

Q. I've been buying 20 yd Trilene XL leader spools at $1.50 per, a great
price. But, since I'm no doubt going to be breaking these suckers off
wholesale, forever, would it be better to invest in Trilene fishing line?
IOW, is it the same stuff? I have a spool of .009 XL fishing line which I
used to extend out my shortened taper line. Is this ok?

nb

notbob wrote:
I thought I'd interject a little fly fishing topic.

After turning my nice new tapered leader into a much shorter version due to
wind knots, I've learned how to tie the brutal blood knot, which I suspect
was named after legions of anglers who blew the corresponding vessel while
trying to tie the damn thing.

Learn to tie a surgeon's knot.

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

It's stronger than a blood knot, faster and easier to tie, and works far
better for lines of very different diameters.

Not quite a pretty , though.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

"rw" wrote in message
m...

Learn to tie a surgeon's knot.

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

It's stronger than a blood knot, faster and easier to tie, and works far
better for lines of very different diameters.

Not quite a pretty , though.

1. Prior experience with the surgeon's knot is
needed before you can get the link lengths anywhere
near specifications: but this can be learned.
2. When I tie with surgeon's knots the leader is
not straight, but deviates at each knot by 20+ degrees.
Is this RW's "non-prettiness" or just bad tying technique?

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:41:37 -0400, "Don Phillipson"
wrote:

"rw" wrote in message
om...

Learn to tie a surgeon's knot.

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

It's stronger than a blood knot, faster and easier to tie, and works far
better for lines of very different diameters.

Not quite a pretty , though.

1. Prior experience with the surgeon's knot is
needed before you can get the link lengths anywhere
near specifications: but this can be learned.
2. When I tie with surgeon's knots the leader is
not straight, but deviates at each knot by 20+ degrees.
Is this RW's "non-prettiness" or just bad tying technique?

The "unstraightness" is intrinsic to a double-surgeons knot.
A triple-surgeons knot, otoh, is straight...and prettier, I suppose...

/daytripper

daytripper wrote:

The "unstraightness" is intrinsic to a double-surgeons knot.
A triple-surgeons knot, otoh, is straight...and prettier, I suppose...

I agree that the triple surgeon's is better, but I'm usually in too much
of a hurry. :-)

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:53:43 -0700, rw
wrote:

daytripper wrote:

The "unstraightness" is intrinsic to a double-surgeons knot.
A triple-surgeons knot, otoh, is straight...and prettier, I suppose...

I agree that the triple surgeon's is better, but I'm usually in too much
of a hurry. :-)

Well, I didn't say the triple was "better" - though I conceded it could be
"prettier" ;-) It is stronger, for sure, but not by a whole heck of a lot, if
one ties their doubles correctly.

I use the double for almost all freshwater leaders - the exception being heavy
leaders for fishing river smallies, or fishing the Salmon River in the fall
for some heavy-weight salmon and steelies. For sal****er leaders I use the
stronger triple, as there's no concern about gathering moss and such - or
having trout keep hitting the damned knots ;-)

/daytripper (tomorrow might just be my first time out this year! :-)

On 2008-04-15, daytripper wrote:

The "unstraightness" is intrinsic to a double-surgeons knot.
A triple-surgeons knot, otoh, is straight...and prettier, I suppose...

Not in my experience. I just went in a tied half dozen double-surgeons and
half dozen triples. They both angle off hideously, the double often at 45
deg. No, I worked too damn hard to learn that dang blood clot of a knot and I
shall not be deprived! Besides, it's purty.

nb

notbob wrote:
On 2008-04-15, daytripper wrote:


The "unstraightness" is intrinsic to a double-surgeons knot.
A triple-surgeons knot, otoh, is straight...and prettier, I suppose...


Not in my experience. I just went in a tied half dozen double-surgeons and
half dozen triples. They both angle off hideously, the double often at 45
deg. No, I worked too damn hard to learn that dang blood clot of a knot and I
shall not be deprived! Besides, it's purty.

nb

Try pulling the tag ends and the running ends as uniformly and smoothly
as possible. You want the two loops to snug down simultaneously and
uniformly. If you don't do this, the knot will not only be ugly, but weak.

It's very easy to screw up a surgeon's knot while you're tightening it.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:29:12 GMT, notbob wrote:

On 2008-04-15, daytripper wrote:

The "unstraightness" is intrinsic to a double-surgeons knot.
A triple-surgeons knot, otoh, is straight...and prettier, I suppose...

Not in my experience. I just went in a tied half dozen double-surgeons and
half dozen triples. They both angle off hideously, the double often at 45
deg. No, I worked too damn hard to learn that dang blood clot of a knot and I
shall not be deprived! Besides, it's purty.

nb

Well...you are, in fact, very very "new" at this stuff...so your experience
isn't surprising. Practice practice practice.

Also, fwiw, if you ever fish with a guide and start that blood-knot thing on
the stream, you're likely gonna get an earful and a half, as a guide wants his
client to be fishing, not taking forever to tie knots ;-)

/daytripper

"notbob" wrote in message
...
On 2008-04-15, daytripper wrote:

The "unstraightness" is intrinsic to a double-surgeons knot.
A triple-surgeons knot, otoh, is straight...and prettier, I suppose...

Not in my experience. I just went in a tied half dozen double-surgeons
and
half dozen triples. They both angle off hideously, the double often at 45
deg.

Sounds like you're doing it wrong. In preparing to tie this knot correctly
the leader and the tippet are aligned as they should be when finished
(diagram a.). The kind of angles you describe suggest that you've got the
tippet reversed, which is to say that it is parallel to and along side the
leader for its entire length (diagram b.).

a.

line ___________________________
tippet ________________

b.

line _____________________________
tippet _________________


The surgeon's knot is simply an overhand knot with two or more turns on two
strands. Done correctly, starting at the position in a. above, the
overlapped portions of both strands are looped and then the end of the
leader and the entire tippet is wrapped the desired number or times through
the loop. This will always result in a straight line as long as the knot is
properly tightened. Starting as in b., the loop is formed as before, where
the strands overlap at the right end, but here, obviously, the entire tippet
is not passed through the loop in successive turns. This will always result
in a tight angle bewtween the two strands when finished. In both cases, the
tippet tends to point in the same direction it did at the start.

No, I worked too damn hard to learn that dang blood clot of a knot and I
shall not be deprived! Besides, it's purty.

The surgeon's knot is easier and better. In the blood knot, the tag ends
come out from the center of the knot at right angles. When snipped off they
leave little stubs that are remarkable effective at snagging whatever they
come into contact with.....unless snipped VERY close......in which case the
knot may unravel and the tags are not held very tightly. In the surgeon's
knot, the tag ends protrude from the knot parallel and very close to the
working strands. They are tightly held by the body of the knot. Snipping
them very close is safe and leaves the nub along the leader and tippet.

With a bit of practice, the surgeon's knot can be tied reliably in thirty
seconds or less. The end of a hemostat makes pulling the strands through
the loop fast and easy.

Good luck.

Wolfgang