Basic Fly Fishing Knots For Beginners

By Jon Clouse

A lot of different fly fishing knots are available for your use while you're out on a fishing trip. Some of the knots you can use are the Arbor knot, the Albright knot, the Blood knot, dropper loop, nail knot and improved clinch. Each of these knots have a different purpose.

The Albright knot is commonly used to join the fly line to the fly reel backing line. When you tie this knot you need to remember to neatly wind the loops round the loop of the larger line. You should hold the loops under your fingers as you wind the line. This loop passes through guides when you need it to. Some fishermen like to coat the knot with rubber cement which makes it more secure and smoother.

The Arbor knot is one of the fly fishing knots used to attach the fishing line to the fishing reel, also known as the Arbor. When you tie this knot it is essential you use the second overhand knot. It is recommended you wind the loop two times around the arbor before you make the first half hitch. This will increase friction which works well on polished reels. This knot is easy to learn and very effective.

The blood knot, another of the most important fly fishing knots, is used when you need to join two lines which are roughly equal in size. For instance, you would use this knot when joining sections of leader or tippet. There is more than one way to tie this knot, the best being to overlap the ends of the lines you are joining and twist them together about ten times. You can make a hole in the center of these twists and pass one end the opposite way through the hole. This knot, if tied correctly will be symmetrical in the middle. This is also an easy knot and will come in handy quite often.

Another of the basic fly fishing knots is the dropper loop. This knot can help you to prevent tangles in your line. You create a loop in the middle of your leader with this knot, which gives you another place to put a fly. You can make this loop my wrapping one line around the leader at the point of overlap. This loop should look symmetrical on both sides.

The nail knot is one of the fly fishing knots you will likely find yourself using often. You generally use a nail knot to tie lines of two different sizes to one another. Thread the smaller of the two through the loops using a straw (or nail, or needle). This knot passes through guides with no trouble, being small and smooth.

Of course, these are only a small number of the fly fishing knots which you can use. You should learn many of these knots, since you will be using different knots for different purposes when you are fly fishing.

These fly fishing knots are easy to learn and will come in handy all the time - learn some of these fly fishing knots before you go fly fishing for the first time.

About the Author:

Jon Clouse, the author, writes often on topics such as Basic Fly Fishing Knots. For more great articles and videos, take a few seconds to visit Fishing FYI