{"id":116,"date":"2008-04-24T23:26:06","date_gmt":"2008-04-25T04:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/?p=116"},"modified":"2008-05-01T23:20:37","modified_gmt":"2008-05-02T04:20:37","slug":"its-all-knotted-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"All tied up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tied_up.jpg\"In the current Pointless Poll (see the Home Page<\/a>) it’s a dead heat for favorite knot between the improved clinch and the loop knot. Which is surprising to me. I like loop knots, don’t get me wrong, I just never realized how many people use them on a regular basis. The clinch knot was the first fishing knot I ever learned. When the improved clinch came out I switched over to it because it was, well, improved. And that’s pretty much where I’ve been ever since.<\/p>\n

There’s an odd tendency for certain knots to stick in your brain, while others don’t. I have this theory that once a knot takes possession of your mind it gets territorial and uses its knotty powers to prevent other knots from gaining a place. For example, the trilene is a great knot. But somehow, even though it’s not that complicated, I can’t seem to tie one unless I have a diagram in front of me. The improved clinch just refuses to let it reside in my grey matter. Conversely, I have no problem remembering how to tie blood knots, nail knots, snells, bowlines, and sheepshanks. It’s as if the improved clinch realizes that these knots are not direct competition.<\/p>\n

Jack likes to laugh and say, “I know two knots, and one of them is a wind knot.” We’ve fished together for over ten years and he still won’t tell me what that second knot is. It can’t be all that great because, as fine a fisherman as he is, he does snap off quite a few fish. Or maybe it’s the knot itself asserting its will, coming undone on purpose to get even with him for not giving knots their due respect.<\/p>\n

A few years ago Jack and I were into some fast and heavy striper action when a nice bass snapped off his fly. So he tied on another one and the next fish snapped off his entire leader. Unperturbed, he tied a fly directly to the fly line and in short time hooked a really big fish which ran him into his backing–before breaking that off and swimming away with the fly line. After that he was reduced to flailing away with a fly tied to nothing but backing. Even then he caught a few more fish until finally the current died and the bass moved off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the current Pointless Poll (see the Home Page) it’s a dead heat for favorite knot between the improved clinch and the loop knot. Which is surprising to me. I like loop knots, don’t get me wrong, I just never realized how many people use them on a regular basis. The clinch knot was the … Continue reading “All tied up”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fishing","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jackgartside.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}