Unleash Your Inner Wind Knots
Anyone can tie a knot. The Internet teaches you how to tie everything from a simple surgeon’s knot to a brain-freezing Bimini twist. Unraveling the ones nature ties as we cast, however, is what separates cool and experienced fly fishers from angry amateurs.
Whether your fly is alone on the leader or accompanied by another fly, some weight, an indicator, or maybe a third fly, nature finds a way to mess with your fishing. Nature’s knots range from the overhand granny knot to an insane nylon tangle. They make you suspect that if there is intelligent design in the universe, then there is also an equally powerful and devious force conspiring to waste your time onstream.
The basic overhand wind knot is all too familiar. Like mosquitoes, these pesky knots never seem to go away. Improved casting helps to a degree, but improved casting means tighter loops, especially with stiff fly rods, and the continued threat of wind knots. Regard these knots as gentle reminders of our humble origins as fly fishers.
With age and experience, fly fishers acquire a sense of when a knot might have crept onto their leader. Maybe the forward cast lacked aerodynamics, producing a faint whistle over your head. If you’re fishing at night, the whistling acquires the quality of a bat flying around your head. Some other intuitive moment may tell you something is wrong, sort of like knowing when a trout has taken an upstream nymph. Well, not exactly like that, but you get the idea.
Why wind knots happen in the first place is usually well-understood and explained to new casters. The forward cast isn’t accelerating correctly. The fly is being cast too directly into the wind. The fly is too heavy for the tippet—my flies always seem to be two to three sizes too big for the tippet. In other words, somewhere along the line, you’ve made a bad decision.
Maybe. But I have my own theories about wind knots based upon years of careful observation and introspection—theories no one wants you to know about. First, there is a statistical relationship between the occurrence of wind knots and the proximity of a trophy fish, even if you don’t see the fish. Something within tells you to hurry up your casting and wave your arms and rod in contorted waves, leading to untold leader issues—and few fish. Call this subliminal stupidity.
Second, wind knots tend to accumulate toward evening, when the light leaves the water, the sky acquires an olive hue, and it becomes impossible to untangle any knot you might discover.
Baetis can come off in droves. You fool a few small fish with your fly when a monster pokes his nose out of the water. The perfect fly is on a hair trigger. Then you discover a wind knot, and suddenly you feel alone with a beast of a fish—and your incompetence. We’ve all been there.
Now the fatal choice: Fish with the wind knot, hoping the 50 percent reduction
in tippet strength is enough to bring in a fish you’ve only seen in magazines—or waste extraordinarily precious minutes repairing a tippet in fading light? You know if you move from your spot you’ll probably spook the fish 99 percent of the time anyway. Doing the math here sometimes helps. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Wind knots just happen. Get over it.
Usually, the most simple wind knots can be undone without too much trouble. Even the tighter ones that shamefully go unnoticed for a dozen casts can often be wiggled free.
Sometimes a wind knot fools you. I’ve been experimenting with double and triple surgeon’s knots to replace the blood knot for smaller tippet sections. A blood knot is sleek and beautiful in its symmetry; a surgeon’s knot is comparatively bulky, maybe a little ugly. The trouble is, complicated wind knots sometimes look like an amorphous triple surgeon’s knot and thus can be left undetected for an hour, sometimes for days of casting. Occasionally, I’ve had to stare at a wind knot for more than a few minutes to decide if it is indeed a natural wind knot or man-made.
Fortunately, pushing on one end of the line with a pair of tweezers often does the trick on these compound wind knots. The last resort for extremely tight knots is more surgical: a thrust of the hook point into the guts of the knot while it sits carefully poised on my thumbnail. At times, I even manage to avoid piercing my thumb with this trick.
With luck, the leader won’t be pinched, kinked, or weakened. Usually the tippet is okay, but a tug on the leader can indicate whether to continue fishing, or to sit down and ponder one’s place in this comedic universe while repairing the tippet.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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