When it comes to cod fishing, knots are almost always afforded less love than the colour of your lure, amount of ball bearings in your reel or length of your rod.
Anglers are shying away from the ‘uncoolness’ that comes with mastering knots, and focussing their attention on the bragging rights that follow an overflowing tackle box full of colourful cod candy – we all have ‘that’ mate!
Yet, when you distil down your entire fishing system the one glaring pressure point, shouldering more load than most, are your knots.
Now, most anglers have a pretty good handle on the two or three knots that 90% of cod fisho’s use to connect a leader to their lure, right?
It’s either a clenched tight half-blood knot to the bent arm of your spinnerbait, or a leftys loop knot, or a close cousin, to add extra wiggle to your plastics, hardbodies, surface lures and swimbaits.
In examining most of the ‘one that got away’ heartbreak stories, the popping of a leader to lure knot is rarely the perpetrator. Now, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, as I’ve personally had a forked tongued loop knot come back to the boat after a spine-tingling strike from a Goliath greenback.
After the self-loathing had abided, I quickly examined a similar lure to uncover a very sharp split ring on the tow point was the culprit of the cut loop knot. This valuable lesson has ensured I now check each and every tow point split ring before attaching a loop knot. My cautiousness has even extended to attaching a solid ring to the tow point split ring of lures, like the Mudeye Thingy, which I know will be getting a fare work out in a session. With no edges, the perfectly smooth rings guarantee I won’t register any unnecessary nicks or cuts inside my loop knot throughout the day.
Leader Knot-sense
The second and most key-critical knot for any native angler is the braid to leader knot. Not only is this knot’s structural integrity paramount, it’s also getting beaten and bashed through your guides over a thousand times each session. This unmitigated stress means your leader knots can’t just be good, they have to be great!
To combat this I’m rediscent to subscribe a magic knot that will fix all your problems, rather reinforce using a knot you are confident and competent tying under any circumstance.
Personally, I have been tying by the FG knot for my 50lb braid and 60lb leader for over a year and have not had one slip. Granted, my first few attempts looked like a half-baked Chicken Twistie, but I as they say, ‘practice makes perfect.’
While I have been getting quicker they still take over double the time to tie than my favoured backup knot, the Albright. For me, however, that’s an investment worth making.
If you do want to branch out and try a new connection, it’s worth searching ‘FG Knot’ on YouTube for some idiot-proof tutorials.
The Forgotten Knot
The third or ‘forgotten knot’ as Hilly calls it, is the knot which joins your braid and backing. In most instances this knot is not afforded the necessary due diligence it deserves as it’s seen as superfluous in your overall system – whoever gets down to the backing, right?
Well, I’ll name two instances where this FG or Albright knot’s importance skyrockets.
The first is the common occurrence every angler eventually falls foul too and that’s a backlash filled birds nest so big an Emu could nest in it.
After eventually cutting your way back into the game you could lose up to two-thirds of line, meaning your braid to backing knot is perilously close to being called off the bench.
The second instance is the common practice of over stacking big braid into pocket-sized baitcaster reels purpose-built for more of a finesse application.
This means, with far less line than you think on your reel, a foul-hooked XOS Goodoo only needs one or two surging runs to pop that braid to backing knot out your guides and into the game.
