About five years ago I switched from monofilament line on my fishing poles to fluorocarbon. I really don’t know the difference in terms of chemical makeup, but fluorocarbon is less stiff than monofilament, and it comes off the reel with less resistance. Fluorocarbon, however, has a tendency to curl, so a year ago I switched to braided line. Braided line does not curl, but it is so strong that it is hard to break when a lure is permanently snagged on something at the bottom of the lake. Sometimes the only way to free snagged braided line is to cut it with a knife up at the pole. This can leave 20 or 30 feet of line dangling in the water. This is bad for the ecological integrity of the lake, and it also is a quick way to use up all of the line on a reel. The solution to this problem is to use braided line with a fluorocarbon leader. Most of the line on a pole is braided, but the last few feet is fluorocarbon. Whenever line needs to be intentionally broken, a hard steady pull will snap the fluorocarbon right at the lure – and no line is left in the water.
The downside of this braided/fluorocarbon combination is that it is difficult to find a reliable knot for connecting lines of different diameter and different consistency.
The best knot for tying fluorocarbon to braided line is the FG knot. I don’t know what FG stands for. I have watched two or three instructional videos on the FG knot, and I have watched a friend of mine tie the knot a half dozen times. As of last week, I had yet to tie it correctly. Every time I think I have it right, the knot fails to hold.
In preparation for my annual Canada fishing trip, I decided to sit on my front porch and practice the FG knot until I had it down. I bought new line for all of my poles, I brought out nail clippers to snip the tails off my knots once I had them tied. I watched a how-to video a final time, and then I sat outside on one of my two faux Adirondack chairs to perfect the troublesome knot.
I was on my front porch for so long that the two kids who were riding bikes in the cul de sac stopped to ask me what I was doing. When I told them that I was tying knots, they wanted to learn. I wasn’t about to teach kids how to tie a knot that I couldn’t tie myself, so I redirected their attention by asking them whether they’d ever casted a fishing pole. Rollin, about age four, hadn’t. The older Alice said, “My uncle Jim took me fishing when I was young, but I’m almost seven now.”
I found a hookless plug in my tackle box and put it on one my poles. Then the three of us went out into the street and I showed them how to cast. Rollin went first. His first cast was actually pretty good, but when he tried to retrieve the plug he turned the crank backwards. On that particular reel, turning the crank backwards unscrews it from the body of the reel, and it quickly became detached. Rollin thought he’d broken my fishing pole.
I reattached the crank and let Alice try. With most spinning reels, there are three distinct steps to a successful cast: pinning the line to the rod with a finger, flipping the bail, and lifting the finger off the line just as the cast is being made. Alice carefully went through the three-step sequence, but timed the finger release poorly. Her first cast sailed sideways right into my neighbor’s cedar tree. The reason I’d gone into the street in the first place was to get away from trees, but Alice had found one anyway. I was not surprised. She’d only done what I sometimes do even after years of practice.
Rollin and Alice’s mom must have been watching us from her house. When she saw me climb into the cedar tree to untangle fishing line, she came out of the house and walked up to us. I assured her that the kids weren’t bothering me, and I suggested that each kid should have two more casts before she took them home.
For nearly twenty years, there were only three young kids living on my street, and one of them was my daughter. Lately several of my former neighbors have died or moved to retirement homes, and the street is being repopulated with families with kids. This is wholly a good thing.
I might have figured out the FG knot, but I won’t know for sure until I hook into a big fish.
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