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Palomar knot - best knot for big game fish?

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The Palomar knot is great for big game fish that pull hard. The knot continues to tighten when being pulled on, and the double loops around the hook eye make for a strong and abrasion resistant knot. Its also very quick to tie.

I used to use this knot fairly often when working on the party boats taking people out for albacore. Sometimes the albacore would be hitting so quickly, that the second the bait hits the water my customers would have a fish on. Many of them broke off, and needed new hooks tied on. This being strong, but so quick to tie was my go to knot. I was tying knots for customers at least 10 per minute while also having to try and gaff their fish.
This knot is also very common for fly fishing. Many people use this knot for their first fly on a nymph dropper. Then they do not cut the tag end off, but use the tag end for their 2nd fly. A quick and easy way to make a two fly rig.

Check out the video here... Or below the video you can visit my site that also has the video along with other videos available.



http://www.mcflyangler.com/palomar-knot

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Sorry, the link I put to my site up there took you to a page that had a different knot. I changed it. Sorry... This is what happens when I upload video's to my site at 2-3AM. HAHA

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Awesome! I always forget about the palomar knot, and your vid reminded me, but also was really well done. Love how you did it with "rope" and mono. Thanks for sharing!

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To each his own. It's a good video showing a knot probably thousands swear by and it's always a contender in best knot pull offs. For me, I don't know if I'm clumsy or jinxed but the Palomar has not been good for me. I've done and can do about any knot out there, including some that go by six different names depending on who you ask. Then simple Uni Knot will do everything I need in a knot and is applicable in so many places from backing on a fly line, loop knot by not pulling to eye, drop knot in leader or leaving tag end like you mentioned. No knot is 100% but the Uni Knot is consistent and virtually always draws up right and strong for me.

 

Good simple video though for the few who may no be familiar with this most common knot.

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Nice video. I never used the palomar, but i have seen it tied a couple of different ways. I see some people dont pull the loop all the way up over the overhand knot, so it beds down on the shank of the hook. Don't know which way is correct. I nearly always use a grinner/uni. I never had it fail me and i can tie it fast with my eyes closed

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... the Palomar has not been good for me.

The Palomar knot is one of a very few knots that work on braid fishing line.

Most knots will slip out with braid, but the Palomar won't.

I don't like it for mono ... so I don't use it for fly fishing. ALL of my conventional gear is spooled with braid, so it's the only knot I use with that stuff.

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... the Palomar has not been good for me.

The Palomar knot is one of a very few knots that work on braid fishing line.

Most knots will slip out with braid, but the Palomar won't.

I don't like it for mono ... so I don't use it for fly fishing. ALL of my conventional gear is spooled with braid, so it's the only knot I use with that stuff.

A 7-10 turn grinner knot works as well, but yeah, for size and time, palomar would be the best for braid, unless it's a large lure, then I personally don't like throwing the loop around a large crankbait with 3 treble hooks on it waiting to catch the loop. Lol.

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I always use a 5 turn grinner. Have used it on Spiderwire down to 0.12mm without problems. I usually go twice throuhg the eye, before tying the knot.

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I always use a 5 turn grinner. Have used it on Spiderwire down to 0.12mm without problems. I usually go twice throuhg the eye, before tying the knot.

No argument from me, there are a few knots that work with braid. For me, the quickest and easiest is the Palomar. But again, I am fishing with conventional gear when I use that.

 

I use snaps on all of my hard plastic lure rigs. I can quickly change lures without retying.

 

Those rods I don't use snaps on, the lure on there will not be changed very often (like jigs or soft plastic stick worms).

 

The only time I retie is when I notice some fraying or other damage.

When retying for this reason, it is recommended to remove a foot of line or so, and coincidentally, the Palomar automatically does that!

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I used to fiddle with different knots for tying flies on, but I learned that the good ol' clinch knot is about as good as any for 90% of my flies. I use a loop knot when fishing really big stuff or streamers.

 

Conventional gear fishing for Bass is where the rubber meets the road, and I'll use a palomar knot because of the force generated when setting the hook (Much much more than a fly rod can generate.) I have snapped 40 pound braid setting the hook on a 3 pound fish before.... Also, like Mikechell says, the palomar is one of the best knots for braided line.

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Mike Chell, do you go braid directly to the bait or snap or do you splice a mono or fluoro section in? I'm old time and for spinnerbaiting and cranks I still us all mono and lighter than most. My basic is 12#, heaviest I'd use for big pike was 17#. I do use braid in mostly 20# pound on some rigs, including my favorite spinning rod for jigs. Otherwise my spins have 8# or lighter on them. When I'm fishing jigs or frogs in the tulies I go with 40# braid tied direct and have never broken it. Cut it on a couple of northern before but not broken.

 

cheech, I don't know how hard you can set a hook but I have caught literally hundreds of bass from 3-7#s on 40# braid in heavy cover on short lines slamming them hard enough to knock them silly and never had a line break. Over the years I've broken a few rods, all graphite never glass, This is with a Uni knot leaving a loop between knot and eye on braid that almost never slips down.

 

A quite elaborate study by the Lindner boys in one of their In Fisherman mags tested the "Cross their eyes" hookset of several of their employees with various lines and rods. The final standing was no one even came close on actual scale to the amount of hook set they were getting. Usually half or less of what they'd guess, mostly from 3-6#. I did break 12# mono on a bass once when I watched spinnerbait turning up to life from water. A huge in my eyes bass swam from under boat and nailed it. I set the hook hard enough to rock the boat with the additional boost of instant adrenaline. Snapped that line and almost fell out of boat.

 

By the way, for those familiar with the Infisherman Magazine I have the two original copies where Al took time to explain why their magazine would never carry advertisement of any kind. You could not be honest and critical of products if they were giving you money to advertise them so they would survive by subscriber sales alone.

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Mike Chell, do you go braid directly to the bait or snap or do you splice a mono or fluoro section in?

Never went for the mono or fluoro "leader". I figured the bass wouldn't know a piece of braid line from a thin piece of weed, so it wasn't worth the effort to splice in.

I've fish the back deck with a few other anglers who either used a mono/fluoro leader or just didn't "believe" in braid. One of them used to get quite upset, when I'd catch a fish out of a hole he'd just explored with his set up.

Even while catching more fish than him, I couldn't convince him that fish don't care what line you've got tied to your lure.

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Mike, I'm going to bring something that cracked me up when braid first got popular. The very first of the braid lines that came out were bright white. Dyneemo and some of the others just don't take dye well. So what was the rage back then? Carry a black marker and color the first 18" of so black. As that faded give it some more black. This brought me back to the days of my youth when I used to try to convince my Dad and fishing friends of his to go to monofilament because their black braided signaled the fish something was wrong and mono was hard to see. So as time passses we color our new braid line black to make them hard to see. And the wheel turns to the next bit of ridiculousness.

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