To crimp or not to crimp ?

[Dave Foyle]

Hi All,

The nail knot variant Alex mentioned earlier was shown to me by Glanville H (now with Nomad) when he was guiding out in the Oman (Musandam).

Basically slip the swivel onto your leader and pinch the two strands together between your finger and thumb to form a loop with the swivel in the middle.  The swivel should be sitting up around the base of your thumb.  Leave a tag end of 8-10 inches.  Wrap the tag end around tightly around your finger and the leader 3-4 times (depending on the weight of line).  Then poke the tag end back down the side of your finger nail and under the coils you just wrapped.  Then wet and snug down. 

On lighter lines, after you have made the wraps around your finger-end, you can put the tag end back through the eye of the swivel before poking it out under the coils.

Seems a good reliable knot and can be used with 300lb leader.

Cheers all.    Dave

[Mario Benedict]

Update... After my recent trip
I find crimping to be the most effective and a quick one to do for 200lb leaders
followed by
Uni knot
I didn't get to try out the chain knot for popping though, probably because it was too time consuming to tie :-)

[Mick Rowley]

i also find crimping very quick and effective, providing you use high quality crimps and if using aluminium crimps use the higher grade aluminium, make sure the crimp is a snug fit for the mono and you dont crush the absolute crapper out of crimp when swaging and all will be ok.

[Tony Busscher]

The best knot is no knot figure 8 brass cripes to suit the line class ,no stress on the line tying a knot .