Braided Loop
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To be honest, there are still allot of people out there who still use a nail or needle knot to knot the leader to the fly line.
The braided loops usually come with a sleeve to secure them, though personally I don’t like these very much as they tend to kink from being stored on the reel. The nail knot idea will work fine, it’s fairly similar to what I do myself on my medium weight rigs where I use 8lb tippet material and and a 10 turn nail knot on the open end (I use UV knot sense on my knot). For my 7/8wt or heavier, I attached the loop a little differently.
Would be interesting to hear what the others do.
On my freshwater setups I don’t use braided loops at all… Nail or needle knot mono butt section to all lines. With the long leaders we often use in freshwater in NZ (Often up to 18 feet) loops are a pain in the butt… pardon the pun.
however I use braided mono loops for near every connection on my saltwater rigs(except on my rio lines which have welded loops already). I am sure if you look in the video section of this site you’ll find Zach has some footage of this very subject and there is also some great info on Peter Morses http://www.wildfish.com.au site under tackle and techniques.
You can judge a man by the size of things which annoy him.
‘. . . pain in the butt.’ ;D
The loop that he gave me was for 3-6 wt. lines. That is why I was going to try it on my daughters rig. Do you find that they hinge at all?
I cut a section of some 4wt line once, dont ask :-[, and I had to get a pack of these braided loops so I could fish the next day.
i stopped using braided loops once i figured out how to use the tie-fast tool.
the braids get all filthy and sink after a while, however if you cut your line to tie on a mono piece, you allow water to enter the line.
i use 30, 40, or 50lb red cajun line. its inexpensive and i carry a few feet of it in my back or chest pack. i’ve had to tie on a new loop while in the middle of a bonefish flat and steelhead river. no time to play around with braided stuff and the little plastic collar that slides down.
we had one guy at our shop who would put on on the end of line and coat it with aquaseal to connect it to a bimini twist on his backing. that was a neat trick.
I dont use braided loops either. I use the butt of an old leader, nail knot it to the end of the fly line and about 3-4 inches from the fly line, I put a perfection loop. I loop my leaders to that. I do use braided loops on the backend to connect the backing with. I use Dan Blanton’s method which here: http://www.danblanton.com/gettinglooped.html on all 6 wt and above rods. That way I can swap lines when I want to.
For my trout rods, I nail knot the back to the fly line, the old fashioned way.
Reasons not to use a braided loop:
-On light trout line they are heavy and will throw off your casting loop
-They add significant bulk to a fly line that is designed with a very specific taper
-They collect dirt and grit and will begin to fray
-Depending on how much you fish they don’t last long.My recommendation:
Take a piece of stiff mono (20-25lb test Maxima or better yet Amnisia) and nail knot one end to your fly line. Leaving a short section (3 inches) tie a perfection loop. Done! To take it to the next level you can coat these knots with a dab of Knot Sense and they will slide gracefully through your guides when landing a fish on a long leader.
Good luck.KBilcher
You’ll probably find that sticking to a needle knot will work best for you. Over the last couple of years I’ve had to replace my floating lines and the new lines I had bought came with welded loops, take a read on Zach’s article Cooking up some lines if you’re thinking of cutting these off.
Before that, I also used a needle knot on all my freshwater lines and only braided loops on my clear intermediate lines and fast sinking lines (DI5 and DI7). Saltwater, my lines all have braided loops if they didn’t come with welded loops
Other than the reasons stated previously, I also found that they take a bit away from a nice delicate presentation as the land on the water on the light outfits.
On a similar subject, I thought I would share the braided connection that I use on my saltwater lines, it was shown to be by good friend who guides up in the Seychelles and has found it to work extremely well, even when using 100lb level leaders to land the fish as quickly as possible.
To make the loop, one has to use braid from a spool, premanufactured loops won’t work. I usually use 30lb braid for my 7 and 8 weights and 50lb for heavier rigs for abrasion resistance to rocks and coral. As you can see from the sketch, the line is threaded up the core of both ends of the loop, what’s also nice about this is that there isn’t a section of braid that is only single which could form a hinging point during casting. I wouldn’t suggest placing a nail knot at the end of the fly line as this would prevent the “Chinese finger cuff” action that the braid exerts on the fly line
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