Fishing Knots - Arbor Knots Are The Reel Deal

By Bob Ives

The arbor knot is a simple, but interesting fishing knot. It gets its name from the arbor of a fishing reel. It's most often used to attach the fishing line to the reel, and it does it's job very well.

In the world of fishing knots, most of them have special purposes. When I first started fishing I used to tie line to my reel with a double overhand knot. This for the most part could serve the purpose because the line rarely got low enough on the reel to worry about the knot coming loose. But it had problems.

If you use most other knots to tie a fishing line onto a reel, you end up with a big bump along the spool. This bump will cause the line to go on unevenly and cause all kinds of issues; everything from reduced casting distance to horrible tangles in the line at the reel, usually referred to as 'birds nests'. Or, if you are an experienced fisherman, you call it 'professional overrun'.

So the way to reduce this bump along the spool is to tie a smaller, more effective knot like the arbor knot. Not only is it a better, smaller knot, it's easier to tie. If you've ever tried to tie a 'granny knot', or double overhand knot on a reel, you know it can be very difficult on some models, especially bait casters.

The right way to tie an arbor knot is to wrap the fishing line around the spool (arbor) of the reel. You then take the loose end of the line, the 'tag end', and tie an overhand knot around the line coming from the opposite end; usually the line from the spool of line you will be loading onto the reel (this is normally called the 'running line'. Now, you tie another overhand knot on the tag end. So, you have one knot on the main line, and one knot on the tag end.

Once you tighten the first knot down, it forces the second knot, the one on the tag end, to tighten up against it. This keeps it from pulling on through. Go ahead and snip off as much of this end as you can. Now you can slowly start to spool the line onto the reel, double checking to make sure there are no bumps.

TIP: When replacing line on a fishing reel, rather than stripping all the old line off, it's a good idea to leave several yards of it on to make reduce the amount of new line you have to tie on. This works because, normally, that old line will never see the light of day anyhow. Once enough line is used up to where you're starting to see your arbor knot on the reel, you know it's about time to tie on some more line. A good way to attach these to lines together is by using a blood knot.

Once you learn to tie an arbor knot, you will see how brilliant it really is. It's so simple and basic, you may find yourself looking for more places to use it. Just be sure you don't use one on the wife without her permission.