Fishing Knots - The Blood Knot Brings It All Together For Fishermen

By Bob Ives

Many people in society have trouble making ends meet from time to time. But, thanks to the blood knot, in the world of angling this does not have to be true. This fishing knot is design to attach two pieces of fishing line together to make one longer piece of line, to add a leader to the line, or to help save some of the line on your fishing reel. It fishing knot works best if both pieces of line are of similar diameter. You wouldn't want to tie a 2.5kg test line to a 20kg saltwater line.

I find it to be very useful in adding new fresh line onto my reel. Rather than stripping off all the old line and tying on completely new line, I can use the blood knot to preserve some of the old. It's just a matter of only stripping off the right amount of line from the fishing reel that still leaves enough to where you won't see it after you make your longest case and just a little bit more. So all you should actually ever see when fishing is the newest line. The advantage of this is that you are going to save money on fishing line and time on having to strip it all off and wind all the new line onto the reel. After all, we're out there to catch fish, not play with our toys, right?

Another great use for this fishing knot is to tie a leader onto you main line. A leader is an extra piece of line, usually 50cm to 1m long, that is used at the end of the line for various purpose. For example, you might want to have monofilament or some other line as your main line, but for the leader you might want to use Vanish, which is a fluorocarbon. The reason for this is that the Vanish will be invisible to the fish, and will help baits like Flukes, Wacky Worms and Senkos appear more realistic by falling more slowly in the water. The blood knot is perfect for tying on a leader.

Now, let's face it, some fishermen might just decide it's easier to tie one end of the line to a swivel and the leader line to the other end of the swivel. As far as leaders go, this works fine for me. But there are a lot of very good fishermen who know their fishing knots and would much rather trust a blood knot than a piece of hardware. After all, if you use a swivel, you now have two knots to worry about coming loose. With the blood knot, you only have one. So it makes sense that it leaves less room for error.

To tie a blood knot, you overlap the two ends that you are going to join together. Wrap the first end around the other about 6 times, then come back and tuck that end in-between the two lines. Wrap the other end the same way, 6 times, then come back and tuck in-between the two lines also, but enter from the opposite way. In other words, if you come in-between the two lines from the bottom on the first one, come in from the top on the second. Pull on both main lines to tighten then trim the tag ends (those loose ends hanging out).

This can be a little difficult with poor eyes or shaky hands or in a bouncing boat. If that's the case, another easy way to do it is just overlap the two ends, grab them and the main lines together to form a loop at one end, then twist the loop around about ten times. Go to the middle of the twists at the top of the loop and open up a hole. Pass each end the opposite way through the hole and tighten up as before. You're good to go catch fish.