Male Speaker: If you buy your fly rod and reel from a fly fishing pro shop more than likely, they will put the backing and your fly line as well as your leader on for you. But it is something you should know how to do. The more easily demonstrated so that you can see how it's done, I'm going to use as piece of rope.
Wrap the rope around the arbor of your fly reel twice. At the end of the backing, tie a small overhand knot very close to the end. Then hold the two pieces of line together parallel to one another. Wrap the tag under the backing around both pieces of line making two turns. What we are making here is a slip knot. Now you have formed a small double loop. Take the tag under the backing and run it up through the double loop parallel to the main piece of backing, like so.
Tighten the slip knot that you have created up against the overhand knot that you tied in the end of the backing. Once it's tight, tighten the slip knot that you have formed down around the arbor of the reel, securing it tightly to the arbor and then reel your backing on to the reel.
Now you must attach your fly line to the backing. To do that, here is world champion fly caster Steve Rajeff to show you his version of a Nailless nail knot.
Steve Rajeff: Since I was about ten years old I tried to tie a nail knot without any tools and it wasn't too long after I tried to do that. When I managed to do that I called it a Nailless nail knot and I start by taking my tippet or my butt section, in this case the blue line and wrap it five or six times on the fly line. With the tag line that I have wrapped with, I have circled around and make like a little circle out of it and I hold it here near the tip of the fly line end.
What I will do now is unwind these furrows, these twists over the top of the tag so that that it will be buried underneath and to do that I just pinch it here on my left hand as a starting point and I unravel the twist the around the tag end. One, two, three, I am unwinding the furrows, four, five and six. I have finished unraveling and I pull on my main leader piece here as always, pull the short tug there and I have a nail knot without a nail.
That is a very simple version of a nail knot and I like that for one I'm dealing with trout leaders and something fairly light. But any opportunity where I have the opportunity to pull a lot of pressure, salt water fishing or salmon fishing or even with various lines where the tendency is the coating comes off easier. In that case I like to do a variation on that, what I do is I still start off by winding the tags six times around the fly line, but what I will do next is to take the tip of the fly line and I fold it back over. And in essence what I am going to do is make a nail knot over a loop. Also this achieves an effect of what is called the Albright knot in the saltwater tippets through the sharp tippets junction in some cases.
But I fold it over the fly line, now I still make my circle around and then I will still unwind my twist over the top of both my tag and the folded over piece of fly line. So now I will unravel the twist over both.
Now I have completed the unraveling part. I pull on my main leader here and I have a little nail knot over the top of the loop. I will sort of draw on the - even the tag into the fly line over the main fly line just to shrink down the loop a little bit closer before I fully tighten the nail knot.
So now I have in essence, an Albright and a nail knot all in one. That way I have got my line locked down and I want to peel off the coating on some of the lines that have that tendency and I have a got a much stronger knot for dealing with saltwater.
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