Trying New Lures And Knots...

[Old plug]

I am total polomar except on a few occasions on a few occasions.

[Al Agnew]

Yep, especially if you use a snap, the palomar is by far the best knot. It's strong, reliable, and extremely easy to tie to anything small. It's only drawback is tying it to a two or three treble hook lure, since you have to form a loop big enough to get the whole lure through it. That's doable, just not quite as easy as tying it to a snap. I see absolutely no reason to use an improved clinch knot on a snap, a jig, or a bare hook when the palomar is so much quicker and probably stronger as well.

Another benefit to the palomar is in nymph fishing, or fishing a dry fly and dropper. Since you can end up with however long a tag end that you wish with no more difficulty in tying it, you can just tie onto the top fly with a palomar, leaving a 12 inch tag end when using nymphs, and tie your second fly onto the end of the tag end. Way quicker and easier than tying another piece of line off the bend of the hook to which you would then tie your second fly, and I've never seen a difference in the number of trout I catch with my palomar tie compared to tying to the bend of the hook as most seem to do. And if you want a 3 ft. dropper off a hopper, as is often the case out West during hopper season, you just leave a 3 ft. tag end when tying on the hopper pattern. I use palomar knots down to 4X and sometimes even smaller diameter lines with absolutely no problems, and the only reason I wouldn't use one on 6X or 7X (if I ever bothered to actually use 7X) is that some of the tiny flies that require those very light lines have eyes too small to get two loops of line through.