Yesterday was a beautiful day so I decided to take a long downstream wade in the middle of the afternoon. This was after a morning morel hunt. Before starting out, I put new tippet on my leader. I use a furled leader (Dec. 4, 2010 post to this blog), and have a “Shorb loop” at the end of it. The tippet most easily attachs by a loop-to-loop connection, and for this I want a Perfection Loop on the tippet. I found that I had forgotten how to do this knot (had not tied it since last summer), and had to refer back to a sketch that I made in 1998, after being shown how to tie it by Ed Strauss at Jorgensen’s fly shop in Fort Wayne.

The perfection loop is a well-known knot and many instructions are posted on the web. But seeing an animated cord knotting itself does not make good instruction.

It seems to me that this is the same as the “Bowline knot” once taught at Boy Scouts. There, it was always tied around one’s waist. The procedure was like the animated cord above; nobody could remember how a week later.

Here is a re-draw of my original sketch.

1. Form a loop
2. Pinch the loop, then poke the tag end between the thumb and forefinger
3. Bring the tag end back around under the thumb then pinch it also
4. Slip the loop from over the thumb up through the first loop

There is now a good Youtube video on the process, and it is almost the same as this. The difference is at step 2; he does not poke the tag end through the fingers but just passes it under the first loop. This probably uses up less tippet.