Leader knot protection

[dragon1]

15/20/30lb braid 8/12/16 fluoro...

For the 15/8 try the Shin Fukae.

20/12 Alberto/improved Albright or double uni.

30/16 FG knot.

Good luck.

[JK9027]

All guides aren't the same but I've been using that "Shin knot" for a while now and it's great. By far the best and quickest knot I've used. I tie about a 7 ft. Leader most of the time. Between the reel and the first guide and it's never been an issue on spinning gear. Now the braid gets frayed but I've never had one come undone, never. I use much longer leaders on the drop shot rod but it's just vertical fishing for me. Sometimes I throw a smallish top water and a hard jerkbait the whole time....max casts and no issues. If I use the rod much I put on a new leader before I fish again, in the garage. 15 lb braid to 8/15 fluro and coploymer leaders.
I never had any luck trying leaders on casting rods. My guides are all micro and semi micro and the knots just don't fit slick enough to mess with it.

[plbass]

My leaders are around 10’ long when new. If you tied a good knot to begin with you have nothing to worry about.

[dragon1]

All guides aren't the same but I've been using that "Shin knot" for a while now and it's great. By far the best and quickest knot I've used. I tie about a 7 ft. Leader most of the time. Between the reel and the first guide and it's never been an issue on spinning gear. Now the braid gets frayed but I've never had one come undone, never. I use much longer leaders on the drop shot rod but it's just vertical fishing for me. Sometimes I throw a smallish top water and a hard jerkbait the whole time....max casts and no issues. If I use the rod much I put on a new leader before I fish again, in the garage. 15 lb braid to 8/15 fluro and coploymer leaders.
I never had any luck trying leaders on casting rods. My guides are all micro and semi micro and the knots just don't fit slick enough to mess with it.

I exclusively use the Shin Fukae up until the diameter of my braid gets into the "8 lb" territory, which is roughly 20-30 depending ont the brand/mdoel of the braid, and more often the 8-carriers rather than the 4 carriers, and leaders up to about 10-12 in the thin-med diamter lines (i.e. NOT a line diameter akin to PLine CXX, although this has been my bread and butter power moving co-poly for over twenty years).

[DrPerf]

I have been using only braid with a leader for the past 8 or 9 years, primarily Seaguar Fluoro Premier Leader and for a few techniques a mono leader, for both spinning and baitcaster rods.. All leaders are at least a rod length long, so the connection knot has to pass through the line guide level wind as well as all the rod line guides.

After researching and experimenting with various connection knots, I settled on the Improved Albright several years ago. After some practice, I can consistently tie the knot more rapidly than any other connection knot and I have been able to rapidly tie the knot on a boat in the wind.

The resultant knot is one of the smallest connection knots that is reliably consistent. There has never been any issue passing through the Daiwa T-Wing and relatively small rod line guides.

https://leadertec.com/big-game-fishi...oved-albright/

I use the connection knot with braid diameters of 0.153mm (0.0060") to 0.340mm (0.0133") and leader diameters of 0.235mm (0.0090") to 0.370mm (0.0150") with the only difference the number of wraps used. I typically use 7 wraps around the double strand in the attached illustration and 5 wraps around single strand, adjusting the number of wraps dependent upon the diameters of the lines to join.

Regards,
Doc

[Spinsparky]

I have been using only braid with a leader for the past 8 or 9 years, primarily Seaguar Fluoro Premier Leader and for a few techniques a mono leader, for both spinning and baitcaster rods.. All leaders are at least a rod length long, so the connection knot has to pass through the line guide level wind as well as all the rod line guides.

After researching and experimenting with various connection knots, I settled on the Improved Albright several years ago. After some practice, I can consistently tie the knot more rapidly than any other connection knot and I have been able to rapidly tie the knot on a boat in the wind.

The resultant knot is one of the smallest connection knots that is reliably consistent. There has never been any issue passing through the Daiwa T-Wing and relatively small rod line guides.

https://leadertec.com/big-game-fishi...oved-albright/

I use the connection knot with braid diameters of 0.153mm (0.0060") to 0.340mm (0.0133") and leader diameters of 0.235mm (0.0090") to 0.370mm (0.0150") with the only difference the number of wraps used. I typically use 7 wraps around the double strand in the attached illustration and 5 wraps around single strand, adjusting the number of wraps dependent upon the diameters of the lines to join.

Regards,
Doc

Care to elaborate on wrap count vs line diameter?

[Spinsparky]

I have used all 3 knots mentioned and do not use any sort of glue protection. Mostly use 15 or 20# braid with 8 or 10# fluorocarbon. I usually start with 10-14 feet of leader. I check the knot from time to time, but failures are very rare and never on a fish, only when breaking off a snag.

What's your favorite knot?

[King31]

Alberto knot with 8-12lb leader and I can’t remember many times in the last 2 years when the knot broke. I usually start with 10ft of leader as mentioned.

[UncleJed]

For the 15/8 try the Shin Fukae.

20/12 Alberto/improved Albright or double uni.

30/16 FG knot.

Good luck.

What's the difference between the Shin Kukae and the Albright? I like the way he demonstrates it in that video, but these two knots look exactly the same to me.

[dragon1]

What's the difference between the Shin Kukae and the Albright? I like the way he demonstrates it in that video, but these two knots look exactly the same to me.

I don't tie the Albright, however it looks like a slight variation in that the braid/main line only wraps on top of the leader and not the main line itself.

Here's another BBC post on Albright v. the Shin Fukae, which is apparently also known as a Lazy Alberto knot.

http://www.bbcboards.net/showthread.php?t=911844

[DrPerf]

Care to elaborate on wrap count vs line diameter?

I have found with smaller diameter line (mainline and/or leader), a few additional wraps help secure the knot better.

And, in some cases, the opposite is true, larger diameter line will require less wraps, resulting in a smaller knot with excellent strength.

Regards,
Doc

[UncleJed]

I don't tie the Albright, however it looks like a slight variation in that the braid/main line only wraps on top of the leader and not the main line itself.

Here's another BBC post on Albright v. the Shin Fukae, which is apparently also known as a Lazy Alberto knot.

http://www.bbcboards.net/showthread.php?t=911844

Ahhh... I see it now. Yes, he's pulling the braid away and only wrapping around the leader. Seems like that would make a thinner knot. Will have to try that.

I've been using this Lefty Kreh leader knot because it's easy and fairly idiot proof, but a little bulky.

[bilgerat]

Care to elaborate on wrap count vs line diameter?

For the majority of line diameters most common to bass applications, I find 6-7 wraps up and 6-7 back down is sufficient.

[AndrewM-Fishing]

My heaviest setup is suffix 20lb braid to 17lb floro, double uni, braid 7 wraps, floro 5 wraps. I have mainly diawa reels. Never had an issue with the t-wing system. I have had the double uni fail me a couple times but then I remember I haven't re-tied in five or six trips so technically that's my fault.

[DrewFlu33]

Really great discussion above. I'm in basically the same boat as dragon with leader knots. For me, Lazy Alberto for leaders under 10 lbs in Sniper diameters...these are all spinning applications with ~0.15 mm diameter braid. As mentioned above, it's a strong, easy-to-tie, thin knot.

I've mentiioned this before on these boards, but for anyone who hasn't seen it: I actually did some almost-scientific testing a couple years back comparing the Lazy Alberto's strenght to a regular Alberto. I tied up some braid to fluoro loops using the regular Alberto (I think it was 7 wraps up and 7 down) on one join and the Lazy Alberto (10 wraps) on the other, put one end of the loop around a chain-link fence post, the other around a trailer hitch on a golf cart, and drove off. In 5 tests with 5 different loops so I wasn't working with damaged knots, the regular Alberto won 3 and the Lazy Alberto won 2. Close enough for me, and in practice, I've broken that knot exactly 1 time and that one feels like it shouldn't count as I was snapping a tube on 8 lb test in milfoil with a well-worn leader/knot when one freight-trained it and got me buried. The Lazy Alberto is a great choice and would definitely be what I'd go with if I only could tie one.

For leaders over 10 lbs, I do go with the FG. Once the leader is that heavy, I believe it has enough strength to allow for properly seating the FG (i.e., wrapping mainline and leader around opposite gloved hands and really cranking on it) to prevent it coming loose after a couple hundred casts. Related to this is the length of the FG. That thing is at least 3 times longer than any other commonly used braid-to-leader knot. Even if you can tie reliable FGs with lighter leaders, I think the length of the knot outweighs any modest advantage in diameter when it comes to going through guides. As diameters increase, I do think that the thinner diameter of the FG starts to win out.