The Clinch Knot Dropper

Let’s say your dropper breaks off or you’ve changed flies on your dropper tippet a couple of times and the line is now too short to make one more change. What to do? You could tie on some more tippet material with another double or triple surgeons knot. This has the following downsides: 1) looping through the existing fly and slot through your loops as you tie the knot is a pain and 2) now you are left with an extra knot in your leader which could lead to tangles or weakened line.

Looping a new piece of tippet around the leader just above the knot of the previous dropper using a clinch knot solves this problem. Again, six or seven twists use saliva when tightening and leave a small tag. One advantage this method has is that as the dropper line twists around, the knot moves around with it so less line being twisted together. One disadvantage is that sometimes the knot slips up the line.