Page 19 - Joseph B. Healy "The Pocket Guide to Fishing Knots"

G .030

F .035

E .040

D .045

C .050

B .055

A .066

AA .065

AAA .070

AAAA .075

AAAAA .080

As such, a double-taper fly line recommended for an 8 ½-foot, 5-ounce

fly rod might be HDH, whereas a so-called three-diameter line would be
HCF, McClane tells us. My point here is to consider the naming
convention of that time, and to appreciate how we’ve simplified matters
through the decades—at least when it comes to fly lines.
Nowadays, we buy fly lines by their number rating—5- and 6-weights
for trout, for example, and 8- to 12-weights and up for heavier fish in
fresh and salt water. The heavier lines help us cast in windy conditions or

when we need to make long-distance casts to wary fish on the alert for
predators (including anglers, you might say). The numbers are based on
the grain weight of the head of the line, the forward-most thirty feet.
The constant between then and now when assembling your tackle
connections is the need for dependable knots, such as two that McClane
shares in his book that you’ll also find in this book—the Blood Knot (for

joining leader sections) and the Perfection Loop (for making loops in the
ends of leader sections if you want to use loop-to-loop connections). H.
G. Tapply also lists knots in Tackle Tinkering (1946), in a chapter titled
“Knots: Hitches and Splices the Angler Should Know”: He shares the
Perfection Loop and also the Barrel Knot (similar to the Blood Knot) and