Page 45 - Joseph B. Healy "The Pocket Guide to Fishing Knots"

Fishing Knots

with Jimmy Houston

Thoughts on knots from the professional bass angler and
television personality.

“Going back to the early 1970s, I worked for Berkley Trilene. Back then,
the big fishing line was (the competitor) Stren. But Berkley hired me,
Ricky Green, Tommy Martin, and Roger Moore. That was the original
Trilene team (of professional anglers). They sent us out to store
promotions to talk about Trilene. One of the things they did in the early

days was use line-testing machines. We affectionately named one R2-
D2, because that was about the time when Star Wars came out. It broke
line at a certain test strength, and what we had it for was to show people
how breaking strength worked. That was new back then. But we also
used it as a teaching tool to show people how to tie good knots. Most
people tied a Clinch Knot, and it pulled through at about seventy percent.
If you tied a swivel on, it would break at about 14 or 15 percent. And so

we would teach people to tie a good knot.”