You can fish for years with three knots. Everything else is convenience or special cases. Learn these until you can tie them in the dark with cold hands, and practise until each one takes under thirty seconds.

1. Fly to tippet

• Improved clinch knot — the standard. Six turns, through the loop, through the big loop, wet it, snug it down. Reliable from 2 lb to 20 lb.
• Davy knot — faster, fewer turns, and it tests well on fine tippet. Worth learning as your quick option.

Always wet the knot before seating it. Dry friction burns monofilament and quietly halves its strength.

2. Tippet to leader (or tippet to tippet)

• Double surgeon’s knot — two overhand knots with the two lines passed through twice. Fast, strong, and it works between very different diameters, which is exactly the case when you add 5X tippet to a 3X leader.
• Blood knot — neater and slimmer, better through the guides, but slower and fussier with mismatched diameters.

3. Fly line to leader

• Loop-to-loop — welded or braided loops on both ends. Fast to change leaders and it does not weaken the fly line. This is what almost everyone should use.
• Nail knot — the traditional join if you have no loop. Learn it once so you can repair a line on the bank.

Two more worth knowing

• Perfection loop — puts a loop in the end of a leader or in a length of tippet so flies can swing freely.
• Non-slip mono loop — a loop knot at the fly, which lets streamers and nymphs move naturally. Worth it for big flies, unnecessary for small dries.

Test every knot by pulling it — hard — before you cast. A knot that slips on the bank was going to slip on a fish.