Pete's Knot Picker

by Pete Lilja
(Iowa)

Occasionally, I get a knot in my Tenkara fluorocarbon level line. It seems it usually happens when I try to check up my cast to make it shorter and mis-time my backcast making a knot in my line. Sometimes they are simple tangles easily removed but other times they're a mess. And the messy tangles often include loops of knot that aren't easy to pick with just fingers. For those a tool is needed...

Since I don't like to use the serrated jaws of my forceps to grab the line another tool was needed. The first tool I made is a piece of aluminum with a knurled handle, a hole to add a chain and a smooth, pointed tip for picking at loops and poking through knots. It works well but is overly complicated to make for such a simple device. It then popped into my head that a nail would be a good substitute.

The next generation of Pete's Knot Picker is simply an 8D duplex nail tightened into a 1/2" drill chuck which is then filed, sanded (to 320 g) and polished as shown in the photo. It works and is easy and inexpensive to make in a few minutes. Of course, any nail will work but the duplex (double headed) nail makes it a little easier to hold and gives a place to attach some kind of lanyard.

I just thought I'd share the idea as I can't be the only tenkara angler that muffs casts!

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten” - Benjamin Franklin

"Be sure in casting, that your fly fall first into the water, for if the line fall first, it scares or frightens the fish..." -
Col. Robert Venables 1662

As age slows my pace, I will become more like the heron.