TimMurphy wrote:
Dear Board,
While they are hardly totally useless I'd vote for a landing net. I have two beautiful hardwood nets, one an old style net with the cotton bag and the other is a a catch and release style net.
I just don't particularly care for the hassle of carrying them. If I de-barbed my fly properly I can often simply grab the fly and twist or shake the fish off the hook without really having to handle them.
Maybe if I caught more 20 inch fish I'd feel differently, but I rarely see the need for one?
I had to tie 8 nail knots in fairly short order recently to rig up several multi-tip lines. I started out using a nail knot tool but quickly switched over to tying uni-knots by hand because I was more used to doing them that way.
If you tie your own leaders I think the Dennison blood knot tool is indispensable when you are working with 15# test lines and higher, but for the lighter stuff not so much.
Regards,
Tim Murphy