[Dean McClain]

This is an interesting subject, for sure. A properly-tied and wetted palomar is tough to beat with softer more stretchy lines of a diameter small enough to allow the knot to tie up very tight, with no gaps, and no allowable play or movement in a shock situation, such as a hard hookset on a big fish with a flipping stick. The line testing equipment used in the test, only tests one aspect of line and knot strength: Shock strength is completely removed from the equation with the slow, steady pull the typical line tester utilizes.

Quite a few years ago, Florida Sportsman magazine did shock testing various lines and knots, and arrived at some quite different results than that same old steady-pull tester gave, which bore out some expensive experiences I'd had while tournament fishing and field testing some of the early copolymer technology. I was breaking 25 and 30 pound line in sudden shock load situations, and never breaking 16 pound, both with a palomar. My temporary solution was to change line brands when going to the larger diameter stuff. I learned also that the old improved-clinch knot that never beat the palomar on the line testing machine, didn't break my heart on big fish when using big line, like the palomar would.

This is just one example that showed me that certain knots perform better with certain lines in particular real-world situations, while the dang line testing machine gave us no useful information at all: Worse, it just confused the issues.

By the same token, when the flourocarbons hit the market many fishermen broke a lot of lines because they were "burning" their old reliable palomar knots. If your knot with flouro doesn't tie completely friction free, don't think twice--immediately retie the knot until it slides together like butter!

Congrats fish'nfool on coming up with your good knot!

Dean