Tying an Albright Knot

Knowing how to properly tie an Albright knot is critical if you’re serious about flyfishing. If you want to tie your backing to your fly line or you need to join together two sections of monofilament with vastly different diameters, you’re going to need to know how to tie an Albright knot. While the Albright knot isn’t the easiest fly fishing knot to master, it is by no means one of the most difficult.

The first thing you want to do when tying an Albright knot is form an open loop in your line and pass the backing through the loop as shown in picture A below. Please note that we are not using real backing or fly line in the photos. We are using a much thicker string so you can see the actual details of the knot-tying process.

After you have passed the backing through your loop of line, take the backing and pass it around the fly line one time as shown in picture B below.

In step three, you need to take the tag end of your backing and wind it around itself and the fly line approximately eight to ten times as shown in the picture below.

You now need to tighten the Albright knot by holding both strands of the fly lining in one hand and pulling the tag end of the backing with the other, as shown in picture E below.

When you are done tightening the Albright knot and trimming the tag end of the backing and the fly line, the finished Albright knot should look similar to the one below in picture F.

As a side note, it should be mentioned that if you’re using very fine line or monofilament when tying an Albright knot, you should double it up when attaching it to the heavier line.