Palomar Knot: How to Tie It, How Strong It Is, When Not to Use It

The Palomar knot is the first knot to learn and, for tying a line to a hook, lure or swivel, at or near the top of every published pull test. Field & Stream’s machine measured it at 89 percent of 10 lb mono and 82 of fluorocarbon. It takes six steps and no counting of turns, and it holds on monofilament, fluorocarbon and braid. Its main limit is the loop: the lure has to pass through it. When it will not, a uni knot or a loop knot takes over.

The Palomar doubles the line before it goes through the eye, so two strands share the load at the bend where knots fail. That one idea keeps it at or near the top of the pull tests on nylon, holds on braid, and can be tied in the dark with cold hands.

What you need

• Line of any kind: monofilament, fluorocarbon or braid. Few knots are good on all three.
• About 12 in (30 cm) of tag; the doubled line uses twice as much as a clinch knot.
• A hook, lure or swivel with an eye the doubled line will pass through, and a body that will pass through the loop; that second condition is the knot’s only real limit.
• Water or saliva to wet the knot, and clippers to trim it.

How to tie the Palomar knot, step by step

1. Double the line. Fold 8–12 in (20–30 cm) of line back on itself to make a loop, and pass the loop through the eye of the hook. With a small eye, pass the tag through, then back, to make the loop on the far side.

   

2. Tie an overhand knot in the doubled line. Use the loop and the two strands together, loosely, with the hook hanging from the middle of the knot. Do not tighten it yet.

   

3. Pass the hook through the loop. Take the loop end of the doubled line and pass the whole hook or lure through it, then bring the loop up above the eye so it sits over the overhand knot.

   

4. Wet the knot. Braid and fluorocarbon especially; a dry seat glazes fluorocarbon and scuffs braid.

   

5. Seat it. Hold the hook and pull the standing line and the tag together, steadily, so the overhand knot slides down and the loop closes over it against the eye. Both strands should lie neatly, not crossed.

   

6. Trim the tag to about 1/8 in (3 mm). A seated Palomar does not slip much, so a short tag is enough.

   

Drawings: fishing.info, generated with Gemini and checked step by step against the text.

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How strong is the Palomar?

Every figure below comes from a test that names its line and method. A percentage is the knot’s break against the bare line’s break; a pound figure is what the scale read when the knot let go.

Three things to read from that table. On nylon the Palomar is at or near the top of every test, but not alone: the Trilene knot and a carefully tied improved clinch matched or beat it on 10 lb mono. On braid the Palomar holds, which is more than an improved clinch does, but a uni with ten or more wraps beats it. Salt Strong’s braid ranking runs uni, San Diego jam a close second, then the Palomar. And the Sport Fishing figures carry the warning that matters most: the same five-turn uni broke at 73 percent in one tyer’s hands and 31 in another’s. On braid, how a knot is tied decides more than which knot.

Single or double Palomar on braid?

Double, with the line through the eye twice: in Salt Strong’s pulls on 10 lb braid, that version beat the standard knot five times out of five. The reason is grip. Braid is woven from ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, a fiber so slick that a knot holding by friction over a few turns slides on it. A knot that slides under load heats and cuts itself.

The Palomar does not slip outright; in Salt Strong’s braid test neither knot pulled out, the Palomar simply broke first. But it has one overhand’s worth of grip, and on braid grip is what runs out. The double Palomar adds it: in step 2, pass the loop through the overhand a second time, so the hook goes through the loop of a double overhand. The improved version also passes the doubled line through the eye twice first.

Salt Strong tested each variation against the standard knot. One strand of line got a knot at each end, soaked fifteen minutes, and was pulled with rising tension until one broke, five pairs per contest.

On braid, then: eye twice, double overhand. Five pulls out of five against the standard knot, and a third overhand was worse than two. On nylon (Salt Strong tested 30 lb Trilene mono) leave the knot alone; the extra passes made so much friction that the knot could not be cinched without damaging the line, and the standard won most pulls anyway. The IGFA’s machine agreed: Sport Fishing’s braid winner, out of 30 entries, was a double-loop Palomar at 79.08 percent.

The three mistakes that cost strength, and the fix

1. Crossed strands. As the doubled line goes through the eye and into the overhand, the standing line and the tag can cross into an X. On fluorocarbon that X is where the line abrades on itself as the knot seats. Wired2Fish counts crossed lines among the places most people go wrong with the Palomar. The fix: keep the two strands parallel from the eye through the overhand; if they cross, open the knot and lay them again before you pull.
2. The loop in the wrong place. The loop has to come up past the hook and close over the overhand, above the eye. Left against the bottom of the eye, NetKnots warns, the knot can fail. The fix: after the hook is through, slide the loop up over the eye until it sits on the knot, then seat.
3. Seating by one strand, or dry. The knot seats when standing line and tag are pulled together and the overhand slides down to the eye. Animated Knots and NetKnots both pull the two ends at once, never the tag alone. Dry is the other half of the same mistake: the friction of cinching heats fluorocarbon and weakens it. That is the one real negative James Niggemeyer names for the knot on that line. The fix: hook in one hand, both strands in the other, the knot wet, one slow steady pull.

How do you tie it for a drop shot?

With one change: a long tag, passed back through the eye. The drop shot rig hangs a hook above a weight on the same line, and the Palomar’s long tag is what makes that possible. Mercury’s knot guide dates the knot’s surge in bass fishing to the 2000 Bassmaster Classic in Chicago. There the technique, just arrived from Japan by way of California, nearly won. Leave a long tag when you double the line: NetKnots doubles 12 to 30 in (30–76 cm), depending on how high the bait should ride. Tie and tighten the Palomar as above. Then, with the hook point up, feed the tag back down through the eye from the top, the side the point faces, so it comes out the bottom. Mercury, NetKnots and Wired2Fish all do this once the knot is tight. The hook now stands out from the line at a right angle, point up, instead of hanging. Check that it faces up, then tie the weight to the end of the tag. If the hook hangs, pass the tag through again from the top.

How heavy a line, and why wet it?

The doubled line has to go through the eye and the hook through the loop, so the knot has a size limit at both ends. A small eye may not take the doubled line; NetKnots and Wired2Fish then pass the end through once and back again from the other side. The other limit is Salt Strong’s abandoned mono test above. On heavy nylon tie the standard Palomar; the double Palomar is a braid knot.

Wetting is not optional. The Palomar seats by sliding the overhand down two strands and closing the loop over it, a lot of line moving under tension in a moment. Put saliva or water on the whole knot, then pull slowly. On fluorocarbon that is the difference between the knot the tests measured and one that glazed as it closed.

When is the Palomar the wrong knot?

• The lure will not fit through the loop. A deep-diving crankbait, a jerkbait with three trebles or a swimbait is awkward to pass through a loop of light line, and the trebles catch it. Ontario OUT of DOORS’ knot test says it plainly: the Palomar “is a good, easy option but doesn’t really work with large lures.” A uni, or on nylon an improved clinch.
• The item is already on a leader. A swivel on a pre-tied rig or a hook on a dropper cannot be passed through anything. Same answer.
• A lure that should swing. The Palomar cinches tight to the eye. For a jerkbait, a walking topwater or a jig on a slack line, a non-slip loop knot fishes better and on fluorocarbon tested one point stronger.
• Braid to a leader. The Palomar is a terminal knot, not a join. Field & Stream got 96 percent from a Palomar to a small barrel swivel as a braid-to-mono connection, but a swivel will not pass through the guides; for a leader that casts, the FG knot.

Salt Strong’s own ranking sets these tests beside every other knot it pulled. The braided line page explains why the slick fiber needs the wraps, and the knots hub has the full table of which knot goes with which line and job.

Is the snell knot better than the Palomar?

On a bare bait hook it may be stronger, but no published pull test shows it: Salt Strong’s Luke Simonds expects the snell to win because its wraps spread the load, yet says he has not tested it. A snell ties only to a hook, so for a lure or swivel the Palomar is the knot, and the snell stays a bait-hook knot.

Who invented the Palomar knot?

It was Chester J. “Chet” Palomar, a Pomona, California fireman on the department from 1944 to 1963 and a Scout leader. In the sport-show days the line companies, Berkley for Trilene and DuPont for Stren, ran booths with a line-testing machine. The standing challenge: tie your best knot against the rep’s and see which breaks first. At the Fred Hall show in 1971 Palomar beat the rep’s knot. DuPont adopted the “Palomar knot” as one of its recommended knots, and the Pomona Progress Bulletin ran the story on March 11, 1971. The 1972 Garcia Fishing Annual gave it a sidebar, and the sports pages carried it across the country.

Palomar was never paid. Fred Greenwood, DuPont’s master knot tyer, told a Minneapolis newspaper in 1976: “Palomar never got any money for his invention, but then he never has to buy fishing line anymore. We keep him supplied.” The virtues were clear from the start: almost nothing to remember, no turns to count, a knot that is nearly impossible to pull out once seated, and a hook left free to rotate in the loop.

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