To be honest, I love everything about the blood knot. I enjoy tying it, I dig the way everything comes together when you cinch it up, and I appreciate its elegance and slim profile. But I am aware that some folks struggle to tie the knot well consistently, or they simply dislike the process of tying it. Most of those anglers probably use a double or triple surgeon’s knot instead.
But here’s a knot I haven’t used before, called the Hesse knot. It seems like kind of a lazy Alberto knot, which is often used to connect braid to mono. The Alberto uses seven wraps up and seven wraps back, while this knot is just four and two.
The video isn’t great, so you may have watch the tying process a couple times. The advantage over the blood knot is that you don’t have to hold several things in place while you try to get all the wraps right. Instead, there is just one loop and a bunch of wraps. The two wraps over the top took me for surprise, but the whole deal does seem to cinch up nice and slim.
Give it a try, and see if it performs as well as Brian, a.k.a. Trout Tornado, says it does. According to his YouTube bio, he’s a hardcore streamer angler, so he definitely needs some tough knots. If he says that the Hesse knot holds up, my guess is that it probably does.
I would suggest using a thicker UV coating and forming a football shaped 2 ended “ramp” around the knot . i found it worked well on my cobbled leaders as when the line got inside the small guides on the Salmon R. when trying to land a fish. especially in the winter when guides are closed by ice and those annoying knot ‘bumps’ and tag ends slide thru easier.