The fisherman’s knot is called the improved clinch and it takes about four seconds once you know it. Five turns around the line, thread back through, thread through the loop you just made, pull slow until it seats. My father showed me once and then expected me to know it, which is how he taught everything.
I still tie it wrong sometimes. Not wrong enough to lose the fish — wrong enough to know, hand it back for him to redo without comment. He’d pull the tag end with his teeth and start again.
He’s been dead eleven years. I tie the knot correctly now.
What I didn’t understand then and understand now imperfectly: he wasn’t teaching me to fish. He was trying to give me something that would work when he couldn’t be there to work it. The knot is a piece of knowledge with no expiration. Monofilament is monofilament. Physics doesn’t change.
He was making me a forward address.
I didn’t know what I was receiving. I thought he was just impatient.