I’m a new member. What happens when you tug too eagerly on the tag end of a badly tied girth hitch.
I trimmed and superglued the remaining lillian back onto the broken tip.
Should work for 5 minutes or so.
What sort of line is that that you’ve got girth hitched on there?
I’m thinking this might have to do with level line being too “sticky” for a girth hitch. I’d recommend an arbor knot style connection for level line to lillian. Check out this forum post and tying tutorial.
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With 4 rods I’ve never broken a tip. I do have replacement tips for every rod that I own and I did break the 4th section from the tip when I slipped on a hill and fell on it. Thankfully the rod company had replacement sections available as that was my favorite rod. (I will note that I jammed that 4th section back together and wrapped it with dental floss for a fix and fished for 2 more hours with it (never say “die”!)
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Welcome to the club!
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You might want to watch a YouTube video or two on how to connect a level line to the lillian. I would not use a girth hitch because the fluorocarbon line is two slippery. Either a slip knot, aka poachers knot works. Or you might try Daniel Galhardo’s one knot.
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Great knot, great picture. Only the tip of the rod should not stick out of the knee, only one Lilian.
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Roger, don’t worry because I hold the record of breaking 3 rod tips in one day with 3 different rods. This stuff happens and you can consider it war wounds. I have broken a total of 6 tips since I began tenkara fishing. If you don’t make mistakes then you are not fishing hard enough. Keep on fishing.
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As mentioned above, no girth hitch with level line. Even so, it’s easy to get that t-shirt, especially with cold fingers.
@DaveR and @Kris.Franqui, I’ve never understood why people say this. I almost exclusively use the girth hitch to connect my lines to my lillians. Caught thousands of fish that way and never had any issues with the line being too slippery or anything like that.
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Oh man… 3 in one day would hurt.
Good to know. I imagine it works fine with lighter line, does heavier level line make it more difficult? I’ve just done it the way TUSA, TBUM, and DT show. The girth hitch makes sense to me with the softer material.
Just to be clear, are you tying a loop in the end of your level line or are you adding a loop/piece of Dacron backing or something to the level line?
I like to go against convention myself…when using a line with a girth hitch, I don’t use a knot in my Lillian. I just pass the Lillian through the girth hitch twice like I do with the arbor knot on a level line. This eliminates the need to knot and unknot the Lillian for cleaning or using different lines.
Is there a club for people who’ve never broken a rod?
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I think there should be, definitely! 
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This is how I tie the ends of my level lines:
Two figure 8s to create a loop in the level line itself, and that’s the loop I use to girth hitch. I started doing this after realizing that adding a Dacron loop (which I started off doing because that’s what people said to do) seemed unnecessary, bulky, and redundant if I could just use the line itself. Plus the level line bites much better into the lillian than Dacron, meaning you don’t really need the lillian stopper knot (though I do have one on several of my rods). I do pass the lillian through the girth hitch loop twice.
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@Lagerratrobe Did you have a second knot in your hitching loop like that? If not, this might be the secret sauce to make girth hitches work on level line.
No, I didn’t. I’ll give that a try and will see how it works.
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All I use is a slip knot and add a knot on the tag end so it cannot slip through. I never had a problem. ( I only use level line )
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