Down with the Clinch! Up with Davy!

I decided to take my chances with the scattered thunderstorms in the forecast and, after peaking at the radar, headed to Hamden to get some fishing in on the Upper West Branch of the Delaware.  It turned out to be a beautiful evening, though bug activity was extremely low.  I've been hearing that hatches have been fairly localized and that there can be a large difference in activity even just a quart mile away.  As darkness settled in, I started seeing a few rises to what appeared to be fairly small sulphurs.

Over the course of the evening, I fished an Royal Wulff dropper with a pheasant tail nymph, an iso emerger, a rather larger cream variant, and finally a small sulphur.  All of this was on around 10-11' of 4x leader.  I had the most luck on the sulphur, but what I really want to talk about is my difficulties with improved clinch knot.  I am perfectly willing to admit it comes down to my errors when tying the knot, but I regularly have the knot slip on me when hand testing after tying, and for about the fifth or sixth time this season, I lost a fish (and my fly) to knot failure.  It's maddening, especially on a slow night like tonight.

At this point, I'm pretty sure my error is that I'm feeding the tag through the wrong side of the loop and that's allowing the knot to slip.  It can certainly be argued that this is not the knot's shortcoming but mine.  Granted.  However, when you're standing in the stream, after dusk, trying to get your fly tied onto a nearly invisible tippet so you can cast to that nice rise you just saw, you want a knot that's reliable and easy to tie.  For my money, the improved clinch just isn't the right knot for the job and tradition be damned.  Enter Davy Wotton and the Davy Knot.

I admit, this knot is new and untested to me, but after the reading I've done I will definitely be giving it a shot on my next outing.  It's far easier to tie and has significantly improved performance over the clinch knot and even the Orvis knot (another contender for my affection) based on testing.

But don't take my word for it!
http://www.redrockadventure.com/fishing/flyfishing/davy-knot.htm
http://mattsbucket.blogspot.com/2011/10/knot-testing.html

And here's an animated how-to:
http://www.netknots.com/fishing_knots/davy-knot

UPDATE:  I've been out quite a few times since this post and I'm completely sold on the Davy Knot.  I will never go back to the Improved Clinch.  It's easy to tie on the river, extremely small so it won't change your presentation, holds up extremely well, and saves you a ton of tippet material since it's a simple matter to reduce the tag end to less than an inch when tightening.  Hats off to Davy Wotton!