so now I have my brand-new real my fly vine my leader and some backing we're gonna spool all these up it's super easy step one is let's start by attaching the backing to the reel the easiest way to do this is with what's called an arbor knot now I like to do this by removing the spool of the reel and simply placing it on your table now take the end of your backing and wrap it around your spool of your reel two full times now we're ready to actually form the knot in order to do the arbor knot we've wrapped around the reel two full turns we're going to take the end of the backing and we're gonna make an overhand knot but we're gonna do it around the big end of the backing so pass it around the big into the backing and now make an overhand knot so you can see I've just made an overhand knot with the main line passing through it's essentially a slipknot I like to do is take that little end and pass it through a second time now I have a double overhand knot and I can tighten it up now before I secure all this knot I'm going to take this small end of the backing and I'm going to tie another double overhand knot so I have a an overhand knot I'm going to pass it through a second time and tighten it and that's just so this thing won't slip out now use your scissors to cut this but when you cut the backing leave a little end there don't cut it right against the knot now the arbor knots essentially done we've made a slipknot remember what we've done we've passed around the spool two full turns then we've made a double overhand knot with a small end around the big end and a second double overhand knot on there we can just tighten it up I like to just pull on it nice and easy now once it feels like it's starting to get snug till it turn you're real so it's vertical and I'm going to pull one direction and then pull back the other direction and just work this back and forth a couple times now it's nice and snug against the spool and our backing is completely attached to our reel that's the arbor knot now once you've tied the arbor knot and the back is attached to the spool now we can spool up the reel put your spool back on and then we can spoil this up easy enough now I'm ready to attach my fly line to my backing when you open up your box with your fly line in it first thing you want to do is just take off these silly little tags and each brand will do that differently you want to look for the end of the line that has a tag on it it's gonna say this end attaches to the reel so make sure we're attaching the correct end so there's my tag I'm good to go now most modern-day flight lines are now coming with a loop to loop connection and welded loop on the back end I do not like the loop so I'm going to remove it the loop does not pass through the guides as cleanly as a nail knot does so we're going to do a nail knot we're going to take a piece of tippet in a formal loop we're gonna use a little piece of masking tape and just tape the two ends on that so we have a little loop of monofilament to deal with we're going to use this tool which is a small stiffener you can use anything you like so now we have our fly line or backing our stiffener and the loop we made hold your fly line take the stiffener and place it against the fly line now we'll take our loop that we created and we're going to place them all together so now we have the fly line the stiffener and the loop all held together now we can tie our nail knot with our backing now remember the other end of this backing is attached to our reel so we can only work with this end so I want plenty of material to work with so I'll allow myself 8 or 10 or 12 inches to work with now we're going to wrap the little end of the backing around everything in our bundle but we're going to wrap away from our hand so I just start wrapping three four five six seven I will typically do five to seven turns unless I'm dealing with a saltwater fly line or a sinking fly line in which case I typically do seven to ten I'm going to move that out of my way and take the tag in the little end and push it down through the little loop that you made now the knots almost done hold the loops with one hand and gently will pull down on our loop here that'll pull that little end to almost go through you don't need to force this don't force this just pull it till it's tight then reach through and grab your stiffener and pull it out now remember the secret with all nail knots is to never let go of your fingers once you hold the loops now we can pull this the rest of the way through and we'll just keep pull until it's tight once I feel it start to snug up I will pull a little on that end and a little on this end and a small tug and start rolling this with your two fingers as you feel it to start tightening up roll them together a little tug little tug little tug and keep going until you feel like in between your fingers you can feel that it's snugged up then you can let go now once we let go we have our nail now we just need to complete the tightening process and I'll get give a little pull pull here patience is the key on a nail knot it's easy not to tie but if you're impatient and you try to do it too quickly the loops will cross and you won't be happy with the end product so once you get it as tight as you think it needs to be give it one good final tug there and then cut these very very close if you do get a big fish that runs you well into your backing you don't want this not catching on the guides as it goes through the guides so cut it nice and close do the same thing on this end you it was simply real this up on our real now we have our flight line completely spooled up on our reel with our backing we used an arbor knot we used a nail knot and now we're going to attach the leader to the fly line so when you take your leader out of the package it's all coiled up like this I'm going to show you the easiest way to undo this what I like to do is take three fingers and put the whole loop on three fingers now take the fat end find the big fat end of the leader and just feed it underneath itself like that you can see how it's all twisted just push that and undo it and usually they'll have three to four times and now just keep that on your three fingers spread your three fingers up I don't want you to get a knot here and pull the long end until this all comes off of your hand now when you pull your leader out of the package and we undo it like this we don't have knots but we're gonna get knots if we're not careful because you notice it's all twisted up so the best way to take those out is to hold the fat end of the leader with one hand and just hold it good and tight and then just start pulling through it'll heat up as it goes through your hand and as it heats up it'll stretch that leader just a little bit and it'll pull all those kinks and coils out of it so that'll be very easy to work with we want to do this every time we fish as well the reason why these memory calls are in here is because it's been spooled up when it sits on the reel it'll do the same thing so we'll need to do this every time we fish just hold it tightly and pull it through and you can see now it lays nice and flat and we don't have all those kinks and coils anymore now we can tie or not and we're gonna take the loop on the leader and the loop on the fly line and we're gonna interconnect these there's a proper way to do it and I'm gonna show you which one it is if your leader does not have a loop don't worry I'm going to show you how to do that if your fly line does not have a loop don't worry I'm going show you how to do that too for those of us that have our loops we're gonna take the leader don't put it through this hole take the leader and thread it completely on to the fly line like this take the end of the leader the small end and push it through the loop in the fly line now we'll just pull it until it tightens up you can see that it will pull together in a perfect figure eight that is the easiest way to connect these now we have our fly line completely ready we have our backing we have our fly line and we've attached our leader I like to leave just a little bit of leader hanging out the end I don't like to reel it all the way up because then it's hard to find the end so I just leave a little bit of leader hanging out and I'm ready to go fishing