What Is a Stop

A stop is a part or a knot that fixes a position on the line by friction, not a permanent joint. That’s the whole difference between a stop and an ordinary knot: a knot is tied once and for good, a stop gets moved whenever it’s needed.

Why a moveable fix

On a sliding weight and a sliding float, it’s the stop’s position that sets the working depth or the free travel. A fixed joint would have to be untied every time — a stop lets you change the setup by hand in seconds, right there on the water.

Three different ways of holding

A knot tied from a scrap of line or braid is the cheapest — it’s tied directly onto the mainline, and its size is set by the length of the tag ends. A silicone or rubber sleeve slides onto the line and holds by the grip of the rubber, with no tying needed. A clamp-type stop with a tooth holds strongest of all, gripping the line mechanically.

The harder a mechanism grips the line, the more visible mark it leaves on it — and that’s usually exactly where the line ends up breaking.

A stop holds weaker than a knot — and that’s by design

Under too hard a pull, a stop slips, while a properly tied knot doesn’t. That’s not a flaw: if a stop held just as firmly, changing the setup without untying it would become impossible, and the whole idea of a moveable fix would lose its point.

Without a bead, a stop slips through

The eye of the part the stop is fixing — a weight, a float — is almost always wider than the stop itself. So a bead goes between them: covered separately — the bead as a buffer.