Lefty Kreh spent a good part of his life proving that most anglers tie too many turns into their knots. His testing landed on roughly six turns as the sweet spot for monofilament — and just two or three for bite wire, because wire doesn’t stretch and seat the way nylon does. That’s a good way into bluefish, because rigging for blues is mostly a string of small, specific calls like that one — each one depends on the material in your fingers, not on a rule you can memorize once and forget.

A bluefish carries a single row of uniform, sharp, conical teeth on both jaws, and the jaw works as a shearing mechanism — the same design that lets a feeding blue take a wedge out of a much larger baitfish. A bluefish doesn’t fray your tippet over a long fight. It closes a blade on it once, and the line is in two pieces. That’s where every rigging decision starts.