Riffling hitch

Board Archives

Date: December 21, 2002 at 22:30:26
From: ken, [pool-64-223-39-246.prov.east.verizon.net]
Subject: Riffling hitch

Riffling hitch

Well! Once upon a time in a fishing village somewhere in Canada or so the story has been told there were a lot of very poor salmon fishermen. This was in the days before nylon monofilament and the leader folks used was silk and the flies were snelled onto the silk and so over the course of time the section where the silk met the steel of the hook would wear and become very weak. Salmon flies in this poor land were hard to come by because of the cost and the people there were dependent on the generosity of the tourist "Sports," for their supply of flies or so the story goes. The hooks on these flies did not have eyes but were snelled. The way that these local fishermen dealt with this problem was to take the leader and make a half hitch on the body of the fly near the head or behind the wing or at the back of the head to get a strong connection to the fly by by-passing the weak worn connection at the snell. When these flies were fished they would angle out from the line similar to a water skier jumping the wake. They would also leave a wake like a little motor boat or a baitfish swimming along with it's nose out of the water. Salmon loved it. You can do the same thing and use either one or two half hitches. I like two and I like to have the line come off the bottom quarter of the fly rather than the side. I use it on worm flies often and it works great on muddler type flies. I have never had a leader break doing this and all that is necessary is to throw a half hitch on and move it around until it pleases you with how the fly moves through the water. The reason that it acts this way is because the leader is coming off the side of the fly near the head and it causes the fly to angle away on the surace from the pull. IT is a deadly way to fish sand eels from time to time. Personally I do not believe "In," the story as it was written down and published but it's a good story in form. All stories are true and some of them actually happened. A very wise person said that and I think they heard it from some other very wise person who also heard it from some other very......... Good stories have a life of their own and change with time and they are still true and stay alive until someone writes them down and kills the oral tradition and claims the lineage.

Posted with TalkShop version 2.71-8

[Previous Message] [Next Message]

Follow Ups:

[ Board Archives ] [ FAQ ]