Last year at my son’s encouragement, we started experimenting with the “Riffle Hitch” technique for smallmouth bass which I used many years ago and some special flies for this method. Not only is this an exciting method but it is often productive when standard techniques bring few strikes.
The “Riffle Hitch” is easy to tie by simply tying two half hitch knots behind the hook eye on the head of the fly. This knot enables us to swim the fly across the current in an erratic motion that mimics the action of a dying struggling minnow. To give us patterns that match many of our minnows we have designed the Bass Skater Shad Streamer, Bass Skater Flash Streamer and Bass Skater Gold Streamer all in size 6. A great tactic is to fish these down and across stream at a twenty degree angle stripping them six inches every ten seconds. Hot spots are the shaded banks, below the riffles and in the tails of the pools. Watch our video in order to see how to tie the Riffle Hitch, vimeo.com/115660393
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