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making a riffling hitch fly

Riffling hitch tube fly – a bit like building miniature models

think like a trout

It’s not just about making a hole in a plastic tube

I am often asked; how to allocate the hole on a riffling hitch tube fly? Must the hole in the tube be equal to 90° or at an angle? – Do I need to block the hole in the front end of the fly?

These questions cannot be answered unequivocally – It all depends on how your hitch fly is made, which type of tubing it is tied on, how long the fly is — and probably other factors.

Tying a functional riffling hitch fly is like building a miniature fly or boat – If you’ve created one that works perfectly, minor changes may ruin the design.

Join us while we discuss our ideas and thoughts on the fantastic riffling hitch tube fly

A modern riffling hitch tube is related to side planers, outboard riggers and the ottering of boats.

Riffling hitch tube flies is a relatively new design in fly tying – English salmon guide and author Mr Crawford Little was one of the first to describe riffling hitch flies tied on a tube. In his book: Success with Salmon from 1988, Mr Little define how a tube that would have the leader inserted through the side or belly of the tube as opposed to the conventional way where the leader was inserted through the front of the tube – would pull to the surface much in the same way a boat pulled at an angle would cut out in the stream.

Are you curious to learn more about the early riffling hitch tube flies and the inventors behind them … Look to our general page on the matter

Go here

Ottering - riffling hitchMr. Crawford Little used the analogy between ottering a rowing boat in a river and how one could build a tube fly that would pull to the surface. Ottering is best described as how one can force an object to cut away from you by pulling from the side of the object. Here it is trolling anglers using a so-called: Sideplaner or plasterboard to pull plugs and bait away from the boat.

riffling hitch know howWe tried to make a computer program that could make all the correct calculations.

On our journey to understand and make the best possible computer design for our riffling hitch tube fly we sought information from a naval architect who had worked with Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and conventional 2-D modeling… We had hoped that we could design a computer program that could lead us to the perfect flies… we soon learned that things weren’t as simple as we had thought.

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Jesper is the chief designer and fly tier at Fishmadman - He also does most of our writing on the Fishmadman pages and Newsletter

Top-water fishing is his sport and as an outdoor writer he has been writing articles on this subject in magazines and books in Europa and North America sins the early 80´s.

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