The Famous Portland Hitch

The first time I ever saw the Portland Hitch, or even heard of it, was in the early 1990’s while fishing the House Pool on Grandy’s Brook with Henry Hare.

A bright flash in the tea brown water under my fly meant that a salmon had moved for my Blue Charm.

“E’s coming” said Henry, “Give ‘im the ‘itch.”
“What?”
“The ‘itch Bye! ‘Ere gimme your fly.”

And with that he hauled my line in hand over hand while I kept my fingers locked on a pinch of line to keep the measure of the cast.
Within seconds he had looped two half-hitches of my leader around the fly, just behind the eye.

I flicked out the measured cast and watched as the fly hit the water. The current snatched at the Blue Charm raising it to the surface like a water skier. It swung in a perfect, slack-free arc waking a “V” shaped commotion across the pool.

As it neared the spot where the salmon had rolled, the fly just disappeared. A throbbing weight on my line gave a better explanation than my disbelieving eyes and I soon had my first fish on the Hitch.

Called variously the Hitch, the Riffle Hitch, the Riffling Hitch and most famously the Portland Hitch, it is all the same thing.

The idea is to get the fly to riffle or wake across the surface of the water.

The conventional way to apply it is to hold your fly, which is tied on in the usual manner, so that the eye points downstream. Two half hitches of your leader are tied around the fly just where the head and the body meet. When it is riffling you want the head of the fly to point in the direction it is travelling.

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It can be done with the fly pointing the other way but that would seem backward to me, despite the early descriptions of the method in fly fishing literature.

Present the fly as you would a wet-fly. When it is working, the results are amazing. A strike can come anywhere in the swing. I’ve seen fish tear across a pool to intercept a Hitched fly.

They say the method originated with Newfoundland guides who would pick up the worn out, gut-eyed flies discarded by the sports rather than see them go to waste.

Here is an interesting variation I use during the summer when the water is starting to get low and the fish are a bit stale.

I rig a sinking-tip line with a short leader and hitched fly. This sub-surface presentation can really spark things up if the fish have been sulking in the pool for a while.

It is counter-intuitive I know, but it is an interesting technique and always worth a try if all else fails.