Jerry’s Dirty Hoh (clearly abused by some fish) rigged with a twisted hitch.
Today we present you with some rigging wizardry courtesy of Alaska West guide, Jerry French. You may recognize Jerry’s name as part of the original brain trust behind the Intruder. However, intruder style patterns are hardly the only flies Jerry fishes..
In fact, he’d be the first to tell you that great anglers evolve, constantly pushing the envelope to try new things. That’s the driving force behind his latest ‘evolution’ of fly patterns, including the ever popular ‘dirty hoh’ which utilizes a leech-like bunny strip (amongst some super unique techniques which is a topic for another post).
It’s hard to argue with the sheer fishiness of bunny strips in the water. Although the downside to most leech-style flies incorporating a bunny strip and a stinger-style hook is that they’re most often tied with the rabbit strip attached directly to the stinger hook (see an example by clicking right here). This provides great action to the fly, allowing the hook and tail and swim together in a natural manner, but doesn’t allow for an easy hook change should your hook become dull. That means more flies that get tossed before they’ve reached their full shelf life, and that’s no bueno.
Instead, when fixing a stinger hook to a bunny tail style fly, Jerry utilizes a super clever way he refers to as the twisted hitch that allows for easy hook changes with unhindered movement of the tail and hook of the fly. It works pretty darn well, and here’s how he does it.
Step 1: Draw your stinger loop tight to allow the loop to be pushed through the eye of the stinger hook. Jerry likes to use as limp a braid as possible here to produce the most action as possible to the fly.Step 2: Pass the stinger loop up through the eye of the hook. This will allow for the hook to ride up in relation to the bunny tail.Step 3: Pass the loop over the bend of the hook.Step 4: Twist the loop clockwise a half turn.Step 5: Pass the loop back over the bend of the hook so the loop is now on top of the shank of the stinger hook as shown.Step 6: Twist the loop a half turn again, this time in the opposite direction (counter clockwise).Step 7: Pass the loop back over the bend of the hook positioning the loop on the underside of the stinger hook shank as shown.Step 8: Wet the tip of your bunny tail for easy handling and slide it through the stinger loop.Step 9: Slide the bunny tail through into position until straight.Step 10: Pull on the head of the fly and the stinger hook to tighten down the loop, trapping the bunny tail.Step 11: Pull the loop tight.Step 12: Pick out any fibers that may have been trapped between the braid and the hide of the rabbit strip.Step 13: Trim the tail to just shy of the bend of the stinger hook and get fishing! The hook is now fixed directly to the tail for killer movement, while still allowing the hook to be changed.. Brilliant!
