To Twitch or Not to Twitch

“Twitching” doesn’t come naturally to most fly fishers.  But last year on the White River in western Colorado, I couldn’t get a reaction from the big rainbows hanging in the current—that was, until I did what my guide suggested and waited until the streamer swung all the way downstream and stopped, then twitched the rod tip.  Worked almost every time.

Mark Freeman writes this morning about the Rogue River Twitch, a technique that has fallen out of favor but which still has its fans.  “The Twitch traces its roots to the 1950s in the Wild and Scenic Section of the Rogue, where fishing guide Willard Lucas of Lucas Lodge discovered a trick to get his non-casting clients into more immature “halfpounder” steelhead that flood the lower Rogue each fall and winter.”