Tube flies for salmon and sea trout
by John Gray
A selection of Beaded Salmon Tube Flies
Following on again from the article,
Micro Tube
Flies, where we looked at the possibility of utilising the finest metal tubing
available, i.e. stainless steel hypodermic needle tubing, for making extremely
fine and slim tube flies for salmon and sea trout fishing, I thought it might be
worth experimenting a little further, by the addition of metal
beads to the slim stainless steel tubes before applying the
dressing. The potential advantages of this innovation are three
fold. Firstly, the bead adds a little weight to the fly, which
might enable it to fish a little deeper, but, as importantly,
the position of the bead towards the front of the tube adds a
little weight to balance the hook at the rear and will,
hopefully, ensure that the tube fly swims closer to the
horizontal than an unweighted tube. Secondly, the tying of the
hair wing immediately behind the bead causes the hair to flare
outwards, ensuring that the hair, when fished in a current, will
have plenty of movement, plenty of life, as opposed to some tube
flies where the hair, especially after lying in a fly box for
some time, lies close to the body of the tube, with little
movement of the hairwing when fishing. Thirdly, the metal bead,
being spherical, reflects light from any angle and might provide
an additional trigger, or target, point for a fish to home in
on.
The photographs below show the basic
components of the beaded tube fly and a few examples of flies dressed on them.
Note that various sizes of beads might be used, or a combination of two or more,
for added weight. I have used here hollow metal beads but, if more weight is
required, solid brass beads might be used.
Basic components for making beaded tube flies
The assembled tubes ready for dressing
Single, double or treble hooks,
barbed or barbless, may be used with the tube flies, as shown in the examples
below.
Some dressed Bead Tube Flies
As in the
Micro Tube
Flies , the ends of the stainless steel tubes are enclosed in a protective
sleeve of heat shrink tubing, which also holds the beads in
place. Stainless steel hypodermic tubing can be purchased from
companies such as
Coopers of
Birmingham. Heat shrink tubing is available from
www.rswww.com
Fine silicone and
PVC tubing is available at
Tube Fly Tubing
See also
Tube Flies
See also
How to make a knot guard (or swing tube) for a Free Swinging Tube
Fly Hook
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