Tube Flies

[Traditionalist]

Tube flies were invented fairly recently, up till that time most salmon and sea-trout flies were dressed on so called "irons" which is just another term for hooks. The term is usually applied to large single hooks. Tube flies sounded the death knell for fully dressed salmon flies for most normal fishing purposes really, as they are cheaper, quicker and easier to produce, and just as effective for practical fishing, in fact often more so. They tend to be lighter and more translucent with much greater mobility than hard built feather wings, and consequently more attractive to the fish.

Tube flies are so called because they are dressed on lengths of tube made either of plastic, aluminium, or brass. There are loads of "systems" for dressing tube flies in the meantime.

Tube fishing is generally taken to mean fishing from a special personal floatation device also referred to as a belly boat, or float tube, which is basically a vehicle tire-inner-tube in a canvas or similar cover, and has nothing to do with tube flies! I mention this, as some of these terms are confusing, and it is sometimes obvious to old hands what they are talking about, but beginners get very confused indeed.

Salmon and sea-trout are usually the main quarry when using tube flies, but they may also be used for all other fish. A big favourite of mine is a muddler minnow variation tied on a tube, this is often very successful as a hopper imitation. I also dress many perch and pike flies on tubes, and I also fish them in the salt for species like sea-trout, garfish, cod etc with considerable success.

Tube flies have many advantages over conventional salmon irons, or similar hooks. They are cheaper, easier to dress, the hooks can easily be changed if damaged, and if properly dressed these tube flies last almost forever!

So what do we need to make  tube flies? Well first of all some tubes! Before you rush out and buy a range of all the lovely (and expensive!) tubes and systems,  just pop into the bathroom and see if your wife has a box of q-tips. (  Not all q-tips are hollow plastic, some are made of rolled paper and such).

These things are great, they have more uses on the tying bench than I could list, and they make perfect tubes for tube flies! Just cut the cotton wool wads off the ends with a sharp craft knife or similar, and hey presto you have a basic tube!



This may be improved considerably by holding the ends near to (but not in!) a clear gas lighter flame to make them flare slightly at the ends, this supposedly prevents the thread slipping off the tube at the ends. A very slight flare is sufficient, don't overdo it.  



The next thing we need is a system for holding the tubes while dressing them. Traditionally, if one can speak of tradition in connection with tube flies, a tapered loop-eyed salmon hook with the eye cut off, in the appropriate size was used to mount tubes on for tying, this system works OK. For years I used a set of needles mounted in my normal vice to hold tubes, this system also works perfectly well.



In the photos the needle in the normal vice has a short tube mounted on the rear of the needle, this is not some exotic way of dressing tube flies in stereo, it is simply to stop me jabbing my fingers on the point of the needle!

Then I finally got around to building a few tube fly vices, the first one was simply a ratchet tool as is used for holding thread cutting tools mounted on a stem , this is fully rotary in both directions because of the built in ratchet mechanism, and may also be stopped with the ratchet if desired, this is good for very large tubes, especially pike tubes, which may be up to ten inches long.

I have also used a Renzetti rotary tube vice head, but now use a vice I built myself.The main disadvantage with the Renzetti, is that long tubes tend to flop about a bit due to the flexibility of the metal shaft used to hold the tubes, if the tubes are plastic. In these cases I use a large needle mounted in one of my home made vices.

This is the vice I now use. It is an engineers pin vice mounted in a one way bearing.



Our first tube fly is an excellent fly for sea-trout and other species. Mount a tube of say half an inch length in your vice or on your needle. Run your thread (I use normal 6/0 tying thread) onto the tube and take it down to a point about 1/8" before the end. Tie in some flat silver lurex or tinsel, smear the body of the fly with tacky varnish or glue, (q-tips are good for this!), and wind the tinsel smoothly up to a point about 1/8" from the head of the tube.



Take a small bunch of peacock sword fibres and tie this in at one side of the tube, spreading it slightly so that it lies flat and is evenly distributed. Rotate the tube in the vice, tie in another sparse bunch of sword fibres exactly opposite the first bunch and in exactly the same fashion, trim the roots carefully so that they are at least flush with the end of the tube, slightly less is even better, and apply some good varnish or glue to the trimmed roots. Between the two bunches of sword fibres on each side of the fly tie in a small bunch of hot orange hackle or hair fibres, trim the roots and build a nice smooth head and whip finish the fly.



When dry you may use varnish to make a nice smooth shiny bullet head if you wish, this looks nice but is not really essential. The best way to do this is first to apply thin clear varnish or cement to the head and put it on one side to dry. When dry use your dubbing needle and apply thick black varnish spreading it carefully and thinly around the head. Put the tube upside down on a needle to dry. The black varnish must be thick enough that it does not run, as it will otherwise soak into the wing and ruin it. I use Veniards cellire varnish, and I leave the top off a new bottle for a few hours to thicken the varnish before using it. If it gets too thick, just use the cellire thinners to thin it down again.

That was it! Your first tube fly! It should appear as in the photo. A piece of valve rubber, or other thin rubber or silicone tubing, is now slipped over the end of the tube to hold the hook in the tube on an even keel for casting and fishing. This is shown in the photo above. There are also some special tubes on the market which hold the hook by themselves, and lastly there are some special needle eye treble hooks from Partridge, which may be pushed into practically any tube, thus obviating the need for valve rubber or special tubes.

You may use singles doubles or trebles of your choice for tube flies, if you use trebles don't use them too large or too heavy, as they will drag the tail of the fly down and prevent it swimming properly. I have found that the use of double hooks is quite a good method of getting the flies to swim on an even keel, if this is desired for the style of dressing in use, and they are lighter than trebles. When a fish takes, the tube-fly usually moves up the line away from the hook, this is an added advantage, as the fish has nothing to lever against and is less likely to throw the hook.

To affix the hook to your line, simply thread the line through the head end of the tube, pull it through, and tie your normal knot at the hook eye, then pull the hook into the valve rubber.

As with nearly all fly types the possibilities are endless. There are a lot of fairly standard tube-fly patterns, but this is one area where you really can experiment away to your hearts content. The photos below show a range of tube flies tied on q-tips tubes just to show you what is possible. We will discuss a few of these patterns in our next lesson in order to give you a good start in experimenting yourself.
Most of the tubes in the photos are my own creations, or variations of standard tube dressings. Or in many cases stripped down versions of fully dressed salmon flies.



I don't bother giving them names usually, my creative talents are just sufficient to invent the flies, and do not suffice for naming them as well unfortunately!

I keep notes of which patterns are successful, and number them for my own use, I do not think it is much use giving people a list of patterns called "Mike´s number one"or "Mikes´s five hundred and sixty three." This just confuses the issue. If you want to name these flies then call them something like "Black flat gold ribbed tube 3/4 inch Orange squirrel tail, blue hackle ," or something similar.  Every dresser knows what that means, and you cause no confusion. If you should come up with something really good, and you catch a large number of fish on it over a period of time, then you may consider finding an attractive name for it.

You can dress  anything on a tube, just as you can dress anything on a hook, however, the tube is fairly bulky of itself, and you should remember this when designing tube flies. Here as with nearly all wet flies, sparsely dressed streamlined tubes are usually more effective than heavily dressed ones.

TL
MC

[Highlander]

Tube flies sounded the death knell for fully dressed salmon flies

Do not think that tube flies alone sounded the death knell. Tubes as you quite rightly said offer more than a few alternatives to singles. Salmon flies to me simply followed a logical progression both in material & hook design. In no particular order, doubles, trebles, tubes, Waddintons etc all followed Irons were not just hooks, they were generally thought to be hooks that were "Japanned" More important to my mind was the move to other materials such as hair wing & furs. With the more exotic feathers of the Victorian era disappearing & a call to protect endangered species of birds thoughtfull fly tyers looked for something different & it was it was on the cards that something would replace the exotic stuff & that was hair & in particular dyed hair. Hair wing & modern synthetics still predominates with the fly tying of today. You take a fully dressed Green Highlander & a hair wing version, hold it at arms length & with eyes partially closed they both look colour wise, very similar. The "Irons" of yesterday caught 1000s of fish & if used today would no doubt still catch. Maybe there was just more fish around in those days.After all if a Salmon is in the mood it is said it would take the handle of a chanty pot given the chance, not something i would recommend I might add. There's a school of thought that would say that a big single gives a better hook hold. Not something I can prove or disapprove as I am  not a serious Salmon man. Me I feel quite secure if my  Esmond Drury or wee double is well stuck in the scissors.
Still nothing is written in stone.
Tight Lines

[Inchlaggan]

Interesting stuff.
In some of the extreme examples of salmon "flies" it is hard to differentiate them from "lures".
Tube flies are frequently fitted with spinner blades on, or just behind the head. This makes them indistinguishable (to all intents and purposes) from Flying Bucktails, which in turn are supposed to have developed from the Flying C. The spinning motion is reminiscent of the Devon Minnow, which lead us to the Quill Minnow fitted with three trebles, which is not much removed from a Rapala.
Spoons developed into Tobys which developed into Tasmanian Devils.
Our ancestors used the same rod and reel set up to fling most of the above into the wet stuff, spinning was not defined by the design of the rod or the development of the fixed spool reel. These changes made it easier, and less expensive, to throw lures on lengths of nylon the required distance, but you can still do it with an old-style salmon rod.
"Fly only" waters, beats and seasons did exist, but lures caught more fish- when we were asked to catch fish for stripping for the hatchery we always used spinning gear.
IMHO tube flies provided a compromise between a fly and a lure, and were (and are) allowed on many fly-only waters (where holding a spinning rod with a Devon Minnow at the working end would result in your being shot).
I am struggling to think of a salmon fly that is an imitative of an insect, so perhaps the term "salmon fly" was always a non-sequitor.
The only distinction that I can think of is that "spinning" end-tackle usually requires a swivel and/or anti-kink vane between the "fly" and the line.

[Traditionalist]

Indeed, obviously the terminology developed more as a result of common usage than on any basis in actual fact.  The "Gaudy" salmon flies were produced to make use of all sorts of exotic feathers among other things, and are all pure fantasy objects with no natural counterparts.  Personally I think "lures" is a better term for all sorts of things, including many "flies".  But we are stuck with the nomenclature as it is.  I often find it amusing that people will go to extreme lengths and get very hot and bothered about "definitions" of such a nature. Hard to imagine a more pointless endeavour.

TL
MC