Take a look at many fly-tying catalogs, especially those from companies on the West Coast, and you’ll no doubt find a section dedicated to tube flies. These flies, as their name suggests, are tied on pieces of tube, instead of on a hook. To mount the fly, the tippet is slid through the tube, and a hook is tied on the end. This setup places the hook at the back of the fly, which means there’s a greater chance you’ll hook any fish that nips at the tail. It also allows you to use short-shank hooks with long flies, which produces less leverage than long-shank hooks and reduces the chances of losing the fish. Another advantage is that you don’t have to get rid of a fly just because the hook point gets badly damaged.
While West Coast steelheaders have taken to tube flies with a vengeance, the casual tyer who seldom fishes for steelhead may wonder if these flies are worth the effort to craft. The answer to that is a resounding yes. Tube flies can open up some interesting fishing options for other species, and you don’t have to buy expensive materials or new tying tools unless the fancy takes you. For instance, you can use all kinds of tubes, such as ballpoint pen ink tubes, Q-tips, electrical wire insulation, heat-shrink tubing, and kid’s necklace lacing. You can buy special vise adapters to hold the tube while you tie, but a paper clip, sewing needle, or nail that produces a snug fit with the tube will work, too. If you are willing to think a little bit outside the box, you can make some cool flies with materials from your local hardware or craft store. Here are some alternative tube concepts to help get your brain going.
Naked Tubes
One thing tube fly tying has in common with tying regular flies is that the process involves securing materials with thread. But if you look at a plastic tube, it’s not that hard to visualize it as a bug or a fish without the addition of other materials. This idea is certainly not new — folks were making simple minnow patterns from pieces of quill in the 1880s. You can still make minnows from quills, but clear heat-shrink tubing comes in a wide variety of diameters and offers a neat way to create lifelike baitfish, bug, and fly patterns. For baitfish, the easiest approach is to cut a piece of heat-shrink tubing (a quarter-inch width works well) to a suitable length and apply heat (from a lighter, steam, or hot water) to the ends.
This produces a cigar shape with a narrowed opening at each end. To match a specific type of baitfish, simply apply color using marker pens. The final step is to cut out a few V-shaped notches along the top and bottom of the fly. This will create diamond-shaped holes that allow trapped air to escape so the fly can sink.
Clear tubing gives the fly a translucent body, which is common with some species of baitfish such as smelt. For shiny baitfish such as anchovies and shiners, you’ll need to insert a sleeve of metalized plastic film such as you’ll find with snack food packaging. Cut a rectangle of film that is slightly shorter than the piece of tube and three times its width. Roll the film into a tube and insert it into the heat-shrink tubing before shrinking the ends. It will unroll against the heat shrink, creating a reflective surface. If you want a fish-scale effect, holographic lure or cosmetic nail foils work well.
If you’d like a tapered body to match more closely the shape of a baitfish, there are a couple of options. The easiest method is to immerse part of the tubing in just-boiled water. Submerge about half the tube in the water for less than a second so the tubing partially shrinks. Repeat the process, but this time submerge only the last quarter of the tubing. You will now have a piece of tube that tapers from head to tail. Fully shrink the ends of the tube to create narrowed openings for the tippet. Again, cut out a few V-shaped notches so the fly will sink.
To fish the fly, you’ll need a couple of small plastic beads and either a small bobber stop or a Bobber Stop Knot (tied with 10-pound-plus monofilament; instructions can be found on the Web). The mounting sequence is stopper knot (or bobber stopper), bead, fly, bead, and hook. Once the hook is knotted on, slide the stopper down the tippet to keep the fly from sliding away from the hook.
If you want to create a body that is a close match for the shape of a real fish, you’ll need to trim the tube to shape and then fuse the cut edges together. Using sharp scissors, cut the tubing to create a fish-shaped taper on the front and back end, but leave a band of uncut tube just ahead of the midsection. The band keeps the body flared outward, producing a fish silhouette when viewed from below. Don’t bother trying to glue the cut edges together, because heat-shrink plastic doesn’t seem to work too well with glues. Fortunately, it can be melted and fused quite easily.
To fuse the heat shrink, you’ll be using a pair of heated pliers to soften and crush the two sides together. Hemostats and regular pliers will work, but duck-bill pliers, with their flat surfaces, are much quicker and create a superior seal. You can heat the pliers with a flame or hot-air gun. Shrink tubing melts around 250 degrees Fahrenheit, so don’t hold the pliers in the heat for too long. If they get too hot, the plastic becomes fluid and won’t fuse.
Crimp seal all the way to the ends of the tubing. When the tubing has cooled, cut off a few millimeters of fused plastic at either end to create small holes that the tippet goes through. As with the other versions, cut V-shaped notches so the fly sinks. You’ll likely find the fly wobbles when your retrieve is erratic or when you are working it through currents. If you incorporate a shiny film insert, the wobble will create flashes of light. Adding a few strands of Flashabou to the hook further enhances this effect.
You may notice that the fly swims with the crimped side up. I usually color this side so that it matches the back coloration of a baitfish. If you want the flat side to be on top, you’ll need to add some ballast. A piece of lead wire or a flattened BB shot can be glued to the inside of the tubing with E6000 glue.
Floating Sausages
A few years back, I was trying to make a fly-fishing version of the Cotton Cordell Pencil Popper. This large top-water lure has a weighted tail that gives it a head-wagging action when retrieved. This motion is especially attractive to striped bass and can result in some explosive takes. Using half-inchwide heat-shrink tubing, I was able to create a six-inch-long sausage with the fusing-with-heated-pliers technique described above. Unfortunately, problems with adding weight to the fly ultimately caused me to set the project aside.
However, the experiment wasn’t a total failure. It was obvious that the sausage concept, if downsized, could be used to make floating bodies for things such as grasshoppers, dragonflies, and damselflies. I tied some damselfly sausages and found they were a hit with panfish and bass at a local lake, and a svelte smelt sausage was the only fly that got attention from the trout on an exceptionally tough day at Lake Almanor.
I wondered if anyone else had come up with this idea and discovered they had. In 2009, David Cowardin published Unsinkable Dry Flies (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform), in which he described how he made all kinds of dry flies with heat-shrink tubing. I have not read the book, but photos online of some of his flies suggest they work well for everything from grasshopper imitations to Royal Coachmen.
For larger patterns such as dragonflies and floating baitfish, there’s usually enough buoyancy to fish the flies in conventional tube-fly style. Once you have made the sausage, simply heat a needle and create a small hole at each end. To mount the fly, run the tippet through the holes and knot a hook on, just like a regular tube fly. A bobber stop prevents the fly from sliding up the tippet.
You can make fly bodies with a thorax that’s wider than the abdomen by dipping just the abdomen section in hot water. This is especially useful for damselfly and dragonfly patterns. And while it may look awkward, placing the hook at the more buoyant (thorax) end eliminates or significantly reduces the sinking caused by the weight of the hook. Wings and legs can be added by threading the material into a needle and spearing it through the plastic. Once the wings and legs are lined up, secure them with a spot of superglue where they exit the body.
Smaller flies, such as mayfly and caddis imitations, tend to be too small to avoid having the hook drag the end of the fly down, and for them, too, wrapping the hook onto the sausage with thread is the way to go.
Wrapped Tubes
While naked tubes provide some interesting fly-fishing options, there are two situations where wrapping a tube in something makes a difference. The first is visual and the second is tactile.
If you have ever fished really big waters, you’ll know there are times when the fish can be spread out over many acres. You can sit and wait in the hope that a fish will come to you, or you can improve your odds by covering a lot of water. Under these circumstances, you’ll often increase your chances of getting bit by using a fly that can be seen from a long distance.
The absorption and scattering of light by stuff such as planktonic algae and zooplankton, as well as by tannins and small particulates, can render some flies invisible over quite short distances. I’ve run numerous underwater visibility tests with GoPro cameras, and the findings are quite sobering. If a fly’s color is similar to the background color of the water, it will quickly blend in. This is why prey species typically match their backgrounds. If you need a searching pattern that stands out, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to tie on an ultrarealistic fly.
One thing that has proven to be visible over the longest distances in all the underwater tests is flash. The more flash a fly has, the more likely it will be seen. Flashabou is a wonderfully flashy material and well worth adding to any searching fly pattern. However, you can get significantly more flash by using a material that acts like a solid mirror. This is one reason why conventional lures such as the Kastmaster have proven to be so good at catching fish.
You can make a fly-tying version of the Kastmaster with just two materials — a piece of tube and some heavy-duty aluminum duct tape. Simply fold a sheet of tape over the tube (so the glued sides are inside) and trim it to a fish shape. The tube provides a hinge, allowing the tape body to rock back and forth, in effect creating an underwater signaling mirror. The amount of light reflected by the tape vastly exceeds what you can get with Flashabou.
A single piece of tape is usually enough for flies under two inches long, while bigger flies can often benefit from a couple of layers. If you use thin-walled tubing (such as a plastic straw), the fly may not have enough weight at the front to avoid flapping around during the cast. A few wraps of lead wire over the front of the tube before you add the tape should be enough to make it fly true. Another option is to add an extra layer or two of tape to the front third of the fly.
To eliminate any chances of the tape separating from the tube at the nose, seal the tape-to-tube junction with UV resin or thick head cement. Flies over three inches long can get bent out of shape when mounted on soft tubing, especially with aggressive casting. Mounting them on stiff tubing, such as a ballpoint pen ink tube, solves that problem.
In addition to creating a big flash of light, the ultrathin profile means the fly cuts through the air with very little resistance. You can cast this fly a very long way, which is an advantage when you need to cover as much water as possible. In a nod to the Kastmaster lure, I decided to call the fly the Castblaster.
Chewy Tubes
Many articles about fly fishing for largemouth bass talk about their wild attacks on poppers and sliders. While this kind of fishing isn’t uncommon, it certainly isn’t a given. Some days, the fish won’t be in the mood to feed on top, and on hard-fished waters, they may flee from an otherwise perfectly presented top-water fly. You will generally find more consistent action if you carefully work flies through structure and along the bottom, the way the conventional-tackle anglers fish plastic worms. But this technique also has its challenges.
If you fish in very clear water and watch the fish attack your fly, you’ll notice they can suck it in and spit it out in an instant. This means that you’ll likely miss a lot of bites when your fly is out of sight. Conventional plastic lures seem to extend the bite time, possibly due to the way the lure feels. If that is correct, it suggests that we may want to spend less time worrying about how the fly looks and more about its mouthfeel.
This is where tube flies can help. The ideal tubing for this application is soft silicone, which bends very easily. Most craft stores sell this stuff. I’ve been using Pepperell’s Pony Bead Lacing for years. It fits snugly over a straightened paper clip, which is easy to secure in your vise.
On top of the tubing, you’ll want to use materials that feel squishy when compressed. Poly-fil fibers, which are used for cushions and stuffed toys, have this characteristic. You’ll need to tie them onto the silicone tubing with thread, using the same technique as tying flared deer hair but with less thread pressure. Coating the tube with a layer of flexible cement or fabric paint before tying on the fibers ensures they stay in place.
If this sounds like too much trouble, use soft felt or trimmed craft fur fabric. Both these materials can be superglued to the tubing. If you use felt, cut two pieces to the shape of the critter you’d like to mimic. Apply glue to the felt and the tube and squish them together. The final step is to pick out the felt fibers with a bodkin or needle to create a soft, fluffy body.
I used to throw away trimmed craft fur that was left over from tying bonefish-style f lies. These days, I keep the patches and use them to make chewy patterns. This stuff is easy to cut to shape, and the remaining fur stubble does not absorb too much water. For baitfish patterns, fold it over the tubing like the foil in the Castblaster pattern. You can also use untrimmed craft fur fabric, which has a lot of action even when worked slowly along the bottom. The downside is that it will hold more water and be a bit more challenging to cast.
There are likely many other ways to create novel patterns with tubes. Why not give it a go the next time you sit down at the vise?
