Eyes on Tube Flies
by Don Mathews
If you’re going to be a steelhead guide on the Great Lakes Tributaries these days, you better have a few switch rods and sink tips in your arsenal. The interest in swinging flies is huge. It’s all about the take. Steelhead gently sip up your nymph or egg offerings, but when a steelhead has a baitfish in its sights, it violently strikes to kill. That’s why you feel those bone jarring takes on the swing. I do best swinging natural looking baitfish imitations to our steelhead. Sure, I catch them on big ugly purple patterns, but when I’m swinging flies it’s the realistic looking Chub or Shiner patterns that put fish in my net.
Make no mistake, if you’re a numbers guy, stay with the high stick nymphing and you will catch more fish most of the time. As a steelhead guide who is used to easy money nymphing in “Steelhead Alley,” I’m now faced with a growing clientele of swingers. All it takes is a few good strikes to make the day. I’m constantly searching for new flies to entice a steelhead into doing a Jeckle and Hyde on those tough days when I’m with a diehard swinger.
Over the years there have been a few rows in my fly box that empty out first, the ones that bail me out on those tough days. Those patterns possess some magical power to get locked-jaw fish to suddenly take. What makes these flies tick? We spend hours on end tying them but we really never know what they look like from the fish’s eye - until now. with the dawn of the fly testing tank. I have no idea who came up with the idea of a fly testing tank. They might have been around for years, but I first saw one last spring at a show in Chautauqua NY (www.tubeflytech.com). As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have one. I built mine out of a five-gallon fish tank with a powerful adjustable flow pump that works very well. I have become obsessed with my new fly testing tank. My wife thinks I’m crazy for staring hours on end, mesmerized by the flies in the tank. I found out those magical streamer patterns in my box all had one thing in common: They performed well in the testing tank. On the other hand, some of the most beautiful patterns in my fly boxes are history now. You know the flies I am talking about. The dogs, or as we like to call them “show flies,” that are beautiful when you open your box around the guys, but they just never seem to put fish in the net. Yet you still keep them there because maybe someday...
I found out that most of my show flies were “spinners” in the tank. They wouldn't track true and their action was poor. Once I really started to understand how a fly works in the current, I could spot a design flaw in almost every non-performer. That was enough for me to rip them out of my fly box for good.
The naysayers to the testing tank idea might say flies aren’t going to act the same in a stupid fish tank as they do in the river, but they do. In my experiments, they do behave the same in the feeder stream behind my house as they do in the tank. When I tethered them in the current, I get the same results as I do in my testing tank. It’s just a whole lot colder and I can’t see them from a side profile as I can with the tank. Sure, it’s not a perfect picture of how the fly behaves while being swung in a river current, but I’m a believer in the concept of the testing tank.
To help me fill all the new empty spots in my fly boxes, I have been working with Guide Mark DeFrank. He shares my obsession with fly design and beer drinking. Being a commercial tier, he has a good knowledge of the materials available in today’s market. In our ongoing quest to develop the ultimate fly for swinging to Great Lakes steelhead, we settled on the tube fly design. We chose tubes for several reasons, but the leverage and holding power of the shortened hook is the biggest plus.
We realized that wing construction and balance are critical on flies that will be fished on the swing. Regular streamer hooks have an up or down turned eye that keep the flies riding upright in the current. With a tube fly, the lightweight hook plays little into keeping the fly upright, so the other components must balance the fly. Many tube flies are tied with patterns that spinning will not affect. I prefer patterns that more closely resemble our baitfish with white colored belly sections and darker backs, and these flies would be less effective if they spun up-side down.
With some of the materials available to today’s fly tier it’s not hard to find materials that breathe, flow, or wiggle as one might say. Minnows or baitfish have a rocking or wiggling motion when they swim, especially when being chased by a big-toothy predator. This is undoubtedly why lure designers discovered years ago how effective it is to add a bill to the front of a minnow style lure. Look at the proven track record of the wobbling Rapalla lure. Almost every species of fish that swims has fallen victim to one. To catch fish, a Rapalla must track true and remain upright and horizontal in the current. Get a few weeds on the back treble hook and the weight kills the action and you don’t catch squat. I can guarantee you that a Rapalla spinning circles in the current doesn’t catch fish, so I must assume that a spinning fly would appear unnatural to fish as well.
Last spring we played around quite a bit with tube flies on our guided trips. We felt that most of the tube fly patterns that we tried were too heavy for our “Steelhead Alley” tributaries. Most of the patterns we tried were tied on bottle tubes. I guess if you were swinging them on big water like the west coast’s Quinault or Skykomish they would be great, but on our small streams, they are the equivalent of a bottom bouncer. In the test tank, most of these patterns exhibited a lot of “hang down” and did not stay horizontal in the current. Most of our experiences with them were poor. When swinging flies I prefer my weighted sink tip to get me down near the bottom. I want my tip to pull the fly down, not the other way around. Lightweight flies get way more action, so we gave up on bottle tubes and most of the metal tubing.
After spending hundreds of dollars on expensive components we discovered the tube flies that performed best in our streams were tied on inexpensive small lightweight plastic tubing. We found the patterns that perform best are slightly weighted at the front and very light at the tail. Too big of a hook just kills the action. We’re also finding that different types of cones or heads can make a huge difference in the action. Unfortunately, many of the radical cone designs we tried were “spinners” in the tank. The fly slowly spins and occasionally darts to the side, and the action it gets is best described as erratic. Probably okay for bass, bluefish or some other chase species but not what I’m looking for in a steelhead fly.
We felt that we needed a differently designed cone head than those currently available. What I needed to do was find a head design that would balance a tube fly tied with soft breathable materials, the end goal being a fly that stays horizontal and doesn’t spin without adding a stiff upper hair wing. We also wanted it to deflect current much like the bill on the Rapalla style lure.
I tried bead chain and dumbbell eyes on tubes with good success. They did a good job of keeping the tube upright and they do deflect the current, giving the fly a rocking motion. Next we started altering our existing cone heads by grinding material off the topside, making the cones lopsided. This was a major breakthrough. When they are used in a fixed position on the tube with the ground flat side up, they work as a counterbalance and keep the fly upright. The tier also has the option of tying in a wing or material in front of the head to help balance the fly further.
We liked the results when we ground the top 1/3 of the Medium Eumer Monster Cone off. This gives the fly a very nice rocking motion. It’s so radical even stiffer materials will wobble. With the topside of the Eumer cone removed, they seem to track better than using a whole cone. Problem was the Eumer cone once altered was on the light side and didn’t keep the fly as upright as we wanted. We liked the results but thought a heavier cone was in order. I searched all over the Internet and couldn’t find what I wanted. So off to the metal lathe I went armed with a section of 3/8-inch brass bar and some hand drawn blueprints. I repeated the procedure over and over: hand turn a custom head in the lathe, put it on a tube, tie the tube-fly, put it in the tank and see what happens. It’s still a work in progress, but we found a less radical head angle makes it track true and still moves the light breathable materials we prefer in our patterns.
I can’t wait to try my new creations. Ice out is weeks away. I’m betting that they will catch fish since they look so real in the tank. I just hope I don’t lose many of the hand turned heads. It’s going to be hard explaining the purchase of a CNC Lathe to the wife.
If you don’t have a metal lathe and a hundred spare hours don’t worry. We had excellent results altering the commercial tube heads out there, especially the Frodin x-small turbo cone (F.I.T.S.). There are several manufacturers making cones that fit tubes. Most brass cones can be altered easily with a dremel tool. Don’t be afraid to experiment.
Just be careful, it is tough holding small parts while grinding them. Don’t try it on tungsten cones they are too hard to grind. Once ground, your altered cone will need to be held in a fixed position on the tube. Tie it in tight and use super glue or Zap a Gap to hold it in place. A top wing balances the fly and secures the cone in place. Just be sure to hold on tight when you swing it thru the pool--it’s all about the explosive take.
