European anglers and, in particular, anglers in Scandinavia benefit significantly from the properties of the tube fly and have, through the last 50 years, worked progressively with the design of tube fly. But who made the first tube fly?

In his book The Angler And The Thread Line, the British author and angler Mr Alexander Wanless, from 1932, put forward his idea of the sliding fly (the first tube fly) from his series of flies called the: Thread Line Salmon Series..  Mr Wanless made the sliding fly and the other flies to be used with the lightweight spinning gear he used in his fishing for salmon. Read more about Alexander Wanless and the first tube fly

The tube fly solved big problems.

Until the birth of the tube fly, salmon anglers were left to use massive single hook flies for their early fishing. Giants of size 6/0 – 12/0 were not uncommon and must have been terrible

to cast, let alone horrible to be hit in the neck while casting.

Huge 11/0 Garry Dog made for early season fishing. This one is from Fly tying company Redparth on Tweed 1940s

One of the biggest problems with big single hooks was that anglers would lose most of the fish to problems with leverage. Read about the difficulties of leverage

How does the salmon see our fly ? – Learn about the psychical dynamics in the Atlantic salmon and why it might react to a particular colour salmon fly

During the life of a salmon it will travel between two very different worlds. Worlds with colours and images are so divergent that it has developed extraordinary abilities to cope with the change of scene.

The eye of the salmon changes physically so the fish can view different colours *  – best as possible (* colours being technically explained as different wavelengths of light)

When staying in the river as parr the eyes will be set on: light with a long wavelength. This would be colouring in the orange-brown tone.

In early spring, when the time has come for the salmon parr to journey to the feeding grounds at high sea, the endocrine system glands will produce a new pigment for the eye. This will enable the salmon to focus on light with short wavelengths like; green and bluish colours… Quite handy ! as these are the colours that prey like: sand-eels, sprat and herring have incorporated in their colouration to hide and blend into the sea world.

Upon returning to the river to spawn, the fresh silver salmon may still have their eye structure set to sea life setting – and often he will be interested in a salmon fly with blue & green colours… Some of them will be so greedy that they will hit any colour salmon fly, but that is another story… Nevertheless! The endocrine glands will gradually produce another pigment that will transform the eye back to its original freshwater setting – with abilities to focus on red, orange and brown colours – Something also reflected in the colours of the skin pigmentation. The many patterns in brown, orange and red seen on male salmon – are not just eye candy brought on for the sake of women – They are fully lit warning posters to rivalling male salmon.

Special thank you goes out to Kim Rasmussen from Salmonfly.dk for advice.

The Fishmadman shop is an extension to our many web pages here on Fishmadman – In the shop, you will find most of the surface flies we talk about and a good deal more – In the shop we take some features on hooks and fly tying a bit further and go into depth with fly-fishing-geek details.