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The first tube flies Alexander Wanless

The first tube fly was made in 1932

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

11/0 Garry Dog - 1940 salmon fly - 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.

Long shank hook = Leverage problemsHuge 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

A few significant things about the tube fly

  • Build big flies with no leverage problems.
  • Tie a tube fly with distributed weight or other add-on and alter the movement like coneheads, bullets – wake discs  – Propellers.
  • With a tube fly, you can keep the fly and change the hook according to the changes in the river.
  • Build big dry flies as we do at Fishmadman with less weight
  • Make wake flies as tube flies and get flies that will wake with easy and can carry hooks in different ways
  • Make tiny – tiny wet flies that can fish ..in the surface layer.. different from any salmon fly you have tried – as a result of this, gain fishing territory on an entirely new part of the river…targeting other fish

 

 

 

 

Jesper is the chief designer and fly tier at Fishmadman - He also does most of our writing on the Fishmadman pages and Newsletter

Top-water fishing is his sport and as an outdoor writer he has been writing articles on this subject in magazines and books in Europa and North America sins the early 80´s.

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