A few days back I was in touch with Stuart Anderson from The Canadian Tube Fly Company, they have been busy at work designing and developing tube fly products for years. This year they have come out with a large diameter tube specifically for larger pike, muskie, and saltwater flies. Along with this tubing, they designed a special mandrel to hold these tubes in any vise.
As you can see, the tubing has been designed so that it fits the existing tubing that they sell. When I tie my pike and muskie flies I don’t bother with stepping the tubing down at the head of the fly. The reason for this is because I have found that the step in the tubing creates a weak point in the fly, and these fish will put your flies through some serious torture, so I find it best to rid them of any potential weak points.
After tying a few flies, and fishing with this tubing I thought I would share some of my observations on this tubing.
- The larger diameter tubing helps give the fly a larger body, not very important with pike and muskie flies because we rely on the material for this, but still feature that could be utilized with certain patterns
- No junction tubing required! I use 6/0 hooks on my tube fly rigs and am able to slide the eye of the hook directly into the tube.
- It comes in Speckled colors too! When sliding the speckled tubing on the mandrel it helps to heat the tubing up a bit first, otherwise it will crack when you slide it on the mandrel.
- You can easily slide a tube fly rig through the fly.
Hope these tips help, try this tubing out if your into big flies! I will post soon about the new Egret Shanks from the Canadian Tube Fly Company so stay tuned.
North Shore Tying Co. 