Pike fly heads?

[sconnie]

Had a guy give me some nice looking pike flies to try out. He got them from another fisherman but doesn’t fish pike. They are tubes and the tyer has created the heads and back stopped the other material with what appears to be a “cone” of material very similar to a Chinese finger traps (plastic cross hatch tubing ).

It seems a great way to lighten up the head and additionally to flair the material, making it bulky without to much weight.

Does anyone else do this? It’s the first time I have seen this technique ( maybe it has a name I can look up?) I’d be interested in any tips on how to work with the tubing or where to find something similar. It appears it was melted to keep it in place, my luck I would burn up the other materials. This certainly might have been covered in one of the other forums, sorry if it’s redundant.

 

[Nick Clayton]

Here's a good place to start.


You can buy the Choclett body tubing. I've done it a little bit but not a whole lot yet

 

[FinLuver]

Check out Gunnar Brammer YouTubes... he shows that material in several of his videos.

 

[Speyrod GB]

Gunnar ties the tubing in and then covers it with bucktail or some other material. He has some great tying videos.

 

[sconnie]

Thanks!

 

[Chucker]

I shall have to try that stuff with the couple of yards of tubing I picked up from the dollar store.

 

[Randall Clark]

I've used them a few times, but for underneath, I prefer to just tie bucktail reverse to get my bulk and for the heads, I've gone to tying in long dubbing in reverse. It gives me a more consistent walk the dog action while the body tubing heads give a solid kick action, but it's almost always just to one side....still catches fish though.

 

[Chucker]

Dollar store tubing seems to work ok!

 

[triploidjunkie]

I've seen flies with those, heads. My buddy ties them, but have never done it myself. The dollar store tubing looks promising.

 

[Stonefish]

I've posted this before.
Another pretty cool way to enhance the head of a fly with the tubing and plasti dip.
You might be able to use a Flex type UV cure the same way as well.
SF

 

[sconnie]

Definitely gonna look into the dollar store tubing

 

[Scudley Do Right]

Cyberlox - CyberloxShop - The UK's No.1 cyberlox shop!

 

[Randall Clark]

I hope the dollar store tubing works out. In my experience, every single thing I've purchased there that there is something purpose built for fly tying has been inferior to the stuff purpose built for fly tying. That said, with some of the stuff, that gap hasn't been all that big....but others were virtually unusable. It just depends.

 

[Randall Clark]

Gunnar ties the tubing in and then covers it with bucktail or some other material. He has some great tying videos.

His videos are some of the best at explaining technique AND theory...

 

[Meeshka]

I've used a fly tying product called Flexo Tubing to tie some crabs for a friend before. Found it quite stiff and a bit hard to work with though. Comes in a variety of colors and sizes. Looks very durable and you can even purchase an instructional DVD. From WireCare