Sea Trout Tube Flies
I have always liked slim, sparsely dressed lures for sea trout night fishing. Following the success of the Needle Fly ( a lure dressed on a sewing needle), devised in the late nineteen nineties for late night sea trout fishing on the River Earn in Perthshire, the Needle Tube was developed by Grays of Kilsyth and introduced in 2008. It has since proven very effective, not only for sea trout but also for Atlantic salmon, Pacific salmon and steelhead. The longer and thinner needle tubes, in lengths up to 40mm, are ideal for creating slim lures for late night sea trout fishing. A few examples of sea trout flies are shown below, dressed in various styles for later in the night.
These tube flies, very simply dressed on Gray’s Needle Tubes, are very effective for sea trout fishing during the hours of darkness, creating a long, slim silver bodied lure, a tempting tenuous impression of a bait fish or sandeel, a favourite prey of the sea trout while at sea.
The tubes above are dressed on 35mm long Needle Tubes, diameter 1.5mm, and are fitted with Owner treble hooks. Shorter Needle Tubes may also be used, often incorporating a long wing, which might be armed more usefully with a longer shank single hook extending towards the rear of the wing, as shown below. See Tube Fly Hooks
Sea Trout Tube Flies with Single Hooks (Tinglers)
The flies shown above are dressed on 15mm long Needle Tubes, 1.5mm outside diameter and armed with size 10 Gamakatsu G-Code F31 Hooks, size 10. The hook may be fitted using a short length of silicone tubing or it may be allowed to swing freely, as here, the hook eye and knot protected by a heat-shrink Knot Guard . It should be noted that single (and double) hooks will tend to swim with hook point uppermost when allowed to swing freely. This offers a few potential advantages when fishing:
- The hook may be hidden in the fly wing fibres and may be less conspicuous.
- The hook point is less likely to be damaged on riverbed rocks.
- The hook is less likely to hook leaves when fished in late season.
Tube Flies for Night Fishing
We might vary the length, weight, style and colour of our tube flies to suit water and weather conditions, time of night, degree of darkness etc. The tube flies illustrated below, dressed in different styles and sizes (here I have used 25mm and 35mm long needle tubes, diameter 1.5mm), might be used at various times throughout a fishing night. The flies are generally fairly simple to dress and colours may be varied to taste, e.g. red, yellow or orange may be substituted for the blue, although the sea trout may not perceive much difference, as I suspect that they can distinguish colours at night no better than we can. Colours may however be useful in creating some tonal variation and visual contrast in our flies.
Fly Colour in Night Fishing
It should be noted that, just as we are unable to see colours at night, sea trout will also see the colours in our sea trout flies merely as varying shades of grey, as illustrated in the photograph below. This is not to say that coloured materials are entirely redundant however. The use of various coloured fly components, e.g. wings, bodies and hackles, will be useful in providing some tonal variation and contrast in our flies, which may on occasion be vital to success. That contrast might, of course, be achieved by using materials in black, white and various shades of grey, but coloured hair and hackles are often more readily available than grey and will, furthermore, be more usefully incorporated in flies which may be used in daytime as well as nighttime. As can be seen by comparing the photographs above (full colour image) and below (greyscale image), there would appear to be very little difference in how a sea trout might see our yellow, pink and light blue hackles, while the orange used here appears as a slightly darker shade of grey.
Gray’s Needle Tube Flies
Gray’s Needle Tubes are very slim stainless steel, plastic lined, fly tying tubes, supplied in two diameters of 1.5mm and 1.8 mm, and in lengths from 10mm to 40mm, for fly tying. They are available online from Grays of Kilsyth in Scotland, along with boxed selections of salmon and sea trout Needle Tube Flies.