Virtual Fly Tying - TUBE FLIES

An Exercise in Virtual Reality

The appearance of a fly, and possibly its appeal to a salmon, might be radically altered by slight changes in colour. We fly tyers may have an idea to put colours together which might have a certain aesthetic appeal, but we won’t know exactly what a fly might look like until it is tied. Whether the salmon will share our liking for a particular colour combination is an entirely different matter, of course. Beauty, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. Even among fishermen, colour preference is very subjective. What appeals to one angler, may not appeal to the next. How much it really matters is debatable and salmon are caught on all manner and colours of fly. Salmon flies are very often dressed to appeal to the tyer as much as anything, but the fly we picture in our mind’s eye might not always turn out quite as appealing as we first thought. Many a fly dressed on a whim will go into the fly box never again to see the light of day.

I thought it might be a useful exercise to play around with my photo editing software, to see what a fly might look like before I tied it. I began with one of my all-time favourite salmon flies. This fly has gone through several incarnations over the years. I call it the Magus, basically a black, silver and magenta shrimp fly which may be tied in a variety of styles. This version is dressed in the Intruder style, on a 30mm needle tube, comprising black hackles, magenta hackles, squirrel tail hair and a couple of strands of Krystal Flash. So, the Magus pictured below is real. The “variants” which follow are virtual. I quite like them all. I just have to get hold of the right colour hackles to dress them for real!

Virtual Variants

The Virtual Red Intruder Shrimp Tube Fly

The Virtual Orange Intruder Shrimp Tube Fly

Yellow Intruder Shrip Tube Fly — The Virtual Yellow Shrimp Intruder Shrimp Tube Fly

Green Intruder Shrimp Tube fly — The Virtual Green Intruder Shrimp Tube Fly

The Virtual Blue Intruder Shrimp Tube Fly

The Virtual Purple Intruder Shrimp Tube Fly

More Virtual Intruders

Getting carried away now! The things we do to pass the time in the close season! Here is another “real” Intruder Tube Fly, dressed on a stainless steel Needle Tube, length 25mm, diamter 1.5mm.

And a few more Virtual Intruders …..

Virtual Intruder Fly - blue-chartreuse — Virtual Intruder – Blue and Chartreuse

Virtual Intruder Tube Fly - Green and Yellow — Virtual Intruder – Green and Yellow

Virtual Intruder Tube Fly - Pink and Blue — Virtual Intruder – Pink and Blue

So, with a few clicks of a mouse, we have pretty much covered the whole colour spectrum. I wonder which of these the salmon (or sea trout or steelhead?) will prefer. A hypothetical question perhaps. These days they too are virtual!