Its all about the tube

I'm always on the look out for new tube products and I recently managed to get my hands on a small set of the new "TubeWorx" tube system from Toby Merigan at Funky Fly Tying. Over the last 6 yrs I've seen the benefits of fishing for pike with tube fies......There are are a number of top pike fly fisherman here in Scandinavia that solely fish with this kind of system.......the greatest exponant that comes to mind is Niklaus Bauer from Sweden. Even talking with Johan (aka - DJUZA) who writes "The Piketeaser blog" last night on skype, he stated that he will only fish solely with tubes this season.

So what do I look for in a tube system....well I like to keep my fishing simple and for anyone looking to start tying some tube flies, this Tubeworx tube system doesn't come any simpler. Outer plastic Tubes come in either clear, solid plain coloured and fluoro in 3mm diameter/200mm lengths which is all you need. coupled with that you get the 1,8mm inner tubes also in clear, coloured & fluoro that slide inside the outer tubes allowing you to slide your cone down over if your looking to add a bit of weight to the front of the fly. I got a packet of 3mm clear tubing and a packet of multi coloured tubing to try out. What I like about this system is you can use clear outer tubes and still add colour to it by using the 1.8mm solid coloured or fluoro inner tubes.

Tubes come in a vast range of solid colours as well as glow in the dark fluoro, which interests me a lot cause I've been fishing here at night on a number of occassions with fluoro glo in the dark materials....and well lets just say that pike certainly aren't shy of a bit of bling in the dark!

Cones are simple to use and also come in a multitude of different colours....nuff said really!

Metal tubes come in either Brass or Tungsten (would like to see alluminium added to that list) and range in a multitude of colours as well as sizes between 6mm, 10mm, 13mm, 15mm, 20mm. My one gripe with this set is that it lacks hook retaining tubes of any size. To be fair though most tube systems these days................and I'm trying and testing a number of them at the mo..... all seem to forget that us pike fly fisherman, use much bigger hooks which have over sized eyes that
need much larger softer hook retaining tubes to slide the hook into the back of the tube fly...Textbook error in my eyes! Anyway I've since spoken with Toby and this problem is getting rectified. I've used this system for my two tube baitfish patterns for the Fantasy pike fly challenge and will do a small tutorial using this tubeworx system in the next couple of weeks. Overall probably one of the easiest and cheapest tube systems around that has a lot of really cool features thrown in. Get hold of Toby at "Funky fly tying" for any enquiries!

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