Tingler Tube Flies for salmon, sea trout and steelhead
The “Tingler” is simply a tube fly (more specifically a Needle Tube Fly) armed with a lightly dressed single hook, hence Tingler. The idea is by no means new. Single hooks have been used with tube flies for a long time. Their use today in salmon, sea trout and steelhead fishing, appears to be increasingly popular, partly due to their preceived benefit for catch and release, allowing the return of hooked fish to the river with minimum harm, allied to increasing regulation and restrictions imposed on fishing tackle and methods, where the use of treble hooks, for example, is often now prohibited. The single hook may be lightly dressed in a variety of colours, allowing the easy interchange of tube and hook to create a range of colour combinations. For example, the mixing of the three tubes and three tails shown in the photograph below allows the angler to create nine different colour combinations of fly, in effect nine different flies.
The Needle Tube
The Needle Tube is a very slim plastic-lined stainless steel fly tying tube, similar to those used to make fine hypodermic medical needles. It has been produced by Grays of Kilsyth since 2008 and has, over the years, proved extremely successful, with countless notable catches of salmon, sea trout and steelhead internationally. It was originally developed, as a successor to the Needle fly (which I had used successfully since 1999), with night fishing for sea trout in mind, where I wanted a long slim lure with a detachable hook, in the early days a small treble hook. In recent years I have increasingly been replacing the treble hook on my needle tube flies, for both salmon and sea trout fishing, with a single hook, with no noticeable loss of hooking efficiency.
The Tingler
The Tingler shown below, comprising a slim stainless steel needle tube of 1.5mm outside diameter combined with a lightly dressed single hook, was tied as a night lure for sea trout.
The hook (in this case a Partridge Saltwater Perfect size 8) has a fairly long shank but is very light in weight, allowing the lure to be extended in length with no significant addition of weight at the rear end of the lure. I like a hook with a total length, measured from eye to rear of hook bend, three times the width of the hook gape – my preference also for night sea trout singles. I dislike hooks which are very long or very short in the shank, relative to their gape. A short shank hook will not allow the hook point to penetrate so readily, owing to the less acute angle of penetration (for the same reason I do not like outpoint hooks), while a long shank hook, although hooking more efficiently, owing to the hook point being pulled more directly in line with, and more closely parallel to, the pull of the line, may be prone to loosening during the fight due to excessive leverage. My current favourite hook (for sea trout singles and needle tubes) is the Gamakatsu G-CODE F31, most often in a size 8.
An undressed single hook can, of course, be used as the tube fly hook but the light, sparse, hook dressing of a few hackle or hair fibres (dressed perhaps to resemble a fish tail) may add, I think, to the attraction, mobility and balance of the lure. When dressing the Tingler hook, a short length of the hook near the eye should be left undressed to allow the hook eye to be inserted into the silicone tubing at the rear of the tube without compressing the fine hook dressing, as in the photograph below.
Tingler Variations
The Tingler Tube and hook may be dressed in a variety of sizes, weights, colours and styles, to suit the quarry, location and season. They might be used successfully for British sea trout on summer nights, Atlantic or Pacific salmon, or Steelhead ( see Steelhead Tinglers ). They might also prove effective for sea bass around the coast. The dressing of the tubes and hooks in a variety of colours also allows the interchange of hook and tube dressings to create a wide range of colour combinations, reducing the need for the angler to carry so many patterns. Simply change the dressed Tingler hook and you have, in effect, a different fly. The colour combinations are unlimited. The change from one dressed hook to another in a different colour can alter the overall appearance of the lure quite dramatically, as in the example below.
Variations on the Tingler Theme
A few Tinglers are shown below, dressed in various sizes and styles.
The Tinglers illustrated above have been dressed on 20mm long Needle Tubes, outside diameter 1.5mm. The hooks are size 8 and the overall length of the lures is about 6 cms (2.5 inches) – a good general length for a small prey fish representation. The tube length, hook size and dressing of the Tingler may be adapted for a range of fishing situations for salmon, sea trout or steelhead. The hook, held in place by a short link of silicone tubing, is likely to detach from the lure when a fish is hooked, with a minimum of leverage on the hook.
Note the upturned single hook
Fitting the single hook to the tube with its point uppermost will aid the stability of the lure, since an undressed single hook (or indeed an undressed double hook) or one with an equally distributed dressing top and bottom will tend to swim naturally with hook points uppermost. Additional benefits are that:
- the hook point is hidden in the hairwing dressing
- a long hair wing is less likely to be caught up on the hook beneath the lure
- leaves in autumn are less likely to be hooked, particularly when using a single hook
- the hook is less likely to catch on riverbed weed or be blunted on a rocky riverbed.
The Tingler, devised in 2012, was described in the article “A Tingler after Dark” by John Gray, Trout & Salmon Magazine, June 2019