TUBE FLIES

FISHMADMAN dry fly and hitch fishing for salmon and steelhead fishmadman.com

TUBE FLIES

Salmon dry flies through a century

The La Branche flies 1920

Dry fly fishing for salmon is a truly fascinating sport that has its origin in Canada where pioneer anglers in the province of New Brunswick launched their salmon dry flies almost a century ago. The early flies where most likely regular trout flies but soon anglers would tie dedicated flies to suite this sport - some of which live on today with names like Colonel Monell and Soldier Palmer. These where bulky flies dressed with heavy hackles extending from front to hook bend, giving the fly a appearance very much like a - bottle brush. Some of the first description of these special salmon dry flies can be found in the book: The Salmon And The Dry Fly from 1924 by Mr. George M. La Branche. La Branche was an avid trout fisherman but also enjoyed fly-fishing for salmon this he did together with his friend and mentor Colonel Ambrose Monell, in the clear Upsalquitch River in New Brunswick. Monell was probably

one of the first salmon anglers ever to catch Atlantic salmon on dry fly.

Rumours of La Branches skills soon reached England and the legendary angler A.H.E Wood made an invitation for La Branche to join him on the river Dee in Scotland. La Branche went and had quite a large number of salmon to the dry fly – but hooked only very few. One can only guess why La Branche had such significant problem’s hooking the Dee fish – but the fact that the flies where bushy an tied on small hooks probably didn’t help him a lot.

The story with La Branches defeat on the Dee just cemented the skepticism that UK anglers had towards the salmon dry flies.

The Wulff flies 1950

Another couple of decades came to pass when salmon dry flies yet again made the headlines. With the book The Atlantic Salmon - published in the

late 50´s, author and famous angler Lee Wulff made dry-fly sport popular in North America. In his book Lee Wulff presented a new line of dry flies called the Wulff series that he and fellow angler Dan Bailey had designed. The flies were big bushy cartoon like imitations of mayflies and was originally intended for trout fishing – but had soon proven to be just the right flies for Atlantic salmon. The Wulff series was designed almost 50 years ago – but still today these flies is closely linked with everything concerning dry fly for salmon.

The Bombers 1960

The Bomber was originally designed as a commotion fly for fishing in the headwaters of the Miramichi River in New Brunswick. It was a Mr. Elmer

Smith that tied the first Bomber – Initially intending the fly to be fished sub-surface he later thought it to be well suited for dry fly fishing and had various versions of the fly made. Today the Bomber is the number one dry fly for most salmon anglers and it is tied in multiple colours and sizes.

Fishmadman Tube Dry Fly 1990

In 1979 Lee Wulff wrote in his book Lee Wulff on flies about his experiments with dry flies and skaters tied on plastic tube. Lee was intrigued by the possibilities of making flies up of sections thus designing the right size fly at

the riverbank – without having to change the size of the hook.

We at Fishmadman took the concept of tube dry flies a bit further and in 1995-96 we tied the classical Bomber patterns and other dry flies on very thin tubes. With this approach we created some very light dry flies with a very different hook-hold than that of the traditional flies. Our flies could be fitted with small wide gape hooks with no considerable weight and superior hooking abilities.

Our first tube dries was the TUBE BOMBER ™ designed for fast flowing waters on big rivers…These where +2 inch big flies that would had been very heavy if tied on single hooks. We also made a huge imitation of a caddis found in great numbers at the rivers we fish in Northern Norway. This fly is: the MONSTER TUBE CADDIS ™ – A fly with a fantastic capability of pulling big salmon to the top and a must have… in the fly box of any modern salmon angler.

Welcome to Fishmadman the page for anglers who fish with dry fly and riffling hitch after Atlantic salmon and steelhead

Monster Tube Caddis ™ a new generation insect imitation - designed for big salmon

The 1960´s Bomber

Flies from the Wulff series

The Pink Lady Palmer

On these next pages you will find some thorough tying instructions with pictures and video.. But you can also chose to buy the original flies from us...They are made from the best materials on the market: Superior US hackle, American White Tail deer - And tubes that we have had manufactured to our specifications and standards - They all come with our company tag - proving that you are buying the original flies

Counter has been at work sins December 2009

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37,7 lb. Atlantic salmon on
Monster Tube Caddis ™