Sea Trout Nights - a new sea trout fishing book by John Gray

The Tingler

Over the years it has been fairly standard practice to arm our sea trout tube flies with treble hooks. While we generally dress our smaller sea trout flies on single hooks, a small treble just looks right on the end of a long slim tube fly. The small treble hooks and holds on to fish pretty well, although perhaps no more efficiently than the fly dressed on a single hook. I would think that I have probably lost as many sea trout hooked on trebles as on single hooked flies.

Regardless of the relative merits of trebles versus singles or doubles, the growing focus on catch and release, allied to increasing restrictions on fishing methods and tackle, has seen a move away from the use of treble hooks on our game fishing rivers. Indeed, we are now seeing a ban on the use of treble hooks on many fisheries, forcing many of us to seek alternatives to the old favourites. Fortunately, there are other options and alternatives to treble hooks are readily available. Single hooks, designed specifically for use with tubes, are now made by many of the major manufacturers, and, with conservation in mind, are being increasingly widely adopted by today’s salmon fishermen. Sea trout fishers may perhaps be less enthusiastic and I suspect that most of us still have a liking for a small treble on our nocturnal tube flies. But, given the increased regulation of fishing methods, baits and hooks, we will all have to move with the times. I have made the first steps in the move away from trebles by the more frequent use of single hooks on my night sea trout tube flies and I describe here the kind of lure I have been using increasingly over the past season or two, with promising results. I call it the “Tingler”. It is not by any means new, being essentially a slim tube fly armed with a light weight single hook, but the name seems apt.

The single hook may be left undressed or may be dressed as in several of the examples illustrated here. The Tingler is intended primarily for sea trout at night but the principle and dressing may be adapted for any predatory fish. I think that a sparsely dressed tube, combined with the flared dressing on the single tail hook, creates a very fishy impression in the water. A great benefit of the Tingler shown here is that it is extremely simple to dress, ideal for anyone new to fly tying.

Dressing the Tingler

Materials

A tube (I have used here a stainless steel needle tube, diameter 1.5mm, length 20mm)

Hair for the wing (I have used here dyed black fox squirrel tail but fine bucktail, arctic fox or other hair may be used)

Thread

Dressing the Tube

Step 1 Insert tube in a suitable vice (I have used here the HMH Tube Fly Starter Tool) and lay a short bed of tying thread at the head.

Step 2 Tie in a sparse bunch of black squirrel tail (a few strands of flash may be added if desired).

Step 3 Rotate the tube through 180 degrees in the vice and tie in a second bunch of squirrel tail opposite the first.

Step 4 Trim and apply two or three coats of varnish to the head.

The Dressed Tube

Dressing the Hook

Repeat the dressing on a suitable straight-eyed single hook, taking care to leave a short length of the hook undressed at the front to insert into the silicone sleeve on the rear of the tube fly.

I have used here a Partridge Saltwater Perfect hook, size 8. A very similar alternative is the Mustad 3261NP-BN. Another nice hook I have discovered recently is the Gamakatsu G-Code F31 in size 8, which is suitable for use as a tube hook or for dressing sea trout singles. There are many other excellent, yet inexpensive, straight eyed single hooks available which are suitable for use on our sea trout tubes, many of them sold as carp hooks or coarse specimen hooks, by manufacturers such as Kamasan, Drennan and others.

Hook Step 1 Lay a short bed of thread at the head

Hook Step 2 Tie in a sparse bunch of black squirrel tail

Hook Step 3 Rotate the hook through 180 degrees in the vice and tie in a second bunch of squirrel tail opposite the first.

The tube fly may now be armed with a dressed single hook as shown below (or with an undressed single hook).

The assembled Tingler Tube Fly

The lure illustrated above is a very simple tube fly, two inches long, dressed with nothing more than black squirrel hair on both tube and hook, possibly as effective as anything for sea trout at night. Various colours can, of course, be used, in addition to various flashy materials but it should be remembered that sea trout cannot see colour at night any more than we can. Colours will be seen merely as shades of grey. The use of colour in our night flies can, I dare say, do no harm, and may offer some advantage in creating a degree of contrast and variation in tone in a lure, which may help to provoke a response from the fish and, if creating colourful night flies gives us as anglers a bit of confidence, and provides some distraction and purpose to us as fly tyers over the long winter months, then why not! A splash of colour can also be a useful addition to flies intended for use in daytime.

Simplicity is key, I think, both in dressing and fishing this kind of lure for sea trout at night. To paraphrase Falkus, the aim is to create a slim, tenuous “impression” of a bait fish, rather than an imitation; a tantalising reminder of their time spent chasing sandeels in the shallow tidal sea pools; an illusion to provoke an instinctive reaction to the sudden appearance above of something they might recognise as prey. This deception is most successfully achieved by a long, slim, sparsely dressed lure, the sparser the better. A slim stainless steel tube is easily transformed into such a lure. The novice with no experience in the art of fly tying will find that he can very easily create an effective sea trout lure, such as that shown above, with little more than a sparse bunch of black hair.

I have found the slim, stainless steel needle tube very effective for sea trout. Heavier than aluminium but lighter than copper or brass, it is easily cast on a single handed rod. The sparsity of the dressing allows the tube to sink easily through the surface film and helps prevent the lure skating in the quickening flow of the pool tails, but not too deeply in the shallow streams and glides favoured by sea trout on a mild night. I will happily fish through the night with various lengths of needle tube, from 15mm to 35mm in length, depending on conditions. Lure size may depend to an extent on the river level, temperature, degree of darkness, distance from the sea, time of night, time of year etc.. A high river and a cold or very dark night, for example, might dictate a longer lure, while early on a mild summer night, with the river running low and clear, single flies in size eight or ten might be a good option. On a normal sea trout night, if there is such a thing, once it is properly dark, the Tinglers illustrated here are the kind of lure I would use with confidence, now armed with either a dressed or undressed single hook, replacing the small trebles I have used for many years on my sea trout needle tube flies.

(See note below on the upturned single hook)

Variations on a Theme

A selection of Tinglers, armed with both dressed and undressed single hooks, are shown below

Click images to enlarge

Tinglers armed with undressed single hooks	Tinglers armed with lightly dressed single hooks


Black	Black Tail


Black & Orange	Black & Orange Tail


Black & Blue	Black and Blue Tail


Black & Red	Black and Red Tail


Black & Olive	Black & Yellow Tail


Black & Magenta	Black & Magenta Tail

More Tinglers

The Upturned Hook

Note that the upturned single hook adds to the balance and stability of the fly, owing to the fact that a single (or double) undressed hook will tend to swim naturally with hook points upwards.

The photographs below show how an undressed single hook, or single hook attached to an undressed tube, will swim when pulled through the water.

It seems sensible, therefore, to set our single (and double) tube fly hooks with points uppermost, thus aiding, rather than opposing, the natural orientation of the hooks, with the following potential benefits:

Improved stability of the tube fly
An upturned hook may be more easily hidden among the hair of the wing and therefore less conspicuous to a fish
An upturned hook may be less easily damaged on a rocky river bed or caught up on riverbed weed
An upturned hook may reduce the likelihood of hooking leaves while fishing in the autumn.

The Advantages of Single Hooks

The use of a single hook on a tube fly may offer the following advantages:

1. With the growing awareness of the need to conserve fragile sea trout stocks, the single hook makes it easier to release fish quickly and without harm.

2. The use of a long shank, straight-eyed single hook, either dressed or undressed, allows the length of the lure to be extended without increasing the weight.

3. The use of a lighter single at the tail end of the tube allows the lure to swim, possibly more attractively, on a more even keel, with the bulk of the weight towards the front of the lure. In addition, a shorter and therefore lighter tube may be used (where a weighty lure is not required) in conjunction with a long shank single, which may be more easily cast on a light single handed rod.

4. A variety of lightly dressed single hooks, in various materials, densities and shades, may add some mobility and vitality to the tube fly and variously dressed single hooks can be readily interchanged with various tube dressings to create a wide range of colour/shade/shape options. For example, four tubes and four dressed single hooks, all with different dressings, give a possible 16 variations of fly, 20 if we include the possible use of an undressed single hook.

Tinglers may of course be dressed in a wide variety of styles, for sea trout, salmon, steelhead and other predatory species. A few more Tinglers are shown below, dressed in a different style.

A Sea Trout Taken on the Tingler, River Spey, 2018