Dressed or undressed, which do you prefer?
The traditional dressed fly has been used for many years by salmon anglers. It has been a long-term favourite and produced countless salmon over the past few decades. Just like with anything in life, fly styles come in and out of fashion. In recent years, tube flies have become rather more fashionable. In some cases, they are being used instead of standard dressed doubles and trebles. The tube fly has its obvious advantages, especially in high, cold water as the weight of the fly can be varied as well as the size more effectively. Some anglers these days are using tube flies in the height of summer when the water is low and perfect for using small dressed flies. So why is this and which style of fly is better?
The traditional dressed fly
The tube fly has many advantages over the dressed version, especially when the water is high and cold and you need the fly to be highly visible. As a tube fly can be up to three inches in length, it can be seen easily by the fish. The main advantage of the tube fly is being able to vary its weight.
Tube flies can have a body constructed from five different materials. These include plastic, aluminium, copper, brass or tungsten. These materials vary in weight and this, in turn, allows the fly to fish at different depths.
Tube flies are highly visible
Aluminium and plastic tubes are the lightest tubes, with plastic being the lightest. The different weighted tubes can be used in a variety of situations. Usually, plastic tubes are used in the summer months. Often tiny half-inch plastic tubes (micro tubes) can be used to great effect in warm low water conditions. I have regularly used these flies coupled with a trout rod for better presentation on smaller Highland rivers, with great success. Some of these flies fish close to the surface and can create a wake (hitch fly). This can be a very exciting way of fishing, as it’s very visual. Often you will see a fish boil at the fly less than an inch below the surface. This is a good tactic to use in low clear water.
A tiny micro tube, excellent in low, clear water
Sunray Shadows are becoming very popular nowadays, and these are usually constructed from a large plastic or aluminium tube. These flies are also usually used in the summer months and are fished near to, or on the surface of the water. This is again a very exciting way to fly fish, as often salmon can be seen chasing your fly and the takes can be savage
Copper and brass tubes are heavier than their plastic or aluminium counterparts, with brass being the heavier of the two. You can tell what material the tube is made from again from the colour of the body of the tube, with copper being copper in colour. The heavier the tube, the deeper the fly will fish. Some copper and brass tubes can be small and these are often used in fast flowing water in the summer to get the fly down quickly in the water column. Brass bottle tubes are usually small in size but very heavy. These tubes also allow you to present a smaller fly at a greater depth. The larger copper and brass tubes are used in the colder and higher water conditions, in the early spring and late autumn.
A selection of bottle tubes
Finally, we come to tubes constructed from tungsten. This a relatively new material used to construct tubes fly bodies from. The tungsten tube is much heavier than the brass tube and is dark grey in colour. It will allow you to present the fly at a greater depth than its brass or copper counterparts. Usually, a tungsten tube is used in very high cold water, where the conditions dictate the fly needs to be fished deeply and slowly. Also because of the heavy nature of a tungsten tube, it should start fishing very soon after landing in the water as it sinks quickly.
When it comes to dressed flies things become much simpler. The only variable to consider is the size of the fly. Since the advent of tube flies the traditional hunting ground of the dressed double would be in late spring and early summer. If the water was low and clear the dressed fly would be perfect and very productive. Indeed, for many purists fishing a full floating line with small dressed fly is the pinnacle of our sport.
In the past tube flies were reserved for the early spring and autumn and also high water. More and more nowadays tube flies are being used in conditions where in years gone by the dressed fly would be used i.e. low clear water in the summer. This is probably because there are now so many varieties of tube fly to choose from. So the small plastic micro tubes mentioned earlier in some situations are replacing the dressed fly. In addition to this, the advent of the small bottle tube has also threatened the traditional stomping ground of the dressed fly. The bottle tube allows you use a fly, which is similar in size to a standard dressed fly but heavier. If you are therefore fishing in very fast water and wanting the fly to get down as soon as it hits the water after casting, the bottle tube is perfect for the job.
In addition to bottle tubes, as we already mentioned Sunray Shadows are fished with great success during the summer months and again this is when the standard dressed fly would be used in the past.
The Sunday Shadow
So on the surface, it appears that there is no place for the traditional dressed fly anymore. The tube fly, with the advent of new materials, appears to have all bases covered. Of course this is not the case. There is at least one situation in which the dressed fly is by far superior and a well-known and respected salmon fisher enlightened me on this.
A number of years ago, when I was fishing a beat on the River Tay for a few days in the late spring. One of my fellow anglers caught more fish than anyone else on the beat. This was not just by one or two fish but by seven. We were all fishing standard small tube flies around one-inch in length and were catching the odd fish each day. However, my fellow angler in question was catching two or three more fish every session. So what was his secret?
A nice springer caught on a dressed fly
He was using his own home tied dressed flies. In fact, he did not have a tube fly in his box. The dressed flies were all very similar to the size and patterns of the tube flies we were using, like Cascades, Kinnermony Killers, and Park Shrimps. However, apart from being dressed flies there was one key difference. They were all so very sparsely dressed. He believed that less was more. With the dressed flies being more sparsely dressed, they gave a subtler appearance in the water compared to even the smallest of tube flies.
When you think about it, it makes complete sense. Due to the construction of a tube fly it will never be as light and nimble as a dressed fly. It will also never have as slim a profile as its dressed counterpart. The construction of the tube fly itself makes it bulkier in appearance, regardless of the size and weight of the fly. In certain circumstances especially when subtlety is the key, the dressed fly wins hands down.
As with everything else in fishing a lot depends on the conditions. In certain situations, the tube fly will out fish the dressed fly and vice versa. One thing for sure is that there will always be a place for the dressed fly, when fly-fishing for salmon. So I suppose it is not so much about whether you prefer dressed or undressed but more about preferring both!