40 Rivers To Freedom

I haven't named this one yet, but I was stoked to finally tie something I've had pictured in my head for forever now

Well I finally got a chance to play with a couple new toys yesterday.  Singlebarbed’s 6th Finger Scissor, and  HMH’s Starter Tube Fly Tool.

To tie tubes in the past, I’ve either used an allen wrench, or just put the tube directly in my vise’s jaws.  The allen wrench works okay, but I’ve never been able to spin/stack deer hair without the wrench slipping a little in the jaws from all the torque on the tube.  Putting the tube right in my vise’s jaws worked alright, too, but I ran into the same problem when spinning hair, and would sometimes crush plastic tubes.

I ordered the HMH Tube Fly Tool from J Stockard Fly Fishing.  They aren’t one of my sponsors or anything, I just like doing business with them.  Plus, for my recent birthday, I got a $50 gift certificate to use there from my mother-in-law.

Like all poor bastards savvy shoppers, I spent a good deal of time going through the tying materials on the J Stockard site, trying to figure out a way to squeeze everything I’ve been meaning to add to my materials arsenal onto that $50 credit.  The list of stuff that I first filled my shopping cart with looked drastically different than my final order.  My first instinct was to get as many hooks as I could.  Then I remembered that I have been wanting to play with rattles on my carp flies, and Stalcup’s Damsel Body on my panfish flies.  Then I added a bunch of synthetic hair before I ran into the HMH tube fly coneheads and remembered that this is the tying season that I go to tubes for all my streamer patterns instead of regular hooks.  And before you knew it, I was removing just enough stuff that I could add the Tube Fly Tool pictured above to my cart without going over my $50 limit.

Now before I give a glowing review on this product, I’ve got to admit that  after a past experience with HMH while I was writing the DayTripper blog, I really didn’t want to.  I won’t go into details or anything, but I only point it out because I had sworn to myself that I’d never give a positive review for another HMH product again after what happened behind the scenes.

Yet here I am, about to tell you that the HMH Tube Fly Tool is rock solid in my vise- a Danvise by the way, so [tongue in cheek] I would guess that all of you who tie on a Renzetti/ Dynaking/ HMH/ etc., should have no problems with this tool [/tongue in cheek].

After tying a few typical tube patterns like the one pictured waaay up at the top of this post, and being happy with the tool’s holding power, I decided it was time to pull the deer hair out.

I went through my mental rolodex of patterns I’ve been wanting to convert to a tube, and sitting way up on top was the Crayfish Muddler, a crayfish pattern developed by Hatches Magazine Editor, Will Mullis.

As I put more and more force on the thread, the hair spun, and the tool stayed put in my vise’s jaws.  But more importantly, the metal rod that holds the tube didn’t bend, the tube didn’t spin, and I was happy enough with the results that I broke my blood oath to never endorse another HMH product again.

So, if you want to enter the world of tubes, I’d say this tool is well worth the $25.

Singlebarbed’s 6th Finger Scissors worked well, too.  Though I have to admit to setting them on my desk a few times between snips out of pure habit.