Waggle tails ' on the cheap'

[James Laraway]

as the trout season is over im thinking i will go after the pike soon with the fly.

Always liked the look of 'waggle tails' for fly tying - just not the price...

so i thought i would try something..

Cut the tail off a cheap sea fishing lure, put some fly tying tubing through and melt both ends to keep in place...





i especially like the tail off the purple 'eel'

[Steven Sinclair]

James,

I have been looking into this myself lately and thought this would be of interest to you  I have a Savage Gear Real Eal with me here in Brunei that I am going to trace the tail from. I'll post the results once I get round to it.





Steven.

[James Laraway]

I've just bought some fitness bands in different colours, should arrive next week!!

your travel companion is a rubber eel,? well... I don't want to know really....🤣

[Rob Brownfield]

We use Chamois leather to make tails. I am not worried about flash as its the vibration/vortices they put out that is important.

Also last a hell of a lot longer than the plastic ones.

The tails on lures tend to be a bit heavy, being made from a much thicker plastic. they work, but are a bugger to cast.

In the long run, I have not found them to be the Holy Grail in pike fly fishing, but they do catch. I much prefer to make my flies "push" water. This seems to be more of a trigger than flash and movement.

[Steven Sinclair]

Cheers for the heads up on Chamois Rob, I hadn't thought of that 

I've got a bright orange dry bag and have picked up a few swimming caps (limited access to materials in Brunei lol) i'll knock up a few this weekend and take them for a test swim. No reason why they wont work for Snakehead too 



Steven.

[James Laraway]

thats my first ones coming off the production line. I found pictures on some online, scaled them on my computer to the size i wanted, traced them off the screen then did a 'gorilla tape template' . Once you have the template you can hammer them out by sticking it to pilates bands of various colours and just cutting them out