Long (overdue) post alert!
Greetings All,
Thanks for the numerous responses and sage insight and experience shared my direction - this truly is a great community!
Been a little slow to respond, because wife and I have been working double-shifts at the hospital for weeks now with dying mother-in-law, but I have been playing with some tubes in the little quiet moments I got.
I did end up placing an order with CTFC the day before Stu offered to tailor a package, which just arrived today (See pic) and yes, I was down at SalmoNature to restock a few supplies I was running low on, and picked up a bunch of the Veniard copper tubes in three sizes. I was pretty disappointed in the Veniard tubes, as the pre-melted liners were useless and loose, so I cut them all out and re-lined with my own liners. My hunch is the guys at Salmo just whipped up a batch quickly, because even the melting was pretty sloppy.
I did a double-liner using colored tube inside the copper and melted to fit, then a thinner clear liner inside that to extend out the back with less bulk to small junction, and melted both the colored and the clear together at the head, using a thick needle to maintain passage for the mono. Came out pretty well.
Will be ordering some bottle-tubes next, as well as trying out the Pro Sportfisher's system of integrated tubes. Thanks for the tip, Ard! Also looking into FoxyTails, FutureFly and Tubular Spey was interesting, but I prefer buying continental yet won't rule them out either. I remember a few years ago buying a good-sized selection of dyed heron spey hackle from CTFC, and was sorely disappointed as they were all essentially black with color only at the roots. Bad batch perhaps, but I use them when I want just a hint of color close to the body.
Here are my first two attempts at a fly that always scared me to tie: a sort of butch job on a Francis/Snaelda, and of course one in my favorite "Tiger Ghost" colors had to be tried...both on copper. Kitty thought it was buggy enough! Next one will be a mini version, using collected cat whiskers tied in backwards as the feelers!
I will keep working on shrimpy styles as these were just rough first attempts, and I adopted the feelers with little "pads" cut into the tips as I saw Salar-1's version of this fly a few years back at the 3-riviere's fly fishing forum (which I couldn't attend this year due to aforementioned hospital duties).
As for Quebec regs, we can do any kind of tube (copper, tungsten, dark-matter) for weight, but no beads or cone-heads, because that makes sense, right? One weight good, one weight bad.
I have a supply of LOOP's straight-eye doubles and various ring-eye singles for stingers (no off-set points!). Next looking for innovative fly boxes that are smallish but hold many tube flies and compartments for tubing and hooks.
I started switching to primarily double hooks last season as there is a tiny weight advantage, but mostly because I obsess over the fly tracking straight without spinning.
Did a bunch of shanked mini-intruders last two seasons, with fixed-length single stingers, but didn't like how they swam, nor how the hook would sometimes snag up the wings during casting. Drove me crazy to retrieve and see that the fly had been swimming right through a sweet spot all crooked. They did get down quick tho, but they were a little labor-intensive to prep, so out with that idea!
I'm surprised, Brian, that you've had good success with electrical shrink-wrap tubing for junctions, I found the stuff to be useless, even when I hit it with a lighter to shrink a little and grab the eye of a stinger, it would always pull out or get crooked. I'm liking the softer, thicker stuff and it really grips well and remains straight. In fact, I think I picked it up years back at good old DDO Electronic, but maybe I'll drop in again just to see if I missed something better.
So, again, thanks everyone for all the great input. I'll keep on experimenting with tubes, and will put many of your tips to good use.