THEY’RE TAKING THE TUBE!

Small, soft, hollow lures are another American creation that are beginning to make an impact here in the UK

GIVEN the recent popularity of lure fishing, predators in the more pressured venues are getting to a point where they have seen every colour and size of paddle-tailed shad, curly tail and even pintail. This is where you need to start thinking ‘outside of the box’, like Abu Garcia and Berkley-backed Sam Edmonds. When the going gets tough, rather than turn tail, Sam takes the ‘tube’; which is actually a hollow-bodied soft bait. Hailing, like many of these types of bait, from the largemouth bass scene in the USA, they offer a very different presentation to the standardised patterns that many UK lure anglers are currently employing. “Being hollow, they sink very slowly because air gets trapped inside the body of the lure,” Sam told us. “The other beauty of tubes is they are very versatile, offering a number of different rigging options.” In order to discover what these are as well as a few other secrets about tube fishing, we joined the 22-year-old Hertfordshire-rod on one of his local Lea Valley pits.

Tubes are available in a wide variety of colours and lengths