What it is
Hareline Saltwater Flashabou is a wide-cut flash tinsel made for bigger flies and hard use. It’s flashy, handles easily at the vise, and it sheds water quickly so bulky patterns don’t stay waterlogged. It’s also durable, and if you use it as a body and coat it, it can take on a UV-resin glow.
What to tie with it
Use it as flash in large streamer and baitfish patterns, or commit to it as an all-flash tail when you want a loud profile. It’s a clean choice for herring and pogie-style baitfish imitations, and it holds up in musky flies. On smaller stuff it still earns its keep as nymph ribbing, flashback wingcases, and you can palmer it for nymph bodies or even palmer it along a streamer body for a full-length shimmer.
Flies and the fish they're for
Surf Candy is a classic place for this kind of wide flash, fished for false albacore, bonito, striped bass, and other saltwater feeders that key on small bait along beaches and rips. Muddler Minnow-style streamers also take flash well and are fished for trout in rivers and stillwaters, and for smallmouth in rivers and lakes. Flashabou-heavy, all-flash streamer variations like the Salt Shaker-style patterns are commonly thrown into mangroves for snook and baby tarpon, where that quick-shedding flash helps you keep casting all day.
How it compares
Compared to Hedron Flashabou, this is a wider width. Holographic Magnum Flashabou is a different look altogether with a 3D holographic effect, and it comes in 16-inch strands that are 1/32-inch wide.
