Has anybody tried the bright orange, pink, etc metal beads? Any insight gained yet? I’ve tied some PT’s with orange, but haven’t gotten any action, and I don’t know whether to waste any more time on them or not.
Only time I have used them is on “egg sucking leeches” (wooly buggers with orange or pink bead)
Mike 
I use the chartreuse colored beads as well as black to make the heads on my green weenie imitations. I’ve used the orange beads on PT’s and other like nymphs to take a lot of stocker rainbows. Never have caught a brown w/ a colored bead other than charteuse.
Fishy,
I don’t but them ‘pre colored’ but I do color my own…
Red works well for me on leech and bugger type flies, I’ve had some good luck with white on certain patterns, and I started using some pink ones on that fly that Joni posted a while back (it has a pink abdomen).
I’m not sure that any of it is all that much better than plain ‘gold’ or ‘black’, but I like them and they sure look cool…can’t say if the fish care, though…I’m not catching all that many more fish than I did before I started painting the beads…but I do like to play with this stuff…
Buddy
But at least you aren’t catching fewer fish, right? That’s what I was worried about - good idea about the Pink Floyd.
Are these by any chance Spirit River beads? If so, I’ve used them on steelhead patterns and absolutely hate them.
Yes, they make a cool fly when you’re going for that “egg sucking” look. But, the paint flakes off so fast if you’re fishing in water with rocky bottoms that after just a couple of drifts, all you have a bright silver bead with flecks of paint on it. They are a useless product, IMHO.
While I imagine they might work on a PT as a general attractor during the fall, I would stick to the usual suspects for the rest of the season.
if anybody is worried about paint chipping off try these!
http://www.flytyingspecialties.com/product_info.php?cPath=19&products_id=345