YEARS back I was fishing with my dad and was using this tube like bait that was designed to shoot into rocks and under cover as soon as it hit the water, it was really cool and fun to use, I was young so don't remember much about it... any ideas what it was? if so can you provide a link or picture with your description or idea? thanks guys!

-Trevor

Absolutely.

You are talking about the flying lure.

http://flyinglure.stores.yahoo.net/orflyinlur.html

this was considered a "gimmick" lure, but like alot of so called gimmick lure like the banjo minnow, it worked and has a contuing following.

A modern lure with a huge following on BassResource.com is the gycb fat ika.  

My dad also had some of these years back..

Avid how does it actually work.

In other terms how does it actually "fly"?

It doesn't exactly "fly".  What it does is fall away from you when you use a lift-and-drop retrieve.  You can get the same effect weighting the tail of soft any soft plastic.  Take a senko-type bait for example.  Rig it weedless, then take a jighead, cut the bend of the hook off and insert the wire with the lead head into the tail of the senko so the jighead acts as a weight.  Lift it off the bottom and it will fall away from you, just like the Flying Lure.