Midges

F

fid17

New member
Joined
Mar 26, 2007
Messages
13
I've seen a lot of people rave about midges on here, but I have never used them. Could someone offer some advice as to how to fish them. Thanks.
 
Fid17

When to fish midges. Fish them when you see small rings of fish rising with no visible hatch. This usually occurs in slower water or back eddies. Midges are not prospecting flies.

Use a small fine mesh net to capture a few and match the size and color as best you can. Exact color is not essential (usually). Midges range from size #18 –32 size flies and common colors are black, olive, cream, and brown. Most are from size #20-26, and most midge flies are not more than tying thread wrapped on a hook. I catch many of my fish with a pupa imitation floating in the film.

To fish, if the water is flat, and the light is right, you can grease your leader up to a foot from the fly and use that as a strike indicator. You can also tie the midge as a dropper on a more visible dry fly. My favorite method is to put a small pinch of strike putty on the tippet knot and visually follow the tippet right to the fly.

Use 6 or 7x tippet. During the sip (not strike), just tighten up your line and your in business! Midge fishing can be frustrating, but when it’s working it can be fun! Good luck.
 
Afish got it!

Also, there are alot of small weighted patterns with micro bead heads and thread/wire bodies such as tiger/zebra midges and micro brassies and the such.

May I recommend this book. I think it's wonderful...

http://tinyurl.com/29t7nu [amazon.com]

It has taught me most of what I now know about tying and, to a certain extent, fishing midges.
 
And if you REALLY want to dig deep into midge fishing, read Midge Magic. I have read it, and it may be "too much information" but if you want more...... But I think Afishinado and Jay summed it up pretty well. Midge Magic doesn't go very much into the actual fishing techniques, though. For patterns you can also search through many web sites for numerous styles of them. But they don't have to be very complicated.
 
Thanks for the info guys, I'll give it a shot.
 
I hope you guys just solved my mystery. I started fly fishing in the middle of May last year. The stream that's about 5 min from my house I used to fish at atleast once a week when I started out. Durring the end of may and most of june the fish in one particular spot used to feed exclusively from about 6pm till dark. I never saw anything on the surface but I might not have been looking hard enough for a size 26 fly, and most of the action seemed subsurface now that I recall it. I'm def going to try some midges this year and hope that solves my problem. Thanks for the info. 2 more weeks here till opening day. I hope I can get away from my 3 jobs to go out.
 
Back
Top