Fly Tying 1 min read

Midge Life Cycle and Mass Confusion

Ken Sperry

Posted by Ken Sperry

January 23, 2010

It is 3:00 AM, I just got in from a week long, rain-soaked trip to California and I am writing about the life cycle of a midge. How I ended up in this state of affairs, I’m not certain. In any event here goes….. Ok, so I’m too tired to write so I figured I’d let this video clip of the life cycle of the midge filmed underwater do the talking; pretty neat stuff, even at three in the morning. I never knew how prominent those gas bubbles were.

Midge Mania and Mass Confusion

I’ll admit, this whole midge thing has me a bit perplexed, just what exactly is a midge? Is “midge” just a term we use to describe those tiny flies that trout eat in the winter or does it refer to a taxonomy of aquatic insects? Well, from what I can tell it is both.

To help figure it out I recently purchased Modern Midges: Tying and Fishing the World’s Most Effective Patterns by Rick Takahashi and Jerry Hubka.

I’ve only flipped through the book so I can’t answer my own question just yet but I will in a follow-up post. If you happen to know and would like to enlighten those of us still in the dark, please leave us a comment below (yes that means you Eric).

Midge Fly Tying Video Collection

In lieu of the Friday Night Fly Tying Video I offer you our gallery of midge fly tying videos. We don’t quite have a 1,000 patterns like Rick Takahashi covers in his book but we have a few of the basics to get you started.

Happy Tying!