Playing with Midges

Over the last few days I have been experimenting with different little dries. And when I get a chance to go fishing anytime for the next few weeks the only fishing I am likely to get in will be stalking midging trout. 

I have been playing around with a few established patterns and have been trying to make them a little more my own. 

Here are a few that I have been playing with.

First Midge Day of 2008

On the 13th of January I was able to go out to the Green and chase midging trout. I met up with another avid fly fisher in Vernal who wanted to get a taste of winter wading on the Green. Since these were my days off and I was not in the mood to fight with indicators and terminal tackle I decided that I would start the day "dry or die", I tied on a size 20 griffiths gnat off of a 10' leader tapered down to 6x, and preceded to hike towards some good water. My fishing partner for the day decided to fish a nymph rig that seems to work well for him on his familiar water, and so as we were hiking up stream to a suitable location to begin the days endeavors I started showing him some spots that I like to fish nymph rigs, and explained what the river was doing in certain spots. 

As we got further up stream he found a good tail out where he felt like he could have some success, so in order to stay within eye and ear shot. I started to work a little swirling back eddy with little success. After fishing the eddy to my satisfaction I decided to hike a little further up stream to the top of an area called Coney Island. In a big pool that surrounds the island I waded in and started to blind cast to where the water was moving slowly down stream. After making a couple casts I saw a trout rise to take my midge. Because I had not fished a dry fly in months I set to hard and to fast, thus breaking off my fly in the fishes mouth, I then re-tied another similar fly and worked the area around where I had had that first eat. After a few more casts I was able to coax a few more fish to rise. After about 5 or 6 missed eats I finally hooked up and landed a little rainbow, he fought healthy and looked to be a little native guy that had spawned there in the Green. 

After landing another and missing a couple more, I then called to Brandon and advised him that if he wanted to tie on a little midge dry I would abducate that hole so that he could have a little success fishing it. After he decided to keep fishing the way he was, I went back to fishing the hole periodically taking breaks to let the fish settle back down and ended up landing around 7 or 8 fish including my first brown of '08. A nice little 14 incher with plenty of spunk.

All and all it was a great day of fishing little dries and enjoying myself.