Some of my own creations! FOTD

As most of my friends know, I'm a midge guy - my friends know this because I give them about a dozen everytime I see them, mostly all different too. I like tying midges because they are easy, small, use simple materials and I fish them 99.8% of the time.

At the fly tying clinic on Saturday I met Deward Yocum, a San Juan River guide, expert fly tyer, and all around good guy. He showed me this cool material called Hairline Micro Tubing (now it's called micro hoolow tubing) and tied up a sweet looking midge on a Dai Riki 270 hook with a clear glass mirrored bead head and any type of dubbing behind the bead. He was tying in a yellow/light green color on red hooks, and the fly looked awesome. I have some of the same micro tubing in red and blue, but never figured out what to tie with it - until Saturday. I guess I had always known I could use the material, but tying the tubing in at the bottom of the fly always left a bulky bump that didn't look right. Deward showed me how to tie the material off behind the bead and wrap down to the bend of the hook, add a tight wrap and work my way back to the bead.

Well, when I got home I couldn't wait to try out the micro tubing and the new method to tie it in, and then to see what other types of tubing/floss I could use to tie up some midges. I tied a bunch, with a bunch of different materials.



This first fly was with the blue micro tubing - and it looked great, just not really sure when I'd actually fish blue. I bought the micro tubing probably 2 years ago when someone showed me on the Bighorn that they were catching fish on electric blue midges. I may have tied about 10 blue wire brassie type flies and then never tied another again.



This is the best fly I tied, although the picture doesn't show just how flashy it is and how much the red has a metallic look to it. This fly will replace all of my red brassie type flies and I guarantee it will kill on the Horn.



This is a fly I tied with the olive tubing that comes on spools, I think it is a lot like v-rib, I'm just not sure if it actually is v-rib. As you can see it doesn't lie completely flat when tying with it - it adds a nice segmentation and the color is awesome. One thing I didn't try (that I will next time) is to tie these flies with a white thread base first over the hook, then tie the tubing on top - I'm betting you get truer colors from your tubings (which is important with lighter colors like olive, yellow, pink, etc.).



This fly is actually tied with Flex Floss - you know the stuff that you get 100 6-inch strings for like $2. I liked this stuff, but as you can see the color is muted and all blends together into a blah color. There is no defined sementation, but makes a killer caddis nymph immitation. I'm betting you could take off the bead, add only the black dubbed head and it would look exactly like one of those little caddis' you pinch out of it's shuck.



This is my secret weapon. Same colored Flex Floss, but I added two tricks. I underlayed the wire under the first layer of floss, and left it hanging at the tail of the fly when I wound the floss back to the eye. I then wound the wire back to the head - the wire seemed to fall between the segmentation left by the floss. The second trick was to add some nail polish to the fly and this made it all smooth and sleek. The nail polish made it glossy and jump out at you. I like this fly - more than I like the photo of it.



This is my immitation of the bug shown a few stories down - the floating/emerger midge type of fly that I can't wait to fish - but I need to get better at tying it before I decide to try it on the river. Basically it is black thread, wire, two tiny hackle tips, black foam and black ostrich. I substituted the ostrich because I don't have hackle that small in black.



These flies were super easy to learn, tie, and fish. These are my favorite types of flies.

Let me know if anyone wants samples of the flies or the materials (I have tons of the floss). If anyone has Hairline micro "hollow" tubing they want to donate, I could use the practice and tie you up a few at the same time!!