The Magic Midge Pupa by Mike Backhouse

Over the years much has been written about Chironomidae (midges) as one of the essential aquatic insects preyed upon by trout. This is particularly true of trout found in the stillwaters of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, both provinces widely accepted as the home of South African stillwater fly fishing.

The purpose of this article is to share with the reader my unique experience (or to put it more precisely, what I like to think is unique about the tactics and techniques that I employ) when fishing midge pupa on stillwaters. I will also share how the discovery of this particular form of aquatic life, and the imitation thereof, literately catapulted my ability to catch sizeable numbers of trout on a consistent and sustainable basis for the last two decades.

The skills that I have acquired along this voyage of discovery are in a state of constant evolution. What I mean by this is simply that I am not done with honing my tactics and techniques for using the midge. I will be the first to admit that there is even more to be learnt about this form of fly fishing, although there is already a significant body of literature available on the topic.

Now to the topic of this article, fishing the magic midge pupa. One day many, many years ago, and fairly soon after being introduced to the sport of flyfishing by an excolleague of mine, he, a friend of his and I found ourselves flyfishing the waters of the Kamberg Nature Reserve. It was a still, warm and balmy autumn day with falling barometric pressure, that I was repeatedly told by the colleague’s friend was contributing to a difficult day’s fishing. It was almost midday and neither of us had seen so much as rise, let alone a fish. As it was a weekend there were a number of other disgruntled anglers walking around the four stocked dams complaining profusely that the hatchery manager needed to be stocking more fish.

I cut my teeth as a flyfisher at Kamberg and had much success in those early years fishing the Woolly Worm, Mrs Simpson, Walkers Nymph and my old favourite, the Peacock Woolly Bugger with a long black marabou tail. On the day in question I had used every single fly in my limited fly box without success. In those days I only owned a floating line so it was a question of using various leader lengths and split shot to get the fly down into the feeding zone.

It was around midday and while taking a break that I noticed the colleague’s friend fishing in Eland Dam from a gap between two stands of tall reeds into a deeper section of water. He was using an intermediate line with a sinking leader to which was attached a two foot length of tippet. The fly at the end of his leader had a polystyrene bead tied in for buoyancy. The fly was tied on a scud hook, and I later identified it as a Suspender Midge, as described in the “The South African Fly Fishing Handbook (Dean Riphagen 1998 pg. 97–99). The tying of the fly is attributed to Neil Patterson but the popularisation thereof is accredited to another well know and highly respected British angler by the name of John Goddard.

What piqued my interest as to how it was being fished on that particular day was the fact that it was being fished in a way contrary, and somewhat illogically, to how I would have thought that it should be fished. Having a polystyrene bead as part of its make-up, I concluded that it should be fished as an emerging fly (hanging in the water like a question mark while the polystyrene bead kept it glued to the surface) on a long leader attached to a floating line.

During the course of the afternoon I watched as the colleague’s friend caught and released five decent sized fish by simply casting the fly, letting the line sink to the bottom of the dam, and then retrieving it by employing short, fast strips of an inch or two without a pause. The fly would rapidly ascend through the water column, and on occasion, would be taken quite savagely by a trout, resulting in a hook-up. There were instances where the takes, and the strike to set the hook that followed, would result in the angler and fish parting company with one another. I often reflect on that day thinking that if you fish with a seven weight fast action rod, and you strike like a puff adder, you deserve all the break-offs that come your way.

T h e f i r s t l e s s o n g l e a n e d f r o m m y

observations of that afternoon was that this kind of fishing required the use of a lighter weight rod in the 3# or 4# class with a limber tip but a stiff butt section in order to manoeuvre the hooked fish away from weed beds while fighting it.

During subsequent visits to Kamberg, and now having become the proud owner of my firdt intermediate fly line, I began experimenting with the technique of fishing the Suspender Midge deep in the water column, and sometimes right on the bottom, with lots of frustrating hang-ups on weed, and limited results. I then decided that there must be a better way to get results with this fly. I started to read up on the midge pupa as well as experimenting with various kinds of retrieve.

The retrieve is a very slow and systematic hand-twist. Takes while descending through the water column are generally firm and confident, while takes on the bottom are less so. When the fly is being retrieved while working the mud and any weed takes are for the most part very gentle, and those of you who are familiar with drifting for grunter from a boat while fishing a mud prawn or ginger shrimp will know how gently the fish mouths the bait - the same can be said for the trout taking the midge off the bottom. The other reason for the very slow retrieve while fishing in and around the bottom is that the Goddard’s Midge, with its polystyrene bead, remains suspended about a foot off the bottom and any tufts of weed that may be encountered as you move to more shallow depths are unlikely to interfere with the fly.

It has been my experience that fishing this pattern, tied using peacock hurl, has worked particularly well when trout were feeding on snails. I think that it is the slow drifting movement together with the colour, and perhaps even the shape of the fly, that has it mistakenly taken for a snail. After all, in our dams,trout are largely eclectic feeders.

One of the most interesting things that I have discovered about this fly while trailing it along submerged in a bath tub full of water is that as the water breaks around the polystyrene bead it causing the fly to have a shiver-like movement. Think of a minnow facing into a current and you will understand what I mean. To get the fly to move in this way only requires the mildest of hand-twists. When the fishing is slow I gently wiggle the rod from side-to-side as I am employing the figure-of-eight hand-twist retrieve. More often than not this extra action will result in a positive fish take / hook-up.

If you employ a fast stripping or even a twitching retrieve you are more likely to end up retrieving weed more than anything else. So, patience is the name of the game and you will do well if you are able to concentrate on the retrieve for long periods of time. If not this is not your game as lapses in concentration will mean that you can miss a lot of fish that you should have hooked during the course of your day.

As I mentioned earlier, it is helpful to have a fly rod with a limber tip as you will better latch on to any take, which you will need to lift the rod into firmly – no striking like a puff adder, please! That is the worst thing in my book, striking too hard, breaking off, and leaving the poor fish with the displeasure of having to dislodge your fly, something which is largely unnecessary.

Some years ago I had the pleasure of staying at Giant’s Cup Wilderness Reserve for two weeks during July. A friend and I were employed as hired hands during the course of our stay and we completed a number of tasks during this time. We worked each day until about 14h00, and following a quick lunch, we would launch our float tubes and fish through the afternoon until it was dark.

Most mornings were perfectly still and the water was so clean that you could see several metres down past your fins – not conducive to productive fishing. The afternoons were different in that the wind would put a ripple on the water which would result in the fish becoming more active. Between 16h30 and 17h30, and just before complete darkness fell, we would have a spell of fishing that we called “happy hour”. The wind would cease to blow, the water would become like the silver on a mirror and the fish would go literally ballistic.

The change from the quietness of the morning in which you would have thought that there was not a fish to be found in the dam to the latter part of the afternoon in which the dam became totally transformed with life – it was a wonder to behold! Fish would be bulging to surface-hatching midge and other aquatic insects like caddis and mayfly, but I believe that it was the midge that was responsible for most of the action. I was catching and releasing as many as a

I would present the fly within close proximity of a feeding fish, and that was not difficult with so many rising fish, employ a brisk hand twist retrieve as the fly entered the water and within seconds I would be tight into a fish, most of which were around the 1 kg mark and fought like hell! It was like fishing in a shad run and the name of the game was to get the fish to the tube, twitching the hook from its mouth without touching it and getting the fly back on the water ready for the next hook-up. We had great fun virtually every evening for two weeks.

I then understood the importance of a rod with a soft tip but with backbone into the butt to horse the fish away from the weed, particularly the bigger ones, and get them to hand quickly. Incidentally, this would be the only time that I would speed up my retrieve. The other little trick that you would do well to use is to lift the rod and high stick the fly as it gets close to the end of the retrieve. You will be pleasantly surprised as to how many fish are following the fly and are just waiting for the upward movement before aggressively taking it. They latch on to it surprisingly hard as they think that it is getting away from them.

The approach to fishing this particular midge pupa requires a predominately slow figure-of-eight hand-twist retrieve, full flex fly rods with a stiff butt, a slow sinking line and tapered 9’ leaders in the 2X and 3X categories. Extending the leader with perhaps a cast of 3X or 4X tippet is optional. One thing it ensures is that as you clip off and tie on new flies it will prevent your leader from becoming gradually shorter. The other thing about extending the leader with tippet is that the fly, given the polystyrene bead, is prone to twisting the leader when casting and this results in the occasional wind knot. To rectify the matter, simply cut back on the tippet and reattach the fly, or at a point tie on a fresh piece of tippet. If you find that you are snagging the weed, extending the tippet to get the fly to move above it can be helpful.

So, in conclusion, the midge and the use thereof, as described in the article, is not everyone’s cup of tea. But as my late dad would have said, “If you don’t try it, you won’t know”! Mating Midges

For more information about the tying of the Goddard Midge you can refer to The South African Fly Fishing Handbook (Dean Riphagen 1998 pg. 97 – 99).

Photo Credits - in order of appearance:

Midge pupa - Frank Fox - http://www.mikro-foto.de, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ index.php?curid=20240520 Adult Midge - Janet Graham Adult Midge - entomart Mating Midges - Orangeaurochs via Flikr

Here is a very simplified step-by-step for the fly mentioned in "The Magic Midge Pupa"

Hook - Mouche 8463 in sizes ranging from a 10 to a 20 Thread - Danville 140, colour to match abdomen Breathing Filament for Head - Polystyrene ball / bead with white pantyhose stretched over it Breathing Fillament for Abdomen - White polypropylene or similar Rib - Flashabou Abdomen & Thorax - Natural fur for dubbing in black, dark brown or olive

Cut a small section of pantyhose and stretch this tightly over a polystyrene ball.

Tie the loose ends of the pantyhose that you're holding in your fingers neatly to the top of the shank. Trim excess and form a neat taper.

Tie in the polypropylene deep into the bend of the hook so that the pattern has a definae curve to it.

These imitate abdominal breathing filaments of the natural.

The diameter of the polypropylene should be roughly equal to the diameter of the hook wire.

Tie in the flashabou rib and spin a noodle of dubbing onto the thread.

Dub the abdomen leaving space for the thorax.

Wind on the rib and tie it off.

Dub the thorax using the same material as for the abdomen.

Tie off the thread behind the ball.

Brush out the thorax dubbing slightly.