Story by Mark Hume with Photography by Nick Didlick

There are few patterns that are easier to tie, and more difficult to fish, than those that imitate chironomid - the pupae of a blizzard of tiny midges that come off lakes and rivers in the Pacific Northwest throughout the year.

At times trout will gorge themselves on chironomids - particularly in the early spring - eating them by the thousands.

Some tiers, like Mo Bradley, of Kamloops, pay attention to the smallest details when tying a pattern, even imitating the legs of the pupa, which are about as big as a day old whisker. There’s no doubt his patterns are effective - but more crudely produced imitations will work just as well if the two fundamentals - size and color - match what is hatching.

The fly has to be fished properly to work.

Some people effectively fish chironomids on a sinking line, but the most effective method is to fish a long leader on a dry line.

The fish take the fly delicately, and the dry line allows two things: first, it makes it easier to keep a tight line, especially if you let the wind draw the fly line out across the surface; and two, it makes it easier to detect the strike by watching the leader-line connection for the slightest twitch.

Chironomids (the ‘ch’ is pronounced as a ‘k’) rise slowly to the surface, where they cling for a moment to discard their pupal shuck, dry their tiny wings, and fly away.

Often they will hatch at night, and the evidence, thousands of white shucks, will be seen floating on the surface film.

Missing a surface emergence doesn’t mean you’ve missed the hatch. Indeed, it tells you that the pupae are maturing and somewhere in the depths beneath your boat or float tube, they will be rising slowly, or sitting suspended in the water column, waiting for the right conditions to surface. Find the right depth, and you will find feeding trout.

In the midst of a hatch you will catch trout just beneath the surface - but sometimes an extremely long leader - 16 to 20 feet - will be needed to get to the suspension depth. This can often be the undoing of anglers used to fishing with a tapered 9 foot leader. They want to keep using the length that it is comfortable to cast. Pressed, they might add three feet - and go fishless.

Fishing from a float tube on a northern B.C. lake last spring, I noticed chironomids - midges that look like small mosquitoes - popping to the surface around me. There were hundreds of them emerging, setting their wings and flying off. Not a rise was to be seen.

I lengthened my leader to 12 feet. Nothing. At 18 - nothing. At 21 feet - which is an ungainly thing to cast - I took a trout 30 seconds after I’d laid my line out. After that, for more than three hours, I took a fish on almost every cast after the 30 second countdown. That is after spending the four previous hours catching just two small trout fishing midge patterns in the surface film.

I killed one fish that day, and when I cleaned it, found its gut jammed with chironomids. All morning the trout had been feeding at around 20 feet, while I blithely paddled and fished along the surface, catching almost nothing. A moments observation - and a leader of the right length, saved the day.

The fishing technique is simple enough, but it is hard for some to master because it calls for such a different approach. You don’t so much cast and retrieve as cast and wait.

Some people regard chironomid fishing as the ultimate thrill. Some feel it is about as exciting as ice fishing. But as it’s often the only way to catch fish in the spring, so you’d best learn it.

If you cast downwind, your leader will extend more easily. It is important to have a straight line, otherwise you just won’t detect the subtle takes. Once the line is set out neatly, you sit and wait for the leader to sink. Then you simply sit at anchor and wait....often for 15 minutes or more. If there is a wind, the waves will give the fly some motion. If it’s dead still, you can use a slow, slow pull, or a slow hand twist, to move the fly, although often strikes come on dead drift.

Trout feed on chironomids by cruising steadily, plucking them out of the water column. They don’t hold on station to eat them. So if your pattern is suspended at the right depth, is the right size and color - it’s only a matter of time before one swims by and inhales your pattern.

It doesn’t take a lot of casting skill, that’s for sure. But it does take patience, and it take observation to select the right pattern. It is a delight, sometimes, to be on a lake surrounded by fly fishers who don’t know how to properly fish a chironomid pattern. While they are casting to every rise form or splash, retrieving quickly and casting again, you are simply sitting still - Zen and the art of angling. Suddenly you raise your rod and are connected to a big trout - and everyone is wondering how in the hell you did that.

You outwaited the damn trout, that’s how.

So much for technique.

Now the patterns. There are thousands of chironomids in nature - fortunately you only have to imitate a few.

The basic body color is black. Some are green, some tan. At one stage of development some have a red hemoglobin butt.

The most simple pattern:

Hook: 10 to 16

Body: Dark brown pheasant tail fibers or black wool.

Rib: stripped peacock quill or flat gold tinsel or silver tinsel.

Thorax: peacock herl.

Gills: White acrylic yarn or white emu feather or ostrich.

Some tie in a tail, using a few strands of squirrel tail, or hackle barbules; some tie in the tiny, front legs, using a few short brown hackles emerging from under the peacock herl thorax. Brian Chan, a Kamloops fly fisher, imitates the hemoglobin on some patterns with a tag of bright red floss.

It takes only a few minutes to tie a chironomid pattern. The best advice is to take a portable tying kit in the spring and imitate the the pupae found clinging to the surface.

Fly fishermen in Europe have been doing midge pupae for more than 60 years. And according to Fly Patterns of British Columbia, famed Kamloops guide, William Nation, tied Nation’s Black as early as 1938. It is a crude, generic pattern, that’s clearly meant to imitate a chironomid.

In the Illustrated Dictionary of Trout Flies, John Roberts credits Dr. H.A. Bell with creating the Blagdon Buzzer, in England. A date unfortunately isn’t given, but elsewhere Mr. Roberts writes that midge imitations were in use after World War I.

He says of the Blagdon Buzzer: “This was probably the first stillwater midge pupa imitation. Hundreds of others have followed.”

The fly isn’t illustrated, but the pattern would be fine for Pacific Northwest lakes:

Hook: 10-12

Body: Black wool tapering slightly.

Rib: Flat gold.

Breathing filaments: A bunch of white floss silk on top of the hook behind the eye.

You could probably tie that simple pattern bobbing along in your float tube. And if you fished it right, it would work.