Tuesday Ties - Wire Zebra Midge

Tuesday Tie’s a day late this week folks. I’ve been spending some time with the folks and completely lost track of the date. Hope everyone else is having a good holiday season with friends and family!

From late fall through early spring midges are an essential part of any fly selection to bring along on your river excursions. There are hundreds and hundreds of midge patterns out there, but the standby pattern I always seem to come back to is the Wire Zebra Midge. It’s a super easy tie and very flexible as far as color combinations go. Best of all it catches fish year after year!

Recipe
Hook: 18-22 emerger hook like a Dai-Riki 125 or Tiemco 2488
Bead: Flashy colors like silver and gold are effective
Body: Two color Ultra Wire
Thorax: Black dubbing, I use Antron but it’s not critical

Start out by tying the two colors of wire in behind the bead and then secure all the way down the shank. Bring the thread back to the head of the fly and, wrapping together, wrap the wires forward and tie off. Lastly and a little, not too much, dubbing behind the bead. Finish up with a couple whip finishes and head cement. It’s that easy!

Black/white seems to be the most popular color combo for the Zebra midge, but other good combos are green/white and red/white. Using a smaller than normal wire size triple tone color combos can also be fun and effective.