First, thank you to my friends at Farmington Valley TU Chapter for hosting me last night. While I didn’t partake in your pizza (I hit Five Guys en route) I was nonetheless grateful for the offer. I suppose I must now come up with The Little Things 3.0.
To the mystery midge, that blue bead contraption from a few weeks back. Turns out it does have a name: the G-R Blue Bead Midge. I know this because it is presented in its glory on pages 173 and 174 of Ed Engle’s Trout Lessons, which arrived in yesterday’s mail. (It looks really good. Details to come.)
According to the description in the book, I need to make the body a little longer and add a few more wire segments. That’s easy enough, and perhaps I’ll do tying video of this nifty little fly.
currentseams.com 
Damn, and I copied your tie! Hope those fish can’t count wire wraps or I’m in trouble! 😉
Hah! I’ve already hooked a bunch of trout that found this many wraps and that much thread to their liking.
The more wraps energy comes from replicating the distinct segmentation found in midge larva. Will more wraps result in more fish? One way to find out. In the meantime, I’d fish your flies with confidence. Btw the recommended hook is the TMC 2488 size 18-20.
I will be trying your tie as soon as some of this snow melts. I have no doubt they will work if I do a good job in presentation. Never used a fly with blue before except for steelhead egg patterns.
It’s not my tie, I’m just glomming on. The originators feel that the blue is best for winter fishing. Of course, you can and should play around with variants. I’m already planning some. 🙂
[…] G-R Blue Bead Midge. Love this fly in winter when the flows aren’t too high or fast. Make it your top dropper, and if the trout are on small stuff, hold on. […]
[…] plunges and runs, but no joy. Then I decided mall to go with a dry/dropper setup. The dropper was a G-R Blue Bead Midge. I was drifting the setup down a slow seam when the dry simply disappeared from the surface. The […]