Oct 3, 2018
Let's start with a picture of an adult midge and a larva next to each other. They are probably different species and may even be different subfamilies - but this will get you oriented:
So let's look at some larvae in more detail. Here is a nice chironomid larva with lots of hemoglobin in it - a blood worm:
And just a regular old one. Note on this how little differentiation there is between the the thorax and the abdomen. You can see the sclerotized head capsule as well.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of pupae...that said, I also I don't know how I managed to talk for 20 minutes about midges and not mention Serendipities, but I did. It is one of my favorite flies and works great as imitating a suspended pupa. Here is one - the deer hair thorax is trimmed a little short, but here you go:
There are all sorts of ways you can suspend your midge pupa, and honestly, I'm not sure what I did with this one! But this would be a good one that I'm suspending below the surface - with maybe a greased tippet...
Or something like this for further down in the water column:
For adults, as I mentioned, I love the griffith's gnat:
CDC also makes for a great adult/emerger:
As you can see, these are incredibly simple flies - there really isn't the need for 'elbows and assholes' as one fly tier complained.
Dick Talleur has a really nice pattern for a midge adult I like. I think it is out of his advanced fly tying book. This is my chewed up version of it. His, as expected, look significantly better: