Flies

Parachute Adams

Origin

The Parachute Adams is Sandi Jacobson’s favorite dry fly and the one she goes to when fishing new water.  That’s endorsement enough, but Sandi’s not alone.  Some fly fishermen say that if they could only have one dry fly to fish, the Parachute Adams would be it.  The Adams fly and the Parachute Adams have a long history.  The Adams was developed in 1922 in Michigan to catch a finicky new european trout  stocked to replace the Michigan Grayling and Brook trout that had been wiped out by overfishing and habitat destruction in the Boardman River.  Sound familiar? This finicky new trout – the Brown trout.  Leonard Hallady created the successful Adams and named it after his friend Judge Charles F. Adams.   The Adams was so successful that it led to many other varatiations and styles including the parachute.  The original parachute was know as a gyrofly and marketed through the sporting goods store William Mills and Son of New York.  By 1934 the flies were under patent by William Avery Bush of Detroit.  The originals were tied on a speciality hook or the hackle was wrapped around it’s own stem.  The parachute style of fly is successful for many reasons.  First, the body of the fly supends in the surface film of the water.  Second, the parachute hackle looks like insect legs supporting the body. Third, its size, shape and color suggests multiple hatches.  And the best for me – it’s easy to see.

There are plenty of excellent references to tie this fly, all with better examples than you see here.   My favorite is Randall Kaufman’s “Tying Dry Flies, Third Edition”  On the internet see www.flyanglersonline.com for almost anything on flyfishing and fly tying, but the Parachute Adams is especially well covered in Part 21 of the Intermediate Fly Tying section.

Pattern

  • Hook: Standard Dry Fly  - Mustad 94840, 94845, Teimco 100, 100BL, 900BL, Daichi 1100 or equivalents, sizes 12-18
  • Thread: Gray or Black, 6/0 or 8/0
  • Wing:  Upright Bundled Fiber – Predominantly White Calf,  either  body or tail hair, but other colors such as black or fluorescent are also used to improve visibility under certain conditions.
  • Tail: Grizzly and Brown mixed hackle fibers, Moose body hair, or Antron synthetic fiber
  • Body:  Gray dubbing  - Muskrat, Antron, or Superfine
  • Hackle: Grizzly and brown, tied parachute style (horizontally around the upright wing)

Tying Instructions:

If you research the parachute Adams you find several different approaches to dressing this fly.  I prefer to get the upright wing set up first so that’s the approach I’ll describe. It’s your choice on crushing the hook barb or not.  If you are supporting catch and release it’s easiest to crush the barb before you tie.  Occasionally you will break a hook while crushing the barb.  So why not do it first.  Easier yet  is to just purchase barbless hooks.

    1. Start the thread at the 80% mark.  This is where the upright wing will be tied in.  Select a bunch of calf hair.  Cut it off square, stack and trim. Measure the hair on top of the hook with the tips overlapping the eye.  You want the vertical length of the hair beyond the tie in point to be 1 and ½ to two hook gaps. Cut the butts on a diagonal to the hook shaft so there will be a smooth transition when wrapping the body.  Tie in using a soft loop and wrap back towards the bend about 10 wraps.  The butts should still be showing.  Wrap forward to the tie in point.  Hold the hair vertical and then take a single wrap around the base of the hair to support the wing in the vertical position. Too low and the wing will not maintain vertical.  Too high and the hair will slip out.  Wax your thread if the wing is proving to be slippery.  See the example in the picture below. I used a heavy black thread for this example.

Once the horizontal holding wrap is in the right position, extend it through the exposed butts to hold the horizontal wrap in place and then wrap over the hook three to four times to secure .  Another approach which uses more thread (a heavier fly )is to build up a bump wedge in front of the wing to support it in a vertical position and then use some horizontal wraps around the base of the wing to form a post.

  • Dub and wrap the body.  It should be tapered up to the wing. You can wrap the body in front of the wing now or after wrapping the parachute hackle.
  • Prepare the hackle feathers.  Thin supple stems are desirable. The hackle length should be long enough to reach to the bend of the hook.  Tie the hackle feathers in on top of the body behind the wing.  Shinny side of the feathers up.  If needed dub more body in front of the wing.  Using gray thread that blends in with the body will reduce touch up dubbing wraps after the parachute is wrapped.   Wrap the parachute hackle horizontally around the upright wing.  The first wrap is at the base of the wing with each succeeding wraps always under the preceding wrap.  Some feel that rotating hackle pliers really help in this step.   Some also wrap each hackle feather separately intertwining the second hackle feather through the wraps of the first feather.  I prefer stacking and wrapping both hackle feathers at the same time without hackle pliers. If the feathers are too short for fingers I like using the Gary Kutz special, the electrical test lead hackle pliers
  • The hardest part of this fly is tying off the parachute hackle and then forming a neat head.  If you have used hackle pliers you can just drape the hackle over the near side of the hook in front of the wing.  The hackle pliers will hold the left over hackle in place.   Then use your left hand to pull back out of the way all the horizontal parachute hackle just wrapped while tying off and trimming the hackle feathers with your right hand.
  • Form a neat thread head, whip finish or use three half-hitches, and trim. Apply Sally Hanson’s Hard as Nails or some head finish of your choice.

Fish It
Fish the Parachute Adams like any dry fly.  Position the fly on the water to drift naturally into the feeding lane of your target fish.  Hmmm, that can be another story.

John Wohlfiel
Golden State Flycasters, October  2007