Parachute Adams

A dry fly, tied #12–20, carried year round. It is tied against 11 named insects in this book, and stands in when nothing is hatching — March–November. A parachute variant of Leonard Halladay's 1922 Adams.

A parachute variant of Leonard Halladay's 1922 Adams, and a universal grey mayfly dun imitation carried all season in sizes 12–20 on a standard dry-fly hook with grey 8/0 thread. The tail is moose body hair or mixed brown and grizzly hackle fibres, the body Adams grey muskrat or superfine dubbing, the wing post upright white calf body hair or poly yarn, and the hackle grizzly and brown wound horizontally around that post. It covers a long list of mayflies — Blue Quill, Hendrickson, Blue-Winged Olive, Brown Drake, Gray Drake, Isonychia, Mahogany Dun, March Brown, Sulphur, White Fly — and mayflies generally, and it doubles as a searching pattern when nothing is coming off. Fished dead-drift. The parachute hackle sits the body in the film rather than above it, which is why it beats the Catskill Adams on flat water and loses to it in heavy riffles. For trout.

#12–20Hook size
dry flyType
AllSeason
11Hatches matched

What it looks like

A drawing, not a photograph, and not traced from one. Its proportions were read off 4 independent reference photographs of the pattern and written down as 6 measured characteristics — wing angle, tail length against the shank, how far a hackle fibre reaches — every one of which had to hold across more than one of them before it could be drawn. What survives across many photographs of a fly is the fly.

The body sits IN the film rather than above it — the hackle is a flat disc on the surface and the fly hangs from it, which is the whole difference from the Catskill Adams. Drawn at #16 — 7.0 mm of shank and 3.5 mm of gape on a Tiemco 100.

The bare hook at every size this pattern is tied in, all to the same scale. There is no industry standard behind a hook number, so these are Tiemco 100 measurements and another maker's 12 will differ a little.

What it imitates

Each of these is the same hatch record the app's own panel reads, so a pattern recommended on a river card in the app is recommended for one of the insects below.

It is also tagged for mayflies generally, no hatch at all — a searching pattern.

Tying recipe

In tying order. This dressing is the standard one — these patterns have been in the publicrecord for decades; A parachute variant of Leonard Halladay's 1922 Adams. — and materials substitute freely: the proportions and the silhouette are the pattern, not the brand of dubbing.

Hook	Standard dry-fly hook, sizes 12–20
Thread	Grey 8/0
Tail	Moose body hair, or mixed brown and grizzly hackle fibres
Body	Adams grey muskrat or superfine dubbing
Wing post	White calf body hair or poly yarn, upright
Hackle	Grizzly and brown mixed, wound horizontally around the post

When to fish it

The default dry fly. Fish it dead-drift for any grey-bodied mayfly dun and as a searching pattern when nothing is coming off. The parachute hackle sits the body in the film rather than above it, which is why it beats the Catskill Adams on flat water and loses to it in heavy riffles.

Carried all year. The insects it matches are active march–november, in water from 38°F to 74°F.

Target species

Trout

Rivers it fishes well

Rivers with a page here that sit in the regions where the insects this pattern imitates are recorded. It is a claim about coverage, not a report of a fish caught.

Related patterns

Same type of fly, or tied for the same insects.

Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, coloured by today's water temperature.