The Adams

The British flyfair around the corner. This weekend I started to make plans for what to tie. I decided that The Adams will be one of the flies I will demonstrate. Why? well the thing with me and patterns is that I like  agood story, and this one got one..

The Adams
Hook: Model perfect dry
Thread: Uni 8/0 White
Tails: Brown/Grizzly rooster
Body: Muskrat/Grey fox underbody fur mixed
Wing: Grizzly hackletips hen or rooster (rounded)
Hackle: Brown/Grizzly rooster

The Adams dry fly came to this world through the vise of Leonard Halladay of Mayfield, Michigan about 1922. Halladay designed the fly for his close friend Charles F. Adams of Lorin, Ohio. Judge Charles F. Adams asked his friend Halladay to create a fly that would imitate the insect the discriminating trout were favoring that day. Leonard Halladay and Charles Adams used The Adams with great success on their beloved Boardman River, Michigan.

From the beggining the fly was tied with two strands Golden Pheasant tippet or grizzly hackle fibers as tails and the wings were tied spent. Some people says that the Adams was first tied as a downwing to imitate a caddis. As for most known and belowed patterns there are a lot of different stories and for sure, the Adams has over the years been tied many different ways.

Even though it was originated in Michigan some catskill tyers like Rube Cross, Walt Dette and Harry Darbee early saw The Adam´s advantages and started to tie it comercially. There are still some contemporary catskill tiers that might shiver when the Adams is called a Catskill pattern. The Adams are proborably one of the most sold flies in America and known all over the world, maybe because of that these gentlemen took it to their vises.

A problem with this fly is to find the round hackle tips that requires for wingmaterial. The search for long, stiff hackles has made the hackletips narrover and more pointed then they were in the 1920´s. Walt Dette´s sollution to this problem was to use hackletips from hen birds.

I hope you enjoyed the story... I did.