Leonard Halladay tied the Adams on the Boardman River in Michigan in 1922 as a general mayfly, and a hundred years on it is still the dry more anglers reach for than any other when trout are taking off the top and nobody can name the insect. It is fished across Australia: on the alpine creeks and lakes of the Snowy Mountains, where NSW DPIRD’s guide puts a size 14 to 16 Parachute Adams on both, in the Victorian high country, on the New England tablelands, and on Tasmania’s lakes and rivers where the mayfly hatches are the best in the country. The parachute version has largely replaced the classic hackled tie because the post can be seen and the fly sits in the film the way a dun does.

The parachute tie, from the bend forward: a tail of grizzly and brown hackle fibres mixed. A slim, tapered body of grey dubbing, muskrat or a fine synthetic. An upright post of white calf hair or polypropylene yarn, set a third of the way back from the eye. A parachute hackle, grizzly and brown mixed, wound horizontally around the base of the post so the barbs lie flat on the water. A thread head.

The classic tie replaces the post with two upright, divided wings of grizzly hen hackle tips, and winds the mixed hackle conventionally around the shank behind and in front of them.

Anglers reach for it everywhere trout rise. A local guide on the West Branch of the Kiewa carries the Parachute Adams from eighteen up to twelve for the browns and rainbows there; below Tantangara Dam on the Murrumbidgee a dark parachute is the change-up from a Royal Wulff, with a nymph kept under either. On the Meander a size sixteen or eighteen is the blind-searching dry, on tight brushy Diggers Creek a high-vis twelve or fourteen is favoured for seeing the take, and on the Mowamba it is a staple of the warmer months beside the hoppers. On the Monaro it is one of the go-to dries for fussy risers, and in sizes twelve and fourteen it is a fly-box staple for Mitta Mitta trout. Two uses that travel: a small parachute as the indicator over an unweighted bloodworm for cruising selective stillwater fish, and a bow-and-arrow delivery of one to a sighted brown in tight cover, followed by a twitch and a patient pause.

Fish it on a floating line with a long enough leader that the fly can drift without the fly line showing in the lane. On a creek, drop it on the seam and the tail of a pocket; on a lake, cover the rises rather than the empty water between them. If fish are bubbling and refusing, drop a size before you change pattern; if they keep refusing, they may be on the emerger, and a Klinkhammer is the next fly.

The parachute post is the point. You need to see the fly, and you need the hook to sit in the film rather than on it. If it starts to skate, you are fishing it, not drifting it: mend or recast. Carry it next to a Pheasant Tail for the days the fish want the nymph instead, and next to a Woolly Bugger for the hour before the rise starts.