Rainbow and Brown Trout Fishing Flies

     When do you use a parachute adams fly?  Your in a big river in the Andes Mountains of Chile and Argentina. You have been fly fishing hard all day with different flies to match the water conditions and you have had very good success. You've been using woolly buggers for wet and the caddis fly for dries.

     Now you have reached a part of the river not to common, the whirlpool!As you drift, your fishing guide points out a large trout feeding in the slack current up against a high bank. You also notice that a great number of trout are feeding upon the surface in the currents that move into the whirlpool.

When to Use the Fly

          Your question to the guide is "What fly do I use here?" Your guide in this case will say, "Use the parachute adams fly size 20 or better yet, use size 22". Why? First, yourguide will tell you that any big fly will probably spook the fish because nothing big is coming into the whirlpool. Second, if you pay close attention, you will see that the big fish are sipping something so small that you can not see it. As you look overboard into the film you will see a great amount of dead insect bodies from a prior hatch. However, the trout is not eating but a selected few of these. So you will have to figure out which one by trying different fly patterns. Sometimes it will be a little black ant or beetle, but most of the time it is going to be the adams fly, at least that is what we have found when fishing the whirlpools of Chile and Argentina.

Casting the Fly

     How do you fish this fly? As the boat is drifting or you are on the bank you must cast a floating line and a light leader and tippet with the smallest fly that you can see, letting it drift naturally with no drag into the feeding lane of the trout. Sometimes he will ignore it as it passes by and that is because he did not see it or it just didn’t come right for him. If he does not show you a definite refusal on your fly then he will probably take it on one of those drifts. The gray parachute adams or a dark Adams with a little white or red tied on top will help you to see the fly in order to trace its drift. It seems that the trout here like the darker colors when it comes to small patterns.

     Once you hook that 26 inch rainbow trout on that size 22 parachute adams, you will not want to leave that piece of water. You will find yourself hooked on whirlpool fishing with small flies. Its great fun.