To be successful it's necessary to capitalize on surface tension. Well, that's the theory that was supposed to work in the back seat of my '53 Bel Air during the second feature at the drive-in (though more often than not I got MY hackles clipped). Okay, I'm guessing you teach English comp not physics so I'll try to explain. In order to make a dry fly float on top of the water you need to present a surface in contact with the water that introduces insignificant energy to separate the electrical bonds binding the water molecules to each other. The gravitation pull on a feather measured in mass/volume is sufficiently low enough to allow it to float on water. It can't generate enough power/surface area to push the molecules apart. A fish hook, on the other hand, has much greater mass/volume and the power generated by the force of gravity on the hook is sufficient to push the weak bonds between water molecules apart. The key here is to spread out the weight as much as possible. The shorter or thicker the hackle, the more dense the fly becomes and the greater probability for sinking. Finer hackle is more likely to trap pockets of air which will also make the fly more boyant (the air pockets essentially become part of the fly thereby dramatically reducing its total mass/volume). Tying your hackel parachute style is self-defeating. It allows most of the hook to come into contact with the water first, thereby allowing the surface tension to be broken. Then your fly is relying entirely on trapped air pockets for floatation. A typical parachute tied hackle of even good quality might actually be able to employ more air pockets per surface area with the water than a conventional hackel, but few bugs actually present that kind of structure (legs on their backs?). And again, thick clipped hackle doesn't trap much air no matter how it's used.

My suggestion might be for you to try spinning bucktail for hackle. No worries about clipping that stuff. It's hollow hair and much better for flotation than any chicken hackle no matter what the quality. Look for fawn bucktails and use the hair on the top (brown) side. A fawn's tail hair is marvelously fine and crinkly. The more crinkly it is, the more air pockets it will trap. You may have to beef up the base of the hackles with a bit of cement. Still I found flies I tied with the stuff were almost unsinkable and the fish hit them fine. It may take a bit of practice learning to spin the hair around the head of the hook but eventually you'll get the hang of it. And one bucktail will tie a helluva lot of flies. Anyway, give it a try and see what you think.

I guess I have had different experiences. I have found parachute style are not as easy to keep on top and not particularly effective attracting fish. The body wrapping material is waterlogged the second the fly hits the water. A parachute adams is definitely easy to see on the water but I give the credit to the bucktail wings which also may contribute somewhat to flotation (hollow hair). A coachman is just as easy to see (but because of its body and tail materials certainly not the best at flotation either!).

I'd be interested in your thoughts on my hair hackle suggestion. The initial difficulty I had with hair hackle was keeping it erect after it's spun. Takes some liberal amounts of cement worked into the base of the hackle. Regular head cement can be a bit thick. I tried nail polish and as I recall (been a few years back), it worked okay. A trimmed hair hackle will not look as lifelike as the irregular appearance of natural feather hackle but if the fish insist on high floating flies, and if there's a lot of accessory action from smaller fish or whitefish/grayling, an all hair or mostly all hair dry fly is sometimes the answer because they're so tough and super at flotation. Freeking whitefish can pick good chicken hackle flies to pieces about as fast as I can tie them on. They're particularly adroit at going for the white wings.

You will have to push against the shoulder to get the hair to stand straight up. If you have tightly wrapped an inner core of thread before wrapping the body material, that will help. Body material of something thick like yarn as opposed to something like floss or tinsel would work better at providing the shoulder. In other words something like a skinny mosquito pattern might be doable but tricky. Probably best to at least throw one half hitch with a touch of cement at the shoulder before proceeding to spin the hair hackle. Also, spinning a hair hackle requires quite a bit of pressure to make the hair "pop" so lighter (or cheaper) thread might not work very well.

Ontario Hunter. Parachute style is extremely good at floating the fly. When you hackle perpendicular to the hook, the barbs that point straight down, penetrate the surface film, BUT the ones that angle to the slide ( \ ) offer the best support. Often I trim those off because the fish now sees the body better, and the fly sites lower, and you get more hookups. There is a very popular parachute pattern called a "Klinkenhimer"..the guys up on the Bitterroot, and Frontier Anglers Flyshop, call them Sprout Bugs. Tied on the curved pupa hook, you metal rib the back half of the fly, and use a pinch of marabou tail that does not support the hook from sinking. You want it to sink below the surface. The hook rides in the film virtually vertical supported ONLY by the parachute hackle and the small white floating yarn you've doped up. It has a scientific advantage in the fish sees the fly approaching BECAUSE a lot of the imitation is BELOW the surface film, and the fish sees the bug approaching in the REFLECTION off of the bottom. They can not see a floating fly until it enters their WINDOW of vision on the surface otherwise. I fish a lot of them. Thats the emerger concept near the surface notion that the fish often see better, and feed on, and parachutes get the job done.

and Jan...some of the very best surface fishing I've had of recent for very big rainbows was on the Henry's Fork early last Summer. WE had an incredible grey drake hatch that lasted for a month which means the spinner fall is the important stage to represent for that bug. The number one pattern was the Parachute Adams that represented the dead, or dying spinners on the water...you could see it well, and what exciting fishing. And if you'll use floating yarn for the post, tie it down in the middle of the strand, then bring both ends up, and horizontal wrap around creating the post, then a wrap or two in front, and in back, you create NO BULK, and can then trim it to whatever length of post you want, dub around the base, hackle and done. It dopes up nicely. and you do not need to buy as expensive a neck because the hackle can be longer..no use for the tiny hackles at the bottom that create a lot of the expense.

Sayfu, I agree, deer body hair tends to break rather easily. The bucktail is finer but still hollow. And, as I indicated, the tail from a fawn is particularly crinkly. Even when trimmed as a hackle it retains much more boyancy than chicken hackle. And you may be right, sometimes I have noticed TOO MUCH boyancy. Trimming a V out of the bottom of hair hackle might be just the ticket. Hair hackle flies are ten times more durable than chicken hackle, at least that's my experience. Using only bucktail and saturating the center with cement has something to do with it. I don't see that working with chicken hackle though. Too much buoyancy would be lost. The downside to hair hackle is it is more time consuming to tie, especially on very small flies (which require selecting very fine hair).

I didn't read all of that..too much for me to focus on, but there is NO substitute for good hackele, NONE. Cutting the tapered tips of of poor hackle doesn't get it. I won't mention all the reasons why, but trust me, there are a number of reasons why. Best you can do is tie patterns that do not need use good hackle for dries...foam flies, no-hackle dries like comparaduns etc. Initial cost is high on hackle like Whiting "100's" but you can tie a lot of small dries on one hackle, and overall, a lot of flies per package. Using poor hackle just creates poor quality flies.

raise chickens