The Best Anglers Never Stop Learning

The Best Anglers Never Stop Learning

Dry

March Brown Parachute

Insect Species Icon March Brown
Difficulty Icon Medium - 3-5 Min
Water Category Icon Coldwater

Tying Video

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Tying Recipe
  • Hook: Straight shank, down eye dry fly hook (~ Tiemco 100 standard dry fly hook)
  • Thread: UTC 70 Denier
  • Tail: Brown Spade Hackle Fibers
  • Body: Peacock Biots
  • Head: Superfine Dubbing
  • Post: Brown Calf Body Hair
  • Hackle: Brown Dry Fly Hackle

Brown Calf Body Hair or any Calf Body Hair is hard to work with, beginners can easily use foam, or McFlyLon Parachute posts

  • Tail: Partridge fibers or pheasant tail fibers
  • Body: Goose Biots or Superfine Dubbing
  • Head: Superfine Dubbing, Australian Possum or Beaver Dubbing (Anything fine)
  • Post:Brown Calf Body Hair or any Calf Body Hair is hard to work with, beginners can easily use foam, or McFlyLon Parachute posts
  • Hackle: Ginger Dry Fly Hackle

While this is a march brown parachute imitation, changing the pattern color just gives you a similar parachute adams, parachute BWO, PMD, Trico and more.  It’s a standard dry fly parachute fly and while sticking to the materials will get you the same look as the video, this is just one of many examples of the variations that can occur with a mayfly parachute post style fly.

  • Olive: Blue Wing Olive, Green Drake, Lead wing Drake
  • Brown: Isonychia, Brown Drake, March Brown
  • Maroon/Red:  Red Quills
  • Yellow: PMD, PME or Hexegenia (Hex)  Just tie the Hex in bigger hook sizes and the PMD in smaller hook sizes
  • Grizzly: Callibaetis
  • Grey: Hendrickson
  • Red or Purple: An attractor variation

While a parachute adams need no introduction, the march brown parachute is just a slight variation of this famous pattern. This is a standard mayfly parachute post dry fly that substitutes a few specialty materials to make a very convincing and realistic march brown adult. This is a good example of working with some specialty materials to create a specialty variation of a proven fly like the parachute adams. This video also shows an alternative way to post hackle in a parachute form, which is nice to see.

While I could give numerous tips on fishing a parachute adams that likely are true for this fly as well, the best advice is to not worry about chasing an actual hatch.  March browns hatch in a variety of different times from early spring to mid summer depending on where you’re located and the hatch is sporadic throughout the day most times.  Because of al this, it’s hard to find an active hatch that is thick like other mayfly hatches.  This is good however, because all you have to do is find waters where you know they could be hatching for the day and throw this in likely holding water.  Fish will come up for this fly even when other insects aren’t on the water because of the sporadic hatching behavior.

Simple blind casting with a dry and an emerger trailing behind it is the best bet.

March Brown

Regional Hatch Chart Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Region: West, East
March Brown
Sizes: #10 - #14
Region: Northwest
March Brown
Sizes: #10 - #14
Region: Midwest
March Brown
Sizes: #10 - #14

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