My caller asked what differences I use when fishing parachute dry flies and regular dry flies. It’s a good question and it made me think. Standard drys are good if you want to fish a spider like a living insect, also if you want to twitch a dry caddis, dance a smallmouth skater and any other time you want to impart a lively action to a dry fly. I tend to use parachute drys on small delicate patterns such as Parachute Beatis and Parachute Mr. Rapidan Black Ants. However, there is a great amount of overlap so experiment and see what you think.

During the summer most smallmouth anglers wade wet and often wade in over their vest pockets. If your flies get wet in their boxes dump them out at home to dry out. However, if everything is your billfold gets wet it is a mess. I now carry my billfold in a zip-lock bag to keep it dry.