How to Tie the Parachute Purple Haze

Producer: tightlinevideo

I don’t know how many different versions of Andy Carlson’s Purple Haze I’ve tied over the years, but as of right now, this is my favorite method for tying it.

The fly starts with a Fulling Mill 5050 dry fly hook in size 14. After getting the hook firmly secured in the jaws of my tying vise, I load a bobbin with a spool of white UTC 70 Denier. Get the thread started on the hook shank, leaving some space behind the eye and, after taking a few wraps rearward, snip off the excess tag. Continue taking thread wraps rearward until your thread hangs at about the midpoint of the hook shank.

I really like moose body hair as a tailing material. It’s stiff, nicely tapered and offers a good bit of float to the rear of the fly. Ready a narrow hair stacker then snip a small clump of the moose body hair free from the hide, down close to it. While holding the tips, strip out the fluff and shorter hairs from the butt ends. Ideally, you want about 10 or 12 hairs for this size 14. Place the hair, tips first, into your stacker and give them a little stacking. With the tips pointing toward the rear of the fly, carefully remove them and pass them to your right hand. Measure to form a tail a hook shank-plus-the-eye in length then transfer that measurement rearward to the start of the hook bend. Take nice tight wraps of tying thread to secure the hair to the top of the shank, all the way back to the bend. Then, return your tying thread to the initial tie-down point and snip the butt ends off close.

White polypropylene floating yarn is used to create the wing post on the fly. Snip a card-width segment free. Place one end on top of the hook shank and begin taking thread wraps to secure it there. Make sure these wraps are nice and tight. Without letting go of the material, lift it up and snip it off at a shallow angle, trying not to snip any tail hairs off in the process. Oops.

Advance your tying thread forward, if needed, so the material is bound down to a point 2 full hook-eye-lengths behind the back edge of the hook eye. Twist the yarn in a clockwise direction, as if you’re looking down on it. Then fold it over and let the material furl to form a wing post, about a full hook in height. Using a pinch wrap, secure the material firmly to the hook shank immediately in front of the post. Lift the excess material up and snip it off at a shallow angle. Take wraps of tying thread to lightly cover up the snipped off ends then relocate your tying thread so it hangs at about the hook point.

For the body of the fly, I’m going to use rabbit fur dubbing in a color called wine, that looks a heck of a lot like purple to me. Pull an ample clump free from the packet and use it to create a slender 3” long noodle on your tying thread, less is more. Start taking wraps with the noodle so the dubbing begins at what’s left of the tail. Take touching wraps forward to build up a nicely tapered body on the fly. Continue wrapping in front of the post to cover up the butt ends of polypropylene then finish with bare thread wraps around the base of the post. End with your tying thread in front of the post on the near side of the fly.

For hackle, to me, there’s nothing quite like a mix of brown and grizzly. If you want to pay for Cree, go right ahead, but I still don’t think it looks as good as brown and griz together. Measure the hackle so the fibers match the hook size, here 14. With parachutes, it really doesn’t have to be exact. Only after measuring to find the correct size, should you pluck the feather free from the skin and set it aside.

Now, repeat the measuring process with the other cape, here the grizzly, and pluck that feather free. Lay the feathers, one on top of the other, with their shiny sides facing you, so their tips roughly match. I like brown on top. Strip away the lower webby fibers from both sides of both feathers then strip a few more fibers from the top edge of both, to ensure they wrap correctly. Trim the butt ends off leaving a nice long length of bare stem.

With the feathers still sandwiched together and their shiny sides facing you, lay the bare stems against the wing post on the near side of the fly, so the fibers start right at the base of the wing post. Begin taking thread wraps, first up the post then back down to both stiffen and smooth it. Snip the excess stem ends off close, if needed, yet again trying not to snip any post fibers in the process.

Get hold of the fly and rotate it 90 degrees in your tying vise. This makes wrapping the hackle a good bit easier. Grab the tip of the top feather with hackle pliers and begin wrapping it around the post behind your tying thread. After 3 or 4 slightly open spiral wraps up the post, anchor the tip of the feather with 2 or 3 turns of tying thread. Then, snip the excess off close, doing your very best not to snip off any extremely valuable hackle fibers in the process.

Now, get hold of the other feather and make wraps with it between the previous hackle feather wraps. I’m going to take an extra wrap with the grizzly feather to kind of make up for the brown hackle fibers I so recklessly snipped off. Anchor that feather’s tip to the post with tight wraps of tying thread, then carefully snip that tip off.

Get hold of your whip finish tool and use it to do a 4 or 5 turn whip finish around the post then snip or cut your tying thread free. Flip the fly back to its normal orientation in your tying vise, it should now look something like this.

If you have any trapped hackle fibers pointing up, you can snip them off, if you like, but it really isn’t necessary. Trim the wing post so it’s about a hook shank in height and fluff it out. With this tying method, it’s super important to apply some low viscosity head cement, here Sally Hansen Hard as Nails, to the thread wraps on the post. Gravity will carry the adhesive down the post and help to anchor the hackle stems to it, greatly increasing the durability of the fly.

And that’s the Parachute Purple Haze. Despite some rather careless trimming on my part, I think the fly still looks pretty good and certainly will function well. I generally don’t use this much hackle on parachutes, but to me, Purple Hazes simply look better when heavily hackled. It’s more about taste rather than function.