Dear Reader: Since I am working at a fishing camp in a remote part of Labrador during the month of July, I am unable to file a regular weekly column. When I return in early August, my regular timely columns will return with me. I might even have a fish story or two to share with you. Meantime, I have for July dusted off a few columns that might be worth your time. Tight lines!

Any fly fisherman worth his waders is always searching for that perfect fly, an artificial for all occasions. Once, when I was less exposed to the information overload that can overwhelm a novice fly angler today, I was a diehard Hornberg man. Yes sir, trial and error fishing on a fair number of Maine trout ponds convinced me that a few Hornbergs were all a trout angler really needed in his bag of tricks.

A Hornberg was a multi-task artificial. Attach it to a sinking line and you could strip it through the water and snag brookies looking for small bait fish. If there was a Green Drake hatch on and a lot of surface action, you could wind-dry that big-winged jewel, drop it gently upon the surface film and seduce a trout gulping those big drakes.

Back in the 70s, while fishing for trout in the Colorado Rockies, my cowboy guide laughed mockingly when I tied on a No. 12 Hornberg. “Ain’t no self-respectin’ cutthroat ever gonna bang thet feller,” he said with a shake of his head and a spat of Red Man.

Needless to say, the Hornberg showed that cowboy a thing or two. Before the week was out, Sam offered to buy my Hornberg collection. I gave him one and kept the rest.

Since those “Hornberg Days” I have learned to be a little more flexible. After all, half the fun of fly fishing is dipping into those little plastic boxes and making a selection from a vast assortment of sizes, shapes and colors and trying to “match the hatch.”

I still have a special fly box, though, marked “Hornbergs.” And they still work inspite of all of the more advanced fly designs that have been spawned by the fly fishing craze. Be advised, if you are a new fly fisher, or one prone to bow to peer pressure, there are purists in the angling community who consider the conventional Hornberg to be the next thing to fishing with Garden Hackle. “Hornbergs are too easy,” one Maine outdoor writer once told me. “Hell, they should be outlawed as artificials unworthy of an angler concerned about fair chase.”

I suspect that you – if you’re a fly fisherman – have a favorite fly among your assortment of feathers and threads. Those of us who live to match the hatch are destined to be an insecure lot. Nature’s capacity to produce an infinite variety of aquatic lifeforms keeps us guessing and always apprehensive about whether we will be caught on the water without the right fly. It is what keeps fly shops in business.

The Hornberg, for all of its versatility, no longer reigns supreme in my fly box. It has been replaced in the heirarchy by another thoroughly commonplace artificial: the Adams. That’s right. The Adams is it; to be more precise, the parachute Adams.

During a 10-day fly fishing vacation in trout-rich Montana, I had a chance to present flies to more good-sized trout than I had ever imagined possible. Oh, other patterns worked. Yellow Humpies, Elk Hair Caddis, Pale Morning Duns, Blue-Winged Olives. All of these caught fish when the size was right, but none, and no others tried, compared with the Parachute Adams when it came to a consistent attraction for cutthroat trout and brookies on the meandering creeks and mountain-fed streams of Big Sky Country.

In his book “The View from Rat Lake,” John Gierach writes: “Apparently, there are a number of very proficient, mostly local Henry’s Fork fly-fishers – born-again presentationists – who use nothing but the Adams dry fly in sizes 10 through 24 on all of the river’s confusing hatches and who catch more fish than anyone has a right to.”

It is no wonder that the Adams is the most popular dry fly in America today. With its mixed hackle and grizzly wings, this bug-like creation is both an imitator and an attractor fly. The fly was created by Len Halliday of Michigan who used it on the Boardman River. Of the Adams, John Gierach writes: “It looks a little like everything, not exactly like anything, and seems to have great totemic power.”

If you fly fish moving water, the parachute Adams, with its enhanced visibility, is a must for every fly box.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal.He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 6 p.m. on 103.9, and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.