This, with all due respect, is complete nonsense.
If you tied it without the grizzly, would it still be an Adams?
How about if you tied it with a white body? Yellow hackle?
Basically, you’ve decided that any generic gray bodied catskill is an Adams. Sorry, a catskill without the brown and grizzly hackle (or cree in its stead) is no more an Adams than it is a light Cahill. If that’s pendantic, so be it.
I have no problem with what color of hackle for my
Adams or any fly. Unless my wife is standing right there everything is ether light or dark.
Think black and white TV and they all seem to work as well as anybody we fish with.
Did you even read what I said?
If you want to get particular, and not contradict yourself, you cant even call your brown & griz hackled “adams” an adams…unless of course they have a tail made of 2 and only 2 golden pheasant tippet fibers. If your “Adams” has a tail of mixed brown and grizzly hackle fibers, it’s just as much of an offshoot derivative as any other fly. Are your wings sharply canted forward? If not, it isnt strictly an adams.
In your other fly box, check out your woolly buggers. If any of them are tied with chenille and/or marabou, they’re not woolly buggers, by your reasoning. The original pattern called for an ostrich herl tail with a peacock body. So clearly, that’s the only acceptable fly to call a woolly bugger, right?
If you’re into classics…well…you couldnt be. You wouldn’t be able to acquire many of those materials legally, and anything that you substituted in would make the pattern cease to be a classic.
Back to the dry box, I’m sure you never use poly yarn, microfibbets, or synthetic dubbing in any of your flies, right? Or do you keep “blue winged olives” and “synthetic dubbed olive dry flies with dun hackle and wings” in different compartments?
Long story short: in my not so humble opinion, people who insist that a minor variation on a pattern is NOT that pattern are needlessly complicating things. My poly-winged, moose mane tailed, gray superfine dubbed, grizzly hackled dry fly is an adams. Maybe yours isnt, but mine is. That’s not to say that classic patterns aren’t worth observance, but rather that a true-to-pattern fly deserves to be noted as such, rather than every derivative work being noted as “not such”. For example, when I tie a “true-to-pattern” fly, I’ll specifically refer to it as a “classic adams” or whatever. Part of this is because I remember how frustrating it was when I was just starting out to hear about all these patterns and not know what people were talking about. Part is because once I did figure it out, it was easy to see that it was just plain nonsense, that served more to confuse the uninitiated than to really truly help point out key differences to anglers. Part of it is because the whole point of naming is to improve communication.
This last bit is key. If I’m fishing a gray-bodied, grizzly hackled dry (with a unique touch of using an Amherst pheasant tippet tail) and having an awesome day…and you make your way over to me and ask me what I’m using, I’m not gonna say, “Oh, these fish are refusing everything but my size 15 Cold Special.” Because frankly, that’s a snobby, nonsense, non-helpful answer. I’m gonna tell you I’m fishing an Adams because immediately you know what I’m fishing and what, in your box, will work just as well, whether it be a “real” adams, or your alternate, non-GP tippet-tailed monstrosity. 
in addition, my research has shown that even Halladay didn’t do it the same way every time. He tied them upright and spent…which is the true Adams? That’s all I am going to say about it, but this…quit picking nits…or pick nits, then put 'em on a size 32 hook and go fishing!
Yeah! #16 Adams with a #32 stinger hook for the refusals.
What you seem to miss is that the Adams is a color scheme for a series of flies. Brown and Grizzly says Adams like Red and Peacock say “Royal.” This color scheme has been represented by the hackle color from the get-go. The classic grizzly and brown tail, again matching the Adams color scheme, was introduced prior to 1938.
So no, I don’t see changing the color scheme as minor. The color scheme is the definition of an Adams - always has been, always will be.
Now, as for truly minor changes. I’m not a slave to materials and see no problem in substituting a new improved material that serves the same purpose or improves on the intended purpose of the old material. Muskrat was an improvement over gray wool yarn. Superfine may be an improvement over muskrat. But if the Superfine isn’t gray, it isn’t an Adams. In the same vein, I see no problem with continuing to call a Royal Wulff made with poly pro wings, or Turkey T-base wings (my fav al a A.K. Best), a Royal Wulff. The wings, whether it be calf tail, poly pro or T-base, serve the purpose of making the fly highly visible in broken water.
Put another way, you may not need the urine stained fur from a vixen to make a pink hendrickson, but your pink hendrickson should damn well have some pink in it, don’t you think?
I fish, fwiw, a parachute “western” Adams with moose body hair for the tail (or is it moose mane, I can’t remember). Sometimes I fish a thorax Adam (I use a teal wing to keep the color scheme)
As for the size 15 Cold Special, if I were you, I’d answer I’m fishing a dun pattern with a gray body, grizzly collar and Amherst pheasant tail. If it had a grizzly tail, I’m fishing a Grizzly Fly.
Now, you didn’t answer my question, if you left off the grizzly hackle but kept the brown, would you tell me you’re fishing an Adams?
As for the size 15 Cold Special, if I were you, I’d answer I’m fishing a dun pattern with a gray body, grizzly collar and Amherst pheasant tail. If it had a grizzly tail, I’m fishing a Grizzly Fly.
No. If you were me, you’d answer, “Adams.” But you’re not me.
Now, you didn’t answer my question, if you left off the grizzly hackle but kept the brown, would you tell me you’re fishing an Adams?
Unbelievable. For a pedant, you really DO miss details. 
If you’d have read the very portion of my post that you quoted you’d have seen that yes, I would call that an adams. Because that’s what it is. An adams with one minor change. What if I handed you an adams of mine with only grizzly, but I’ve hit the hackle with a brown prismacolor in a few spots? Adams or not?
FWIW, I’ve tied royal wulffs with an orange band, white band, and hot pink band…as well as red-dyed peacock herl. They’re all royal wulffs as long as their in my fly box. Dont care what you call em, you’re entitled to call them daredevil spoons if you like. They’re royal wulffs to me, because when I’m describing them to someone, that gives them a reference point. In this case, I’d add to that the color change. But its just a royal wulff on casual friday.
The point I’m trying to make is that tying flies is an art, not a science (not saying there isnt science involved, but tying as a whole is an art). As an art it is totally and completely 100% subjective, and any attempt to impose definitive inflexible laws on tying are hopeless.
So…are you going to eschew those horrible mutant woolly bugger knockoffs that use marabou and chenille and are totally unworthy of the woolly bugger name? How bout those sham classic patterns?
Ah, I failed to interpret the part that anything that has a collar and one of the colors present in the classic Adams is to you an Adams. And 2+2 could equal 3. And a polygon with four sides could be a triangle. I mean, what the hell right?
To you, it’s an Adams. In fact, anything could be an Adams, right? After all, it’s your box.
Let’s look at this another way. Any pattern books that show an Adams as only having a grizzly collar?
How about a fly shop? When you go in and look at the flies, what do you expect to see when you look at the Adamses?
As for the woolly bugger, I don’t know its history. But I can’t see how a change from wool (?) to chenille or from ostrich to marabou differs from what I consider a minor material change. And Russ Blessing is still alive, if he’s not complaining why should I?
Because you’re the pedant that gets worked up over nonsense. Or did you miss that memo too?
So YOU can replace GP tippet with hackle fibers or moose hair and its okay. But I replace a brown hackle with grizzly hackle and it isnt? You’re changing color, animal part, and even what general type of animal the material is coming from…I change the color of dye used on the feathers…and somehow you’re right and I’m wrong?
Also, you start your argument by making a nod to tradition, but then clearly go back and retcon that to say that the only traditions that matter are the ones you decide to maintain…tailing = okay to change at will, hackle = alter it and die. For the bugger, you dont even know its history, and you just decide for the entire community that it’s cool to change every aspect of the pattern. Thanks for that.
Also, to help you overcome your rapidly deteriorating reading comprehension: for a guy that wants to take me to task for ignoring parts of posts (that I never even ignored), you still have yet to address using a marker to add a bit of brown to my grizzly hackles. Just figured I’d mention that one more time. Feel free to address that, or ignore it to better suit your flawed point, as seems to be your typical MO.
And again, you miss the point. Adams is a color scheme as recognized by all those pattern books and all those fly shops.
If the pattern books are right and the fly shops are right, you’re wrong. Sorry Cold, you’re not tying an Adams.
And no, I didn’t decide for the entire community that it was cool to change everything about a bugger. Buggers are presented in their current form, I in a sense inherited that. If I go to a pattern book, I’ll see chenille and marabou. If I go to a fly shop, I’ll see chenille and marabou. If I tell another fisherman I’m using a black bugger, they’ll know what I’m talking about: a marabou tail, chenille body, palmered hackle.
You don’t get this, because I’m not talking about tradition, I’m talking about communication. If I tell somebody I’m fishing a parachute Western Adams, they’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
If you tell somebody you’re fishing an Adams, they’ll have no freaking idea what you’re fishing.
(btw, if Russell Blessing were to tell the entire world tomorrow that “I invented buggers and those aren’t buggers,” I promise I won’t call them buggers but rather marabou tailed woolly worms).
However, if you got the same color “perception” I’d say, yeah you’re fishing an Adams. No different than if you tied with cree.
This post is NOT “aimed” at anybody in particular. It represents my own observations and opinions.
Just for whatever it is worth, I have fished on days and in places where brown hackle didn’t work, when grizzly hackle didn’t work, but where the mixture worked fairly well. Given that, I tend to carry mixtures of flies to cover those cases and a few others as well (e.g. sulfur, PMD, black, ginger &/or ginger grizzly, blue dun, etc…). I tend to believe that, in general, the order of importance is: (1) drag-free drift, (2) presentation, (3) size, (4) form, and (5) color. I also believe that the more one fishes, the more exceptions one will encounter and the more time one is actually likely to need a brown-and-grizzly hackled fly, a quill-bodied fly, a peacock herl fly, etc.
The tail of the Adams has commonly been changed over time and place. It started out as GP tippet, now it is most commonly hackle barbs, many use moose (or other) hair, some use microfibbets. The body might be gray wool for some, muskrat &/or beaver dubbing for others, synthetic for yet others. Varying the wing position is typically handled in the name, i.e. trude, parachute, spinner, variant (wingless) etc… From my own (far from exhaustive) observations the main constant has been the admixture of brown and grizzly hackle.
All of that being said, I think that the main reasons for naming a fly are to make it easy to refer to, and a couple of optional reasons, to be descriptive &/or to honor/commemorate/mention someone or something.
Now I feel a wicked urge to tye and Smada, an Adams tyed backwards…
Regards to all,
Ed
This post is NOT “aimed” at anybody in particular. It represents my own observations and opinions.
Well played, sir. And nice post. Perhaps those tennessee trout are just that tricky, but for my time spent on the water, if they’re going to be that finnicky, its probably much better conditions for some bass and panfish. 
Gotta go tie some Adams poppers now…
This is a good technique to use 2 different feather colors on a parachute and wrap them together.
I use this method, we call it a Tommy Twist, since it was shown to me by Tommy Legler.
Bob Scheidt
Cold,
Now that you mention it, those Adams poppers seem kind of interesting… Hmmm, are the bodies cork, foam, of spun deer hair? (Don’t tell me “dealer’s choice”. I need guidance, guidance man, guidance.)
Ed
P.S. The idea of an Adams popper actually DOES sound interesting.