Tying dries

Bingbuddy - Muskrat is a great dubbing material to use for dries but you do have to remove the guard hairs. For me - I like to try and make the body as tight as possible with a bit of a taper to it - so I try and dub the thread with as little material as I can while still covering the thread. And while I said that muskrat is a good material - fine natural dubbing that you buy already packages is good for this. And yes - guard hairs dubbed on the body will make the fly more likely to absorb water IMO. What I've been tying lately with muskrat is caddis pupa using the muskrat for the head - leaving the guard hairs in place. I always thought that the good thing about muskrat is that it gives a slimey look when wet and loosely dubbed. It really is a great material - love it. (Reminds me - gotta get some more!)Hope this helps.

bings, as steely said! on dries take the gaurd hairs out and dub a tight body. muskat is one of the best natural materials to use for dry fly dubbing because it repells water better than other natural furs.
if you trap a muskrat and tan it you'll see a few different shades of under fur. this is why i like to get different sections of fur and animal hair for the variety of natural colors. ~dt 

Bing - Looks good my friend. Great first attempt! Tail is about the right length and although it looks like there are a few guard hairs on the body - it doesn't look like it will matter much. As far as the hackle - with the Adams - the pattern calls for two different colors for winding. You'd be surprized as to how few wraps you need to make to support the fly. Only one or two per hackle stem is all ya need. To avoid trapping the hackle on the first turn - try the below step that's on the Red Quill tute. Just something I do that seems to help me avoid hackle fibers from laying back on the first few turns. Also - I normally strip a bit of fibers off one side of the stem so that on the first turn only the bare stem is being wound on the hook shank. Finally - when you go to tie off the hackle after winding - follow the hackle with the thread as your making your last third of a turn. Then stop the turn and tie off. (Kind of hard to explain) I think this always helped me - again from trapping hackle.  I hope ya don't think I'm being critical - just trying to help ya from going through all the frustrations I went through learning this. Looks a heck of alot better than my first Adams!!!!!!!!!!

8. Wind the hackle forward. Whip finish off
Before I start the first wind, I always pull forward on the hackle stem and if there are any stray hackle fibers, I pluck them off. If not these fibers will be the ones that will trap and lay back along the body. The first pic shows a few of these stray fibers.

Good tip DT!