Being of an analytic mind I enjoy spending time formulating hypothesis and attempting to test them under semi-scientific circumstances. During hopper season each year I tend to visit a single run for a couple hours a handful of times to hone and test some thoughts on fishing hoppers and patterns I’ve tied for the hoppers around here. At the creek with my line strung through my guides I searched the grass around the banks downstream for close to fifteen minutes counting the numbers and varieties of hoppers I could readily catch. The two pictured here came in the largest numbers with the Brown/Yellow out numbering the Green/Yellow by almost 2:1. This information is important and can help you catch more trout from a single run which was my goal: see how many fish could be taken from a single run with a hopper.

Matching the size, shape and color of the hopper matters more when attempting to fool several fish from the same spot, if you’ve got the time and the creek you can bounce from place to place taking one or two at each spot with a less-exact imitation but I’m of the opinion that the closer your imitation is to the natural the easier trout will be fooled time and time again even after seeing their friends surface for the bait only to meet a net in the end. I rated my hopper imitations pretty low on the accuracy scale with respect to the naturals I was seeing. My boxes contained hoppers of the correct size but the colors need a bit of tweeking, I didn’t have a yellow bellied foam hopper on me and both Green and Brown hoppers had yellow bellies. The Green on my hopper imitation is a bit off but maybe would work, the legs are totally wrong and should be adjusted for next time. The Brown hopper imitation was a bit more accurate and scored more points for the matching legs, the natural has barred orange and black legs. Yet the wing is too light, it may help me see the fly  better but doesn’t help convince the trout. My assessment led me to fish the Brown hopper imitation first because I found twice as many of them and I had a better imitation with me. Pretty simple stuff here.

This riffle/run and mini-pool is roughly 20ft long, the riffle is about 6ft long and is deeper along the left side, this always holds between 1 and 3 Brown’s, don’t let the depth fool you they are there. The run is short between 3-4 feet and drops into the pool that runs roughly 10ft or so. Fish stack in the run below the riffle at a depth of a couple feet, when undisturbed they hang out here. Smaller fish hang back scattered in the pool. My assessment told me to stick my Brown hopper right at the bottom of the riffle just as it hit the run, my hopper would fly past the trout in the run quickly and they would be forced to make a decision. The first cast came after I positioned myself and waited a couple minutes to lull any disturbance I may have caused entering the creek. Sticking the cast a nice 13inch Brown surfaced almost immediately taking my hopper. I quickly backed the trout out and landed him in the riffle I was standing in. My eagerness typically gets the best of me and I want to get right back at it but in this case I forced myself to literally set my rod on the banks. I dried my fly, made sure my tippet wasn’t twisted from casting the bulky hopper and began searching for invertebrates. Scuds were the clear winner with all the instream vegetation around.

I waited for over five minutes before I touched my rod again. Logically, even under windy conditions, a hopper doesn’t fall or jump into the perfect spot on a run every minute let alone every thirty seconds which is what it would take if I just kept casting allowing my fly to drift back to me. My thought here is that less is more, way less… could be way more. I took aim and made my second cast but stuck it too far left in pool. I picked my cast up and waited another minute or two then sunk it in the same spot on the lower riffle, right into the run and… nothing. I picked my fly up, dried it off, stood and waited some more. I knew if I sunk it further up the riffle that one of the potentially three fish would hit it no question but I wanted to wait and see if I could pull more from the run and pool. I let one cast bounce of the weeds and into a slack portion of the pool, a long slow drift resulted in a sharp strike from a small 8inch Brown.

The process continued as I walked the fish out, dried my fly and waited. I had two more strike-less drifts in the pool and decided to wait before casting to the couple fish I knew were hiding up in the riffle, far to the left (you can see in the picture the slightly deeper water caused by the direction and force of the flow). The first drift resulted in a strike immediately but I was just a hair late on the hook set, that or the fish didn’t hit the fly well enough. I waited a couple more minutes and presented to the riffle one more time, this time I stuck the hookset and landed a 9inch Brown that was hanging in the lower end of the riffle. I dug the spotting on this one alot. I swapped to the Green hopper imitation and waited as long as I could before casting it to the same group of trout, second drift I brought one more fish up. I made a couple more casts in the last fifteen minutes I was there but nothing else would stir. My goal is to increase the number of strikes with better presentations using more accurate imitations next time.

Post-Note: I’m wondering now if the Green hopper is an earlier/younger of the Brown hopper. More research is needed.

Slide Show

Goals for the day:

• Find Trico’s Hatching
• Catch fish on Trico Pattern
• Enjoy another day on a S.E. Minnesota Trout Stream
• Work Hoppers Later in the Day

With the goals laid out before me I set out at 5am. Getting to the spot I wanted to fish was going to require a longer drive than normal but this provided the opportunity to find some rising fish, fish new water and see a stretch of water that I rarely get to visit. I met Joel, who became my Brother-in-Law this past Sunday at 5:30am. This outing was his last as a single man and it felt good to get him out. Read the rest of this entry »

Stopped by a spot I visit every so often returning from CSMP work and dropped a hopper pattern looking for a quick dance with a trout. Not much time to fish, just trying to get one or two to come up and say hi. Noon with an air temp of 82+ degrees makes for happy hoppers warmed and active. Today there was a stiff wind making for tricky casting but I’ve found that some of the best hopper fishing involves wind, hoppers tend to end up in the water after wind blows in mid-jump or flight. I planed to fish a section of pasture that was easy to access, difficult to fish and offering large rewards. Read the rest of this entry »

A while back I got a tip from another trout hound who sent me a link for a youtube.com video by a fellow named Mike Wier. This informative video shows Mike using a three fly rig including a hopper pattern set as the indicator, what makes the fly intriguing are the mono-loops tied t0 the shank prior to construction. The loop at the hook eye allows for a loop-to-loop connection between the Hopper and the leader, the mono-loop at the rear of the hook is meant for the rest of your tippet to pass through so the Hopper sits level on the water allowing the trailing nymph rig to pass behind the indicator smoothly, allowing for a higher number of accurate presentations, article here.

I recently received the Beavertail Body Cutters in the mail and have begun the task of creating a multi-colored mini-plague of my own hoppers, some of which I have constructed with the added mono-loops to create my own hoppicators. On a tip I roughed up the mono prior to attempting to attach it to the hook. Also, I chose to use 50 denier White GSP thread to really get the mono tight, after which I used Zap-a-Gap to hold it firm, period. I chose a 14lbs Fluorocarbon mono to make the loops strong but invisible. I tied a few up and used them recently and found the foam to float excellent, now two things will make or break the float on these flies IMO. First, taking the time to adquatly dry the fly each and everytime it gets struck or pulled under the surface, besides if you just caught a fish off a dropper you should let the stream rest and recover before presenting to the trout again. To dry the flies quickly I use my cotton t-shirt and press firmly without damaging the fly into my shirt on both sides, dries it out without the use of floatant, everytime. The other thing that can make or break the float, and thus the presentation is the attachment of the trailing rig, wether using the mono-loop or tying directly to the hook eye with your leader the flies must fall naturally down below the fly, if you tie the leader to the fly not using the mono-loop  but to the eye and the right angle of the trailing flies does not fall straight down at the correct right angle the flies want to fight each other and turn the hopper pattern for a poorer float.

The cost of this little project was a bit more than usual due to the added cost of the foam body cutters but if properly used/maintained I’m confident I will be able to make a few thousand of these things over the years without issue. The foam was dirt cheap and some of the deer hair I cured myself making the hooks, flash and legs the other main cost. After spying youtube.com a bit I came across the video that ultimatly led to the choice of the body cutters, this video is slick for sure, allowing almost anyone with the tools/materials to duplicate the pattern.

Knowing that trout are opportunists, and that as the seasons progress, the available food source for the trout that live in our driftless streams morphs throughout the year. One of my goals has been to understand at a basic level why things work the way they do in an effort to use nature to my advantage to further my goal; of catching trout. With that said it is getting to be that wonderful time of the year when the hop-ass winged-wonders arrive in droves. The Grasshoppers.

To find the best conditions for mobile grasshoppers I chose to fish later in the day getting to the water around 4pm. I know it is still early and that as the next month and a half progresses there will be better opportunities to fish hopper patterns but I my goal was to scout out a place I believed would yield a plague. Grasshoppers are ectotherms, meaning they use external sources to regulate their body temperature, such as the sun. Knowing this and the fact that it has been much cooler recently made me choose the height of the day for the search. Hopper patterns will be best fished later in the day after the naturals have a chance to warm themselves to the minimum 101.5 degree mark, signaling activity. Note: the graph below compares different specie healthy adult body temperature.

I rigged a F*** ****** (shhh…it will come in time) with a Sparkle Larvae hanging off the end about 18 inches and put it in the first drink I arrived at. Two casts later I was pulling in the first trout of the afternoon, a beautiful 10in S.E. Minnesota brown trout. I kept swinging and pulled a few more tiny ones out all on the Sparkle Larvae, I did get one strike with the secret weapon but the Sparkle Larvae was the clear winner today. Going on six trout nymphed from the same spot I felt kind of selfish but I was the only one around, move on? Nope.

I put my flies in again hoping to bring lucky number seven to hand when I saw the take, with a #16 barbless scud hook I’ve found that if I set the hook too sharply that it pops right off but if I make the hook set a slow but immediate response the hook sticks, something to keep in mind for winter trout nymphing. Back to “Lucky”, I set the hook in the slow manner, difficult for me at times, as I brought the fish in I saw what I thought was it’s shadow elongated by the angle of the sun. It was not an elongated shadow, no this was the real deal which I became very aware of as the fish came easily in to me and promptly turned and took off. Normally a bit of a run is cool but this was awesome, ran three or four times and really pulled hard. At this point I got in the stream and landed this fish downstream before the stream turned into nothing but a riffle. Big Fish (18in)…Small Fly(#16), just a thought for any of you who like to catch “large” trout.

After landing number seven I proceeded to take two more making the count nine and I hadn’t even looked around for what I came for, the hoppers. I put the deadly weapons away and moved downstream but found that a bovine presence had altered the stream to a boderline unsuitable condition for fishing, however I was greeted with each step by about a dozen hoppers in their early stages bolting in every direction. Hoppers go through six stages of development beginning with a nymph and ending with a fully winged adult. I was finding several thousand around me in the first two stages and with varying color. I moved upstream and rounded out my time on the water working towards a brook trout spot I knew of that is well hidden and in the height of the summer the only thing getting back there other than me are deer. I picked up a beatutiful Brookie and kicked out to head home.

Slide Show

The Parachute Hopper: 

•  Hook #10-12 2xLong Dry Fly
• Thread: Brown 6/0
• Body: 1 1/2 in Light Yellow Polypropylene Floating Yarn
• Wings: Mottled Turkey Feather
• Legs: Turkey Feather Fibers Tied
• Para-Post: Yellow Polypropylene Yarn
• Hackle: Grizzly

I’m not very pleased with this fly and so I need to work on it. I had a rough time with the body and head. I wanted to use the floating yarn, a. because it floats, b. last longer than dubbing, c. it was on hand. I had problems after I tied in the legs and wings and then should have either tied in more yarn for another wrap in front of the para-post, or kept the 1st piece longer. I am going to look for some instructions and try try again. I’ll post the progress of course, it will get better.

I look at a large selection of flies with recipies on a variety of websites. In the links at the bottom of this site there are a few of the ones I frequent more often. I do use instruction but for the most part I read them once and try to imitate. I don’t honestly remember how the instructions go for tying this fly but I managed to wrap my head around it and produced a few varieties of a Madame X Hopper. So here goes:

The Madame X Hopper: 

• Hook: #10-12 2xLong Dry Fly Hook
• Thread: Brown 6/0
• Tail: Dark Deer Hair
• Body: Yellow, Pale Yellow Dubbing Mix
• Head and Wing: Light Deer Hair
• Legs: Red/Brown Grizzly Rubber Legs

I decided to try traditional Parachute Hopper Legs made of turkey wing fibers with the basic Madame X pattern. Since I haven’t seen a pattern like this I named it the One-Winged Soldier.

One-Winged Soldier:

• Hook #10-12 2xLong Dry Fly
• Thread: 6/0 Brown
• Tail: Dark Deer Hair
• Body: Yellow/Pale Yellow Dubbing Mix
• Head and Wing: Light Deer Hair
• Legs: Turkey Feather Fibers

These are two more flies I will be adding to my late summer season box.