What it is
The Hopper is not one dressing but a job: a floating imitation of a grasshopper, big enough to be worth a trout's trip to the surface and buoyant enough to carry a nymph beneath it. Wherever grass meets trout water in the warm months, from the tablelands of New South Wales and the Victorian high country to Tasmania's Central Plateau lakes and the south-west rivers of Western Australia, the hoppers come up in summer and the fish move to the edges to meet them. The pattern follows the insect around the country.
Older dressings used deer hair and turkey quill. Most Australian boxes now carry foam hoppers: lighter, harder to sink, quicker to tie, and better at surviving a dozen fish.
Anatomy
Read from the bend of the hook forward. A body of closed-cell foam, tan, yellow or olive, segmented with thread so it reads as an abdomen, extending a little past the bend. A wing of elk hair or a folded strip of foam or synthetic fibre laid flat over the back. Legs of knotted pheasant-tail fibres or rubber, trailing back and out from the thorax, which give the fly its kick on the water. A head of foam folded back over itself, often with a small bright sighter of orange or white foam on top so the angler can find it in the glare. A sparse underwing of crystal flash on some ties for the flash a real hopper's wings give as it struggles.
Key features
- It floats no matter what. Foam does not need drying between fish. The fly carries a tungsten nymph under it all afternoon, which is why it is the best dry-dropper top fly in the box.
- It lands loudly. A real hopper hits the water with a splat and trout come to the sound. This is the one dry you cast with a little force rather than a delicate turnover.
- The legs move. Splayed rubber legs twitch in the current and on a small pull, and a drowning hopper kicks. Most refusals come to legless ties.
- The silhouette from below is a slab. A wide, flat body with a straight-edged wing reads as a hopper against the sky; a slim body reads as nothing in particular.
Typical materials
| Part | Typical material |
|---|---|
| Hook | Long-shank dry-fly or terrestrial hook, size 10 to 14 |
| Thread | 6/0 or 140 denier, tan or olive |
| Body | 2 mm closed-cell foam, tan, yellow or olive, segmented with thread |
| Wing | Elk hair, or a strip of thin foam or synthetic wing material laid flat |
| Legs | Round rubber legs, or knotted pheasant-tail fibres, two each side |
| Head | The same foam folded forward and tied down behind the eye |
| Sighter | A small strip of orange or white foam on top of the head |
| Optional | A few strands of crystal flash under the wing; a dubbed thorax |
Fishing it
Fish it where the real ones land: within a rod length of the grass, not out in the middle. Let it hit the water with a plop. Then leave it. A hopper drifts dead, or kicks once, and a twitch every few seconds is more than a real one manages.
Size it to the grasshoppers you see, and go a size smaller than feels right on clear, low water. A size 12 covers most afternoons; a 10 when the big ones are about; a 14 when the fish are refusing. This guide's own experience on the Monaro-fed tributaries is that a hopper worked tight to the bank keeps paying well into autumn, long after the first cold nights, and the same is true on any tableland or high-country stream once the grass has dried off.
In the afternoon, when the wind is up and the hoppers are blowing onto the water, it fishes alone. In the morning, before they are moving, hang a small tungsten Pheasant Tail under it and fish the dry-dropper until the day warms up.
