Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”

by Rusty Dunn

Walk through late summer grasses on your way to a trout stream and – if you’re lucky – you’ll hear the buzz­ing and clicking of grasshoppers fleeing before you. Play your cards right, and you’ll soon be hooked to an angry trout. Hopper season is the most en­joyable time of year for many fly anglers. It’s na­ture’s reward for suffer­ing through the indigni­ties of hatch matching, tiny flies, fussy fish, and foul weather earlier in the season. No need for delicacy when fishing Jiminy Cricket. Tie a pinkie-sized hunk of fur and feather to 3X tippet, splat it noisily into trout water, and be ready for famously indelicate strikes. Trout often take hop­pers with violent erup­tions of water, fly, and leader.

Hopper fishing has been popular in western states since the very beginning, but it wasn’t fully em­braced by the rest of the country until the 1950s or 60s. What took so long? Vince Marinaro’s in­fluential 1950 book A Modern Dry Fly Code edu­cated eastern an­glers on the im­portance of ter­restrials. The book ap­peared at a time of rapid growth in fly fishing, when anglers of the East ex­plored rivers of the West and discov­ered the thrills of grasshopper ma­nia. Effective hop­per pat­terns became widely avail­able in the 1950s and grew to be a late sum­mer staple for trout anglers nationwide.

Joe’s Hopper is an excellent and historically influential grasshopper imita­tion. It was arguably the first to be popular na­tionally, having been made famous in the late 1950s by angling author Joe Brooks (The Com­plete Book of Fly Fishing, 1958). The pat­tern, how­ever, was de­veloped decades ear­lier as the Michigan Hop­per by Art Winnie, a barber, cus­tom fly tyer, and fly-fishing enthusiast of Traverse City, MI. Winnie’s barber shop was a gathering place for fly an­glers of the Board­man River. Its walls were lined with tree bark for that “outdoor feel”, and Winnie updated a sign in the front win­dow with a count­down of days remaining until the opening of trout season. On slow days in the shop, Winnie tied flies for his mail-order fly business. Winnie’s two most fa­mous flies were the Michi­gan Hopper and the Michi­gan Caddis, which was terribly misnamed for a fly that imitated Hexagenia mayflies. The Michi­gan Hopper was first pub­lished in Harold Smedley’s 1943 book Fly Patterns and Their Origins, but Winnie tied, fished, and sold it years before that.

Hopper fishing is especially effective in late summer when (i) naturals are abun­dant, (ii) the wind is brisk, and (iii) air tem­pera­tures are above ~70°F. Weather strongly influ­ences grass­hopper reproduction and sur­vival, and their numbers var­y greatly from year to year. In a hopper-poor year, you might do better with beetle and ant patterns, as they are always abun­dant in late summer. Wind is your friend when hopper fish­ing. Grassy banks on the leeward side (facing away from the wind) of meadow streams serve up the most hop­pers instream, and that’s a good place to concentrate. Air tempera­tures strongly influence grass­hopper ac­tiv­ity. Hoppers are lethargic on cool mornings, be­come ac­tive as tem­peratures approach 70°F, and stay active until the cool of the evening. Trout, on the other hand, are lethargic when water temperatures rise above ~70°F. Thus, hopper fish­ing is best when the air is warm or hot, but the water is not.

Cast your hoppers near or under stream­side cover such as overhanging grasses, bushes, and trees. Pause a moment, then give the fly a little twitch. Dapping can be effective but be extra stealthy; touch the hop­per seductively up and down on the surface. Rises are often explosive, so be ready. Trout take lots of grass­hop­pers un­derwater, so don’t over­look using a sunken hopper pattern.

No matter how you fish it, Art Winnie’s Michigan Hop­per is excellent for those late summer and fall days when nothing larger than midges are on the wing. Most hopper flies today are tied of brightly colored foam and rubber legs. Are such patterns any more or less effective than Art Winnie’s fur and feather original? You’ll have to decide that for yourself. But remember, foam hoppers are gobs of petroleum, but Winnie’s Michigan Hop­per is a true “work of Art”.

Copyright 2024, Rusty Dunn

Michigan Hopper / Joe’s Hopper

Most Wisconsin grasshoppers are light to medium brown with yellow, olive, or green bodies.