The Beauty of Foam Hoppers

Sanchez foam wing hopper

Where do I even begin…

Livingston, Montana is a great place to fish hoppers late in the season.  Being a fishing guide and avid fisherman myself I have had many opportunities to try out every kind of hopper imaginable.  I love tying flies and coming up with my own variations on tried -and-true patterns.  Every summer I try to outdo the last with a better hopper.  When talking about foam hoppers what it eventually boils down to is that they are virtually unsinkable, fun to tie, and most importantly, from time to time fish mistake them for the real thing!

I’ve had fish eat tan, yellow, brown, black, green, goldenrod, peach, pink, and purple, yes pink and purple, foam hoppers.  Almost every color of buoyant craft foam available from either fly shops or craft stores, has wound up on one of my foam hoppers. Add to that the availability of leg material in small, medium, large, round, flat, barred, with or without glitter, etc… in every color you can imagine, you start seeing the endless possibilities of foam and rubber.

Hoppers have come a long way from the timeless deer hair creations, including Joe’s hopper, Dave’s hopper, and the fly that may have started the synthetic craze, the Madam-X with those silly white rubber legs. Hoppers don’t have white legs, but for some reason, white rubber legs drive trout nuts.  I can’t even count the number of trout I’ve fooled on white rubber legged flies like the Turk’s Tarantula, Madame-X, Sanchez Convertible series of flies, bitch creeks and yuk bugs.  Sinking or floating, white rubber legs, or any colored rubber legs, just attract fish. Combine the floating qualities of foam, plus rubber legs to a hook, what you get are fish.

Foam floats, rubber legs wiggle. Fish love it. Enough said

What do you think?  Do you enjoy fishing with foam hoppers as much as I do or do you refuse to fish with foam?  What are some of your favorite patterns and most successful colors?