North Dakota lakes in the summer. The wind would blow grasshoppers into the
lakes. Sometimes they were big enought to knock a man off a motorcycle. I
never saw the blown in in grate numbers but enough to keep a few fish busy.
I would cast a Joes Hopper at a fish ( or what I though was a fish) and
ocassionally connect. Good weather, a chance at fish and in NoDak nobody
else around.
"Larry" wrote in message
...
The hopper/dropper thread down the page a bit reminded me this.

One day, several years ago, by weaving back and forth downwind, I managed
to herd about 40 or 50 hoppers in front of me and out onto the 'Bonefish
Flat' section of the HFork. I've read, over and over, about the
'smashing rises' that were going to occur and I excitedly followed the
hapless flotilla downstream, expecting to mark the location of many big
fish.

Well, after following 40 live hoppers maybe 500 yards ( all the way down
into the fast water near the midway bridge) I had seen exactly one rise
and it appeared to be a small fish. 40 times 500 yards is a hell of a
lot of float to get one rise.

Since that I've never gotten up much enthusiam for tying on a hopper, but
I still carry a few.

Actually, I've never experienced 'hopper fishing' that struck me as more
effective than big attractor dry fishing would have been, same time and
place. ( one exception, a high country lake with a patch of grass that
had hundreds of hoppers along the edge...there the fish were hopper
selective ).

When and where have you experienced good fishing to hopper patterns and
thought that 'hopper' was a key to the fish? I'm tempted to think such
situations are actually far more rare than the stories about them in the
magazines.