The hopper myth?

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.