Hoppers...fact Or Fiction?

[toolman]

Try both presentations....then sink them if that does not work.

[OneMoreLastCast]

I've also seen a lot of big fish eat adult cranes when it's ninja-early on the Bow.

 

Does it really matter if the fish "think" it's a hopper or stone or whatever? If they're willing to put a bigass hairy dry that you can see from 100 paces in their mouth, I'll take it - no questions asked.

 

I would certainly tend to agree that the prolonged good dryfly fishing we've experienced this year is a result of the extended stonefly season.

 

 

'Nuff said IMO...do we really care as long as the fish thinks it's okay to eat?

 

Seriously, now I'm really off to bed.

[toolman]

In closing, tune in for tommorow nights discussion.

Mice...Fact or Myth?

[reevesr1]

Fly combo for tomorrow:

Hopper/skid bitch/weighted stimulator as a nymph.

I call it the Who Give's A *hit Rig!!

 

Good night Now!!!!

[H2O]

I've floated early morning when the trout on the Bow were frequently taking dry stonefly imitations until the sun warmed up, then once the banks were noisy with hoppers I've switched to a tan parachute hopper because the action died and had great success.

 

I think this year in particular that the hopper action is good because the stonefly action earlier on was good as well so the fish are already accustomed to looking up for a big meal ticket.

[maxwell]

i think fish eat hoppers and stones...i think hopper and stone patterns ar eone in teh same and coudl eb fished in either situation adn i also think thatt depending on teh day u can kill em on hoppers and other days on stones...this year has bin a amazing stonefly year and when fishing "hoppers" in teh evenigns and early mornings its more likely that they fish are eating stones...but if u fish a stonefly in the afternoon i bet they take it for a hopper...just a thought...shitshow!

[toolman]

Well it is important to note that hot, windy afternoons that are refered to as prime Hopper fishing times, are also the exact same favorable conditions that Skid Bitches prefer for their egg laying runs. Also to be noted, a Hopper pattern with a tan belly and long legs, probably looks very similar to a trout, as the tan colored belly of a skid bitch does.

[Pipestoneflyguy]

Despite not seeing a single hopper up this way all year, I have still swung/drifted a number of muddler head hoppers, spey and reg, with moderate success. Hoppers are rare in this climate and altitiude (although with the right conditions they can appear in massive numbers) but on whole, I think they are seen by fish as stoneflies (which are all over the place right now).

 

I think the fact that most of us have had a fish attempt to take an indicator says alot about this debate.

 

We should have a contest to see who catches a fish on the most riduculous "looks like nothing ever seen on this planet" fly. I imagine fish are like babies and puppies, they'll try putting anything in their mouth if you offer it to them.

[toolman]

"I think the fact that most of us have had a fish attempt to take an indicator says alot about this debate."

 

Strikes on indicators are usually territorial on the Bow, due to the fact that trout become conditioned to associate indicators with flyfisherman and is not considered a feeding behavior.

[bloom]

"I think the fact that most of us have had a fish attempt to take an indicator says alot about this debate."

 

Strikes on indicators are territorial, due to the fact that trout become conditioned to associate indicators with flyfisherman and is not considered a feeding behavior.

 

 

 

I feel otherwise. My philosophy on fly tying and fly fishing is that fish are opportunistic feeders. If it looks like food, or moves like food...lets give it a shot. How often have you heard stories of fish in rivers eating pine needles or cigarette butts.

 

I've only had fish hit my indicator a few times, and when this happens it comes right after a 6'' pull. This usually occurs when caddis are skating around on a lake.

 

My input on the hopper thing is the same. "Hey that looks like food...who cares what type, I'm going to take a bite"

[wongrs]

i'd also add that hoppers would tend to fall into the river more in september october wouldn't they? as they start to die off they lose the energy to navigate themselves properly above water as MTB suggested earlier. Toolman, perhaps you can convince your throat-pumping entomologist friend to try the same experiment again in say late-september or early-october.

 

and i like the idea of fishing a stone-hopper combo. i myself have caught about 100x more fish on stimulators over hoppers but i likely fish stimmies 50x as often.

[Tee]

I had a chace to fish the Nicola river in BC this year for about 2 hours durring high noon. While walking toward the river throught the tall grass all I could see were hoppers jumping, or flying away from my movements. Once on the water I tried nymphing at first since there were no visible rises with little success. I eventually tied on a Dave's Hopper and all of a sudden the fish that weren't rising were taking this hopper aggressively.

 

Now i can't verify that I was catching only because they were hoppers, but it sure seemed to match the formula that i've read about soo often. I would agree with doc that trout are opportunistic and may have hit just because they looked buggy, but a single dave's hopper on the line worked for me then.

 

Now I know this isn't southern Alberta, but it sure seemed that a hopper pattern could raise a fish that wasn't already surface feeding.

 

My point? I suppose that trout woudn't hone into hoppers like they would green drakes durring a hatch, but I bet that they would see a large meal that would take less energy than 10 small meals and decide it's worth an effort. I also bet that a trout that had sucessfully eaten 10 hopper/stonefly sized bugs would realize that this isn't a meal he would want to pass up.

[toolman]

Bloom, you may be right and I will assume that you are. I don't use indicators very often anyway and when I do, I will take it off immediately if it gets hit as it is a reminder that in most cases, I should not be using it in the first place.

 

Wongrs,

From my limited knowledge of the life cycle of Grasshoppers found here in S. AB, I have learned that Hoppers tend to colonize in late autum and some species will then begin migration flights. It is the colonization along the grassy shorelines and the migratory flights that lead to the rivers edge, that present the best opportunities for fishing hoppers.

My point in this discussion is that folks are fishing hopper patterns with limited success through the season and the success that they occassionally have is likely because the Hopper patterns are often very similar in size, profile and color as Stoneflys and the fish are seeing them as such. Other than the localized sites where colonization and migratory flight paths intersect the river, hoppers are not that common in trouts diets, as samples taken this season have revealed.

I am sure that when a thousand or even tens of thousands of hoppers show up along a km or two of shoreline for a few days, some of them will end up in the water and the trout will go into a feeding frenzy as Fishead has described. I believe that the several months of Stoneflys emerging, have already conditioned them to eat big bugs that look a lot like the Stoneflys do.

[Brunsie]

Although I believe trout are opportunistic feeders, I do believe they are taking the Hopper pattern as just that.

Think back to when we were kids, (That's a long way for some of us), when we went fishing we used worms and when we could catch them, live hoppers. I don't think the fish were mistaking a live hopper for a Stonefly, and they did catch fish.

On the other hand I don't think the trout key on Hoppers as much as they do on Stone's so maybe an overlap.

My $.02

BK

 

Then again, who really cares. Fishing hoppers is just so damn much fun

[toolman]

I would suggest that it is difficult to compare artificails to live bait. I could go down to the Bow with at tub of NightCrawlers and catch a trout in less than a minute, as the bait will give off a scent trail that will drift downstream too all of the trout for a 100 meters or more. If we were to compare the catch rates of fishing with bait, to fishing with a wire wrapped SJW, it would be 10 to 1 for the Nightcrawlers.

I have heard a few comments on this thread stating " Who cares?" Well I care, as I find it very interesting studying and learning the life cycle of the insects that are of importance in a trout diet. With knowledge of the behavior of insects through the stages of their life cycle, I will have more strategies/tactics at my disposal to increase my chances of success in varying conditions.

[tgo]

Great discussion guys. I think that trout are not just opportunistic and not just selective in their feeding, but maybe their habits change with changes in their environment like lack of food, water temps etc.) I do not believe that hoppers are as important as stoneflies in the sense that stoneflies are much more likely to induce selective feeding than hoppers. I think hopper patterns are as important as they are because they look so much like stoneflies. But then again, many attractor patterns that look very little like the natural. Kind of funny this topic came up after the wierd day I had yesterday on the Bow in the NW. I fished a Turks Tarantula and rubber-legged stimmie and every fish I caught except for 1 took the fly after it had sunk about a foot or so below the surface.

 

I've had this happen before, but not to this extreme. The fish would completely ignore the fly when it was floating high, but then I would pull the fly under the surface and usually a trout would nose it or attack. More often than not I could see a trout upstream and would gently cast the hopper upstream of the fish and wouldn't even get a look. Then I'd go upstream and let it swing in and then sit in the current and then I would get at least two smacks from the trout, but very few hookups. At one point I would cast the fly 45 degrees upsream and quickly pull it under and then I could see fish following it downstream. Once I saw two trout follow it and neither take it, which is strange bcause I thought the competitive nature of the fish would take over (at least in my experience). Really funny day.

 

Why would they only take the fly below the surface? I would think it was because they recognized it as a drowned hopper, but then I remember mkm and I throwing about 7 or 8 onto the surface of the Bow and watched as at least a couple trout smack them before they had a chance to sink.

[wongrs]

we should also note that throat samples can vary between fish depending on where they usually lie. a fish down south from policeman's down would have more hoppers in it's diet with the grassy adjacent fields compared with say a fish that lives in the NW by the 10th street and princes island park as it's all riprap along there with residential housing.

 

it would be important to know the habitat of the fish when analyzing throat samples and diet. even grassy areas in the NW are devoid of hoppers as some get too much moisture.

[toolman]

These were random samples taken over an extended period, from Glenmore bridge to Carseland, with varying weather and hatches. The results gave us a snap shot of the common and predictable food sources of the general trout population. Most fish samples showed the trout generally selectively feeding, with only one or two insect species dominant in each sample, with a majority of the trout keyed in on the same insects, on the same stretch of water on that day. Not as opportunistic as most would think, but rather selective on most days. Of course there was evidence of other insects in the daily diet, but they were locked in at different times of the day to a small range of food choices, which often would change through out the day. What they were eating at 9:00am could be dramatically different than what was found in a sample taken at 9:00pm from the same area. The diets of the smaller trout were slightly different at times, with a lot of jeuvenille boatman in their diets.

Again, no hard statistics were kept by me and this is amateur biology at best, except for the info. from the Entomologist who was sampling/collecting, with my friend , who gave me a general report of their findings.

The point is, no one reported any hoppers in the diet of any of their samples, which were mostly taken during daylight hours.

So, I conclude that the trout have not been eating hoppers all summer, as many have suggested. They were certainly eating stoneflies though, especailly after dark. The dead or almost dead Stoneflys that I have seen in the drift, (spent females that had finished egg laying runs, mostly in the late afternoon on hot, sunny days), were submerged about 10"-12" under the surface and I had productive days/nights fishing at this depth. We also fished drowned adult stonefly patterns, deep on the stream bottom, both dead-drifting and swinging down and across, with rod shattering stikes on some days.

I'll likely get a call from Max and the guys telling me to hush up about the fishing techniques I am talking about...

So I will say no more about that...grin

[maxwell]

Well it is important to note that hot, windy afternoons that are refered to as prime Hopper fishing times, are also the exact same favorable conditions that Skid Bitches prefer for their egg laying runs. Also to be noted, a Hopper pattern with a tan belly and long legs, probably looks very similar to a trout, as the tan colored belly of a skid bitch does.

 

greg wut are ya smokin..."stoneflies" not "skidbitches"...lay there eggs at night...were are your reading/dreaming this...ive heard of salmonflies laying there eggs during hte day but still havnt observed .... however on many occasions by myself and with you we have seen teh emergence and egglaying runs start at dark and end shortly after sun up......

[toolman]

Claassenia Sabulosa Stoneflys are the dominant Stonefly hatch on the Bow river. In their final Instar, nymphs migrate to slower water along the shoreline and colonize a few weeks before emergence. The emergence sites are usually a few rocks and the entire colony will continue to emerge on too these rocks for weeks on end. (These are my favorite fishing spots). The first few days of the emergence are mostly all males and then the females will start to emerge as well. The males fight for mating rights and often a female will be mounted as soon as she crawls out of the water, before she has even had a chance to emerge from her nymphal exuvium. The females will finish their final stage of developement into adults, through the first night. Egg laying starts mid morning if the temps are warm enough and will continue untill mid afternoon. The gravid females prefer warm, windy days to ovi-deposit their eggs and the earliest I have seen an egg laying run was around 10:30 am. They will crawl (not fly) on to the surface of the water and skid out to the riffles to ovideposit their eggs. The females have fully developed wings, but they are non functional. The males are brachypterous with stunted, non functional wings and are the reason they are sometimes called Short winged stoneflys, which makes identification of this species relatively easy.

The emergence continues through the season with a higher ratio of females to males emerging nightly as the emergence continues.

The females are called Skid Bitches as they skid/skate on the surface of the water when egg laying and they are called bitch, as they are female.(No wise cracks please).

I also witnessed a phenomena one warm evening in July, that I have not yet explained, when dozens of Skid Bitches started crawling on to the water and skated down the calm flats for as far as the eye could see. Brian and I collected samples and were surprised to see that they had allready ovideposited their eggs and we wondered where they were going and why they would do this at the end of their life cycle. It's likely that they were attempting to get away from the aggressive males before darkness decended and the males come out with only one thing on their minds.

 

I have information in print from different sources, that outlines the basic emergence cycle and I have observed and documented many details that I have never seen published before.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it...sonny!

[maxwell]

lmao dude keep fighting but darwin says otherwise...windy days make it hard for any bug to fly crawl emerge etc. hence shitty odds of having a successful egglaying flight crawl emergence or whatever...we talked about this with the caddis stones hoppers maylies midges...wind pushes em over or down into the riffle and kills em.....i agree with all that except the last few bars...and u know why...the only stoneflies i have found are under rocks locks and in the grass when lights out....u were the one skiddin skid bitches all lastyear nightfishing...hoppers i suppose i must have it assed backwards sorry

[toolman]

The females have not finished fully developing into adults untill the morning. Also, they need the thermal energy of the sun to have the energy to ovi-deposit the eggs in the fast moving water. It may be because of predation by birds, that the skid bitches prefer the late morning starts and sunny, windy days. I watched a few stonefly nymphs make the error of emerging too early on a few nights, which made them an easy meal for the Robins who were waiting every evening at dusk for someone to make a mistake. The birds would come back at first light to eat all of the exuvia's (nymphal casings) on the rocks, from the previous nights emergence.

I swing skid bitches at night because sometimes they fall into the water, (usually trying to escape from the males) and the females will try and skate to shore. Also in the evening an hour or so before dark, because of the strange migration that we observed of the Skid Bitches at the end of their life cycle, heading downstream away from the colony. I swing Skid Bitches from the mid morning untill mid-afternoon to immitate the egg laying runs. Trout will often be waiting near the emergence sites for these types of events to happen and are often willing takers to my presentations, which I sometimes need to swing right up to the bank in 6" of water before getting the hit..

[maxwell]

yes i agree they need a day or two too mature develop eggs and bring up teh blood temps but there body temps are at teh highest when...just as the sun sets...just like the fish and any other coldblooded animal...why do snakes turtles fish crocs etc sun themselves at lateafternoon/sundown...BUT!

u need too re-read the link u sent me...from our pals at the u of a

 

scientific name Claassenia sabulosa

 

habitat

Larger, coolwater streams and rivers.

 

seasonality

Adults emerge in late June to mid-July.

 

identification

Males (length = 19.6 mm) are brachypterous, but females (length = 31.4 mm) are long-winged. Males have genital hooks darkly sclerotized at their tips and arising from lateral angles of Tergum 10. Males also have a raised knob or "hammer" on Sternum 9. The female subgenital plate is broadly rounded, usually with a shallow median recession and is little produced over Sternum 9. The subgenital plate has a row of spinules along its posterior margin. Nymphs have anal gills and an occipital ridge composed of spinules.

 

life history

The life cycle is three years in Saskatchewan, and the nymphal habitat is under stones in swift riffle areas. Adults are nocturnal, emerging at nightfall and when active at dusk or night have the ability to move on the surface of the water somewhat like water-striders. Mating can occur as soon as the female emerges from its nymphal exuvium.

 

conservation

The species is not endangered, but as with all stoneflies, it is sensitive to organic pollution.

 

diet info

Nymphs are carnivorous, feeding on mayfly nymphs, black fly and chironomid larvae.

 

range

In Alberta, this species is known from the Saskatchewan River system, and from boreal and mountain streams. In North America, it ranges from the Cordilleran region of British Columbia and Alberta through the Cascade and Rocky Mountains to New Mexico and east to northern Manitoba and northern Ontario.

 

taxonomic hierarchy

Animalia; Arthropoda; Insecta; Plecoptera; Perlidae; Perlinae; Claassenia; sabulosa

 

and the link...

http://www.entomology.ualberta.ca/searchin...;c=7&s=2130

 

NUFF SAID!

[toolman]

And where does it mention ovi-depositing at night anywhere on that page, or on the link that I have posted on the entomology thread several times. Also, where does anything I have written about Claassenia's, contradict what is on this page from the UofA site? It mentions the same emergence cycle that I have written and says they are active at dawn, meaning there are still a few stragglers emerging, but I have not seen many as the Robins were always there. In fact, they built their nest only a few meters away. Pretty smart birds and the one constant predator I saw eating the Stones every day at sunrise and especailly sunset. The Stoneflys seemed to know the Robbins were there and delayed their emergences an extra 15-20 minutes past dark after the first few nights.

I spent two weeks at the same site observing the emergence, mating and egg laying cycle of this species of Stonefly, every night at dusk and every morning at sunrise and through the morning when the egg laying would start. I have learned a great deal about them that I have never seen documented before. Keep digging if you wish, but remember, holes only get deeper...

[maxwell]

u know the direction i go with a shovel in a hole dude...especially when its involving fishing...45 degree angle up!...so lets do a sunrise session brother...we know the spot..ill take the pics u make the notes...ill call ya when im done workin and they are still emergeing so the females are still abundants as we know takes 3-5 days before the females die...in my sample jar anyway...