Holly Hopper

My Go-To Hopper Pattern!

I have always enjoyed the craftmanship that goes into each and every fly pattern. Even as a little kid I was captivated by them and was amazed that each one was tied by hand. My parents bought me a fly tying kit when I was ten or eleven years old. My Dad didn’t tie flies, so he bought me a fly tying book written by fly fishing legend Jack Dennis to teach me how to tie. The book he bought me was called Jack Dennis’ Western Trout Fly Tying Manual. I read it cover to cover, including all the stories surrounding each fly pattern in the book. As a result of the book, and all his stories, Jack Dennis is someone who I’ve always looked up to in the fly fishing community.

One of Jack Dennis’ patterns I’ve had a lot of success with over the years is his Amy’s Ant pattern. About ten years ago I learned that the fly was named after his daughter. As someone I look up to, I thought if he named a fly after his daughter it would be fun if I did as well! My daughter’s name is Holly. I thought to myself, what type of fly begins with the letter “H” so that I could design a Holly H_ _ _ _ _ , just like Jack Dennis did his Amy’s Ant? Well, the first type of fly that that came to mind was, of course, a hopper pattern.

Now that the Holly Hopper name was decided, I just needed to design the fly. I looked at a lot of grasshopper images online. A few things stood out to me. First, every grasshopper I saw had a big head and huge eyes. A lot of grasshopper fly patterns don’t have this so I decided that was a must for the Holly Hopper. Second, the body of a grasshopper isn’t soft and matte in appearance, it’s more of a hard surface – a shell almost. In light of that I decided not to use dubbing as the main body materiel, but something with a harder surface, with some shine, and that is segmented. The last design feature I considered critical were the legs. The key for me with any grasshopper pattern is that the legs come out at a 45 degree angle from the body. Not tucked up close against it. I wanted to use pheasant tail feathers for the legs because they’re a little more “traditional”. Also, I prefer to have at least a few natural materials in all my flies as opposed to completely relying on synthetics. I initially tied the Holly Hopper with pearl Flashabou as the underwing. It works well. I’ve also begun to tie it with golden pheasant as an underwing because some of the grasshoppers I see flying around have an underwing that’s colorful. The idea of using golden pheasant tippets for this came from a Kelly Galloup video I watched. The extra color has proven to be a good attractor.

In terms of color, I initially made the Holly Hopper in both olive and gold. The olive ones looked great, but they didn’t catch many fish. I don’t know if it was because the color isn’t a common one on the western rivers where I fished them, or if it had something to do with the fly itself. I’ve since stopped tying them. The gold Holly Hopper has fished amazingly well right from the beginning! As a result, I always keep a dozen of them in my fly box and it’s the first hopper pattern I always tie on. It has caught many, many fish from Colorado to Wyoming, and even up into Canada. I am confident in this fly on any river in the west, from mid to late summer, especially in meadow stretches.

My favorite memory while fishing this fly was several years ago when I was fishing the 2nd meadow of Slough Creek with a buddy. He was on one side of the river and I was on the other, as we walked up a section together. The bottom of the river was pretty non-descript, but there was one subsurface clump of rock and vegetation out in front of me. I threw the Holly Hopper out in front of it. As it drifted over it, I saw a cutthroat come out from under the rock and slowly rise out of the depths. As it came to the surface it’s gaping mouth opened and it engulfed the fly. I resisted the temptation to set the hook too early, as often happens on such slow, deliberate, takes. The cutt closed its mouth and as it turned I set the hook. The whole thing felt like it was happing in slow motion. A few minutes later, after taking the Holly Hopper out of the corner of its mouth, I netted the 18″ cutthroat and released it. The friend, the location, and even the fly, became another wonderful fly fishing memory of mine.

The Holly Hopper does have one drawback at times. It doesn’t float as well as a foam hopper does. As a result, I do not always use it when I’m employing a hopper/dropper technique. I opt for one of Charlie Craven’s foam “Charlie Boy Hopper” patterns when I’m going to attach a dropper. It floats like a cork and can still fish well even with a dropper attached to it. I also still really like the basic parachute hopper patterns that have been around forever. So in my box, I always carry all three patterns: the Holly Hopper (some with a Flashabou underwing and some with a golden pheasant underwing), Charlie Craven’s Charlie Boy Hopper, and a few parachutes.

Give the Holly Hopper a try – I think you’ll like it.

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Holly Hopper Tying Instructions

Step 1: Attach a thin strip of the razor foam to the underside of the hook, right behind the hook eye. Make a large black eye made out of the black superfine dubbing. Using a needle, the tip of a bodkin, or the sharp end of your whip finisher, poke a very small hole in the foam at the point it will meet the hook eye. Wrap the foam around the dubbing and the front of the hook, letting the hook eye emerge through the hole created. Tie down behind the eye. I’ve never had the foam tear where the hook eye goes through while fishing, but a dab of cement on the foam may give you a little more confidence. Finally wrap the thread back towards the bend and cut the foam to form the tail. I often put a small ball of cream dubbing underneath the tail to make it prop-up and stay parallel to the hook shank/body.

Step 2: First tie in the Light Golden Stone tubing. Then wrap the Light Yellow Ice Dub onto the thread. Dub the body of the fly, making sure to leave room for the legs and thorax of the fly. Next wrap the tubing forward, making sure not to have any spaces between each wrap. Also make sure to create a slight taper.

Step 3: Tie in the pheasant tail legs. You can purchase these premade, but I don’t think they look as nice as ones I make myself. They are easy to make, but are best done in advance. Buy a pheasant tail feather and a knot tying tool. You can crank out 50 legs in no time once you get in a rythem. When tying in the legs, make sure they go out at a 45 degree angle from the body, the lower half of the legs pointing straight down. Next tie in the underwing. Pictured below is a Krinkle Mirror Flash underwing and a golden pheasant underwing. As mentioned previously, I also often tie this fly with a pearl Flashabou underwing.

Step 4: Tie a minimal amount of the cream dubbing around the legs to help hold them in place. Next, tie in the deer hair wing. I prefer to have the wing lay flat, as opposed to having it spray-out out like often seen with caddis flies. It’s hard to accomplish this because when the thread is tightened the deer hair will want to spray-out. I tie a few loose wraps as I move towards the tip end of the deer hair to keep the wing flatter. Tie in a grizzly hackle feather. Then, after adding one more thin layer of cream dubbing to give the hackle a good base to secure to, wrap the hackle forward. Try to keep the thorax in good proportion to the rest of the fly. There’s a lot going on in this section, and it can easily build-up and become too thick. Try to use thin layers of dubbing and not many wraps of thread. Whip finish when complete. Lastly, I’ll often trim the hackle on the underneath side of the fly. This helps the fly to land on it’s belly and float right-side-up.