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Whilst there are over 2000 species of Grasshoppers and Locust in Australia there are really only three "hoppers" that are of significance to fly fishers.
Hoppers are normally fished as dry flies but it is worth noting that as some hoppers drown and sink and consequently fishing a hopper pattern wet or drowned can result in some spectacular success.

Looks great on the water and floats all day. The general form and colour together with presentation and how you fish them will help you fool the fish. Whether fished dry or wet by in large all hopper patterns should be fished in the current with as little line drag as possible or with occasional short jerking strips or twitches.

Materials

Process

A	Wind the thread in touching turns to the bend of the hook. Understanding hooks Cut a piece of 3-4mm closed cell foam that is about 3/4 the width of the gape of the hook, about 1.5 times as long as the hook shank and finished with a V at the tail end. Tie the closed cell foam on top of the hook shank with the V extending behind the fly. Closed cell foam bodies

B	Tie in a bunch of  deer hair on top of the closed cell foam so that the tips extends the same distance behind the hook as the closed cell foam. Deer hair - stacking etc

C	Tie in a knotted hackle leg on each side of the body with the feet extending down and behind the fly. legs on flies Take the thread back to just in front of where the deer hair wing is tied in and form a dubbing loop being careful to insure that at the point where the two sides of the loop leave the hook shank that they are adjacent to each other. If the two sides of the loop are separated by the body at the point that the loop leaves the body then the loop will not hold the dubbing material. The loop method of dubbing

D	Using the "hot legs" method load the dubbing loop with deer hair that has been crushed in the palm of the hand and form the loaded dubbing loop into a deer hair rope.

E	Wind on "hot legs" rope forward in touching turn. Tie the "hot legs" rope off and trim the excess. Hold the deer hair out of the way whilst you build up a neat head. Whip finish and varnish the head. Stroke the deer hair legs down and back to represent the front legs and trim any that look out of place.

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