A beautiful high-country brown. Rod’s king of all fish.

So, to recap: mountains, brown trout, clear water, cloudless sky, high sun, little or no breeze (or a very sheltered bank), an elevated bank over deep water, plenty of hoppers in the grass, and a few on the water. Hopefully it goes without saying, a good pair of polarised sunnies (Smith Guides Choice Low Light Yellow Chromapop – since you asked).

First, figure out the casting zone. If you’re on a steep bank with deep water right at the bank, the zone is usually 1 to 2 rod lengths from the edge; if you’ve got clear sight on a sandy bottom, fish the zone a metre either side of where the water starts to darken off. Fish will often move along hard against the bank, or if they’re feeling vulnerable in shallows, just on the edge of the deeper water, where they can both look shoreward for food, but also easily escape to the depths. If you work as a team – one at water level casting into the zone, the other spotting from a vantage point 5 to 10 metres in front of the caster – you will maximise your success rate. A good spotter can tell you right where to land your fly in the path of a fish, and can tell you precisely when a fish is approaching your fly, while all you can see is reflected glare.

Michael’s first cast ever… swamped by a big brown; 3rd cast a nice fat consolation rainbow.

Always have your fly on the water. The primary purpose of having your fly on the water is to be ready for the cruising fish, with a quick pick up and reposition (rather than blind fishing). Whenever I talk about this style of fishing, I encourage people to forget blind fishing and focus on the fish you see. It is completely absorbing and it often all comes down to one fish. It can be, but usually is not, a high numbers game. If I see 10 fish in a three to four hour session, I feel I’ve done well. If I’ve landed one of those, that’s enough. Because it’s more than just catching. When you see a brute of a brown hovering motionless under a fly, studying it from every angle, swimming away, coming back for another look, sometimes committing, sometimes not. In that moment, you feel a connection and an understanding that you get in no other form of fishing. You and the fish are in each other’s space, where for once the fish doesn’t immediately appear aware of you. It is behaving completely naturally.

Anyway, back to Rod. This hasn’t been a great hopper season and no doubt the hopper catch statistics have taken a bit of a hit. I’ve had a few sessions with Rod, and we’ve spent way too much time overthinking the whole process as the hours pass by, arguing the toss on small points of detail. But there’s one thing we have agreed on. With fewer hoppers on the water, there are less fish cruising the shallows looking for them. However, there are more fish bolting up out of the deep water for opportunistic raids. We’ve christened these two types ‘cruisers’ and ‘raiders’. And the technique to actually hook each is quite different. With cruisers, you literally have to will your arm not to strike too soon. I’ve seen people strike before the fish has even taken the fly, convinced the trout has already swallowed it when it hasn’t even broken the surface. Plucking defeat from the jaws of victory. Conversely, with this season’s raiders, when you’ve slowed your heart rate down to avoid being trigger happy and striking too soon, a fish can raid the fly, have a good suck and spit it out in disgust, before you’ve remembered to set the hook.

We have way overthought this dilemma. One thing everyone who fishes an indicator knows, is the moment you take your eyes off the indicator, it will go down. And it’s the same with hopper fishing. Take your eyes off the fly to look where you’re walking, and as sure as hoppers jump, when you look back, there’s just a swirl where your hopper pattern once floated.

My thoughts are, this is not unlike the explanation for a ‘wind-in’ hookup, which accounts for a disproportionate number of fish. As per the wind-in, the fly is behaving differently compared to the vast majority of the session. When you’re fishing a static hopper and decide to walk down the bank, it’s no longer static. It is both drifting away from you with the along shore current or breeze, and /or potentially, being animated by the odd inadvertent rod movement. If a trout was out of sight and watching the fly, that different behaviour might just be enough to trigger a raid. Because otherwise, I would have to swear that raiders know when you’re not looking. What other explanation is there? But then again….

The MTP Henneberry Hopper takes centre stage; post-mortem and living.

Flies? I have a ridiculous number of terrestrials, many of which no doubt would be effective. But right now, all I can bring myself to use is the MTP Henneberry Hopper. I actually dissected one last week – albeit a much-loved but beyond repair example, and the body is very realistic (although a bit wasp-like). My only wish for the MTP is that they tie one with a wider gape hook. Something about the way it sits in the water, and is sucked down, orients the hook away from the fish’s lip on really gentle suck-down takes, and I know a wider gape would fix that. My scientific dissection reinforced this view. I think it’s the super-floaty yarn which resists the suck down. And to save you the bother, there didn’t appear to be a way to easily replace the original hook, darn it!