Ed's Hopper and Branksome

'As we drew up at the entrance to the gorge section of the Sterkspruit on Branksome, a juvenile Jackal Buzzard stared down at us from its perch on a road sign just long enough for me to drop my window and photograph him with a long lens. Then the big bird opened its wings, lifted gracefully, swooped low over the river and was gone on the wind. Nice way to start a spot of fishing.' Tom Sutcliffe Yet More Sweet Days

“I’ve tried nice big hook sizes when big juicy hoppers were bounding onto the water’s surface, but the smaller sizes always outfished the bigger sizes. Number 14 seems to be the optimum size” Peter Leuver, Fur and Feather (Kangaroo Press, 1991).

In April 1992, Dave Walker and Martin Davies announced the formation of the Wild Trout Society with an Expo in Barkly East.

For me, it was the first of many visits to the area and the start of enduring friendships, most particularly with Basie and Carien Vosloo of the farm Birkhall through which flows the Sterkspruit River.

Last year Basie’s sister, Rene retired from her life as a senior executive with Discovery Health and moved onto the neighbouring farm, Branksome, which is also on the Sterkspruit.

She has converted the former milking and shearing building into five beautifully furnished rooms, one of which she named ‘Ed’s Hopper’.

She has retained the façade and footprint of the original building which was constructed in the 1920’s from blocks of locally-quarried sandstone.

The river is a five minute walk or drive away. You can find a tying sequence and a history of my hopper on Tom Sutcliffe’s Spirit of Fly Fishing website. In 1998 I fished the Sterksruit with one of the first Sage SPL O-weights to reach these shores and, in combination with my hopper, it proved successful on the Sterkspruit and, a day later on the Bokspruit.

Two farm-hands and their dogs arrived and stopped to watch me. I asked if they would like some fish for the table and they nodded enthusiastically. Fishing the head of a large pool and hardly moving my feet I hooked seven fish and landed five in about a dozen casts with the hopper.

I think the fly was so successful in the northEastern Cape because its shape and silhouette are instantly recognisable to trout in those rivers which flow through grasscovered valleys. About twenty years ago Ron and Robin Moore were fishing the upper Rifle Spruit on a farm they then owned in Barkly East. The way the light fell on a pool enabled them to see each trout clearly and they experimented with a variety of flies.

The overwhelming favourite to which the fish came again and again was a Parson’s Glory, a New Zealand Matuka pattern with a buff body and wing and a tail of red hackle fibres.

Their assumption was that the fish took it for a “Barkly Hopper” the local grasshopper which displays a vivid scarlet flash on its legs and, in some species, in the wings.

I accordingly started adding two pieces of red micro krystalflash to the wings. In Australia and America, hoppers tied on #14 and #16 hooks have proved the most effective as Peter Leuver indicates in one of the anchor quotes to this article His experience is echoed by Ed Koch and Harrison Steeves in their book Terrestrials: A Modern Approach to Fishing and Tying with Synthetic and Natural Materials (Stackpole, 1994)

“Many of us have found that the smaller hopper and cricket patterns out-produce the larger ones in many instances so don’t be afraid to try some of these little guys in size 14 and 16. Immature forms are quite small and imitations can frequently be the fly choice of the day.” Lefty Kreh lay on the stream bed and got a friend to throw hoppers onto the water. What he noticed was that their hind legs pointed downwards and broke through the water surface. I mimicked this by combining two different thicknesses of rubber knotted together. My original hopper used foam rubber cylinders extracted from a yellow camping mattress with a leather punch.

A later version of Ed’s Hopper using camping mattress foam

My latest version uses stretched Chicone’s Fettuccine Foam. It is square and I used a J.Son extended body tool for the abdomen. I reduce the diameter of the foam rubber by stretching it before attaching it to the detached body tool. There are several YouTube videos explaining how to use this tool. I used UTC 70 denier thread to make the abdomen but Veevus 16/0 or 18/0 Semperfli Nanosilk are alternatives. For the rest of the fly I use Uni-Caenis 20/0 which makes tying micro-patterns easy. I use it in a standard Tiemco adjustable arm bobbin and keep a Stonfo bobbin threader handy because you will break this thread from time to time.

Tying the mini Ed’s Hopper using an detached-body tool

The completed mini-version of Ed’s Hopper

The legs combine mini 0.2 Veniard speckled rubber legs and the even thinner Hareline Daddy Long Legs. The hook is a #20 Dohiku HDN 302 – a wet fly hook much-used by our Protea anglers. You need a heavier hook to anchor top-heavy foam rubber patterns. If tied on light wire hooks they land on their sides.

Gordon van der Spuy recently fished the Smalblaar stream and from a high vantage point watched a friend fish a hopper. The fly drifted unmolested until it was twitched - which invariably triggered a rise.

I saw something similar on a hot and humid day on the Smalblaar when the air was filled with a nuptial flight of ants. The water was carpeted with their bodies and I watched a small bass in a side eddy. It ignored dozens of ants floating overhead but only rose to those that were still struggling.

Hoppers in Barkly East oBen feature red legs

This is particularly important on rivers like the Sterkspruit which has a high leaf load and where movement of the fly, either a lift with nymphs or a twitched dry fly, is accordingly imperative for success.

I wish Rene Vosloo every success on her new venture. The Sterkspruit is very dear to my heart and I cherish the memories of the days when the response to my hopper was regular and, at times, sudden and startling.