In my experience you will need several different hopper patterns simply because if you're wade fishing, (drifting excluded), after you pass your original hopper over the fish a few times they refuse it after catching a couple of fish. It's like they tell the other fish don't eat the yellow ones! I have found if I carry a couple of 3 or 4 different patterns I can stay on the fish for a longer period of time. I may have to change patterns after a dozen or so casts, but I catch more fish, and if it's a particularly good spot with a decent amount of fish in it I can rotate back to the original pattern and hoist a few more out before they totally get with the program.
We'd probably say the fish dictate more than the actual patterns. Also up on the Madison River a few weeks ago with hoppers - you got one shot at a fish, and that was it. You weren't going to bring that big fish up again on another pattern, and we tried. They knew something was up...
I can see that on more pressured waters. We all know the fish become very wary as the fishing pressure increases. In these cases I resort to my favorite hopper pattern, one I have developed myself which works extremely well though it takes some practice and patience to fish correctly, but that's an old man thing.
In my experience you will need several different hopper patterns simply because if you're wade fishing, (drifting excluded), after you pass your original hopper over the fish a few times they refuse it after catching a couple of fish. It's like they tell the other fish don't eat the yellow ones! I have found if I carry a couple of 3 or 4 different patterns I can stay on the fish for a longer period of time. I may have to change patterns after a dozen or so casts, but I catch more fish, and if it's a particularly good spot with a decent amount of fish in it I can rotate back to the original pattern and hoist a few more out before they totally get with the program.
We'd probably say the fish dictate more than the actual patterns. Also up on the Madison River a few weeks ago with hoppers - you got one shot at a fish, and that was it. You weren't going to bring that big fish up again on another pattern, and we tried. They knew something was up...
I can see that on more pressured waters. We all know the fish become very wary as the fishing pressure increases. In these cases I resort to my favorite hopper pattern, one I have developed myself which works extremely well though it takes some practice and patience to fish correctly, but that's an old man thing.