Morrish Hopper
Cheech - May
In my opinion, the bottom profile of a hopper pattern trumps all other attributes... We'll start with that. Ken Morrish is well known for lots of very effective flies, so it's no surprise that this is one of his creations. Back when it first came out, people would ask all the time how to cut the body correctly, and the only real answer was either to cut them very carefully with scissors or to use razor blades. The reason I started to play with this one is that River Road Creations created a specific cutter set to considerably speed up the tying process. Once you get the bodies punched out and trimmed, It's really a pretty simple fly to tie - with one caveat... The legs. The original pattern uses round rubber legs with knots, which isn't too bad until you decide to tie them in. Again, the most important part of a hopper is the bottom profile, so it's critical to get the legs tied in at the correct angles. I started out using separate centipede legs like the original uses, but it was really hard to get the angles on the back legs to sit correctly, in fact, we scrapped the first video we did because the legs didn't look right. I went back to the drawing board and played with different knotting techniques until I found something that worked and was easily repeatable. You will see the slight modification on the back legs from the original as you watch the video. I also played with body trimming techniques until I found a good way to get a more angled back body angle, you will see that in the video as well. I also eliminated the notch in the back of the fly and at the head... Those were more about just saving time as I tied the fly, but feel free to notch away in your bugs. I will add this too - It's critical to have very sharp, smooth bladed scissors. The TMC deer hair scissors were my favorites, but the TMC Tungsten Razor scissors, and Dr. Slick Tungsten scissors worked as well. Foam selection turned out to be more critical than I thought as well - plain 6mm sheets were a bit more spongy to tie with than three sheets of glued foam, so we show how to glue sheets together. The glue between the sheets actually "stiffens" the foam ever so slightly. Overall, this hopper has been a LOT of fun to tie, and it's been a very fun challenge to try to achieve that perfect profile every time I tie it. The best part of this bug is that it's a super simple fly to tie once you get a few of them under your belt. ~ Cheech
