As we close in on August in the 406, our angling focus will switch from stones and mayflies to banging the banks with hoppers. While my preference is sending a single hopper into the wind, experience has shown me that adding a dropper pays out. It’s like betting on both red and black in roulette, except you don’t lose your second bet when you hit on the first.
The hopper-dropper routine is especially effective when fish become overly pressured by the Hopper Mob and stop fully committing to smashing terrestrials. Montana offers a bounty of different systems to play this game but my favorite is the Beaverhead River in Dillon, and then my home ditch, the fabled Gallatin River.
The following combos are hopper-dropper pairings that I throw with ultimate confidence on these two systems, but I’ve made may way around the Mountain West enough to watch them be effective in waters throughout the region and beyond.
A final note of advice: these hopper-droppers have very open relationships with each other, so don’t be afraid to switch them out with each other to keep things spicy!
All of these patterns can be purchased at the product carousel at the bottom of this post.
