The Amazing Hippie Stomper!

There's not many things in fly fishing that are more fun than watching a trout come to the surface and eat a big, high floating dry fly. It's amazing how often you can fool an otherwise picky fish into coming up and crushing a big, silly-looking floating fly. We're getting into the heat of terrestrial season, and we've been fishing with a lot of different patterns successfully, but there's been one that stands above the rest - the Hippie Stomper. This fly is a creation by Bozeman-based Andrew Grillos, and it's a stone cold killer! The Hippie Stomper is an interesting looking thing, but what it lacks in good looks it makes up for in the fish-catching department. The big poly wing makes the fly easy to see from a long ways away, and also makes it a great indicator pattern. It comes in a wide variety of colors in size 12-16 primarily, so you always have the perfect color for whatever situation you might encounter. While the Hippie Stomper might not look exactly like anything, it has a fishy look that can imitate a beetle, ant, cricket, hopper, or some other tasty morsel of trout chow! I was guiding a few weeks ago, and we were trying to catch a few particular fish on various hopper, beetle, and cricket patterns, but weren't having much in the way of interest from the fish. I tied on a Royal Hippie Stomper - one with a peacock and red floss body. I doped it up with floatant, my client made a solid cast in front of the fish, and the brown came up from the bottom of 3-4 feet of water and calmly slurped the fly in. We had probably changed flies at least a half dozen times, if not closer to a dozen. The Hippie Stomper was the only pattern that the fish actually showed any interest in, and it ate on the first cast. We're not sure what it is about it, but it makes trout get a little crazy and let their guard down. We just got in a solid shipment of Hippie Stompers in a full range of sizes and colors - swing by the shop and grab a couple before you head out, you won't be disappointed! Ryan