Fly fishing and more: Alien Bug

I have been experimenting with hopper patterns since my first visit to the Rockies in 1992. Back then hopper patterns were mainly based on deer hair, either spun (like Dave's Hopper) or bullet head hair style (like the Henry's Fork hopper). Other hopper patterns include large parachute style hoppers like the Schroeder's Parachute hopper.

Dave's Hopper

Although these hopper patterns can be very productive at times, they all have one similar down side. They get waterlogged after a while and won't float very well once waterlogged. Another down side was they are very time consuming to tie. Yes, tying a neat Dave's Hopper can be great fun, but boy does it wear you out after tying five of those critters....

Chernobyl Ant

A little bit of history

During the mid 1990's high density foam made its debut as the material for buoyancy on dry flies. In 1995 the odd looking fly called the Chernobyl Ant won the Jackson Hole One Fly Event. The basic idea is a 3 mm high density black foam strip tied in several different segments to form the abdomen and head. The addition of rubber legs at the side gave the critter a very lifelike action.

Club Sandich

Foam as a tying material evolved to multi layered, very colourful and segmented extended body patterns like the Club Sandwich. Although these flies float like a cork and look more like a mutant grass hopper which stayed too long in the nuclear microwave oven I think they also are too cumbersome to tie. They also involve needing special form cutting tools as well to get the foam strips in a particular shape. I prefer a mix of foam and natural materials like deer or elk hair for the wings.

Alien Bug
This summer I was visiting my buddy David Blair who owns a fly shop in Calgary called Fish Tales. I saw this magazine article written by Seamus Toner, who also happen to work at David's fly shop. He originally tied it on a salmon fly hook and with a sort of an extended body, so I guess it's a kind of a cross breeding of a steelhead fly like a bomber and the recent foam hoppers like the Club Sandwhich.

The basic ingredient is using two or three sheets of 3 mm high density foam. You can buy these sheets at your local hobby shop in many different colours. There are no rules for colours here.

I like using bright colours like yellow or orange on top (for visibility) and more subdued colors like olive, brown or black for the bottom of the fly. To imitate the Salmon fly (Pteronarcys dorsata), the giant American stonefly use orange for the bottom to imitate the salmon coloured underbody.

Nice segmented body

Before tying you need some preparation. Glue the sheets together using some sort of flexible glue. The easiest way is to use a spray glue like Scotch spray glue. Cut the glued sheets into about 57 mm wide strips. For sizes up to hook size 10 I like to use two foam layers, for larger sizes use 3 layers.

So this Alien Bug is easy to tie, very durable, floats for ever and easy to track on the water. Since this hopper floats so well, it's also a great strike indicator to fish with a (even heavily weighted) nymph as a dropper. I fished the Alien Bug in the gin clear streams in Southern Germany, the alpine rivers in Austria, in the hills of the Spanish Pyrenees, Montana and tributaries of the Yellowstone river. Friends of mine fished it in South Africa, Yellowstone country, the Driftless area and Patagonia.

The ingredients:

Hook: Any hopper hook (#6-10)
Thread: Uni-thread 6/0 (I like hot orange)
Body: Sandwiched foam
Legs: Round medium rubber legs (I like them yellow or red striped)
Wing: Elk or deer hair
Tail: Red goose biots
Indicator: tuff of hot orange or chartreuse (or even mixed!) indicator strand

Update 28 Aug 2021:

I sent a few Alien Bugs to Craig Mathews and he says it should be outlawed.

Update 30 Sep 2019:

Fly Fish Food fly shop made a short video on glueing foam sheets. It's really easy!

Thanks to my buddy Hans Weilenmann for taking great pictures of the Alien Bug (and more).
More flies can be seen at his site.