Pay attention. In the wake of devastating fires throughout California and so many of our other Western states blessed with fertile trout waters, a curious transformation of riparian habitat, plunked down amid arid landscapes in the best of times, is taking place. Stripped of streamside trees and sometimes the shade of entire forests, the banks of Western rivers often sprout weedy vegetation, a mixture of grasses and flowering plants, the seeds of which would have never found purchase were it not for the fires. A blessing in disguise? That seems a stretch, considering the damage done to so much property and so many lives. Yet if the sport of fly fishing teaches us anything, it should at least be the capacity to accept what, at any moment, is staring us in the face, rather than what we want or hope reality to be, and it turns out that in many places, this all-new streamside vegetation is suddenly teeming with grasshoppers and other terrestrials that were never before in abundance along these same fire-ravaged waters.
Look around. The past couple of summers, my pal Joe Kelly and I have hiked into a wilderness drainage mutilated by recent fires. Downed trees and weedy, annual growth as high as our heads made it virtually impossible to travel along the old trail that once followed the river from the mouth to the junction of the north and south forks. Try the trail, after a long session of fishing, rather than returning to camp along the banks or in the stream, and you are soon struggling, rod above your head, through vegetation up to your ears or climbing on your knees under tree trunks too big around to scale, all the while cursing, if you are so inclined, like a sailor.
But hit it just right, in mid-July or early August, say, about the same time this new riparian understory, now basking in the sun, has gone to seed, and watch the grasshoppers explode like popping popcorn around your boots and streamwet knees. I have some fairly complicated hopper patterns I’ve generally tied over the years; Joe, on the other hand, has long been a fan of newer, more rubbery patterns, no doubt superior in their capacity to stay afloat, as well as their in durability, a consideration if you get into the kind of small-stream action often associated with wilderness waters and feisty native trout.
How precise our patterns really need to be, of course, is a point of discussion in many of these “At the Vise” columns. Or rather, the argument often made is that imitation has little to do with successful fly fishing, that instead, presentation of our f lies is the key. No doubt both sides of the argument can be and are often overstated. Splat anything with wiggly legs up tight against a bank where grasshoppers abound, and you might amaze yourself, your friends, and even the trout with your angling prowess while also enjoying, when all goes well, the startling rises that big dry flies can produce on even the quietest of meandering streams.
The Albertino, anyway, is just my take on a slightly downsized version of the popular Fat Albert. Learn to tie it, and you can adapt both size and colors to whatever big bugs — grasshoppers, Salmonflies, beetles — fall to the surface of your favored river or stream.
Or even lake. Because it’s hard to say, in fact, what a big rubber bug actually even imitates, beyond its impression in that catch-all category, something else good to eat. During a winter trip to the Southern Hemisphere, I was impressed by my guide’s readiness to have me launch a Fat Albert, or a plump Albertino, or even one of his own all-foam concoctions, up tight to the steep rock faces plunging into the deep lake surrounded by snow-rimmed mountains where both brown trout and rainbows appeared now and then from somewhere out of the inky depths. A big streamer cast on a sinking line might have made more sense. But my guide, like yours truly, fell hard for the pleasures of watching the big floating fly land near the rocks, get jiggled once, and then lie quietly on the surface while, presumably, predators eyed it from below.
You have to understand: when a fly like that lands on the water, it’s pretty much the same as if you or I were in a swimming pool, underwater, and somebody tossed in a beach chair. Trout notice. Whether they come to the fly and why is the very stuff of the game; let’s just say when one does, and it pokes its nose through the surface, opens its mouth, and eats, you have every right to chirp with delight, although you might want to consider going easy, for the sake of your friends, on selfies posted to social media.
Now where were we?
The Albertino does nothing to advance the tying of the typical Fat Albert other than introduce the green underbody that I’ve found effective in triggering strikes from trout, which I believe see this color in juvenile grasshoppers throughout the West. A big (size 10) green Humpy has worked well for me over the years because I believe it mimics the color and size and awkward posture of the youngest of hoppers. Of course, the same f ly has also worked during a Green Drake hatch, when I found myself on the water with nothing better to throw at the trout, just as I’m quite willing to believe that the typical Fat Alberts I used to fool those Southern Hemisphere trout may well have tempted fish into rising simply because there were adult dragonflies landing on the water, and anything big and wiggly was worth investigating.
Does it matter? What I’m suggesting, of course, is that we need to be careful before we go too far claiming reasons for how a fly works. And why. Too many theories, I’d contend, close the door on the kind of close observation that could give us fresh insight as to what might really be going on. I also know that when my guide, Roland Bastidas, told me to pitch the fly through a 20-knot righthand crosswind and make it land in the narrow cleavage in the rocks 75 feet away, where a gnarly brown trout was lying just beneath the surface, and my casts kept missing the mark, left or right or 10 feet short, it didn’t matter what I had tied to my tippet, unless I got the cast just right.
Materials
Hook: TMC 2302, size 6 to 8
Thread: Brown UTC Ultra 140 denier, or similar
Overbody: Dark brown 2-millimeter Thin Fly Foam
Underbody: Chartreuse 2-millimeter Thin Fly Foam
Legs: Tan Life Flex
Underwing: White EP Trigger Point Fibers
Overwing: UV green EP Trigger Point Fibers
Tying Instructions
Step 1: Secure the hook in the vise. Start the thread and cover the back two-thirds of the shank. Make this spot, about a third of the way back from the hook eye, your tie-in point.
Step 2: With a razor knife and a straight edge, cut two strips of foam. The width of the strip for the overbody should be about one and a half times the hook gap, and the width of the strip for the underbody should be about equal to the gap. At the tie-in point, secure the brown overbody strip and lash it down along the entire hook shank. Wind the thread back to the tie-in point and secure the narrower chartreuse underbody strip. Lash it down directly over the first strip of foam.
Step 3: Compress and cover both layers of foam with thread wraps, from the bend of the hook to the forward tie-in point. Check all sides of the fly to make sure the foam is entirely covered with thread.
Step 4: Look at the compressed brown body or abdomen of the fly and think of it in four equal parts. Advance the thread, fold over the chartreuse underbody, and secure it at the aft quarter point. Repeat this process three more times — advance the thread, then secure another quarter of the underbody. When you reach the forward end of the abdomen, you should have four fairly equal sections of underbody. Do not trim it.
Step 5: Fold the overbody forward and secure it at the same point you finished tying off the underbody, but do not trim it. Take a look at the underside of the fly: you now have the classic Fat Albert body, which you can replicate in other patterns.
Step 6: For each set of legs, take a full length of Life Flex, fold it in half, and tie an overhand knot in the doubled-over material. Clip off one of the two disconnected ends at the knot; this single strand becomes the cocked back leg of a grasshopper. Position the knot in the Life Flex somewhere near the aft end of the fly, with the cocked leg pointed down or outward, and secure the doubled section of Life Flex where you finished tying off the foam. Repeat on the other side of the fly.
Step 7: Begin the underwing of the fly with a small, short tuft of white EP Trigger Point Fibers. Cut off about an inch of the forward protruding foam material from the underbody. Secure the EP Fibers to the top of the body with wraps of thread at the middle of the tuft. Now fold the front half of the tuft back tuft back toward the rear, then tie in above it the short section of underbody foam that you had just clipped from the front of the fly. Trim the folded EP fibers so they extend just short of the aft end of the body, and trim the aft end of the foam to a short stub.
Step 8: The overwing is really nothing more than a spot of bright material to help you see the fly on the water. Tie in another small tuft of EP Trigger Point Fibers, in this case green. Secure the fibers in the middle of the tuft, then fold the tuft and pull it aft and use judicious thread wraps to help it angle toward the back of the fly. Trim the overwing so that it appears seamless with the underwing.
Step 9: For the forward portion of the fly, fold back the foam layers and use thread wraps to build up a slender forward underbody on the shank. Try not to crowd the eye. Then pull all three layers of foam forward and secure them directly behind the hook eye.
Step 10: For the forward legs, take a single strand of Life Flex, tie it in on the far side of the fly, loop it around the front of the fly, and secure it again on the near side. Once you cut the forward loop, you’ve got another pair of legs on each side of the fly.
Step 11: At this point, go ahead and whip finish under the layers of foam, directly behind the hook eye. Then trim up what may look like an unruly mess. Clip the forward loop of Life Flex. Trim the two lower layers of foam so that they extend an eighth of an inch or two beyond the hook eye. Trim the corners of these two layers of foam. Trim the top layer of foam about half the length of the two lower layers. Trim the ends of the legs to whatever length seems appropriate for the size of the fly. Finally, saturate all of the exposed thread wraps that make up the underside of the fly with a liberal coat of lacquer or your favorite head cement.
