I don't remember the first time I heard the term, hopper dropper, but it wasn't long ago, not in terms of an angling life that is now in its sixth decade. I clearly remember the first time I saw its predecessor - dry fly & dropper. The fisherman who taught it to me was in his seventies at the time. It was 1977.

Jim Bell and I had gone into the Weminuche together. We'd come up from Silverton, by way of Cunningham Gulch, then over Stony Pass before hitting the headwaters of the Rio Grande near Pole Creek. We parked Jim's Jeepster at his mining claim at Kite Lake on the east side of the Continental Divide. Even though Jim was in his seventies, he easily hiked up over the saddle above the lake carrying a heavy pack. We crossed the divide again, back to the Western Slope, and worked our way down into the bowl that held the lake at the foot of White Dome, the easternmost peak in the Grenadier Range. The name on the topographic map was Eldorado Lake, but the locals all knew it as Annabelle - named after Jim's aunt.

It was late afternoon when we arrived, in the middle of alpine summer. The tundra was emerald green. Paintbrush in a dozen colors from pale yellow to the most vivid reds and oranges were scattered on the lush cushion, softening our footfalls as we carried our packs to the place where we would pitch our tents and stow our gear.

Jim was eager to fish, and within minutes his limber cane-colored fiberglass rod, a Wright & McGill Green Hornet, was rigged in a way I'd not yet seen. At the end of a ten foot leader he tied a #14 Light Cahill dry fly, and to the hook of that fly he added about three feet of tippet to which he attached a #14 Dark Cahill. I did not rig my own rod; instead, I walked with Jim along the edge of the lake toward the outlet where a tiny creek tipped over the lip of a rock wall and tumbled down into the gorge of Elk Creek.

As we approached the outlet, Jim knelt down and began to crawl. I did the same. Stones bit our palms and knees, but we were far too excited to care - visible in the perfectly clear water, stacked in the slow moving current just above the plunging outlet, a dozen small trout were feeding about two feet deep.

Jim's Green Hornet threw a wispy line. It was designed for a silk line designated 2GH, but it cast a light plastic line beautifully, and anything Jim threw with it always landed on the water with very little disturbance. Before casting, he put the dropper in his mouth, soaking it with saliva. One long, slow, low sidearm backcast, and an equally long, slow, low delivery over the water put the flies where they needed to be.

Given Jim's careful presentation, the trout did not scatter when his line and flies settled on the lake surface just above the feeding fish. The dry fly floated over them, and the dropper, which had sunk to their level, drifted through the trout. One of them ate it, and as was typical of innocent trout in those days, instead of taking flight the others followed the hooked fish, as if curious or confused about why it was behaving so strangely. Jim slipped the hooked trout gently to the edge of the lake and slid it up the bank.
I watched Jim remove four lovely cutthroat from the lake in about as many casts, before we left to cook them beneath the looming presence of White Dome.

Jim did not invent dry fly & dropper. I imagine an angling mentor, perhaps his father, taught it to him. And before that, his mentor's mentor was taught, and back, and back . . .
Back, perhaps, to the time of Alexander the Great when, many angling historians believe, fly fishing began. A Macedonian angler watching his mountain brown trout probably observed that they sometimes took food from the surface, and sometimes ate as they held in slow currents well beneath the surface. The ancient angler tied on two flies one that he lifted with tension so it would ride high, while the other sank deep. Perhaps he'd done it on a favorite high mountain lake after carefully crawling to the outlet, gently sliding hooked Macedonian trout onto a green Macedonian bank.

Most angling historians will scoff at this fantasy. The dry fly, they believe, was invented rather late in angling history. Personally, I disagree. I suspect that the dry fly is as ancient as the wet fly. In antiquity, surely, some trout ate an angler's fly before it had sunk beneath the surface.

And that's what I think when I stand beside a favorite lake with Jim's Green Hornet, tying on a Light Cahill dry fly with a Dark Cahill dropper, before I sink to my knees to crawl toward hope, my own charge crawling beside me.

There is nothing new under the sun.