Bakko's Phat Azz Hopper Fly Tying Recipe:
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HOOK: #6-12 Tiemco 2457
THREAD: Brown Magpie Materials 110-denier or Veevus 8/0
BODY: Three laminated layers of 2mm Thin Fly Foam, cut with a River Road Creations Beavertail Foam Cutter, size medium for hooks #6-8 and small for #10-12
UNDERWING: Hareline Olive or Tan Micro Barred Voodoo Fibers
SHELL: Tan 1mm Razor Foam
SIGHTER: Orange 1mm Razor Foam
THIGHS: Tan 1mm Razor Foam
FRONT LEGS: Tan medium Sexi-Floss
KICKER LEGS: Red small Sexi-Floss
I see a lot of flies in my everyday life . . . and I love them. I have run a fly shop for most of my working life. And if it’s not the latest offerings from the commercial fly vendors, it’s customers showing me their creations and variations, or my own shop guys who surreptitiously creep into my office with a hidden fly cup in their pocket to discuss ideas. I love every bit of it, but I have to say, my days of seeing new and exciting things are getting fewer and farther between. But they are, thankfully, not extinct.
A great “for instance” is Kyle Bakko’s new Phat Azz Hopper. Kyle is a new Umpqua Feather Merchants signature tier, and his patterns came to my attention with the debut of the 2025 catalog last fall. I always eagerly peruse the new signature patterns, and several of Kyle’s flies immediately jumped out at me for both their practicality and creativity.
Bakko’s use of multilayered foam bodies and foam cutters, and his eye for accuracy and proportion, make his flies stand out in the increasingly crowded new-fly world. I chose his Phat Azz Hopper for this issue because of the incredibly creative way he builds the head. But I could have just as easily picked his unusual Big Sky Hopper pattern, which is tied on a jig hook. In fact, I could have blindly chosen any one of his new flies for this article and fulfilled my requirements easily.
Bakko is a 44-year-old single dad with two boys, Finn and Sawyer. He was born, raised, and still lives in Billings, Montana. His unbridled enthusiasm and love of fly fishing are evident even in a short conversation, and he left me with the impression that there’s nothing he loves more than designing new flies, along with the requisite “product testing” it entails.
His Phat Azz Hopper, like all good patterns, was developed to fill a need. Bakko does a lot of float fishing, and his usual method includes a dry/dropper rig on rivers like the Stillwater, Shoshone, and Yellowstone. Big droppers like Pat’s Rubber Legs or crayfish imitations require a buoyant dry to hold them up, and Bakko was unsatisfied with previous offerings, so he set about to create a magnum foam hopper that would do the job.
As it turns out, the Phat Azz has such a great profile that he often ends up cutting off the dropper and just fishing the single hopper, to great effect.
Bakko starts with three layers of 2mm foam, laminated together with Super Glue or 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. Once the foam is cured and dried, he uses a River Road Creations Beavertail Foam Cutter to punch out the bodies, which results in thick, shapely, multi-toned slabs of foam on which to start building.
He creates a segmented extended body using thread to divide the rear end of the foam. Then, through an astonishing display of arts and crafts prowess, Bakko uses sheets of 1mm foam to build a realistic shellback, sighter, and insanely lifelike legs.
After adding a mottled underwing and a few Sexi-Floss legs, he goes to work with a marker to fill in the eyes and mottle the body as he sees fit. While at first glance this hopper seems overly complicated and difficult to tie, I can attest that once you give it a few tries and figure out the proportions and processes, this fly is incredibly quick to tie and results in something you’ll be excited to show off to your friends, as well as the fish.
I presently own a couple dozen practice flies that I tied in preparation for this article, and have since tied a dozen more. Mixing and matching the various colors of foam and fly sizes has gotten a bit out of hand, and I find myself needing another fly box. It’s the story of my life.