I was thinking of putting the siphon tip just below the hops, so that all the beer would come in close proximity to the hops on it's way into the bottling bucket.

jrodie ,
If you can do it carefully it will work. Otherwise all the giggling will either break suction or clog with loose leafs? Maybe rig up something (sanitized) that floats and keeps the tip just below the surface? Good luck with all that!

The only real problem with the siphon tips is hops can block them. Generally, i'll siphon to the last mm or so in the kettle, until the siphon tip gets blocked by pellet rubbish

Trying to take advantage of that doesn't seem like a good idea to

I use a standard plastic siphon. I have always had trouble keeping the siphon opening just above the trub in the cube. Rubber bands, clamps and other various contraptions. If it did seem to hold it correctly I would always have problems when I pushed in the piston to start the siphoning. It would move the tip into the trub or the plastic hose would come out of the fermentation bucket!

I have changed my way of doing this now and it works OK (for me)! I now just put something under one edge of the cube to slightly tilt the cube for better collection. I place the siphon in the cube directly on the bottom! I place a pitcher at the end of the plastic tube and plunge the piston down quite firmly. The sucking action pulls the trub and hop residue into the pitcher. This sucking action forms a crater around the siphon tip. The pitcher fills with muck from the cube but as the hose runs clear I redirect the hose into the fermenter. The siphon tip is sitting on the bottom of the cube with the tilt drawing the wort towards that lower corner of the cube. There is nothing in the crater but the tip. The fermenter is full of clear wort.

This works best if the cube is left two days so that the trub solidifies a little. Also, I hold the pitcher above the bucket so that when it starts flowing clear I remove the pitcher and let it splash in the bucket to aerate. I also think that a little trub in the fermentation bucket is actually beneficial but I know that some people just like clear wort!