Strange Encounters of the Terrestrial Kind

As spring breaks into summer and things dry up in the west, we begin to see a multitude of strange bugs appear on the banks of the river. By late spring or mid-summer, fish are looking up, waiting for their next snack floating helplessly downriver. We often overlook a lot of the insects we see creeping around logs, in trees, and between the rocks. Let’s take a look at some of my favorite terrestrial insects and the flies that imitate them.

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Ants

Ants are by far my favorite terrestrial that is commonly found on the streambanks nationwide. East coast to the west coast, ant fly patterns work on practically every trout fishery in the summer. I wouldn’t call it a guaranteed go-to, but let me tell you, I’m pretty confident with an ant fly during mid-summer and the fall. Many fisheries in the west experience an incredible emergence of ants after the first week or two of 70-degree plus days. Many are familiar with the flying ants that are leaving a colony to mate, and they are often seen getting devoured by rising trout on lakes and rivers. The most overlooked terrestrial technique is a drowned ant. One of my favorite things to do is drop a fur ant or tungsten ant below a dry or foam bug. Patterns like a foam carpenter ant in #10-12, Harrop’s CDC cinnamon ant in #12-14, or a hard body ant in #14-16 is a safe bet during the dog days of summer. You’ll see a lot of other patterns that can be fished as ants, but are not necessarily named as such. Triple doubles, buzzballs, renegades, and Griffith’s gnats all can double as productive ant imitations in a pinch.

Moths

Every evening as I drive up my road along Lightning Creek and along Spring Creek, I see big moths everywhere. The cooler shaded creek makes a perfect shelter from the high heat and long days. Moths love pines, and the Idaho panhandle and northwest Montana are covered with them. In particular, we see lots of spruce moths, which tend to appear in the dog days of summer and will last well into the fall. Many folks rely on these moths for awesome fishing on rivers like the Clark Fork and other streams in the drainage. I’ve had luck fishing when there are lots of moths around, especially on some of the higher elevation lakes in our area such as Antelope Lake, which is right around the corner. The great thing about these high-calorie trout snacks is that they are easily imitated with a simple tan elk hair caddis in a #10. However, my top three favorites are Jake’s Richter scale moth, a snowshoe moth, and Bloom’s spruce, which has an indicator para-post and realistic mottled wing. Don’t overlook the moths, they’re everywhere!

Crickets

Crickets are common just about everywhere, and their season availability is much longer than that of a grasshopper. Generally, crickets show up much sooner than grasshoppers, so trout have much longer to key into crickets and get used to them floating down the river helplessly. Depending on your location and geography, crickets can be found in three very common color phases: black, brown, and tan. It’s a safe bet to assume that there are crickets along almost any streambank in the summer. Growing up back east and fishing small spring creeks such as the Letort, Big Spring, and the Yellow Breeches, crickets were always in my box, and for good reason, they catch fish. One of my biggest rainbows out of Big Spring came on a small Letort cricket pattern, which was originally tied by Ed Shenk, the master of the Letort. Some of my favorite patterns are the Letort cricket or a Morrish hopper in black or tan in a small size. If anything, crickets are more sentimental to me, but I find plenty of success with them wherever I go.

Hoppers

High in fats and protein, these guys are the power bars of the trout world. Hoppers are those bugs trout don’t miss, they’re just too big to pass up. The cool thing about hoppers is their abundance during the dry dog days of summer. However, it sometimes takes them a little while to get going on some rivers. Either way, they offer some amazing fishing in the summer.

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Commonly found in tan, green, yellow, and sometimes orange, they can be a blast to tie as well because you can get extremely creative. Trout generally won’t be super selective on a hopper pattern. However, pressured fish may key into color occasionally if they are focusing their attention to the river banks.

Hopper fishing can be a lot of fun, and you can use a lot of different techniques to catch fish in the summer. Most people are familiar with the hopper-dropper rig, but it’s still good to mention it for the beginners out there getting rigged up for some fun fishing. Taking a small nymph and hanging it 18 inches or so off the end of the hopper is a great way to locate fish that may not always feed on the top. The hopper serves as your indicator for a strike on the nymph, but in the event that a trout takes on the surface, you’re set up on top as well. There are a million and one hopper patterns out there right now, so it’s easy to get caught up in which one to fish. The Donkey Kong hopper and the Yeti hopper are by far my favorites, simply because they have a very realistic profile and design. For simplicity sake, you won’t go wrong with a Morrish hopper. Foam hoppers perform the best, but if you are looking for very soft presentations, Dave’s hopper or a parachute hopper will flutter to the water instead of making a big plop.

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Beetles, Bees, and other Buzzers…

There’s a lot of weird bugs out there and a lot of them you rarely see unless you look for them. We often overlook a lot of insects like beetles and bees in the fly fishing community. Rightfully, we rarely have to fish anything but a chubby chernobyl or a big fat hopper pattern in the summer, but I like trying new flies as often as I can.

Beetles come in aquatic and terrestrial forms. Aquatic swimming beetles are often seen zipping through weeds and lilies, while your terrestrial beetles are found struggling just to stay afloat, often helpless on the water until picked off by a fish waiting downstream. Beetles come in a multitude of different sizes and colors, but a majority of the beetles found in the inland northwest are black or an iridescent greenish-black-blue combination. Here in the inland northwest, we have pine borer beetles that are often blown from the trees and onto the water. The favorite pattern of mine is the disco beetle. It’s easy to tie and is a bite-sized foam bug that just catches fish. My other favorite is the hamburgler, mainly because when I catch a fish, I can say, “The Hamburgler strikes again!” All joking aside, beetles can produce some quality fishing over fussy trout.

Occasionally you’ll see a bee or wasp on the water, and that has to get you thinking, “Would a trout eat that?” Often I answer myself, “Why not?” One of my favorite (and most intricate looking) fly patterns for a wasp imitation is Kuchelmeister’s bee/wasp. When getting creative with terrestrial bugs, it is amazing to see what people come up with. A simpler but effective bee pattern is Caleb’s bee, and I’ve found people come into the shop seeking out bee and wasp patterns, so they definitely know what’s up.

Then there are the misfits of the bunch. There is a large class of terrestrial insects that aren’t often imitated or observed on the water. The same goes for some fly patterns as well. Patterns like the plan B, chernobyl, moodah poodah, and the transfoamer just simply look like a stack of foam and legs. What exactly are they? What aren’t they? Nobody knows, but to the fish they are food, so the fish must experience terrestrial encounters all the time. To the fish, aliens do exist!

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