Cicadas

[ozark trout fisher]

Fly fisherman are inherently crazy. Our warped way of looking at the world makes us believe that it is entirely worth while to pretty much make it your life's purpose to get on the water as much as possible, to unquestionably believe that it is worth while to drive two hours to a trout stream when you can catch bass bluegill in your back yard, and to consider what most people would call an infestation to be welcome, because it gets the fish rising.

Right now the thirteen year Cicadas are hatching, infesting, and buzzing their way across the Ozark region. In the middle of the day when they are loudest, it is barely possible to hear anything else in the woodlands near my home. The bugs seemingly have no problem attaching themselves to humans, and the fact that they do not bite doesn't seem to be much of a comfort when one of these massive, prehistoric looking bugs lands on your face. But the fact of the matter is they fall into the water of every area lake, river, and stream in massive numbers, and they get the fishing looking up in a way that I have not seen since I have moved here.

So I have been spending a lot of time on the lake near my home, casting Dave's Hoppers (which is not a very close imitation of a Cicada, but it seems to be close enough) catching about as many crazed, frenzied bass and bluegill as I want to. It makes me think that this must at least vaguely resemble what a salmon fly hatch is like on a western river: fast, crazy fishing for fish that are keyed into the surface. It has been so good that two nights ago when I went out on a canoe on one of the local ponds, I was absolutely sure that I would have no difficulty whatsoever landing as many fish as I pleased on a Dave's Hopper. Sure enough, the fish were rising like crazy to the Cicadas, but for some reason I just couldn't draw more than just a few half-hearted rises to my dry fly. I guess this showed me that whenever I think that I have the fish wired, they have a way of showing me that I don't actually know nearly as much as I thought I did. So on the assumption that like fisherman, fish are also essentially insane, I tied on exactly the wrong fly for these rising fish, an Olive Woolly Bugger, and proceeded to catch fish like crazy. You know how it is.

[Al Agnew]

Sometimes conventional wisdom isn't smart. I've caught a lot of fish over the years by doing whatever conventional wisdom said I shouldn't do.

[shaker]

Sometimes conventional wisdom isn't smart. I've caught a lot of fish over the years by doing whatever conventional wisdom said I shouldn't do.

Cicada story, several years ago I was driving to the Truman Lake area to meet some friends at their cabin and was planning on some serious fishing. It was hot of course had the windows rolled up and the AC on, I turned off a blacktop road onto a gravel road and I heard some nose coming for the engine I thought, sounded like the fan belt or bearing or something bad was coming loose. I wasn't very far from my friends place but decided to stop and check out the noise I didn't want to really tear something up. As soon as I opened the door I found out what the noise was. CICADAS millions of them everyone screeming his or her fool head off. My friends were more than a little annoyed you couldn't even carry on a conversation outside for all the noise.

An thats my story an I sticken to it!

Richard