When you lift their rock, the crickets scatter. They are good collecting spots at any time of day, but particularly so as the evening cool descends, since crickets like their retained warmth. Rocks that have sunk partway into the ground are inviting caverns for this fat fiddler. The cricket that entrusts his security to a field rock is your best bet. A hayfield cricket is always three straws ahead of your fingers. After a bit of practice, you begin to spot them peeping from a tuft of weeds, hopping down grassy boulevards, meditating under boards, rocks, and thrown-out pieces of flat junk.ĭon’t bother trying to catch them in hayfields, where they are abundant. These are the chirpers whose repetitive notes can be calculated to tell you the air temperature. Slab-sided bluegills and crappies relish the big, fat, black field crickets. The August 1973 cover featured the “silent predator”-SHARK! Field & Stream On a September afternoon, when the sun feels good on a northern slope, the crickets’ song hints at impending frosts. Katydids loudly fill the night with the sound of their own name. The common red-legged grasshopper whirrs up from the ground, where it lays its eggs, to light upon weed stalks. Then all the noisemakers become urgently active. The rest of us wait until the first flicker of coral spreads from one bush maple to another, and the cut-over hayfields turn a subtle yellow. If your fishing normally takes you on big waters for big fish, wipe the gas off your hands and enjoy the relaxed pleasure of this panfishing tactic for August, September, and October.ĭeep South bream specialists know and love the cricket year-round. Many fishermen have forgotten how deadly these abundant baits can be on small, quiet waters. Many a country cane poler once spent the days of Indian summer dapping these morsels under overhanging trees along creekbanks, flicking them into the center holes of lily-pad clusters, or dropping them back into the shady water under rural road bridges. Pond and creek bass, bluegills, crappie, and bullheads may not appreciate their chirps and whirrs, but they call for encores when you offer them as bait. Their very best performances, however, are given on the end of a hook. Field crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers are among the insect world’s most accomplished noisemakers.
BEFORE I GO panfishing in the late summer, I like to listen to a little music.
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