Grasshoppers:
A plop is perfect
Typical adult grasshopper, the kind that rattle from
streamside vegetation in late summer.
All told, however, there are about 60 species of grasshoppers in Minnesota, and I presume fairly similar numbers of species are found in other Midwestern states. Many of these species, however, are restricted to particular habitats, especially open sandy areas and are seen and recognized only by the (rare) grasshopper specialist.

Clearly, fly anglers don't have to worry about learning 60 species of insects to imitate. In fact, given the haphazard nature of grasshoppers falling onto the water's surface, imitations can be pretty generic. The careful choice of dubbing color, while necessary occasionally to fooling trout during a mayfly hatch, isn't of prime importance when tying up a'hopper imitation.

The Red-legged and Two-striped grasshoppers are the two most common species likely to be found in stream side vegetation. A Red-legged adult measures about 3/4 to 7/8 of an inch long, while the Two-striped is larger -- an adult female reaching 1 1/2 inches. A relative of the destructive migratory locust of Africa also occurs in Minnesota on dry, sandy sites; it can reach an impressive length of 2 inches.

By Dean Hansen

This is fun?

Sure, you're on your favorite trout stream, but it's a hot late-August afternoon and the only mayflies on the water look like dandruff. You match them with a #26 Blue-winged Olive tied to a tippet fine enough to make a spider jealous. Your presentations would make casting-teacher Joan Wulff jealous, too-- but you haven't had a strike for at least an hour.

While you fish on, a hot breeze causes a grasshopper in overhanging stream side weeds to make a slight miscalculation and it lands with a "splat" on the water close to an undercut bank. With a couple of quick kicks of its hind legs. the 'hopper starts towards shore. Before it can say, "I'd better get my little proctodeum out of here,"the grasshopper disappears in the splash of a rising 16-inch brown.

Within minutes you've traded your light dry-fly leader for a heavier one with perhaps a 3X tippet and you're tossing a #10 grasshopper imitation into the wind, and up against the bank where the brown rose so recklessly.

Everyone knows the grasshopper-- enormous hind jumping legs, strong wing and a disgusting habit of spitting when handled. The popular conception that grasshopper adults are present only after mid-summer, however, is only partly true: several species of Midwest grasshoppers, in fact, mature in the spring. It is an entomological justification for using 'hopper imitations early in the year-- and I've used them successfully in April, May or June.

Particularly in dry years, grasshoppers get pretty bad press. Some species can then become enormously abundant and hoards of hungry 'hoppers can, and do, devastate wheat, corn and other crops in the Midwest. While we haven't had anything like the migratory grasshopper plagues of the 1870s (remember the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories?), a drought in the late 1980s led to serious crop damage by an exploding grasshopper population in the Midwest.
A "rubber-legs" 'hopper imitation

Grasshoppers begin life in a mass of eggs laid an inch or so in the ground in late summer or fall (there are exceptions). Hatching occurs the following spring and the newly hatched grasshopper looks very much like a scaled down version of its parents, except that it lacks wings.

A 'hopper infant eats voraciously (usually live plant material, hence their conflict with farmers) and, just like mayfly nymphs or caddis larvae, grows by molting its hard exoskeleton periodically. At each molt (usually 5) its developing wings become more and more visible as "wing pads" on the upper sides of its thorax. Only in its final adult stage are the wings fully formed and functional. Then it's time to mate, lay eggs, and, we can hope, jump in the stream for a quick swim.

While a 'hopper's appetite for plants puts it into some conflict with crop and forage production, they convert plant material into animal protein and other nutrients and the thousands of young 'hoppers on an acre of grassland are an important source of food for birds, small mammals, amphibians and even other insects. There is an important place in the overall food web for the oft-maligned grasshopper.


Dean Hansen's writings on entomology appear in every issue of Midwest Fly Fishing™ magazine. This article appeared in 1997.
Usual hopper imitation - it's bulky, bouyant.