In a small dirt lot somewhere in Northeastern Missouri, I cracked the window of the rental car and let in a sound. It was a wavering buzz, a chorus of many singers emanating from the trees on this stiflingly hot early summer day. This was a sound I'd driven well over a thousand miles to hear. I looked over at my partner in the passenger seat and cracked a maniacal grin. We weren't too late after all!
Periodical cicadas or "magic cicadas" represent seven different species of cicada that emerge on 13 and 17 year cycles. 17 different broods emerge of separate cycles all across the Eastern United states. In 2024, two broods emerged simultaneously in the Midwest and South- the Northern Illinois Brood and the Great Southern Brood. Collectively, millions of cicadas emerged from the earth, where they spent more than 99 percent of their life, shed their nymphal shucks, and went about doing what sexually mature cicadas do best: screaming and having sex. That's probably what I'd want to do if I'd just spent the last 13-17 years living in the soil too, quite frankly. Some people aren't particularly big fans of the sound or the bugs themselves. Personally, I think those people suffer from a severe negative attitude problem. How lucky are we that such an incredible ecological phenomena occurs in our backyard? It's such an incredible display of life, a vitally important occurrence in the habitats in which these bugs persist. Throughout parts of their range, some periodical cicadas are not doing well at all. Charles Lester Marlatt, who first assigned Roman numeric designations to the existing broods (as well as 13 others that don't actually exist) noted dramatic declines in the very brood that should emerge in the Connecticut River Valley, attributing it to deforestation and the introduction of house sparrows (
Marlatt, C.L (1907). "Summary of the Habits and Characteristics of the Cicada.") Unfortunately, Brood XI was last seen in 1954 and is now extinct, an outright ecological catastrophe most southern New England residents are wholly unaware of.
As I've written about in this blog before, I'm a cicada addict. I adore periodical cicadas and everything about them, from their ornate, jewel like wings to their mechanical sounding call, to their seemingly bumbling flights as they try to evade predators. Of course, it doesn't hurt that fish like to eat them. Fish really like to eat them. Here in Missouri, I was hoping that the fish that would be really liking the cicadas would be grass carp. In North America fisherman often have a pretty poor understanding of what carp are In this area in the midwest it's made no better by a plethora of large native suckers that look vaguely like common carp, and a number of introduced Asian carp species, including grass carp. Grass carp are a bit different than the species that are often in the headlines as Asian carp, which are silver and bighead carp. Grass carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella, are the only species in their genus and look, at least to the trained eye, absolutely nothing like common carp. Nor do they act like common carp, come from the same part of the world (grass carp are from far Eastern Asia, common carp from Europe and far Western Asia. Though both species feed on or near the surface semi frequently, grass carp are built for it a little better with a terminal mouth while common carp have a more inferior mouth (this means that their mouth is on the bottom of their face, not that their mouth is worse). Both are detrimental ecologically in a variety of different ways. Both are also a heck of a lot of fun to catch on a fly rod, but to this point in my fly fishing carrier I'd caught exactly one, this monster from a park pond in the northeast:
I really wanted more, and I really wanted to catch one without having to throw a bunch of bits of bread in the water. These calling cicadas were singing a promise to me. They were singing a promise that I was surely about to find my fix. I trotted through the brush towards the river, cicadas blundering into branches in their haste to get away from me. Upon reaching the edge of a high clay bank and peaking over, it was immediately apparent that they bugs weren't lying. A half a dozen or so grass carp cruised up and down a bubble line, picking off bugs as they went. They weren't alone though. They were joined by roughly the same number of shortnose gar, a fish species I'd gotten to see for the first time with my friend Hamilton Bell earlier in the week down in Arkansas. They'd snubbed me then (
read: I blew a lot of shots), but this opportunity seemed almost too good. And they were eating bugs? What a wonderful surprise! This seemed uncharacteristic for a gar species, but I'm not one to turn down an opportunity at an odd species on a dry fly. Firs though, I had to rush back to the car to rig up. My grin was now twice as maniacal.
There's some minor complexity to catching cicada eating fish, but it isn't so technical as to be prohibitively difficult. Certain fish seem to have certain preferences at different times. I've never gotten carp to eat sinking cicadas well, though I'm sure it happens. On the tailwaters of Maryland during the 2021 emergence, I caught fat brown trout on some sinking cicadas, to exclusion of the dry fly during the midday surface activity lull. I had yet to get the opportunity to put a cicada in front of a grass carp, or a shortnose gar for that matter, but given the methodical behavior of these fish I anticipated a long drift being favorable to a splat-down, and probably minimal action on the fly. And that's exactly what I got. In fact, I was about to have two days of the best dry fly fishing I'd ever experienced. These grassers behaved much like big brown trout do. They chose the same sorts of lies a trout would, holding position in faster water and cycling in the froggy spots. They were selective but not overly so, and they fought incredibly well. They fought astoundingly well too. It was everything I could have asked for.
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I knocked a couple grassers out really promptly, but was immediately keen on sticking a gar. It didn't take too long to find willing participants to grab the fly, they were in fact extremely keen on that, but it did take a little while to get one willing to stick (
read: I whiffed a whole bunch of them). When I finally did, it was an elevating moment. My first of a gar species, my third gar species, on a periodical cicada dry fly. That just seemed absurd. But these fish were clearly keen on the bugs. They were setting up much like the grassers were, though they favored cruising the slower water over stationing up. Some were holding lies though, finning in the current and picking off cicadas as they floated by. They showed notable preference for the bugs that were still alive and moving, and in turn for a fly that was twitched like the living naturals. It was just the coolest thing, so cool I had to know if this was a well know phenomena. I reached out to
Dr. Solomon David, biologist and gar specialist at the University of Minnesota about what I was seeing. Not only did he respond promptly confirming that shortnose gar are indeed known to feed intently on periodical cicadas, he told me that one of the only pieces of formal scientific literature on the species delved into their behavior while feeding on magicicadas: American Midland Naturalist Journal: Shortnose Gar - Territorial Defense of Profitable Pool Positions.
How friggen cool is that? Solomon David then asked if I'd be able to contribute any data. I'm always looking for an excuse to provide something that could be of use to fisheries science. If I'm going to go around pricking all sorts of fish in face for fun, some sort of good should at least come of my efforts. Subsequently, for the rest of my time in Missouri, every shortnose gar I caught was accurately measured and photographed. Their behavior prior to capture and exact location were recorded, and I took photos of gar in feeding lanes, cicadas on the water, and overall shots of the river. It added some work on my part, but that isn't unfamiliar. I spent many formative years observing river herring runs to get visual estimates on returns in streams without fish ladders. The amount that can be learned by approaching fish with a scientist's eye, looking for a quantitative analysis, is significant. Fisherman aren't always good scientists, arguably rarely. The goal of catching fish doesn't always necessitate understanding exactly why fish do what they do. It doesn't take a thorough understanding of fish, across all sorts of species and waterbodies, to catch enough to be satisfied. Anglers are often not even that good at telling what species of fish they're holding in their had when they do catch one. So taking a very scientific approach, engaging with the ichthyologists and fisheries biologists, and participating in the collection of data that might further the scientific understanding of fish and their habitat presents a lot of opportunities. I'll jump at the opportunity to take part any chance I get.
They way gar take a fly has always amused me. It's almost adorable, bordering on comical at times. With these cicadas it was no different. The fly would plop down, perhaps two or three feet ahead of the fish. Either it would respond to the fly landing or I'd twitch the bug. The gar would turn, angling toward the fly, and nose right up to it. By nose up, I don't mean put their snout under the fly. They get it next to their eye almost, next to their jaws on one side of their head or the other. If they could they'd probably be squinting at the fly at this point. If a moment passes and the gar doesn't commit, I'm inclined to give the fly little twitches. This is usually all it takes, the gar's fins kick a little and it closes whatever gap it has between it and the fly. Then is snaps at it, opening its mouth and jerking its head to the side. Can you picture it? I've seen it countless times from four different species of gar, everywhere from Vermont to Florida to Arkansas. It's very specific, and frankly very funny.
My satisfaction with life is heavily contingent, probably too contingent, on laborious exploration of places I've never been with either a fly rod or a camera in hand. There isn't necessarily anything relaxing about it at all, sometimes I wear myself down to zero. I beat myself to a pulp wading twelve miles of river one day and had to pull over on the side of the highway because the cramping was too severe to drive through. I forget that my body even exists in favor of paying attention to everything else instead. And when an event is ephemeral and temporary, or my time in a place is short, I can be almost frantic about it. Not so frantic that I don't take time to be completely stationary though.
Standing on a high, sloping bank above one long, slow pool, I could see a few grassers larger than the one's I'd been catching working the surface. The rock below my feet was sheet thin layers of sedimentary strata, layer down millennia ago when this whole place was underwater. Not much had altered it since it had hardened as it was near perfectly level and didn't who much at all in the way of signs of metamorphosis from heat or pressure. The river had carved at it though, revealing the time it had been laid as step-like layers sloping down to the riverbed. On top of it was a less old form of the same process- layers of sand and clay that had been dropped by the river when it was younger. The rock made a good seat, I decided to watch the fish feed for a bit and take in as much information as I could while I had the opportunity. The larger fish were definitively wearier than the smaller ones, and didn't spend as much time hovering right under the surface. Since the water was extremely turbid they were only really visible as dark, long smudges with wavering tails. Some of the little ones stayed up and cruised around. But the larger ones, some of which were probably in the high 30 inch class, rose up from the gloom and held position for a moment or two, picked off a couple cicadas when they came by, and then sank back down. They were clearly favoring proximity to shad, though they didn't seem to need to be in it all the time. Fish treat shadows as cover,, because it is. I couldn't see them well at all when they were in the shade, but could see them fairly clearly around the periphery of it. They seemed to want to remain close to that shadow as a quick escape if it became necessary. Eventually sensing a pattern of movement with the larger fish there I eased down to the water's edge. From that level seeing the fish before they surfaced to eat was nearly impossible, so I waited with fly line in hand to make a quick but long cast. When one topped, I let it fly. The bug landed, a few seconds passed, and white lips opened around it. I held ground until the lips closed and the head turned to go back down and lifted the rod. The pool then erupted as an angry grasser mad it's feeling about being deceived known.
I repeated the process over an over that second day, scrambilng up and down steep banks, watching fish, and walking river in deck boots and shorts, hunting and hunting some more until I was fairly satisfied with the results. I'd come, I'd seen, and I'd caught. I watched birds hunt the cicadas and seen a few snakes slide away into holes. I'd done some minor gar science and bent an eight weight on more grass carp than I'd caught up until that point prior. Understanding that the time had come to push northward, we said goodbye to Missouri- as place I'd not had anywhere near the respect for that it deserved until driving it's entire extent from south to north. But there were more bugs, more fish, and more places to be. The clock is always ticking, and I needed to find more to keep that maniacal grin on my face. Though there was a tornado to be chased in
Nebraska first, the next stop on the cicada pilgrimage was Illinois.
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