Fly tiers are busy at their tying benches. Spin and cast anglers are combing the racks at sporting goods stores for just the right lures or anxiously hoping their online orders will arrive in time. Bait fishermen are calculating how to tie or wire a roundish, inch-long insect onto wire-thin hook, while allowing its wings the freedom to still splash about on the water.
They’re eagerly anticipating the day when the first few hundred 17-year periodical cicadas will splash onto the surface of their favorite fishing waters, a day likely to come within the next week as the cicadas of Brood X move headlong into their emergence.
“Trout, catfish, bass, carp, sunfish, everything will be targeting cicadas,” said George Hampton, a Millersburg fly angler who’s fished through 3 previous Brood X emergences – 1970, 1987 and 2004 – as well as emergences of other broods of the big, bulging-eyed insects.
“There seemed to be less of these bugs the last time around than 2 other times I fished it, but there were still plenty to get the fish excited and fill the woods around the streams with non-stop buzz.”
He added, “It didn’t seem to matter if a fly looked much like a cicada or not, just so it was big, made a big splash when it hit and then looked like it was fluttering on the surface.”
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John Allen, an outdoor writer in Carlisle, noted, “When these flies land on the water, it is close to the equivalent of a toddler throwing a rock in the water. Presentations should slap the water. If you didn’t make a slap, most times the fish just look at it and swim away. When there are active fish in the area, a splash creates an almost instantaneous reaction.
“About two weeks after the emergence, the fish will be very keyed in on them. In streams, the faster-moving runs are the best spots. On lakes, anywhere that has trees along the banks is a good area.
“The hardest part about fishing these bugs is when they land on the surface, they immediately start fluttering their wings creating a vibration across the surface. Very difficult to mimic and can make the fish hesitant to take in slow water.”
While some anglers are scrambling now to gear up for the event, others saw it coming when the Brood X emergence of 2021 was first discussed late last year and jumped to get ready.
“I had orders of lures arriving the first couple weeks in January,” said Andy Heckman, of Lickdale. “I’ve been carrying a few with me ever since the first day of trout season (April 3) just in case some cicadas came out earlier than they predicted.”
That early emergence did not happen, and the first cicadas only now are being spotted aboveground in many parts of Pennsylvania.
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Field & Stream magazine’s online headline, “Brood X Cicada Hatch Promises the Wildest Dry-Fly Action in 17 Years,” only slightly overstates what’s about to engulf the angling community for a few weeks.
While Brood X is the largest and most widespread, there are other broods in other years that produce much the same action over smaller areas.
Morgan Lyle, in that online article, quoted Tom Baltz, an internationally known fly fishing guide and tyer in Carlisle, about the latter’s experience with cicadas in 2004 on Penns Creek.
“As soon as we opened the car door and stepped out, I knew we were in trouble, because I didn’t have anything like a cicada, and it sounded like there were Martians landing,” Baltz told him, recalling that the trout “looked like sharks coming up and grabbing seals.”
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Many anglers will find themselves in a situation similar to Baltz in 2002 when the emergence hits their favorite waters this time around. He didn’t have flies tied to exactly replicate cicadas but found that any large grasshopper-type fly pattern brought plenty of strikes from the fish. But he has tied some deer-hair cicada replicas since then.
Scientific Anglers, a fly fishing gear manufacturer, noted in a recent post to its blog, “Where it occurs, the emergence will bring the largest fish in a given body of water – stream, river, and lake, to the surface in a feeding frenzy. Fly anglers should be prepared to take advantage of this opportunity. A little research and preparation could bring some of the best fly fishing that can be experienced anywhere. Will you be ready for Brood X?”
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