Cricket (Gryllidae)

Terrestrial, hatching July–September, active in water between 55 and 75°F, and imitated at #10–14. Recorded from southeast Minnesota, where 99 Minnesota rivers on this site carry a page.

#10–14Hook size
55–75°FWater, active
Jul–SepPeak months
1Life stage fished

Subbasins with trout water where it is on record: 5 of Minnesota's 72.

See Minnesota's trout water on the live map → Every reach coloured by water temperature — the water these hatches come off.

What it is

Terrestrial · Gryllidae · adult

Black, blocky, and heavy, with long back legs. It gets onto the water by accident from grassy banks, late in the season when the grass is dry and the hatches are finished.

The late-season terrestrial, after the hoppers thin out. Black, and fished in the shade.

When it hatches

These are Minnesota's own dates, not this site's shared calendar. They are the Crickets (Orthoptera) row of Hatch Chart for Southeast Minnesota Trout Streams, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Lanesboro Area Fisheries (Vaughn Snook, Assistant Fisheries Supervisor), as of 15 June 2016. The chart's calendar runs January to October and makes no claim about November or December. Its own footer says it is a general time frame, that some streams have only a few of these hatches, and that others may see hatches it does not list.

Peak is July–September. The pale months either side are the shoulder — the app widens a peak by one month in each direction and recommends the bug there, and no further: that widening is bounded so that a bug peaking in May is never offered in August.

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peak shoulder not recommended

Water conditions

The band is a water temperature, not an air temperature, and it is the range in which this insect is worth fishing — for a mayfly that is the emergence window; for a scud or a midge it is simply the range trout will still eat one in.

55°F 75°F

Active from 55°F to 75°F. On this map that is cold, cold-transitional, cool, warm water — the band crosses 3 of the three breaks the river colours use. Breaks at 58, 64 and 70°F.

Stages

What the insect is doing, and what that means for what you tie on.

Stage	What it is
adult	Lands hard, sinks low, and does not move much. A cricket fished tight to the bank with an audible landing is imitating exactly what happens.

Matching flies

3 patterns in this book imitate the Cricket, across its stages. Which one to tie on follows the stage the water temperature says it is in — the app makes that call on a live reading; this page lists the whole set.

Where to find it right now

The rivers with a page here that sit in this insect's regions, with a USGS gauge reporting water temperature. This list is re-ranked against the reading each gauge is sending now and today's date, so it is live — the fallback below it, if the readings do not arrive, is each river's measured July mean.

Regional presence

Regions, not collection records. This insect is recorded from the coarse regions below; nobody has surveyed which named river it has been caught on, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

northern lower Michigan MI
southern lower Michigan MI
the Wisconsin driftless WI
the Virginia mountains VA
the North Carolina mountains NC
southeast Minnesota MN

Rivers in these regions with a page here

Related hatches

Same family, or overlapping this one's calendar on the same water.

Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, coloured by today's water temperature.