The Hopper Hatch | Hopper Species | Patterns | Hopper Habits | Splat & Twitch

Grasshoppers can be found almost anywhere there is vegetation. They share the order Orthoptera with katydids, crickets, cockroaches, mantids and walking sticks. Though some are flightless, most grasshoppers fly with varying degrees of efficiency. They are, as a rule, fat-bodied, with strong hind legs for jumping and large, squarish heads. The hind wings, the ones actually used for flying, are soft and membranous and are often brightly colored. The forewings are hard and shell-like and act as a covering for the wings while at rest and as body armor.

The various species range in color from almost black through dark brown, olive and tan to bright green. They range in size from one-half to two-and-one-half inches. They often assume the predominant color of their surroundings so that a species that might be green in a cornfield could be yellow in dry grass.

The most important hoppers to the angler are the Acrididae, or short-horned grasshoppers, which include most of the hoppers found in fields and along roadsides from mid-summer until fall. Two species in this family, the Romalae microptera in the South and the Brachystola magna in the West, are among the largest North American grasshoppers, growing to as much as two-and-one-half inches, or about as long as a #2 streamer hook. However, the pygmy grasshoppers, or grouse locusts (family Tetrigidae), are usually between one-half and three-quarters of an inch long.

Meadow hoppers (subfamily Conocophalinae) are about five-eighths of an inch long and greenish and are found in wet, grassy meadows and along the margins of ponds and streams Shield-back hoppers (subfamily Decticinae) are usually an inch or more long, brownish in color and are found in dry woods and adjoining fields.

There are local variations both in the species present and in their coloration. Hoppers that live in rocky terrain with a predominant growth of sage may be bluish gray, but those that inhabit the borders of hardwood forests can be almost black.

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