Extra TERRESTRIALS

North America has approximately 600 species of grasshoppers, 600 species of crickets, 1,000 species of ants, and 30,000 species of beetles. Add in outliers like bees, dragonflies, and cicadas, and you’ve got a mess of bugs classified as terrestrials. When a breeze blows any of these land-based trout snacks into the river, it doesn’t last long. In late summer, when traditional hatches slow, it’s terrestrials that keep the fish looking up. In fact, some of the biggest fish of the season often fall to a drifting terrestrial pattern. The bonus is that terrestrial fishing is laid-back. The best action coincides with wet-wading season. Or hop in the drift boat wearing flip-flops, relax with a cold beer, and just keep plopping that juicy hopper along undercut banks until a behemoth brown decides to jet out from its lair and smack it. But fishing terrestrials takes confidence because you often do a lot of casting before you finally get a taker. To get you on the fast track to success, we’ve rounded up some of the best trout guides in the U.S. to find out which terrestrial they tie on first, and how they use it to call up late-summer slobs.