Okay, hear me out! Out of all the potential for fishing bait, using cicadas is certainly a bold and out-there choice. But some fishermen find it's getting results.
You know cicadas, right? Those insects resemble crickets and stay buried in the ground for years at a time. Every so often, you get a big emergence of cicadas in the summer time. Given then the abundance of them then, they're pretty easy to find during an emergence. Probably less so at other times, making them more of a novelty bait.
WKRN recently spoke with angler Davis Nolan, who used a couple of wild cicadas on the other end of his line. He ended up catching a pretty sizable fresh-water catfish. However, Nolan is far from the first to try to use the insect. One person tossed cicadas in the water to see if the fish would bite, and sure enough, they gobbled them up.
Fishermen Share Their Own Experiences
One just has to look to Reddit to find a whole group of anglers sharing their stories. One person said that cicadas were the secret to a bucket full of catfish. They wrote, "In cicada hatches I've caught hundreds upon hundreds of Carp, Catfish, Largemouth and Smallmouth bass on topwater lures but once while I was on Buggs island lake in Va. we were catching catfish on topwater by the hundreds and all of a sudden the temps got up near 100 in the middle of the day and no bites. I decided to try the real thing so I put on a 1/6 th oz. jig head and added a dead cicada. For the rest of the day I landed catfish after catfish. The bait never touched the bottom before getting hammered."
Another mentioned the differences between male and females, writing, "What I found with the last brood of 17 year cicadas was that within a few days the bass learn the difference between males and females. They want the females, which are loaded with eggs and protein. The males have hollow abdomens, which enable their calls. Use the females as top water bait. You will be able to tell the difference pretty quickly while handling them."
Apparently, you can catch other fish besides catfish. One person caught both blue gill and carp. Apparently, it's the wings that attract the fish, so you want to keep the insects alive. The wings move in the water, drawing motion, and hungry fish.
