First checkDid it fall from the bank, or did it come up from the water? If you cannot tell, do not name it a terrestrial.
Terrestrial invertebrates are an important part of stream fish diets, especially in summer, and none of them lived in the water. Hoppers, ants and beetles arrive from the bank. The observation class is 'fallen terrestrial', not a hatch.AFS-BROOK-TROUT-TERRESTRIALSEvidence from: Two West Virginia brook-trout streamsDispute
The reliable tells are silhouette and origin: long jumping hind legs, a pinched waist, or hard elytra — and the absence of aquatic gills, cases, and cerci.Dispute
Treat this as a hypothesis that the animal arrived from the bank. If you find gills or a case, you are in the wrong group.Dispute
The tell
What settles it, and what settles against it.
Read off this record's own diagnostic weights, heaviest first. A structure near the top of the left column does most of the work on its own; one near the bottom only leans.
Argues for Terrestrials (ants, beetles, hoppers)
Fallen terrestrial insect (hopper, ant, beetle, etc.) — not an aquatic emergence+5
Hopper / grasshopper silhouette — hind legs long, body blocky, wings folded along back+5
Pinched waist (ant / flying ant) with elbowed antennae+5
No long tail filaments visible+2
Winged insect at or near the surface+2
Hard wing covers (elytra) meeting in a straight line down the back+2
Wings held flat and parallel along the body+1
Argues against it
Three tail filaments clearly visible-5
Plate-like or feather-like abdominal gills visible-5
Fish-shaped forage silhouette (minnow / shiner / fry) — not an insect-5
Two tail filaments clearly visible-4
Portable case or case-like structure present-4
Gills at the thorax or leg bases-4
Extendable grasping mouthparts (labium / mask) on an aquatic nymph-4
Three leaf-like caudal lamellae at the tail (damselfly nymph) rather than round filaments-4
Moving as a school or tight bait cluster, not as a single insect-4
Fleshy lobes or a disc at the blunt rear end-4
Head withdrawn into the front of the body, hard to see-4
A single tail filament pointing straight back, and no paired hooks-4
Swollen rear end gripping a rock in current, body standing up and waving downstream-4
Hardened head with softer worm-like abdomen-3
Terminal prolegs or hooks at the rear-3
Wings held upright (sailboat posture)-3
Air bubble or silvery film carried under water (diving beetle / water beetle)-3
No hardened head capsule and no legs — soft and segmented throughout-3
One pair of long, flattened, oar-like hind legs used to row-3
Swims on its back, belly upwards-3
Aquatic insect crawling on rock or debris-2
Wings held tent-like or inverted-V over body-2
Two long antennae-1
Mouthparts form a pointed beak rather than chewing jaws-1
A structure at −4 or below is treated as a hard exclusion by the comparison tool rather than as a penalty: if you saw it, this group is ruled out and no amount of matching elsewhere brings it back. Run a comparison →
Size in hand2–76 mm: ants to about 25 mm, grasshoppers mostly 13–25 mm and up to 76 mm. No source here gives beetle sizes.MDC-ANTS, MDC-SHORT-HORNED-GRASSHOPPERSEvidence from: Missouri field guide; North American familyDispute
Ant: pinched waist, elbowed antennae; winged males and queens on mating flightsMDC-ANTSEvidence from: Missouri field guide; North American familyDispute
These groups name Terrestrials (ants, beetles, hoppers) in their own separators. If you arrived holding one of them and were not sure, this is the sentence that pointed you over.
Where in the column it mattersSurface film. The only group here that arrives from outside the water. Position is set by the bank and the wind, not by the fish or the hatch.
Read from the record's own position notes: surface film after a fall from bank or vegetation; bankside grass and riparian vegetation.
Reference windows
When this group is typically available.
Typical published ranges only. Elevation, latitude, tailwater release and a given year's weather move all of these, often by weeks. This is never a statement about today.
1 reference window
Bank fallsadult
JFMAMJJASOND
Hoppers, ants and beetles fall from the bank; this is not a hatch. Terrestrials are an important part of stream fish diets especially in summer, and grasshoppers grow through the summer and die with the hard freezes of late fall.
Observed: Summer diet timing from two West Virginia brook-trout streams; grasshopper season from Missouri. Neither source gives month boundaries.
The pattern layer ties this group in Dry. That is a correspondence between an imitation and an animal, worked out when the patterns were written. Whether a fish is on it today is a question this page cannot reach.
Dave's Hopper
Dry
Hook8–14
A grasshopper that fell, not something that hatched here.
Dropped on the bank edge and twitched. The legs and the bulk are the tell.
Fur Ant
Dry
Hook16–22
A pinched-waist ant on the film — flying ants after a still, humid afternoon.
Dead-drifted in the film. The waist is the structure being imitated.
Foam Beetle
Dry
Hook14–18
A hard-backed beetle sitting in the film, not an aquatic emergence.
Dead-drifted along the bank. The silhouette is a round back, not a wing.
5 of them. The limits are part of what was reviewed rather than a disclaimer bolted on afterwards. An entry that hid them would be claiming more than it checked.
Written by the reviewer
Declared by the reviewerBroad observation class only — not a species ID and not a hatch.Dispute
Declared by the reviewerThis guide never claims a current fall or a pattern that will catch fish here today.Dispute
Declared by the reviewerThis is a broad observation class for summer/early-fall bank and meadow insects on the water, not a species-level identification and not a hatch.AFS-BROOK-TROUT-TERRESTRIALS, MDC-SHORT-HORNED-GRASSHOPPERSEvidence from: Summer diet timing from two West Virginia brook-trout streams; grasshopper season from MissouriDispute
Declared by the reviewerHopper, ant, and beetle silhouettes differ; the useful field result is 'fallen terrestrial' plus the silhouette you actually saw.Dispute
Declared by the reviewerThis preview never claims a current fall, density, or a pattern that will catch fish here today.Dispute
Sources
Everything above rests on 6 published pages.
These are every page behind this entry. Where a reviewer traced a line above to the pages that carry it, that line names them itself, with where the evidence comes from when it is narrower than the whole entry. A line with no names beside it rests on this list as a whole: nobody has yet checked which page carried it, and naming one would be a mapping nobody made.
A plate shows shape. It cannot show a gill beating, a mask firing, or an animal reversing into sand — so where motion is the field mark, the entry points at motion. These are demonstrations, selected by hand and by publisher. Nothing here is a source: it changes no score, no window and no reviewed claim.
The Orvis Company. How an ant, a beetle and a hopper actually sit in the film — flush, half-sunk, trapped against a bank — which is the difference this entry turns on.
Specialist angling channel · external video · title read back from the publisher 2026-09-09
Carry it on
Take the group to the next step.
These send the class of animal and the water this record is documented in. They do not send a sighting, because this page does not have one — you have not told it what you saw.
Which fish in this kind of water are documented eating this class of forage, and how they behave when they are.
What this forage class asks of the setup — the weight it wants, and where the chain gives first.
Keep the group on the day's record, so a later entry can be compared against what you were looking at.
Found an error?
This entry was written and drawn away from your water. If something here is wrong, say so — the report is assembled in your browser and sent only if you send it.