2013 crickets are here!

I got a good chuckle when I rode by a popular area fish bait store a couple of weeks ago and the sign out front said, “2013 crickets are here!”  First of all, I have tried to figure out how you tell a 2013 cricket from a 2012 cricket and I can’t google up an information on that anywhere. Second, I wonder why they got here so early. Crickets like cold weather less than I do.

Usually, we are catching a few good bream by now, but with this weather — well, the crickets better be glad they are living inside the bait shop with a big light bulb to keep them warm. I succumbed to the pressure to try some crickets earlier this week. When I bought 50 crickets, my baitmaster laughed and said, “That’s probably about 45 more than you are going to need, unless you are feeding a gecko.”

He was right. I drowned about five of the crickets trying to catch a bream with no luck. I left the rest in the cricket box in the closet on the boat dock. That night, it hit 40 degrees and put my crickets into deep, winter hibernation. The next night it hit 40 again and they apparently died of cricket hypothermia. RIP.

I did hear a funny story about the bream biting in one small south Arkansas lake this week. “Man, the chinquapins are biting and they are as big as small buffalo!”  Next time I catch a little buffalo, I’m gonna think, Wow, this is as small as a big chinquapin….

The only thing I can say is “Okay, the 2013 crickets are here. When will the 2013 bream show up?”