There Is No Shortage of Hoppers

I saw a picture online last week of a friend posing with a handsome brown trout he’d caught.

“It’s hopper season!” read the caption.

I hadn’t thought about “that” hopper season in years. Instead, the hopper season I’ve become familiar with has biblical plague connotations.

The grasshoppers were so thick in north central Montana last summer that swarms of them in flight were picked up on radar. While that’s yet to happen this summer, there’s certainly no shortage. Hoppers at our cabin on Fort Peck Lake rise like clouds of dust when the dogs wander the backyard. The potted peppers I was trying t...