Bug Hatch?

So, for the last 5 days I have been going out crappie fishing. After the sun goes down and the later we go the bottom 5′ gets so full of “stuff” I can’t even see my jig.

Pic 1 is 1/2 hour before sunset
Pic 2 is 1 hour after sunset

What’s going on???

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Very likely that would be blood worms or midges coming out of the bottom.

If it is only near bottom could be some sort of bug hatch or something. If it covers more of the water column most likely zooplankton. I have seen zooplankton so thick at times while fishing you could barely continue to fish.

I have had this happen before too, but it is usually most of the water column and also seems to coincide with a shutdown in fishing. Always wondered……

We were still catching crappies until midnight it was just difficult to target a specific fish due to the clutter.

You would think the lake would have big perch with that big hatch, but it doesn’t.

In blooms like this, the flx28 in color mode 2 works well, basically clears out most the plankton returns and shows primarily fish.

That is like the Horseshoe Chain at night. Not in all spots but some spots. I had some hole’s where the bug hatch there is a cloud that basically comes to the surface of the hole. I’ve shown my light down the hole and see various critters swimming about. Mostly small plankton stuff but some as much as about 1″ or so. Well hard to gauge actual size in water but they look large enough to be feeding off the plankton stuff.

Most times it very hard to catch any fish in the cloud of stuff, especially when I can’t tell what’s fish or what’s just a bunch of buggy stuff.

I have a hard time believing you would be catching fish if that was a bug hatch.

sticker wrote:

I have a hard time believing you would be catching fish if that was a bug hatch.

They were few and far between, but we’d still pick one off every once and a while.

Bugs that’s what I look for ! No bugs no crappies . What I do is set up before dark when they show up I turn out bugs and bait if you need to . You will still see the crappies come in and I upside my bait like big fatheads or big plastics . Only problem is you get slabs that way 😝

A family friend who is a biologist explained it to me once, it’s a bunch of little insects of some sort that come up at that time in mud, silt and sand bottoms to feed.

I see this a lot in one lake I fish on that lake it has to be over 25 feet deep before I find them. As it gets darker the higher in the water column they are. Dark cloudy days they will get to about 15 feet and no farther. On this particular lake the Crappies will be schooled until this hatch comes up and then the Crappies spread out. At this point for any kind of success have to hole hop a lot and using larger baits and more aggressive techniques seem to work for me.

Using DI instead of 2d you can pick out the fish in the mess.

Could be diel vertical migration of zooplankton.

Lots of info if you google it.

Buffalo Fishhead

Buffalo Fishhead wrote:

Could be diel vertical migration of zooplankton.

Lots of info if you google it.

Buffalo Fishhead

Thanks I have searched high and low for information on this type of movement in the water column and could find nothing helps to have a specific name to search for.

I figured this is why this particular lake has big Crappies in it with fast growth, as Crappies are filter feeders they can take advantage of all this zooplankton.

I have a hard time believing that its a bug hatch. Our common insects that hatch in freshwater lakes around here need warmer temps – not water temperatures near freezing. Like some have mentioned it could be zoo plankton.

I’ve heard Dave Gentz talk about the zooplankton at dusk all the time. I see it happen all the time as well.

Don’t know anything more beyond that though.