Mayfly advice (Leech Lake)

Hey guys, we just got back from a long weekend fathers day walleye trip to Leech and sort of bombed with the fishing aspect (I did however do well at poker). The few fish we did catch were big but man it was slow. Mayflie’s were clearly hatching with clouds of bugs non stop on the sonar and sheets of dead bugs on the surface. With this in mind, we tried jig/fathead for only like an hour (no luck) and switched to crawlers and leeches, spinners, lindy rigs. We fished over rock humps, wind blown points (plenty of that last week), edges of weedbeds in the bays, rocky shorelines, 8 foot all the way down to 25 feet. We marked very few fish anywhere. With the mayfly hatch, what’s your favorite “back up” plan that catches fish and where would you look in this situation. Good thing there was poker and 3 generations of dads to hang out with to salvage the trip…

I just watched an old episode of IDO w James and Chris Granrud on Rainy Lake hammering during a mayfly hatch with a jig and half a crawler. So that’s my plan this weekend on Rainy if the mayfly’s are bad, but locating and marking fish is step 1 imo. That’s difficult on a lake the size of Leech or Rainy but necessary imo.

Slo death with pinch of crawler can be good.

Leech has been a tough nut to crack lately. Your trip sounds similar to me and my buddies Opener on Leech and we didn’t have Mayflies to blame. He has a place on the lake and it’s just become more difficult the last few years not sure why.

The hatch seems to be ending from what I can see at this point

I was up there as well over the weekend and fishing was tougher for sure. Early morning spinners in 12-14, Side Imaging schools in 8-12 on weedlines midday and throwing bobbers at them with smaller leeches, and night trolling sand flats with stick baits got us about a dozen good eaters a day, with your standard couple of 24-26’s sprinkled in.

lindyrig79 wrote:

Leech has been a tough nut to crack lately. Your trip sounds similar to me and my buddies Opener on Leech and we didn’t have Mayflies to blame. He has a place on the lake and it’s just become more difficult the last few years not sure why.

More traffic due to Mille Lacs regs and the lake is getting clearer due to Zebra Mussels. Fish have become more pressured. Fishing away from the boat pitching jigs, planer boards and bobbers has been key to success up there this year.

I’m up on Leech right now and the May flies are unreal.

Fishing has been tough but managing them. Leech on a lindy has produced but again, very slow.

Front moving in tonight. Hopefully some better news…

As everyone knows its been a pretty windy year until about a week ago. Looks like Temps will be in the mid to upper 80’s for the foreseeable future. I fished leech with my neighbor a few weeks ago and worked our tail ends off to catch 3 keepers.
Everything is cyclical.

We were up there last year during a big hatch and did well “wiggle worming” with a small jig and half crawler.

Matt L wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>lindyrig79 wrote:</div>
Leech has been a tough nut to crack lately. Your trip sounds similar to me and my buddies Opener on Leech and we didn’t have Mayflies to blame. He has a place on the lake and it’s just become more difficult the last few years not sure why.

More traffic due to Mille Lacs regs and the lake is getting clearer due to Zebra Mussels. Fish have become more pressured. Fishing away from the boat pitching jigs, planer boards and bobbers has been key to success up there this year.

I didn’t go into extensive detail on my first post….. but think this is exactly right.

After the whole border fiasco my group ended up booking a place on Leech this weekend. Appreciate the reports. Typically during bug hatches people look to fish deeper mud, right? I’m not at all confident in finding fish/weedlines with my (outdated) electronics, unfortunately.

Just got back last night from chasing musky on Leech for a few days. Caught a number of them, but they were babies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mayfly hatch as intense. Seems like right after sundown they just explode into a thick cloud. One scene reminded me of a static channel on TV. I didn’t get any reports from walleye anglers, but I’m pretty certain I was marking walleye routinely on the wind-blown rocky points. The water was stained bright green.

While it seems to be waning around Stoney Pt a friend in whipolt says they are thick

A little further south, bug hatch was all over Woman, Little Boy this past week too. Shutdown the smallmouth bite and only got 1 walleye.

Hopefully they are hungry again by 4th of July when we head up to woman lake next weekend!

Spent all last week up on Leech Lake fishing every morning, mid-day, and evening. Boated one 26 inch walleye all week on a jig and crawler in 12 fow off a point leeward. Threw everything in my box at every speed I could think of at one time or other. Pulling spinners would collect about 1/4 pound of mayfly shells per minute. Never fished so hard for so little in my life. Will be taking vacation elsewhere next year.

My boat got up to Leech earlier today and fished for a few hours midday and a few at sundown. In total, caught 9 walleyes pulling spinners + leech. 6 were > 22”, biggest was just 25” though. Got blanked pulling cranks shallow at sundown.

Yep…the hatch is still unreal up here!

Worked our tails off for 4 days and managed 4 at 26”, a few around 22” and less then a hand full around 16-19”. Lots of hours spent fishing and it was tough to say the least. Some guys fished all week catching nothing but a few pike. Pan fishing up in boy bay was hit or miss but action was to be had. The “hot spot” for walleyes was around 5 mile in about 16-20’.

Good luck if you are going up there in the next few days…

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With the new regs it sure is nice to fillet up some of the bigger fish for a fry.

Will be interesting to see what it does to the overall population and size structure for the lake. I know alot of people who are eating the big ones cause that’s all they catch.

Deuces wrote:

With the new regs it sure is nice to fillet up some of the bigger fish for a fry.

Will be interesting to see what it does to the overall population and size structure for the lake. I know alot of people who are eating the big ones cause that’s all they catch.

Exactly. It’s so ironic to catch literally hundreds of walleyes on Mille Lacs and not keep a single one, and then head to Walker and fish for days for a meal but keep everything.