Mayfly bite

Have heard of the terror some species go on when these things start hatching. Well, this evening was one my family won’t forget. To make a long story short, pulled into a spot and started seeing dimples all over the surface ahead of boat, didn’t take long in clear water to start seeing what those dimples were, crappies. Crappies everywhere, under the surface, halfway in column, dang near jumping out the water at times, lots of rolling, you know those schools you see spook once in awhile, well one school here would make a boil 15′ long that appeared to have a 100 fish in it, and there were countless of those schools all around us.

Took awhile to figure out what they wanted, way longer than I had anticipated and was getting really anxious we weren’t going to cash in on the opportunity but finally dialed it in. Epic doesn’t seem to cut it.

Bought a brand new panfish rod to try out. Put on an existing ice reel, and some new 2# fireline, super stoked to try it out before we got to lake. Wife stole it right away and I didn’t catch one fish on it

Left us hanging there…What was the magic bait?

Unsure of the weight bc still new to panfish lures but very small orange head, orange red hair flu flu under a bobber, pop pop pop pause. I had on a 1/16oz? orange head and white under body with chart double flicker twister tail. Some of the flys had white bellies, maybe the double tiny tail mimicked the wings spanning out?

Flu flu definitely had the edge, they would blow up the lure when hit upon entry, I caught my fair share but she couldn’t keep em off her line if she tried.

Front deck looked like a war zone when I cleaned up later, chunks of crawler here, waxies there, dozens of jigs spewed about, plastics and parts of plastics sprinkled among em.

That’s awesome!

Did you actually see any of the bugs? Wonder what they were.

A lot of times the dimples you see can be minnows eating Midges, and the crappies are chasing the Minnows. And Mr. B is chasing the Crappies. The circle of life.

SR

We were anchored up on a shallow spot for few hours prior for kids to swim and us to grill on the boat. What I sure thought were mayflies, were everywhere, quite annoying.

Once we left that spot to go fishing it was strange bc in our area we found them there were no bugs, very strange. I thought perhaps they were literally getting eaten by the massive school of fish around us but that’s a good question and theory from you bc I’ve been trying to think that thru last night and today on just the “why” they were there.

Back in the early 70s we had something like you described happen. It’s the only time I’ve seen it. It was dead calm and the crappies were swimming just under the surface with the top of there mouths out of the water skimming something off the surface. A bobber rig with a hook and worm was all it took. Every cast. When the school spooked give it 5-10 minutes and it reformed 40-50 feet away.

Bug hatches make for some incredible fishing. We call it “Popcorn” I will go down to the dock about 1/2 hr or so before dark and suddenly all you hear is the sound of popcorn popping and swirls everywhere. I run into my garage and grab my 5 wt flyrod and popper and catch big gills and crappies until the mosquitoes eat me alive… No time to find the repellant lol….Looking forward to it in the next couple weeks

It can get interesting to figure out. The are literally hundreds of different types of Mayflies in Minnesota. Not all of them live in lakes, and not all of them live everywhere in the state. Then you add in the dozens of Caddisflies, Stoneflies, Craneflies, Midges, Damselflies, and Dragonflies. Thankfully Crappie and Sunfish don’t seem to get as selective as Rainbow Trout so it isn’t necessary to “match the hatch” with great precision. The bugs have a larval form, the nymph, which can live for a year or two. The actual adult flies only live for a day or so. Most fish are much more interested in the nymphs because they’re easier to catch and more common. So Mr. Bead’s Flu-flu jig under a bobber must have looked enough like the nymph and he fooled a ton of Crappies.

The only time I’ve seen actual selectivity was with a bunch of Bluegills up near Aitkin. I was throwing a Pheasant Tail Nymph, a standard fly used for Trout all over the world. It does a great job of simulating smaller Mayfly nymphs. They’d swim right up to it and then just stop. This had me scratching my head for a while, and then I remembered seeing the “shucks” or exoskeletons of Damselfy nymphs on the dock. I tied on a bigger olive colored nymph with big buggy eyes and it was game on after that.

SR