I am going on a trip to EP 62 Clearwater Lake in early June and I keep hearing that this is a great time of year to go fishing, which is why we picked those dates. However, I have heard of a nightmare called the mayfly hatch and I am wondering how concerned I should be about this. What are our chances of this being a problem for us if we are going to be there from June 8-11? How long does the hatch last and how long does it affect the fishing? If we were there during the hatch, can we still catch fish?

Thanks for any information you guys might have!

When they hatch, it is usually HUGE, and the fish(SMB, Walleye, Perch, sunfish) will gravitate there. Easy pickings! We troll around looking for black bottom bays, with small hot-n-tots(6,7 to 14ft) and a graph. That's where they emerge from the muck. 3inch black curly tails on a1/8ounce jig will get them. The problem is that it essentially kills the topwater bite because they are slurping them from the bottom, end of classic SMB-topwater bite! You can't tell the fish what to hit, you have to go to them. The fish are feeding heavy. You can eliminate some of the perch and bluegill bites by dropping a big 5inch white grub down, and hopefully only the larger predators will attack.

I was just South of EP62 last year the third week of June. I knew something was up when I trolled across the entry point lake without a single bite. We hit a massive hatch. The smaller shallow lakes were covered with mayflies the whole week. Larger lakes such as Brule were fine. I'm sure you'll get a bunch of answers that it all depends on weather and lake type. We are going the same time as you this year to better our odds of missing the hatch. It was a tough bite, the fish were gorged. Live bait may have helped, we had limited success with gulp helgramites on a small jig.


The topwater/crank bait bite was nonexistent on the hatch lakes.

quote bassnet: "When they hatch, it is usually HUGE, and the fish(SMB, Walleye, Perch, sunfish) will gravitate there. Easy pickings! We troll around looking for black bottom bays, with small hot-n-tots(6,7 to 14ft) and a graph. That's where they emerge from the muck. 3inch black curly tails on a1/8ounce jig will get them. The problem is that it essentially kills the topwater bite because they are slurping them from the bottom, end of classic SMB-topwater bite! You can't tell the fish what to hit, you have to go to them. The fish are feeding heavy. You can eliminate some of the perch and bluegill bites by dropping a big 5inch white grub down, and hopefully only the larger predators will attack."

I agree with everything you said here. I would like to add though that whenever I see a smallie rise to a surface mayfly I will cast in that vicinity with a floating rap and let it sit, sometimes as long as 2 or 3 minutes and it draws some voracious strikes. if I twitch it right away it almost never gets touched. I don't know why but it has worked for me many times in this scenario.

I have thrown small Pop-Rs right where I have seen a smallmouth slurp a mayfly off the surface during the hatch and had some action.