Large Mayfly Hatch on Satellite

Wow....that's more than we get.
We've had mayflies hatching for about 6 weeks now on Lake St. Clair and I figure we have at least 4 species at this point.....including Hexagenia limbata.
A month ago, the lawn was brown when I cut it. Not from lack of water but from the blanketing of mayflies.
Lou
 
that formed what seemed like brown clouds over the river but never something of such magnitude that it would appear on radar like a bad thunderstorm. The bio-mass involved in that, both terrestrial and aquatic, is simply stunning. Even with the greatly reduced water quality of our Rivers imagine the fecundity of a system that can produce that volume......

I'd love to see it just once.....

Steve
 
Don't y'all call them "fish flys" up there?
I remember staying on my sisters boat a few years back and they thick. Deb hates them, they get all over her boat!
The good thing is that means you have decent water quality.
 
Don't y'all call them "fish flys" up there?
I remember staying on my sisters boat a few years back and they thick. Deb hates them, they get all over her boat!
The good thing is that means you have decent water quality.
Click to expand...

Actually, I'm a fly fisherman and to me.....they're mayflies. To the rest of the area around here.....they're *&$%^%$%%$$%^^##@@# FISH FLIES. :) As you said, the good news is.........we have a very healthy lake system.
Lou
 
Ha Ha . . . Good point Lou! When you're fly fishing they're mayflies--and you can't wait for the hatch. When you're fishing for walleyes crawlers or leeches they're *&$%^%$%%$$%^^##@@# FISH FLIES--and you can't seem to avoid them.

Steve--the fecundity of the River is incredible, especially when you consider that only 1 in 1,000 survive to the adult stage.

Rick
 
I remember the snow plow years when the main channel bridge in LaCrosse had to be plowed and sanded. Seems like from the late 70s thru the early 90s we had poor hatches here. The river is definately cleaner now. I remember some where in the late 60s a friend and I pushpoled my 12' flat thru the arrowhead from the "steamboat" channel out into Lake Onalaska. They had hatched the night before and were drying on the arrowhead, you should have seen us, we were completely covered with em. All I can remember is that we caught some monster Mooneyes (shad) on mayfly flies that day.
George
 
Rick:
As the head life guard at Pettibone Beach in the late 40's when they plowed the mayflies off the bridge a back eddy filled our swimming area. We had to scoop them into our life boat and dump them out in the down current of the river. What a stinky mess. If my memories serve me right they switched the lights on the bridge and slowed the process down/
wis box
 
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