Hey, Keith here.
Late July might be one of the toughest months to catch big bass, but there's one natural midsummer event that takes the guesswork out of finding fish:
The mayfly hatch.
These bugs don't just turn the fish on, they tell you exactly where the bite will be.
Wherever mayflies pile up along the shoreline, the bream and bass won't be far behind.
In the dog days, you need every advantage you can get. The hatch might be the biggest one nature offers a bank angler.
Today, I break down exactly what the mayfly hatch is and how to fish it.
BEST LINKS
What I looked at this week
Don’t be this angler! Learn proper fishing etiquette! (Anglers)
How to catch bass on summer mayfly hatches (Wired2Fish)
How to fish a mayfly hatch for bass (Field & Stream)
Why and how to fish the mayfly hatch (Mossy Oak)
How to fish during a mayfly hatch (MONSTERBASS)
Deals of the week
Bass Pro Shops took 54% off a 15-pack of Hellgramites—regularly $6.49, marked down to $2.98.
Walmart has a 10-pack of Yamamoto Hula Grubs for $6.00 marked down from $9.44.
Sportsman’s Warehouse has a Quantum Throttle baitcasting reel on clearance for $24.77 down from $79.99.
DEEP DIVE
Understanding the mayfly hatch
Before we begin, I want to clear something up: Mayflies mostly don't hatch in May.
In much of the country, the biggest hatches fire off in late June and July, and some areas see them roll into August and September.
Mayflies spend almost their entire lives underwater as nymphs, crawling along the bottom.
When the water warms into the low 70s, they swim to the surface, emerge as winged adults, and fly straight to the nearest overhanging trees and bushes.
Some sections of the country see big hatches where the branches literally sag under the weight of all the bugs.
What's wildest is that adult mayflies don't even have mouths. They don't live long enough to need one.
Within a day or two, they mate, drop their eggs, and fall dead onto the water.
That's when the pond turns into a buffet line.
The bugs fall out of the bushes. The bream swarm in to slurp them off the surface. And the big bass show up to eat the bream.
The hatch concentrates hundreds of bluegill into a short stretch of shoreline, feeding so recklessly they forget to watch their backs.
For a big bass that wants one large meal instead of ten small ones, a distracted bluegill becomes easy prey.
Best of all for us bank anglers, the whole event happens in shallow water, right along the bank.
Hatches repeat in the same spots year after year because this year's bugs come from eggs laid in last year's hatch.
Find one good mayfly bank and you've found it for life.
I took this photo near the river I fish. What looks like moss hanging from the limbs is thousands of mayflies stacked on top of each other.
How I fish the mayfly hatch
Fishing a hatch isn't complicated, but it does play out differently than a normal summer trip. Here's the routine I follow anytime the bugs are on the bushes.
Find the bugs first. Don't start casting until you've located the hatch. Walk the bank and look for bugs coating bushes, dock posts, and spider webs, husks floating on the surface, or bream popping the top like rain. If the bushes are bare, keep walking.
Fish the low light. Mayflies are most active at dawn and dusk, and that's when the surface commotion peaks. If you only have an hour, make it the first or last hour of daylight.
Ring the dinner bell. This is the best trick in the book. During the slow midday stretch, cast your lure up into a bug-covered bush and shake the limb. Knock a fresh wave of mayflies onto the water and the bream fire up within seconds, with the bass right behind them. You can restart the frenzy on demand.
Rest and rotate. These feeding windows burn hot and fast. When a stretch goes quiet, walk to the next bug-covered bank and circle back in an hour. Fresh bass are constantly finding the hatch, so a rested spot often reloads.
Don't let the word "fly" fool you. Big mayflies like this one are large enough for bass to pick off the surface on their own.
The lures that match the hatch
A popper: The classic mayfly bait, a Rebel Pop-R or Berkley Bullet Pop twitched and paused near the bushes perfectly imitates a bluegill sipping bugs off the top. One touring pro paints all of his poppers flat black because a dark blob is exactly what a wad of struggling mayflies looks like from below.
A popping frog: My pick when the cover gets nasty. Something like the SPRO Bronzeye Poppin' Frog does the same popping work but comes through limbs and grass weedless, and those two big hooks land a much higher percentage of fish than treble hooks when you're wrenching bass away from a bush. It also doubles as your limb-shaking tool.
A bluegill-colored swim jig: Not every bass is looking up. A 3.8-ounce Rage Menace swim jig, paired with a matching swimbait or craw trailer, imitates the bream themselves. Swim it right off the bank and past the bushes.
A slow worm for stuffed fish: Bass gorge during a hatch, and a fish with a full belly will sometimes ignore topwater completely. A small 5-inch Power Worm or Shaky Head crawled along the bottom under the swarm is an easy meal even a stuffed bass won't pass up.
My SPRO Bronzeye Poppin' Frog in bluegill colors
