Holy Mayflies and Silver Flying Saucers

[Dutch552]

Launched at KY Dam Marina at 5:00 planning to cover some water and look for some new areas on the LBL side while the wind was being cooperative. I had a difficult time trolling cranks because my trebles kept getting fouled from what I initially thought was a vegetation die off upstream. On closer inspection, it is the remnants of a MASSIVE mayfly hatch yesterday. Millions upon millions of dead mayflies floating on the water's surface that were making their way down my mono and caused just enough of a weight imbalance to make the cranks run erratically and tangle. I can't remember seeing so many dead mayflies since I was a kid.

Another troubling observation from this morning is the number of carp I observed on the surface feeding. You could pretty much walk from barge island to big bear and never get your knees wet from the schools of silver any bighead carp. I know that us resident anglers complain on the regular about their displacement of gamefish and the unimaginable numbers that we are encountering but today took the cake for me. My eight trolling lines would incite a silver flying saucer every 4-5 minutes and I never lost sight of carp swimming/finning at the surface for a couple of hours. If the KDFWR trawl net and boat was available today we could have boated several metric tons of fish where I was cruising. Around 9:00 I got the living crap scared out of me when I mowed through a school of carp on the main river channel and disturbed Nessie herself as a carp that would easily weigh 60lbs launched itself completely out to the water in the main river channel like a bottlenose dolphin. Unbelievable that a fish with that much mass could launch itself completely out of the water like it's smaller brethren. Of note, I caught not a single fish in the stretch of water with the giant carp schools-couldn't buy a bite.

I got tired of reeling in my lines every five minutes to remove mayfly carcasses and having my head on a swivel for carp coming at me so I relocated where the wind had displaced the floating debris. Called it a day at 11:00 with 15 keepers, a decent white bass and two 18" blue cats. Be safe out there my friends.