Holy Mayflies and Silver Flying Saucers

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.

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Should you run into another hatch, tie a slip bober line a few feet in front of your crank bait. The mayflies will slide down th line, hit the knot and stop.


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It was a big hatch for sure.

Congrats!! 15 keepers was a great day. As of late for me the green carp have worn us out. Big fish for the week was 7 pounds with several over 5 pounds. The crappie were tough for me all week.

It is entertaining to see the line to a crank hit a silver carp. We saw several this week that looked 30 inches long jump more than a couple of feet high in a rainbow arch. Might as well get some entertainment value out of them since it looks like they will be the only show in town in a very few short years.

Dutch552, and MR. Dutch, I get excited when I find or hear about the mayfly hatch, usually, the bluegill are on them, but looks like on KY lake, it's the carp. Glad you could get away from the carp and find a place to catch some Fish. MR, It's sad, but I think your projection of 'only show in town' for the future of Barkley and KY lakes will come true. I guess you will need to come up with a way to get these carp to attack a crank bait. From my years of carp fishing versus green carp fishing, the common carp fights 2X harder than the green carp. Man, you could have an exclusive guide service for the Silver Carp capital fishery of the south(Ky/Barkley Lakes) if you can get them to hit a crank bait or some other bait. Sad, but if DNR can eradicate Shad from a lake without killing the other fish, you'd think we have some smart people who could come up with a way to eradicate these carp. Will not be good in the next few years. Looks like the lakes will soon be 90% carp(by weight) in the near future.

Congrats on finally getting on some fish. I'm with you on the carp issue.

Adam, the bulk of what you were seeing floating was actually the casings that the adult mayflies shed when they come up off the bottom. I've seen common carp swim on top sucking the casings and dead willow flies off the surface.

@$#& mayflies will flat out ruin a whitebass bite!! They sit on bottom waiting for the little buggers to come out of the bottom of the lake. Won't hit a lure hardly at all. Had a asian carp scare by my trolling motor and jumped into the bottom of my pontoon underneath...heck of a noise!! Floated out the back dead or alive...hopefully dead.

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