For all of you lake bug experts, I am looking for some help. There is always talk about the bug hatch, and I have endured the BS with the may flies. I need to better understand these hatches, where they happen on Mille Lacs, and how to locate them. I assume that none of the hatches come out of the rocks. But do they come out of the sand and mud? Or one of them only? What is the best way to find them?
Basically, the bugs hatch in the water itself. The best way to find oit if you're on a hatch is to take a look at your sonar. If you see a mass that's fuzzy, you're on a hatch point. Start looking outside the hatch point for minnows and anything that might be following the bait. Set up where you see fish outside that circle, cuz they're usually hungry...........
You are right in the simplest form of the way the bugs live. Tom S. was close as mayflies are one of the primary insects large sets of "bug hatches".
While at Tom's website, I eliminated mayflies from the address and typed in lake flies. A little bit of reading brought me to the Research Center from the U of MN and a great identification screen regarding aquatic insects at the website below:
I can't tell you how many different species of mayfly come off and I know that there are probably more than one specie of lake flies (Chironomids or midges) that come off the Big Pond in a single year!!!
The cloud that tatman was talking about is in fact the bug larvae (maybe even pupa) leaving the bottom substrate on the way to the surface to hatch, be adults for a short period of time and then lay eggs back in the water to continue the process. Once the eggs hatch, some type of nymphal form goes back to the mud or whatever habitat is necessary to start the process of life over again living its life in that substrate until it is time to swim to the surface and hatch again.
There are actually times in the winter that these lake fly larvae leave the bottom and swim through the water either looking for food or to become food. In-Fisherman talked about this during an icefishing article on crappies in the winter and how the Vex will start to show from the bottom a lot of green marks when the chironomids start to feed after dark and crappies feed on them.
So there is much I don't know about these critters as well.
