When it comes to bream fishing, mayflies are the real “lord of the flies”

When mayflies start swarming just above the water, it’s time to break out your bream-fishing gear and get ready for action.

During the heat of summer, a lot of the best fishing goes deep, meaning deep water — or at least open water well away from the shoreline. One exception is bream fishing — meaning bluegills, redear sunfish or any other fish that loves to eat bugs — particularly during a mayfly hatch.

Mayflies are an aquatic insect belonging to the family of insects that includes dragonflies and damselflies. More than 3,000 species of mayflies are found worldwide, but they all share a common characteristic: they spend most of their sub-adult life underwater. 

When mayflies “hatch,” they transform from their aquatic nymph stage to their brief adult stage as a winged, terrestrial insect. This occurs anytime from spring until fall, depending on the subspecies.

A clue to their importance to anglers? In Canada, mayflies are referred to as “fish-flies” or “shad-flies.” The insects swarm in large numbers after emerging from the water and will molt one time before becoming full adults, reproducing and then dying. Swarming typically occurs at dawn or dusk on nearly any structure adjacent to the water.

While swarming in this soft-shell phase, large numbers of mayflies are preyed upon by other animals, particularly fish, if the insects are unlucky enough to fall into the water.

While freshwater trout, panfish and even crappie are fond of eating larval mayflies, when the creatures hit the warm, shallow waters during the summer, it can be a bream fisherman’s dream come true.

The best part is that mayflies will hatch several times throughout the summer.

Kent Driscoll, a pro-staff member for Mississippi-based B’n’M Poles, said he witnesses just such an occurrence nearly every summer.

“They mostly hatch in clear-water lakes, and when they do, they just swarm all over everything,” said Driscoll. “They particularly seem to like hardwood trees, and if I find a hatch occurring, I’m certainly going to head to the banks with a bream pole.”

Driscoll uses one of B’n’M’s new 6½-foot, split-handle, panfish/trout rods, the “TCB rod,” which is designed to be used with lures as light as 1/64-ounce on 2-pound-test line. The rod offers the deceptive presentation of a fly rod and the mechanics of a spinning outfit.

Driscoll said it’s hard to predict when and where mayfly hatches will occur, but the best fishing spots seem to be under hardwood limbs with heavy leaf cover in a shady area that overhangs deeper water. He said under these conditions, fish, most typically bluegills, will rush the surface and feed like piranhas.

“You can start the action. If you see the insects on a limb and just reach over and shake it a little, that draws the fish in,” he said. “Then you’ll have some fast fishing until the action peters out. Then, you just move down the bank or to the next spot and start all over.”

Obviously, not every location is going to hold only bluegills big enough to fillet; anglers should expect to wade through their share of shorts while sorting out the better bream if the goal is taking some home for the table.

One of the best methods to target larger sunfish in a mayfly hatch is to look for areas with deeper water and/or cover like docks or heavy vegetation that will provide the bigger specimens with some security. 

Driscoll said you can usually tell the size of the hatch once you hit the water. A widespread hatch may not occur all across a lake; in fact, a smaller hatch may involve just a mile or two of shoreline. In any event, he suggests taking some time and looking at your topo map or chart plotter; see if you can pinpoint deeper locations or steeper banks on the lake where the hatch is occurring. 

Driscoll’s top baits are small, match-the-hatch style jigs. He prefers 1-inch Trout Magnet jigs or a small Popeye jig. He said the best colors are black, dark brown or “earthy” tones that resemble the insects. He usually just lobs the tiny, 1/64-ounce  jigs under the cover. The bait is typically eaten as soon as it hits the water or as it is falling. In some cases, he may add a small cork above the jig to add weight as well as suspend the bait in the water.

“If you use a cork, set it for about 3 feet to try to get down below the smaller fish but still keep it well off the bottom. These fish are feeding up, so you need to stay above them,” he said.

Finally, Driscoll said another way to take advantage of mayflies is to take a kid with you.

“As experienced fishermen, we’ve all seen this kind of fast action before,” he said, “but to a young angler, this is probably something they’ve never experienced, and it really adds to their excitement to see fish breaking all over the surface and catch a fish on every cast.”

Trout Magnet works great on bream, too

A spinning rod, line, float and lure system designed by Arkansas-based Leland Lures works wonders for catching cold-water trout. The same system that works magic on trout is also a killer on bream; it catches both bluegill and redears as well as any other insect-eating panfish.

Jeff Smith, Trout Magnet’s owner, designed the system and explained how it works.

“It starts with our TCB rod, which stands for Trout, Crappie and Bluegill,” Smith said. “It’s a longer rod with a very fast tip. You need that tip to cast these small 1/64-ounce lures.”

Smith said rather than using the typical 4- or 6-pound monofilament that most anglers associate with spinning gear, Trout Magnet markets 2-pound line called SOS fishing line — Strong, Obscure, Small.

“Our SOS line is a very smooth, copolymer line made for light-line fishing,” Smith said. “It is extremely abrasion-resistant, has great knot strength and is much stronger than other lines at the same diameter.” 

He said the line’s the shade of green makes it difficult for fish to see underwater, and that 2-pound line also casts further with just the weight of the lure and float.

The last piece of the system is the Trout Magnet jighead and meal-worm plastic body.

 “One of the things we were looking for when we designed this lure was we wanted something that falls horizontally in the water instead of falling headfirst, like all other jigs,” said Smith. “That was the idea behind the unusual head shape.”

Pairing the 1/64-ounce heads with split-tail, 1¼-inch bodies makes for a great imitation of an aquatic insect floating in the water. Smith said it’s important to hook the bait right in front of the split in the tail so that it all lays out naturally without any twist, allowing the bait to appear more natural than a bait spiraling down through the water.

“This whole system was designed for catching trout in moving-water streams,” said crappie pro Kent Driscoll. “It’s just as deadly on bream, bluegill, redear, anything that eats aquatic insects is going to suck this thing in as soon as it sees it.”

Get more info on the Trout Magnet fishing system at www.troutmagnet.com.