Nature provides for its own, and every year the warm days of June result in willow fly hatches at Kentucky and Barkley Lakes. The small insects are known by several names, including mayflies and dayflies, but to the fish populations of the Twin Lakes, they spell just one thing: food.
Willow flies are common on local waters from May through October, but they swarm in earnest during the warm nights of June and July.
“I saw the first hatch of mayflies, or willow flies as they are called in the South, last weekend in the Paris Landing area,” reports Kentucky Lake fishing guide Steve McCadams (www.stevemccadams.com). “Anglers can expect more hatches to occur in the weeks ahead, and this biological mystery often appears overnight, especially in the aftermath of a thunderstorm, and this natural buffet is appealing to all species of fish.”
Willow flies are easily recognized by their long slender bodies with triangular wings held in a straight line above their back, and they appear in dense swarms that blanket shoreline structure.
The small insects live in the water for as much as two years during the early stages of their lives before they emerge to molt into fully charged adults with only one mission: reproduction of the species.
As they emerge from the water, willow flies swarm into trees and bridges along the shoreline where they hang like dark curtains. Fish congregate below the hatch and wait for the insects to drop back into the water, where they are snatched up as soon as the land.
Bream, crappie, bass, stripe, catfish and almost every predator fish in the lakes can be caught below a willow fly hatch. Little fish eat the insects, bigger fish eat the little fish, and anglers catch the bigger fish. It is a classic food chain reaction.
For sheer angling excitement, nothing beats fishing with a fly rod and a popping bug or a dry fly. Cast your bug or fly under a willow fly hatch, and you are almost assured of catching a fish with every cast.
If you want to speed up the action, throw a stick or a rock into the insects hanging on the tree limbs to knock some of them into the water. When they hit the water, it will often boil with fish gobbling them up.
It is best to fish a willow fly hatch early in the morning, because the insects will begin to dry out as the sun rises, and they fly away in a mating ritual that will leave them dead within hours.
In some areas, willow flies swarm by the millions, and they become so thick that they pile up on bridges and roadways several inches deep, sometimes requiring road crews to remove them with snowplows and shovels.
Without willow flies, there would be less wildlife life in and around our waters. They are an important food source not only for fish, but also for birds, amphibians and other shoreline creatures.
Willow flies also provide great fishing action, and now is the time to take advantage of it.