There’s no better time for walleye than right now. Why? Because the mayflies are hatching

A adult hexagenia limbata mayfly (photo: James St. John/Flickr)

It’s that time of year again, when the giant hexagenia limbata mayfly hatch occurs and here in our Northwestern Ontario neck of the woods, and the first sailboat-like flies are just starting to lift off the lakes. A bit further south, they’re swarming everywhere, while to the north of us, the peak hatch is still a week or so away.

It is a strange time on the walleye calendar, too, because if you know how to take advantage of the high-protein bug bars—there can be up to 120 worm-like larva spread across every metre/yard of lake bottom—the walleye fishing can be outrageous. But if you don’t recognize what’s happening, it can be frustrating.

We were out the other day implementing our one-two punch mayfly technique, and found that the walleyes were scattered across the large 15 to 20 foot mud flats that we were fishing, so trolling Slow-Death was definitely the ticket. We did find a few nice concentrations to sit over and pluck apart, too, with mushroom head jigs and Crush City Ned BLTs, but the trolling bite was faster and definitely produced bigger fish.

In the days to come, that will change with the bunched up corner boys taking full stage, and our tactics will change accordingly. I should mention, too, that we discussed this fascinating mayfly/walleye relationship on our recent Doc Talks Fishing podcast with good friend and former OMNR colleague, biologist Bev Richie. Bev explained that we typically enjoy the heaviest hatches in even-numbered years like this year (2024) because the life cycle of the limbata strain is spread over two seasons. Bev also highlighted that the bulbous larvae laying in the bottom are so plentiful and so nutritious that absolutely every fish species plucks them up and eats them. Even memorable-size muskies and northern pike. 

You can listen to Bev explain what is going on by clicking HERE and you watch how we took advantage of her magnificent mayfly information and put it into our on the water game plan the other day by watching the following video.