You Put a Hex on Me

Hexegenia limbata. It might be the most well known Latin name for a bug among those that tempt trout with the fly in the Eastern United States. That's in part because, like some other species, it doesn't really have a wide spread name. There's "giant Michigan mayfly", and the hatches on Michigan's famous trout streams, which were tailor made for this silt and mud loving insect, are legendary. But they occur in far more places than Michigan. So most call these bugs Hexegenia, or just Hex for short.
Also owing to their fame is the gigantic size of these mayflies. When bunches of Hex duns drift on the surface, even fish of epic proportion take notice. Very few other hatches can draw even mostly piscivorous fish's attention like the hex, not in this part of the world. And though their fame lies in the places where both trout and Hexegenia habitat overlap, these bugs draw fish of all sorts to the surface, and most Hex habitat isn't trout habitat. These are after all a slow water, muddy bottom mayfly, and throughout much of their range that means they're in water too warm to hold trout year round. Id encountered Hexegenia in CT a handful of times over the years, and mostly it was a good hatch to catch smallmouth during. Then, one night in late July I stumbled upon an extremely heavy hex hatch in mixed-species water, bringing basically every fish to the surface. I had nothing remotely appropriate that first night and got totally skunked. But I became obsessed with this particular hatch and ended up fishing it night after night, into the first week of August. For about an hour and a half to two hours after sunset each evening the river literally boiled with fish feeding on giant mayflies. Bluegill, rock bass, white perch, yellow perch, largemouth and smallmouth bass, channel catfish, common carp, bullheads, walleye... everyone had joined the party. The sound was like no other... I've heard vastly more loud feeding frenzies, but never anything this loud and sustained and on an insect emergence. Unfortunately it was also such a blanket hatch that it was tricky fishing. It wasn't easy to target fish because they were cruising at random. There were so many bugs that it was also genuinely impossible at times to tell which was my fly. And of course the fish had a lot of targets to choose from. When I did catch fish, it was mostly white perch. This is something I wont complain about, catching white perch on dry flies is not a normal occurrence, and some of these were frankly huge.

On the third night I hit the hatch, I hooked a very large channel catfsh. It ate almost at my feet, and in the dim glow of the street I could see the whole fish. It may have been as big as 15lbs. And it was up and gulping these bugs. My heart was about beating out of my chest when I set the hook and it tore off. This was not a 5wt appropriate fish. When the line went slack and my fly came back with the hook point broken off, I almost cried. Unfortunately that was the only very large and unusual fish I got a chance at during this hatch, though I also had a near 30lb carp swim up and gulp a cluster of Hex right in front of me, and saw a giant walleye one night do the same.

Towards the end of the hatch, when it was actually a mix of duns and spinners, I figured out that fishing from the opposite bank I had been was wildly more effective. This may seem strange, it turned out having that one streetlight in front of me rather than behind me let me actually see my fly, and I now also had a better angle to the current and could feel when fish ate the fly submerged. Unfortunately I then only had one more night of heavy feeding on the giant mayflies. But that was at least good for the only bass and by far the largest white perch. And too me that was satisfaction enough. I do want to catch some of the more wild fish that I saw taking advantage during this hatch next year, but just being there each night to see one of the biggest combined fish and insect biomasses I'd ever been witness to was memorable.

There really is nothing quite like the Hex. Those giant ephemeral bugs, so large yet so weightless in my hand, drying and flapping their hands all over the surface of that river... with the pops, boils and splashes of hundreds upon hundreds of fish ringing through the night air. What a remarkable natural event.
Until next time,
Fish for the love of fish.
Fish for the love of places fish live.
Fish for you.
And stay safe and healthy.

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