Calm humid nights preceding warm windless mornings in mid-June cultivate the greatest aquatic food chain reaction feeding phenomenon of the year – the mayfly hatch. I don’t know about you, but my boat continues to reap the rewards and take advantage of what this forage overabundance brings to our northwoods smallmouth fisheries. Occurring every mid to late June under varying degrees, the hatch has turned into a peak period if your game is pursuing smallmouths with flies, surface baits, hair jigs or finesse swimming plastics. During our most recent hatch in June 2023, I had the pleasure of introducing a good family friend, Tom, to smallmouth fishing. We arrived to the lake that morning at 6am, only to find a lot full of bass rigs. Unbeknownst to me, there was a derby on this water that day but it would be a non-issue as nearly all of them were bank-beating for post-spawners. As soon as we idled out towards our first spot of the morning, mayfly carcasses were everywhere. The hatch occurred overnight. Where concentrations were thickest, the lake’s calm surface was littered with millions of fly carcasses. Calm as glass, the flotillas of fly carcasses wer