By RAY WYCHE
Staff Writer

A warmer than usual early spring and a colder than usual mid-spring might have thrown them off schedule a bit, but mayflies are now swarming at Lake Waccamaw – a sign that the lake’s water is in good condition.

The first of this year’s hatch, in numbers beyond counting, blew ashore around the first of the month, shortly after reaching the adult stages of their one-daylong lives.

A large hatch of mayflies indicates the water quality is good; mayflies require clean water on which they lay their eggs that will hatch into larvae that spend a year on the bottom of the lake. The larvae sprout wings and ride to the lake’s surface on a bubble of air and float on the surface until the sun dries their wings (if they don’t become fish food first) and the slightest breeze carries them ashore, where they will breed and then die.

The vast swarms of the insects blown ashore cover everything – trees, houses, cars, people – and cause alarm among the uninformed. But the insects are harmless, having no defensive or digestive systems, and they provide a feast for a short period for top-feeding fish and turtles.

The annual swarm normally begins around the middle of April, but warm weather earlier in the spring may have sped up the hatch. And cold weather that followed may have slowed down the hatching process.

Johnny McNeill, longtime lake resident and observer of nature, says this year’s hatch may be a little earlier than normal.

“The warm water triggers the hatch,” McNeill said. ‘There’d be more by now if it had been warmer.”

The cool weather that hit the area on Easter weekend may have put a temporary halt to mayfly hatching but the return of warmer weather brought hordes of the gossamer winged insects to shore.