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The female fish fly lays an average of 4,000 eggs on the surface of the water.

If you live near a lake or river in Windsor-Essex County, chances are you’re battling fish flies. Interesting to read in The Windsor Star how people are coping with them: some are power-washing them off their buildings — even filling three wheelbarrows full! — while others are just leaving the flies sit where they land until fish fly season ends.

So far, I’ve only had a dozen or so fish flies stick to my lakefront house in Leamington, most of them on the roadside of the house, where there is a lantern on my front lawn (fish flies are attracted by lights). Inside the house, I’ve been careful to keep the lights off, even watching a bit of TV in the dark!

According to University of Windsor biology graduate student Ellen Green, we are only into Week 1 of a three-week fish fly mating season. If you see big blobs of brownish stuff on the surface of the water near shorelines, that’s probably fish fly eggs: after mating, the females head to the water to lay about 4,000 eggs each! The eggs then sink to the bottom, where they hatch. The first evolution of the newly hatched fish fly will camp out in the sediment for up to two years before beginning its journey to the surface and out of the water for the in-air mating dance.

As a newcomer to Leamington, I had been warned by locals that these shad fly-like creatures stink like dead fish when you power-wash them off the house.  When I confirmed this fact with a nearby neighbour, he told me there’s a way around that: don’t power wash!

How to keep your house free of fish flies then? Here’s Don’s no-stench solution: blow them off with a leaf blower!

Since I don’t own a leaf blower (and can’t stand the gazillion-decibel racket they make), I think I will join Riverside Drive businessman Eduard Meyer and just leave the fish flies where they land. The poor things only live about three days anyway. After that, they’ll dry out under the beating sun, turn to dust and blow away … until next season!

When I woke up and the gazillions of Sturgeon Creek flies (those brain-challenged flies that look like mosquitoes on steroids) that had been clinging to the road side of my new house for three days were almost gone, I thought maybe the neighbours were exaggerating about this two-week fly horror.

Well, they were right.  It was when I opened the curtains to the sliding doors on the lakeside of my little rancher that I realized — they’re baaaaaack!!  There were so many of them that I could barely see out the windows. Even the deck and the picnic table on it were covered in flies!

Welcome to lakeside living, said my new hairdresser, Brad, the owner of Salon 22 in Kingsville. From my description, though, it seems there are more flies at my house in Leamington than down the road in Kingsville. Of course, everyone in the salon was only too eager to regale this newcomer to Lake Erie living with tales of worse to come. They said gigantic fish flies (some call them June bugs) will arrive any time now — and could blanket my house for up to 4 weeks!  Bonus: they stink like dead fish!

For someone who likes a clean house, lakeside living is becoming an eye-opener.  I thought the spiders and their web-building games were a nuisance.  But at least I could sweep the webs away with a scoping broom (I have since been informed I should call Butch to spray for spiders twice a year). With the Sturgeon Creek flies, I have determined that a power washer is the only thing to get their dead carcasses — and green poop — off my light blue siding and white window sills.

I might need extra tools in my cleaning arsenal, but I figure it’s all worth it to live by the lake.  After all, that’s why I moved to Leamington.  So bring on the fish flies — I’m armed and ready!

If anyone knows any tricks to keep all those flies away, please let me know.