This past fall I noticed a lot of surface strikes by smaller LMB. Lots of them. I started looking hard at the surface to see what was floating and saw a bug come out of the water and fly away. Then another with a bass right behind that almost picked it off 6 inches out of the water. One of the bugs flew around a few laps and landed back in the water. Finally, one came out and I tracked it as it flew around and landed right on the water's edge. It was, I am pretty sure, a Backswimmer. Fascinated I watched for another half an hour where many seemed to get eaten right as they left the water and others made it.
jim

It's pretty fun what you can observe by just sitting and watching.

Shades of Yogi Berra!

I had a couple of midge hatches that I happened upon at my place last Fall,, with flyrod nearby I thought this would be the fish in a barrel deal but I was wrong, they wanted nothing to do with the foam spider I was throwing.. wasn't matching the hatch very well I guess.

Not sure about the match the hatch idea. At one time when I was trying out fly rods, 4 pound test leaders, etc I made some flies that looked just like pond denizens of various types. About 1/3 of them worked in my pond.

OTOH, I found that brown Stubby Steves were deadly on everything.

plus 1 on SS.