I agree about the dawn soap. I think it has to be original, not foam or power scrubber. I have not added it to the pool yet, but we had a problem on top of the winter cover. Literally a few drops of dish soap and the giant water bugs and boatmen/back swimmers were dead within a minute. Something about it starving the oxygen out of the water is why it works....
Shocking my pool did. Oohing for these guys last summer. I dumped straight bleach on the water bugs, nothing. Got angry, bought lithium shock and dumped it directly on them...nothing. We had borates in our pool and algaecide, never let fc drop below ideal levels and never had cc over .5. We still had bugs. So maybe there is resistant algae that they are eating.
I find if I keep the pool covered and only open immediately before swimming, we don't get the bugs.
We already had the giant water bugs this year and the water is only 45 degrees, holding fc for days on end with no cc. They were in the skimmer basket so I was able to get rid of them by emptying the basket in the field behind our pool...didn't have the dawn on hand and was too grossed out to run in and get it. They haven't been back yet.
Like I said, I'm hesitant to add the dawn to the pool, but bugs are not welcome in my pool. If they show up again, then I'm going for it.