Latest / The Articulate Fly / S8, Ep 52: Hot Days and Night Bites: Brian Shumaker’s Guide to Pennsylvania Smallmouth Fishing

Transcript

S8, Ep 52: Hot Days and Night Bites: Brian Shumaker’s Guide to Pennsylvania Smallmouth Fishing · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly.
• 0:06
  .We'reback with another Pennsylvania Smallmouth Report with the man himself, Captain Brian Shumaker.
• 0:11
  Brian, how are you?
• 0:12
  I'm doing well, Marvin.
• 0:14
  How about yourself?
• 0:15
  Just trying to stay out of trouble.
• 0:16
  And, you know, we've had a fair amount of water under the bridge since we last spoke.
• 0:20
  It's been over 100 degrees.
• 0:21
  You've had like an incredible amount of rain, and it's getting ready to get hot again in your neck of the woods, kind of.
• 0:26
  What are you seeing on the water?
• 0:28
  We are in our prime time top water season right now.
• 0:33
  The blue damsels are coming off real heavy late morning, into the afternoons, into the early evenings.
• 0:41
  We'll soon be having.
• 0:43
  The whiteflies will be rolling in end of July, beginning of August.
• 0:49
  So it is top water season.
• 0:53
  And so do you just kind of normally start the day out and see if they're turned on.
• 0:56
  On top?
• 0:56
  And if you do just kind of ride that train the whole day or do you have kind of a different strategy when you first put it in the morning?
• 1:02
  No, we're gonna.
• 1:03
  We go right to top water right away.
• 1:06
  When I have two people, usually I have definitely have one with a popping bug on, and I'll have one with a, with a streamer or a crayfish.
• 1:17
  And we'll see what's going on first thing in the morning and go from there.
• 1:22
  So it could be either gonna roll with the top water or have a little bit of mixture.
• 1:27
  But then by, you know, I'm going to say mid morning, we are all top water for the rest of the day.
• 1:34
  Yeah.
• 1:34
  And so on the top water side, you know, for like damselflies, are you like a Carolina blue boogle bug popper guy or do you have some, maybe some more realistic imitations?
• 1:43
  How do you like to fish those guys?
• 1:44
  Basically just like the boogle bugs, the Carolina blue.
• 1:49
  I do these smaller blockhead poppers, and blue, they work real well.
• 1:57
  And you, you can still fish, or not olive, but you can still fish like a yellow popper yellow boogle bug, because we still have some sulfur and stuff coming off a little bit.
• 2:06
  So they'll eat.
• 2:07
  They'll eat basically blue, white, yellow, or sometimes green.
• 2:15
  So that's.
• 2:16
  That's pretty much the game we got going on right now.
• 2:20
  Got it.
• 2:20
  And so when the white flies come online, you know, is that gonna be a drier, bushy or bug, or are you gonna stick to the popping bugs?
• 2:26
  Oh, I stick with popping bugs or a very good fly for the white fly.
• 2:31
  Because when you.
• 2:32
  When the white flies come off here, I mean it's.
• 2:36
  It's a real heavy hatch and it comes off at dark and you can throw dry flies like a white Wulff or something like that, size 12.
• 2:43
  But you know, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
• 2:47
  If you're throwing something realistic like a white Wulff.
• 2:51
  I like to throw Clouser's floating minnow and it's got a white head.
• 2:57
  You know, it's got white bucktail coming off the back.
• 3:00
  It just gives them something a little bit different.
• 3:03
  And you could take a white boogle bug.
• 3:05
  You don't want to go real big, but smaller size and you can just twitch out across the surface and those fish will come up and eat it.
• 3:12
  It just gives them something different.
• 3:15
  Got it.
• 3:15
  And you know, obviously you got a big shot of rain, right.
• 3:17
  So, you know, or how are you looking?
• 3:19
  I would imagine your water's probably up.
• 3:20
  But are things kind of stained and blown out on the Susquehanna Juniata or are they pre fishable now?
• 3:25
  Juniata is still, still dirty and it's dropping and so does the Susquehanna it's dropping.
• 3:31
  We did get a nice slug of water, which made it real nice for this time of year.
• 3:37
  And now it's starting to drop.
• 3:38
  But I don't think it's going to get down where it's going to get too bony.
• 3:42
  After we get through by the end of the week, we're supposed to be through this heat wave and we can have some rain coming by the end of the week.
• 3:49
  And then of course, if you want to trust the weather, man, the long range forecast looks like we might have some rain early next week, which will be good.
• 3:57
  It'll keep the flows consistent, keep them up a little bit.
• 4:01
  Yeah.
• 4:01
  Which makes everybody's life easier on the casting front so they're not having to air.
• 4:05
  Air mail out like 70 to 80 foot casts every time rain.
• 4:08
  Exactly.
• 4:09
  And it helps the guides in the boats too, you know, that way you're not beating and banging, playing like a pinball machine if it gets too low.
• 4:16
  Yeah.
• 4:17
  It makes it a whole lot easier to epoxy the hull of your boat in the off season, right?
• 4:21
  Yeah, exactly.
• 4:22
  Exactly.
• 4:23
  Yeah.
• 4:24
  And so, you know, I guess you were.
• 4:26
  You did a little bit.
• 4:27
  You guess you had a fishing tournament this week and you guys were out with the bass thumb tournament, right?
• 4:31
  Yeah, we did the bass thumb tournament.
• 4:34
  It was Friday and Saturday of last week.
• 4:38
  That's a real good event, a real good time.
• 4:41
  You know, you get your team and you go out there and you try to catch the biggest.
• 4:47
  Well, it's five fish a day.
• 4:49
  Your top five from the first day and top five for the second day and that's your total.
• 4:55
  And you try hopefully can find some big fish to bring your totals up.
• 5:00
  But it's a good event.
• 5:03
  You know, you have, you have a real good time doing.
• 5:06
  They, they do a good job putting it together.
• 5:08
  Yeah, I saw the pictures on Facebook.
• 5:10
  Look like you guys had a ton of folks.
• 5:12
  Oh, it was, yeah, it was, it was good.
• 5:14
  It was a real good time.
• 5:16
  And so, you know, as I know you're probably, you're pretty well booked out probably for the next six weeks or so, but probably what cruising into hopefully the cooler part of late summer, early fall, you might have some
• 5:25
  dates for folks, right?
• 5:27
  Absolutely.
• 5:27
  I got some dates.
• 5:29
  Getting like the last half of September, the first two weeks, October, I got some availability.
• 5:35
  Yeah, I always joke with Matt Reilly, like that's my sweet spot.
• 5:38
  From an angler comfort perspective, I don't believe anybody when they say it's cool on their side of the mountain this time of year.
• 5:45
  No, it's not, it's not cool.
• 5:47
  Even a breeze out there on the river isn't cool.
• 5:50
  Yeah, dude, it's, it's, it's too hot.
• 5:52
  I'm, I'm too old and too smart for that.
• 5:54
  I mean there'd have to be probably 36 inch smallmouth to get me, get me out to go after them this time of year.
• 5:59
  Yeah, I mean the, the thing you can do to beat the heat is, is fish.
• 6:04
  You know, in the dark that, that's a good way to try to beat the heat.
• 6:09
  It's tough for me.
• 6:10
  It's hard to navigate.
• 6:12
  But you know, if you want to get out and fish, you can try the night bite.
• 6:19
  Yeah, it's interesting cause it's, you know, it's funny because we talked about that last time that you, if you had to pick early morning or, or later in the day.
• 6:25
  You like later in the day.
• 6:26
  And it's kind of funny because I usually, I like that I'm a night person by nature, but I also would say, you know, it's kind of funny because the trout wisdom would almost be reversed.
• 6:33
  Right.
• 6:34
  Because it's gotten so hot that you can't really, you know, expect that at 7 or 8 o' clock at night you're not going to still have 70 or 72 degree trout water.
• 6:42
  Well, you're definitely going to have, you know, you're going to have warm water.
• 6:46
  But you know, my, and I think we talked about it last time.
• 6:50
  My theory is when it gets our water temperatures get up into the high 80s, especially the big fish become nocturnal feeders, you know, whether it's to beat the heat or whatever.
• 7:04
  And they just seem, seem to go and feed, you know, more, more on the dark side than they do during the daytime.
• 7:12
  Yeah, probably more little mouse and critters like that falling in the river too.
• 7:18
  Oh, absolutely.
• 7:19
  You have, you know, the little critters trying to swim across the river and so forth like that.
• 7:24
  And that's an easy pickings for them big bass.
• 7:27
  Yeah, it's kind of funny.
• 7:27
  We've got a pond here in the neighborhood and you know, the ducks always start out with a lot of ducklings.
• 7:31
  And every day when you go walk around the lake, there are a few more that the largemouth bass got.
• 7:36
  Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
• 7:38
  Yeah.
• 7:38
  Well, you know, folks, we, we love questions.
• 7:40
  If you have a question for Brian DM or email me and well, if we use it on the fishing report, I will send you some articulate fly swag and weiner and a drawing for some cool stuff.
• 7:50
  And we are firmly in the March through the summer and we don't never really know how much water we're going to have when we get into August and early September.
• 7:58
  So you owe it yourself to get out there and catch a few.
• 8:00
  Tight lines, everybody.
• 8:02
  Tight lines, Brian, tight lines, Marvin.