Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 56: Road Warrior: Matt Reilly on Cicadas, Smallmouth and Fishing the Rain

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S6, Ep 56: Road Warrior: Matt Reilly on Cicadas, Smallmouth and Fishing the Rain · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
• 0:06
  Marvin: and we're back with another Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Riley. How are you, Matt?
• 0:12
  Matt: Man, I am tired, but I'm doing great. How are you?
• 0:16
  Marvin: I'm getting there. Yeah, I guess you've become like the Jiffy Lube man,
• 0:19
  Marvin: getting your oil changed every week.
• 0:21
  Matt: Uh yeah yeah exactly i really don't want to know um how many times i've launched
• 0:28
  Matt: my boat or uh how many miles i've driven in the last months or so.
• 0:32
  Marvin: Yeah it's almost like southwest virginia is almost slightly ironic right because
• 0:36
  Marvin: you've been down relatively close to me fishing cicadas you're telling me you're
• 0:40
  Marvin: you know burning up the road heading back from east tennessee so you kind of
• 0:43
  Marvin: haven't even really been home right yeah.
• 0:46
  Matt: Not a whole lot um i have a very understanding family well.
• 0:51
  Marvin: There you go it's important well it's okay you know periodic cicadas only happen
• 0:55
  Marvin: every 13 or 17 years so you got to like have your priorities right yeah.
• 0:59
  Matt: I mean or like every two or three or four depending on how far you're willing to drive.
• 1:04
  Marvin: Which sounds like you're willing to drive quite far so you know we were kind
• 1:08
  Marvin: of talking before we started recording you know it's It's kind of been a little
• 1:11
  Marvin: bit patchy, kind of, you know, let's just say Southern Virginia,
• 1:16
  Marvin: North Carolina, East Tennessee on the cicada front.
• 1:19
  Marvin: Some people have a ton of them and some people don't really have very many at all.
• 1:24
  Matt: Yeah, I mean, that's to be expected to a large degree.
• 1:29
  Matt: That's just the nature of the bugs. They have a very specific,
• 1:32
  Matt: each brood has a very specific range.
• 1:36
  Matt: Range and for the most part it's
• 1:40
  Matt: pretty well understood um but there
• 1:43
  Matt: there are still places and we've seen a couple um in
• 1:46
  Matt: fact some of the heavier you know areas with
• 1:49
  Matt: heavier distributions for for brood 19 that
• 1:52
  Matt: have uh you know not been
• 1:55
  Matt: you know very much on
• 1:58
  Matt: the radar there's there's that
• 2:01
  Matt: um but yeah some of the some of the areas i had expected to find some heavier
• 2:07
  Matt: concentrations were kind of patchy and um did really seem to be maturing into
• 2:13
  Matt: much so we kind of hung around for a little bit and then hit the road again
• 2:18
  Matt: and found some other stuff so,
• 2:20
  Matt: that's kind of what you have to do if if you want to find the best mission that you can end.
• 2:27
  Matt: But thankfully, I'm exceptionally lucky in the sense that I have clients that'll do,
• 2:35
  Matt: a lot of things that I ask of them and, and trust me on that stuff.
• 2:39
  Matt: And, and, uh, I don't get a whole lot of opportunities these days to just hop
• 2:44
  Matt: in a car, drive off to someplace I've never been before for a week.
• 2:47
  Matt: So it's, uh, it's welcome for sure.
• 2:51
  Marvin: Yeah. And so it's interesting, right? It kind of makes me think about like fish
• 2:55
  Marvin: in the salmon fly hatch out West that, you know, as this periodic cicada thing kind of keeps going,
• 3:01
  Marvin: you know, the fish are going to get pretty satiated on them i mean kind of what
• 3:04
  Marvin: do you have to do kind of as the season wears on you know you got you know they're
• 3:08
  Marvin: looking up they're looking for the bugs but you know how do you get you know
• 3:12
  Marvin: fish that are you know getting kind of fat and super happy uh to eat it.
• 3:18
  Matt: It does happen and kind of i think it depends on i i would say well i mean the
• 3:25
  Matt: two primary motivators for that are are the the the volume of bugs and the volume of fish,
• 3:31
  Matt: you know, if there's fish in a big body water, that's just got a stupid number
• 3:35
  Matt: of fish and a stupid number of bugs, they can spread that wealth out pretty well.
• 3:39
  Matt: Um, and it takes quite a while.
• 3:43
  Matt: I mean, most, most, most fish will just continue to eat, um,
• 3:49
  Matt: while the biomass is there.
• 3:51
  Matt: Um, but there, you know, I have, I have run into places in the past couple of weeks, um,
• 3:58
  Matt: where there were a lot of bugs and frankly
• 4:02
  Matt: not that many fish eating them and which
• 4:05
  Matt: which is you know to be clear it's common early on
• 4:09
  Matt: in a periodical scana emergence um but
• 4:13
  Matt: it usually matures to a point where you
• 4:16
  Matt: do have a lot of fish eating these bugs and
• 4:19
  Matt: um it sounds some places where just
• 4:22
  Matt: you know there were you know some big grass
• 4:25
  Matt: carp or catfish or something eating them
• 4:28
  Matt: and not much else and uh yeah you'd
• 4:31
  Matt: hit some big blocks of time where there's just not a
• 4:34
  Matt: whole lot going on even though there's still lots of bugs on the water um some
• 4:39
  Matt: of the best periodical state edge and edge fishing i've had has been in places
• 4:44
  Matt: where you get out and you can you know there's a obvious presence of bugs but
• 4:49
  Matt: there's you know it's not super crazy heavy on the water Because,
• 4:54
  Matt: you know, if there's a ton of them on the water,
• 4:57
  Matt: part of the reason is because they're not getting eaten up, you know.
• 5:01
  Matt: So seeing fewer bugs on the water and fish cruising around and eating them is
• 5:07
  Matt: really kind of the sweet spot.
• 5:09
  Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, I guess we're saying we're expecting to kind of see this
• 5:12
  Marvin: kind of be heavy for maybe the next two to three weeks or so.
• 5:16
  Matt: I would say three weeks is certainly a stretch, and it kind of depends on where you are.
• 5:23
  Matt: It tends to last for four to six weeks as a general rule.
• 5:30
  Matt: The lifespan of an adult periodical span is closer to four weeks,
• 5:35
  Matt: but they don't all come out at once.
• 5:38
  Matt: There's a bell curve there. there so you know in a lot of places in the south
• 5:43
  Matt: the first couple bugs started popping kind of,
• 5:47
  Matt: late april um and if you have bugs hatching for a week or two growing and not that that puts you
• 5:55
  Matt: know early first week of may or so and then you know four weeks after that puts
• 6:02
  Matt: you to early to mid-june so that's that's kind of what i would expect um and
• 6:08
  Matt: you know again it depends Depends on where you are.
• 6:11
  Matt: Emergence timing has everything to do with weather, specifically ground temperature,
• 6:19
  Matt: and microclimates are a thing, and, you know, latitudinal gradients and weather
• 6:26
  Matt: and temperature are a thing.
• 6:28
  Matt: So it's not a homogenous thing across the country.
• 6:34
  Marvin: Got it. And of course, the other story in our part of the world is we've had
• 6:37
  Marvin: a fair amount of rain, right?
• 6:40
  Matt: That's right. The rivers in my neck of the woods have been full to high to blown
• 6:48
  Matt: out for the last couple of weeks.
• 6:52
  Matt: Almost no matter where you look, short of some tailwaters. And even like before
• 6:59
  Matt: we hopped on the phone, I was looking at the gauges and some of our trout streams in the mountains.
• 7:02
  Matt: And they're up to kind of marginally waitable right now because we've had pretty
• 7:11
  Matt: heavy rain about every three to four days for the last couple of weeks.
• 7:16
  Matt: And it does look like it's drying up here in the coming week or so.
• 7:23
  Matt: So that's a good thing. But yeah, I'm glad to not necessarily be home right now.
• 7:32
  Marvin: Yeah. It's interesting too, right? Because where you are in Southwest Virginia,
• 7:35
  Marvin: you know, so much, you know, varies just based on which side of the mountain the rain falls on.
• 7:39
  Marvin: But sometimes you can get some of that stuff that's in the Smokies and it can
• 7:43
  Marvin: really mess you up a little bit.
• 7:47
  Matt: Yeah. You know, I mean, well, for one, you know, the New River watershed,
• 7:51
  Matt: the head of it's in Western North Carolina. So that's certainly relevant. of it.
• 7:57
  Matt: Um, and then, yeah, I mean, it's, it, uh, really not, not too far from the Smokies.
• 8:04
  Matt: So if we get, if we get those big systems that are kind of moving West to East
• 8:08
  Matt: and they hang on the mountains right there, they can very easily impact our area too.
• 8:14
  Marvin: Yeah. So I guess, you know, whether you're fishing for trout or small mouth,
• 8:17
  Marvin: um, you know, I guess the clue is, uh, maybe, you know, fish on structure until
• 8:21
  Marvin: the water kind of drops out a little bit, but, uh, what do you think folks should
• 8:24
  Marvin: expect to see on the small mouth front once the, you know, give it another two
• 8:28
  Marvin: or three days and things kind of start to come back into kind of more seasonable shape.
• 8:33
  Matt: Yeah, the, um, I have been smallmouth fishing a couple of times in the last couple of weeks.
• 8:39
  Matt: And, you know, as, as I would expect, we're kind of progressively seeing, uh,
• 8:45
  Matt: spunkier and spunkier, um, big females post-pawn fish that are just recovering
• 8:51
  Matt: fully and, and chasing food around and, um, and then fewer and fewer males sitting on nests.
• 8:58
  Matt: So, uh, that's a, that's a good thing because one it's, it's,
• 9:03
  Matt: it makes fishing a little easier cause you don't have to dodge,
• 9:06
  Matt: um, big nesting areas and stuff like that.
• 9:10
  Matt: And two, um, you just have, just have more happy, aggressive fish in the system
• 9:16
  Matt: and water temps aren't crazy hot yet.
• 9:19
  Matt: Um, we're still, still in what I call the spring.
• 9:23
  Matt: We've still got a fair bit of a, of a streamer bait fish bite ahead of us.
• 9:26
  Matt: So, um, yeah, it's good fishing,
• 9:30
  Matt: um, the next couple of weeks and, uh, you know, if, if, uh, nothing else,
• 9:36
  Matt: hopefully this bit of rain kind of sets us up for not dreadfully low flows through,
• 9:43
  Matt: you know, August and September.
• 9:45
  Marvin: I'll remind you that when you tell me you've been dragging your raft over rocks, but at any rate.
• 9:50
  Matt: Well, I don't have to tell you that you can just assume that's the case.
• 9:55
  Marvin: But I know that's good news for you because, you know, even though people love
• 9:58
  Marvin: to fish topwater, I know you really, you know, it's like so many guys that guide
• 10:02
  Marvin: for smallmouth, they really just can't let go of that streamer bite.
• 10:07
  Matt: Yeah, it's, uh, I mean, I would, I would say it's almost the opposite.
• 10:12
  Matt: Sometimes people, as soon as it starts getting warm, people want to hop on the
• 10:17
  Matt: top waterfront and, and we've, we've talked about it before.
• 10:21
  Matt: Um, you can, there, there's usually a window early to mid to late,
• 10:27
  Matt: you know, kind of, kind of depends on the timing of the spawn,
• 10:31
  Matt: but it's usually, you know, early through late late may where you know topwater
• 10:39
  Matt: bug fishing popper fishing can become pretty effective and,
• 10:44
  Matt: um i think really what it
• 10:47
  Matt: is a lot of times is is just people tossing bugs
• 10:51
  Matt: on top of nests along the bank and you know nothing else seems to be working
• 10:55
  Matt: that well because they're streamer fishing and they throw the fly at the bank
• 10:59
  Matt: and the fish kind of follows out doesn't eat you know it's not not eating and
• 11:03
  Matt: a lot of times that that can just be a male that's just kind of escorting your.
• 11:09
  Matt: Your threatening bait fish away from its nest but if
• 11:12
  Matt: you splat a bug on top of it and don't move it they'll come up and eat it or
• 11:16
  Matt: suck it in or grab it or whatever and uh you know it kind of kind of creates
• 11:22
  Matt: this little bit of a like you know oh bug season's happening early kind of thing
• 11:27
  Matt: and And like I said, while that can be viable,
• 11:32
  Matt: it also don't necessarily think it's the greatest idea.
• 11:37
  Matt: And then there will be basically until mid-July, there's going to be some foraging
• 11:45
  Matt: events that distract the fish from topwater flies.
• 11:50
  Matt: And that's not to say that you can't have some fantastic topwater fishing through,
• 11:54
  Matt: you know, May, June, early July.
• 11:56
  Matt: But non-game bait fish, spawning activity.
• 12:03
  Matt: Post-spawn feeding activity on the smallmouths front, and crayfish molts kind
• 12:11
  Matt: of late, late June, early July will all be things to consider.
• 12:15
  Matt: So, I mean, streamer fishing is definitely not in the rear view.
• 12:21
  Matt: And I would say to anybody fishing between now and what I would call the real
• 12:25
  Matt: start of bug season sometime in mid to late July.
• 12:32
  Matt: If things aren't going on top, there may be a reason and you may see a switch
• 12:37
  Matt: to some flavor, a streamer do you a lot of good.
• 12:41
  Matt: So kind of just pay attention to what you're seeing and what's going on around you.
• 12:46
  Matt: Don't be too hardheaded on that front.
• 12:48
  Marvin: There you go. Good life advice, too. And we know that, you know,
• 12:55
  Marvin: folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
• 12:57
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
• 13:01
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag.
• 13:05
  Marvin: And we're going to draw in for some cool stuff from Matt at the end of the season.
• 13:07
  Marvin: And, you know, Matt, I would imagine at this point, you know,
• 13:10
  Marvin: barring cancellations, you're probably pretty well taken care of until October.
• 13:14
  Marvin: But you want to let folks know kind of what you have available and where they
• 13:18
  Marvin: can find you and all that kind of good stuff?
• 13:20
  Matt: Yeah. Yeah, all my small updates are spoken for at this point.
• 13:26
  Matt: Um but you know
• 13:29
  Matt: i'd say that the next major thing is is musky season
• 13:32
  Matt: and um and that
• 13:36
  Matt: i'm probably gonna get in the swing of that probably the last week of october
• 13:41
  Matt: um maybe the first week of november and uh and we'll roll on through early march
• 13:49
  Matt: but the my website is matt rileyflyfishing.com and my phone number's on there,
• 13:56
  Matt: my email's on there, and however you want to reach out, I look forward to hearing from you.
• 14:01
  Marvin: Yeah, and don't wait until they put the pumpkin spice latte in Starbucks to
• 14:05
  Marvin: book your dates or you'll be fishing next year.
• 14:07
  Matt: Right? No, yeah, that's the truth, man.
• 14:10
  Marvin: Yeah, so we'll listen, folks. As I always say, you owe it to yourself to get
• 14:15
  Marvin: out there and catch a few.
• 14:17
  Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Matt.
• 14:20
  Matt: Thanks, Marv.