Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 45: Matt Reilly's Post-Spawn Smallmouth Strategies and Topwater Tips

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S6, Ep 45: Matt Reilly's Post-Spawn Smallmouth Strategies and Topwater Tips · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Marvin: Hey folks it's Marvin Cash the host of the articulate fly and we're back with
• 0:07
  Marvin: another southwest virginia fishing report with Matt Riley how are you doing Matt I'm.
• 0:12
  Matt: Doing great man how are you.
• 0:13
  Marvin: As always I'm just trying to stay out of trouble and you know I think finally
• 0:18
  Marvin: uh we've got this kind of funky early spring weather out of our system and it
• 0:22
  Marvin: looks like we're kind of back to kind of typical warming trend and no crazy like 32 degree nights.
• 0:29
  Marvin: And I think that might be a trend that's going to continue. That's what Ellis Ward says anyway.
• 0:36
  Matt: He didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
• 0:40
  Matt: Yeah, today was kind of an odd day.
• 0:43
  Matt: We had a couple, you know, Sunday was, or I don't know what day it is,
• 0:48
  Matt: Monday was kind of a scorcher.
• 0:50
  Matt: I think we hit like 88, 90, at least up in, I was fishing up in Lynchburg,
• 0:58
  Matt: but we had a bit of a cold front roll through today.
• 1:04
  Matt: We had some wind and I think the high was like 70, 67, something like that, a little bit of rain.
• 1:12
  Matt: But it's looking like it's going to be in the kind of mid 70s to mid 80s for
• 1:17
  Matt: the foreseeable future.
• 1:20
  Matt: I wouldn't say a fair bit of rain, but there's a chance of rain about every
• 1:25
  Matt: day in the forecast starting this weekend.
• 1:29
  Matt: So things are looking to be kind of damp and seasonable.
• 1:35
  Matt: So yeah, all good.
• 1:38
  Marvin: Yeah, and I would imagine, right, probably more post-spawn fish than pre-spawn
• 1:43
  Marvin: smallmouth at this point?
• 1:45
  Matt: Uh correct yeah depending on where you are um volume of fish in the system and all that um.
• 1:52
  Matt: But i would say we're we're certainly postponed a
• 1:55
  Matt: couple weeks postponed um and i was actually talking to a client of mine about
• 2:00
  Matt: that on the phone you know when i say post spawn i'm i'm really referring to
• 2:06
  Matt: you you kind of make it mean a couple of different You could refer to the summer as post-spawn,
• 2:12
  Matt: you know, like diffusion throughout the river, set up the feed.
• 2:16
  Matt: Spawn's totally over.
• 2:19
  Matt: When I say post-spawn, I'm referring to fish that have already,
• 2:24
  Matt: like, dropped eggs and fertilized them, you know.
• 2:29
  Matt: So, males that are sitting on nests, I will either call nest guarding males
• 2:34
  Matt: or I'll call them post-spawn males. And then, you know, females that have dropped
• 2:38
  Matt: eggs, they're immediately postponed as well.
• 2:42
  Matt: And they obviously don't garden nests like the males do, but it just,
• 2:47
  Matt: it creates a certain attitude and demeanor within the fish.
• 2:52
  Matt: So it's something you have to consider. But yeah, our pretty standard timing
• 2:58
  Matt: throughout southwest central Virginia is somewhere between like the 12th of
• 3:06
  Matt: April and the 18th of April.
• 3:08
  Matt: You're going to have a wave go off if temperatures are anywhere near 60 in that
• 3:16
  Matt: range just about every year.
• 3:17
  Matt: So we're certainly, I would say, about two weeks post the first wave of spawning fish.
• 3:25
  Marvin: Yeah, got it. And I guess, you know, it goes without saying don't fish to the
• 3:28
  Marvin: males on the nests. But, you know, I also know that kind of,
• 3:31
  Marvin: you know, we'll just say, you know, not summer post-spawn, but near post-spawn
• 3:36
  Marvin: kind of puts the fish in a funk.
• 3:38
  Marvin: You know, how long is it going to take for that to kind of work through the
• 3:40
  Marvin: system before kind of the bite starts to kind of come back?
• 3:45
  Matt: Yeah, it's, it's, uh, you know, again, it might be more information than you
• 3:50
  Matt: want, but, um, this is just what goes through my head every day.
• 3:54
  Matt: And it's, it's, it's a valuable context because a lot of people don't know what
• 3:58
  Matt: they're looking at. You know, males on nests are guarding, and they don't really
• 4:04
  Matt: do a lot of actual eating.
• 4:07
  Matt: I mean, they will eat something that comes near their nest, or they'll just
• 4:11
  Matt: pick it up and try to move it, or they'll try to kill it or just wrap it or something.
• 4:16
  Matt: But a lot of times what you get from those fish are just, you know,
• 4:20
  Matt: you'll toss your fly, whether it be a streamer or popper or something,
• 4:23
  Matt: up into an area with a nest in it.
• 4:29
  Matt: And you'll get this fish just kind of lazily following it out.
• 4:33
  Matt: And that can be frustrating if you don't know what you're looking at because
• 4:38
  Matt: it seems like, you know, a fish just followed your fly and didn't eat it.
• 4:43
  Matt: But really what it is, is a fish that's just not really actively feeding and
• 4:48
  Matt: has other things on its mind.
• 4:49
  Matt: And it's just kind of seeing a potential predator out of its zone.
• 4:56
  Matt: Sometimes they'll come over and eat something or mouth it and you just get this
• 5:00
  Matt: kind of uninspired take.
• 5:04
  Matt: And, you know, very easy to catch guardian males if you don't know exactly where
• 5:09
  Matt: they are. So, generally speaking, this time of year, I just encourage people
• 5:15
  Matt: and I try myself to just fight fish as quickly as possible and put them back.
• 5:19
  Matt: You know, don't keep them in the net for five minutes and take a bunch of pictures
• 5:22
  Matt: and, you know, just kind of be done with it.
• 5:27
  Matt: But the females, and when a male gets on a nest, it'll be two to three weeks
• 5:37
  Matt: before, about two weeks before you have fries swimming up.
• 5:42
  Matt: And then, you know, probably a month very safely, you know, before they're back
• 5:49
  Matt: out in the river with no parental responsibilities. Yeah.
• 5:55
  Matt: And that goes for, you know, all of them. The females, once they spawn,
• 6:00
  Matt: they're just, you know, pretty tired, lazy.
• 6:05
  Matt: And they'll hang near those spawning areas, but they're just,
• 6:08
  Matt: they're going to be tough to locate if you don't know exactly where.
• 6:14
  Matt: And it can be very specific places where they'll kind of hole up.
• 6:18
  Matt: And they can be tough to feed because they are just, you know,
• 6:21
  Matt: they don't have a lot of energy. They're not real actively chasing things down.
• 6:26
  Matt: So in order to find those bigger fish, all the 20 plus inch fish in the river
• 6:34
  Matt: system are going to be females for the most part.
• 6:37
  Matt: In order to catch those fish, it's hard to do it consistently unless you just
• 6:42
  Matt: have a lot of really good data post-spawn.
• 6:47
  Matt: You generally have to slow things way down.
• 6:52
  Matt: And and fish to some specific areas um and
• 6:57
  Matt: that you know that'll last a couple
• 6:59
  Matt: of weeks basically just long enough for those fish to
• 7:02
  Matt: kind of get their strength back and kind of integrate back into the the greater
• 7:07
  Matt: um river system so a couple weeks to a month basically before it's all said
• 7:14
  Matt: and done and before that you know you're just kind of fishing other other areas you're You're fishing,
• 7:21
  Matt: well, one area I tend to find a lot of those post-bomb females is kind of more mid-river, vertical,
• 7:27
  Matt: fairly dramatic structure.
• 7:32
  Matt: And, you know, otherwise just fishing current seams and stuff like that,
• 7:37
  Matt: you know, where you'll find fish that are not actively guarding nests.
• 7:42
  Marvin: Yeah, got it. And got a question for you from Josh. She wanted to get your thoughts
• 7:46
  Marvin: on key river indicators that tell you to start focusing on topwater fishing.
• 7:54
  Matt: Um yeah okay um
• 7:57
  Matt: the i'll just
• 8:01
  Matt: kind of go off off the cuff here i guess there's really
• 8:04
  Matt: i say this a lot but there's a couple of different genres of
• 8:07
  Matt: top water fishing um if we're talking bug
• 8:10
  Matt: fishing um which is
• 8:13
  Matt: generally a fairly passive um you
• 8:17
  Matt: know finesse kind of tactic um one
• 8:21
  Matt: it's real helpful to have bugs out and about you know i
• 8:23
  Matt: i think i saw i know i saw the first
• 8:27
  Matt: you know dragon flies damsel flies of the
• 8:30
  Matt: year in the last two weeks on my rivers and so that's significant but you know
• 8:35
  Matt: certain smaller rivers you've got a big kind of drake mayflies flying around
• 8:41
  Matt: a lot in the spring caddis flies even earlier in march you know if you've been
• 8:46
  Matt: in a small creek or stream
• 8:48
  Matt: in March or April and you have pretty shallow clear water.
• 8:54
  Matt: Um, it's, it's not out of the question to think that you might,
• 8:57
  Matt: might be able to catch some fish on top water flies.
• 9:00
  Matt: Um, and so, you know, certainly looking for the presence of bugs,
• 9:06
  Matt: water temps that are generally, you know, depending again on how big or deep
• 9:12
  Matt: your river system is a pretty shallow river system, You could probably start fishing in the 50 to,
• 9:19
  Matt: I mean, I'd say probably 55 to 60 degree rain if the water's low to normal.
• 9:28
  Matt: Just understand that when you're in that water temperature range in the spring,
• 9:32
  Matt: you're generally not, you know, the fish are still pre-spawn.
• 9:35
  Matt: They're actively keying in on bigger food sources. Yeah.
• 9:40
  Matt: But comfortably by 60 degrees, you could do that a lot of places.
• 9:47
  Matt: And what else?
• 9:51
  Matt: Just, you know, seeing surface activity, you know, just kind of basically if
• 9:55
  Matt: you're out there in February, you're generally not seeing sunfish and bass and
• 10:00
  Matt: stuff hitting the surface very often.
• 10:02
  Matt: But, you know, come May, you'll start to see some of that stuff.
• 10:06
  Matt: So if you see activity on the surface, that's a good indicator as well.
• 10:11
  Matt: And like I mentioned earlier, with just kind of the general demeanor of the post-pawn females,
• 10:20
  Matt: fifth time a year, a really passive approach like that, especially if you know
• 10:26
  Matt: exactly where a fish lives,
• 10:29
  Matt: can be a really effective thing.
• 10:32
  Matt: Because, you know, a bug or an insect imitation popped down on the surface.
• 10:39
  Matt: It fishes when it's sitting still, and there's a lot of food value there,
• 10:44
  Matt: and it's not going to require that fish to really catch anything.
• 10:50
  Matt: It's kind of like when we have really hot water temps in the summer,
• 10:54
  Matt: you know, you can catch the biggest fish in the river on a small bug just because
• 10:59
  Matt: they're trying to conserve energy.
• 11:00
  Matt: So that's another you know indicator i guess you say when it comes to other
• 11:06
  Matt: top water stuff you know poppers and divers and you know just like kind of bait
• 11:13
  Matt: machine froggy stuff that you know,
• 11:16
  Matt: messing around on the surface i would say you know that that can even fit into
• 11:21
  Matt: the pre-spawn program if you have water more likely stream flows and temperatures
• 11:28
  Matt: that that permit that you know if if the water is real high and real cold,
• 11:32
  Matt: you're probably not fishing top water.
• 11:35
  Matt: But if it's, you know, again, like 55 degrees and, you know,
• 11:39
  Matt: maybe normal to a little low, you know, and you want to fish a kind of a waking
• 11:45
  Matt: bait fish or, you know, a swimming, diving,
• 11:49
  Matt: you know, minnow bait fish kind of thing, I would say go for it.
• 11:55
  Matt: That, I mean, that's pretty much what I go for. and, you know, try it out.
• 12:00
  Matt: You never really know what's going to work until you do it.
• 12:05
  Matt: And it'll just play into your data for what the fish will do when.
• 12:11
  Marvin: Yeah, there you go. And, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
• 12:15
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever's easiest for you.
• 12:19
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag when you're
• 12:22
  Marvin: drawing for something cool from Matt at the end of the season.
• 12:25
  Marvin: And Matt, before I let you go, you want to let folks know, you know,
• 12:29
  Marvin: where they can find you so they can book you and fish with you.
• 12:32
  Marvin: And I know there are not a lot of lily pads out there probably between now and October.
• 12:36
  Marvin: Will you want to let folks kind of know what the situation is?
• 12:40
  Matt: Yeah um i mean i always encourage people to
• 12:43
  Matt: to give me a call um kind
• 12:46
  Matt: of regardless if you're interested in in uh
• 12:50
  Matt: in anything um just talking about fishing
• 12:53
  Matt: or setting something up in the future um i
• 12:57
  Matt: i do tend to i don't have
• 12:59
  Matt: much anything really available until mid-october
• 13:04
  Matt: um but you know cancellations happen
• 13:07
  Matt: pretty regularly um sometimes and
• 13:12
  Matt: uh you know things happen so just always
• 13:15
  Matt: check with me and but for the most part um you know we're looking at we're looking
• 13:20
  Matt: at must be season and stuff like that um but i'm not pushing real hard for any
• 13:26
  Matt: of that yet but anyway you know all that information is on my website which
• 13:31
  Matt: is mattrileyflyfishing.com,
• 13:34
  Matt: and yeah feel free to reach out however you feel best.
• 13:37
  Marvin: Well there you go well listen folks show it to yourself to get out there and
• 13:40
  Marvin: catch a few tight lines everybody tight lines matt thanks barbara.