Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 71: Adapting to Heat and Low Flows: A Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Reilly

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S6, Ep 71: Adapting to Heat and Low Flows: A Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Reilly · 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: I'm doing good, man. I'm tired and hot.
• 0:15
  Marvin: There you go. A little bit of Gatorade, probably two or three gallons of water,
• 0:18
  Marvin: you'll be good for tomorrow, right?
• 0:20
  Matt: Oh man, I've been carrying about a gallon of Gatorade and two gallons of water
• 0:27
  Matt: every day, And I've been refilling them both,
• 0:31
  Matt: all of it, at the end of every day or the beginning of the next. So it's real.
• 0:37
  Marvin: Yeah, I have a newfound appreciation for sun hoodies. I'll tell you that.
• 0:42
  Matt: Yeah, no doubt. Buffs and gloves and all that stuff.
• 0:46
  Marvin: Yeah. And it's kind of amazing. Like, you know, we kind of went from,
• 0:50
  Marvin: like, you know, hero to zero in, like, four weeks.
• 0:54
  Marvin: Like, we had tons of water. We had a relatively wet kind of what I would call an old school spring.
• 0:59
  Marvin: And, you know, now we're, you know, I know you talk about how cool it is and
• 1:03
  Marvin: you're part of Southwest Virginia. I don't believe you.
• 1:05
  Marvin: You know, it's pretty damn hot and we haven't really had that much rain.
• 1:09
  Marvin: And so things are getting technical and hard pretty quickly.
• 1:13
  Matt: Yeah, I mean, I would agree. I mean, it was back around Mother's Day.
• 1:17
  Matt: You know, we were having, we had quite a bit of rain around Mother's Day.
• 1:20
  Matt: And then for those kind of last couple weeks of May and early June when I was
• 1:25
  Matt: doing cicada stuff, the rivers were pretty high.
• 1:31
  Matt: And, yeah, we're kind of like basement flow, you know, half to the third of
• 1:37
  Matt: the seasonal average in a lot of places.
• 1:41
  Matt: You know, where you see the big difference regionally here is just in water
• 1:46
  Matt: temp to start. I mean, we, uh, we've been kind of starting most days around like 78, 79.
• 1:55
  Matt: Um, my buddy's up on the James, you know, some mornings are like in the low eighties.
• 2:01
  Matt: So, um, we're a little bit cooler in that sense, but that's just because,
• 2:05
  Matt: you know, we're, we're a little bit closer to the mountains, I guess.
• 2:09
  Matt: And, um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's hot and it's low and the,
• 2:14
  Matt: the technicality, the The smallmouth fishing has gone through the roof in the last week or two.
• 2:20
  Matt: So, you know, it's, it's, we're definitely getting, summer has definitely started.
• 2:26
  Matt: I'll put it that way. Yeah.
• 2:27
  Marvin: And, you know, it's funny, we were talking before we started recording,
• 2:30
  Marvin: right? So, you know, you need longer casts.
• 2:33
  Marvin: You're saying, you know, that really, even though you are, you know,
• 2:37
  Marvin: probably two to three weeks out from what we would kind of consider kind of
• 2:40
  Marvin: prime bug time in your neck of the woods that you know you really need that
• 2:46
  Marvin: kind of long drift to kind of you know quietly float uh float the food into
• 2:51
  Marvin: the smallie's mouth and get him to eat.
• 2:54
  Matt: Yeah. So, I mean, in a typical year, and I mean, every year,
• 3:00
  Matt: really, you have things happening throughout May,
• 3:05
  Matt: June, early July that kind of takes the focus,
• 3:11
  Matt: I guess, off of bugs and terrestrial aquatic insects.
• 3:17
  Matt: Eggs um mainly you know
• 3:20
  Matt: non-game fish spawning activity um
• 3:25
  Matt: i actually saw some uh some non-game fish and some spawning colors today while
• 3:31
  Matt: i was dragging the boat to a ripple which was pretty cool um minus the dragging
• 3:36
  Matt: the boat part um then you also have some crayfish molts usually happen happened
• 3:41
  Matt: around the end of June, um, early July.
• 3:45
  Matt: And, um, you know, but all that said, we, we have, we have insects around.
• 3:52
  Matt: We've had damselflies and dragonflies for, I mean, a couple of months.
• 3:57
  Matt: And, uh, the cicadas, man, the cicadas are super happy, um,
• 4:02
  Matt: even pretty early in the morning with the heat and
• 4:05
  Matt: the sun um so so there's
• 4:08
  Matt: there's definitely bugs around um and and the streamer fishing and kind of crayfish
• 4:14
  Matt: bottom fishing at times has been has been good especially if you're in higher
• 4:18
  Matt: gradient pieces of water um but you know like like you were saying the uh.
• 4:27
  Matt: But from a stealth standpoint, particularly in the flat or water and some of
• 4:32
  Matt: the places we're finding bigger fish,
• 4:36
  Matt: bug fishing comes in handy because it's just a very finesse-y tactic.
• 4:43
  Matt: And that's how we're getting a lot of bigger fish right now.
• 4:47
  Matt: Now, the other, you know, one of the keys to the real kind of prime bug bite is water temperature.
• 4:54
  Matt: And, you know, water temperatures tend to peak out for the year sometime in late July,
• 5:00
  Matt: early August, before they kind of start trudging back down when we start getting
• 5:06
  Matt: some cooler overnight temps sometime in mid-August, late August.
• 5:11
  Matt: And we have um we've
• 5:15
  Matt: already seen temps pretty close to peak like in
• 5:18
  Matt: the mid mid to upper 80s in
• 5:21
  Matt: the last week or two so that just
• 5:25
  Matt: kind of sluggishness that can come with
• 5:28
  Matt: that when that happens really suddenly um
• 5:31
  Matt: we've definitely seen and you know
• 5:34
  Matt: so so bug fishing kind of kind of helps there too
• 5:37
  Matt: so uh you know kind of like always you know the fishing's just understanding
• 5:43
  Matt: the uh the patterns and the mechanisms at play and and and reacting to the conditions
• 5:49
  Matt: that you have on a day-to-day basis whether they're seasonal or not so that's
• 5:54
  Matt: that's where we're at yeah.
• 5:56
  Marvin: So you're just waiting for a good downpour rain to really get the streamer game back right.
• 6:01
  Matt: Man, I would, I would just lay on my back in the yard if it rained all day tomorrow,
• 6:09
  Matt: just, just to, just to soak it in.
• 6:11
  Matt: I would do, I would do a lot of things for quite a bit of rain. um just
• 6:15
  Matt: to you know people like to talk like you know a bunch of rain is setting you
• 6:21
  Matt: up for for a good summer or whatever but i mean as we've seen in the last couple
• 6:25
  Matt: weeks we had pretty full rivers three weeks ago and here we are pretty low and and uh,
• 6:33
  Matt: running out of options so um regular rain is is definitely necessary and we
• 6:39
  Matt: do have some You know, kind of quarter inch here and there forecasted in the next couple of weeks.
• 6:46
  Matt: But, you know, that kind of stuff in the summer can disappear pretty quickly.
• 6:51
  Matt: So, well, we'll see what happens.
• 6:54
  Matt: But we definitely could use some.
• 6:57
  Marvin: Yeah, while you're saying that, it makes me think about how people get excited
• 7:00
  Marvin: about snowpack out west and then it gets warm early and then there's no water in September.
• 7:05
  Matt: Right. Yeah. Yep. You never know what you're going to get.
• 7:10
  Matt: And like I said, it's all, it's all just, just reacting to what we get.
• 7:16
  Marvin: Yeah. And I would imagine probably, you know, hatches were probably kind of
• 7:20
  Marvin: winded down up high in your trout streams, probably like a terrestrial kind of beetle game.
• 7:25
  Marvin: And, you know, probably, you know, you got to go really high and you really
• 7:29
  Marvin: need to take a thermometer with you, right?
• 7:31
  Matt: Yeah, those streams are getting exceptionally low.
• 7:35
  Matt: The heat has more effect the lower things get, even up in the mountains.
• 7:42
  Matt: You just don't have the buffer of stream flow and volume.
• 7:47
  Matt: Volume and yeah we we see
• 7:50
  Matt: some we see some green drakes into june and
• 7:53
  Matt: um you know you see some trichos in
• 7:56
  Matt: the summertime but it's uh you know
• 7:59
  Matt: i i honestly haven't been up there in a little while for the for the carp and
• 8:04
  Matt: the smallmouth but um if i were going tomorrow i would definitely be fishing
• 8:08
  Matt: uh some kind of attractor bushy dry flies and and beetles and that kind of thing
• 8:14
  Matt: um i i would I would expect to be able to do pretty well on that.
• 8:20
  Marvin: Yeah. Yellow or orange stimulator always works, right?
• 8:23
  Matt: Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
• 8:25
  Marvin: That's right. Well, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
• 8:30
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media. And one thing we've added
• 8:33
  Marvin: relatively recently, we're playing with a different kind of webpage configuration
• 8:37
  Marvin: for the podcast episodes.
• 8:39
  Marvin: If you go to the podcast link on our website, you'll see a little recorder button
• 8:44
  Marvin: down in the bottom right-hand corner.
• 8:45
  Marvin: And so you can actually record your question and you may actually hear your
• 8:49
  Marvin: question played live when Matt and I record. So that's kind of a cool thing.
• 8:54
  Marvin: And I would also remind folks, too, that, you know, if you like the podcast,
• 8:58
  Marvin: tell a friend and ratings and reviews and podcatchers really,
• 9:01
  Marvin: really help us. They help us.
• 9:03
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• 9:07
  Marvin: So if you have time, you know, give us five stars, write us a review or two.
• 9:11
  Marvin: And, you know, Matt, before I let you go, you want to let folks know kind of
• 9:16
  Marvin: where they can find you and book you. I know you have a few days left.
• 9:19
  Marvin: You've gotten some recent cancellations. And if you got anything else neat going on?
• 9:24
  Matt: Yeah, I did just have... What is it?
• 9:28
  Matt: July 8, 9, and 10.
• 9:31
  Marvin: Yeah, July 8, 9, and 10. I saw the Instagram story.
• 9:35
  Matt: Right. Well, the embarrassing thing is I put up the wrong dates first,
• 9:39
  Matt: and I had to take those down because I don't know what day it is,
• 9:42
  Matt: and I am a slave to my calendar.
• 9:46
  Matt: And if I don't look at it, I get it wrong.
• 9:49
  Matt: But yeah, it's July 8, 9, and 10.
• 9:53
  Matt: Those are the last small amount of dates, They're only smallmouth dates for
• 9:57
  Matt: the time being that have opened until the winter.
• 10:03
  Matt: And, yeah, we have started booking quite a few musky dates, too.
• 10:07
  Matt: Like, I have a couple left in November.
• 10:11
  Matt: And then we're looking at, you know, real winter on the river,
• 10:16
  Matt: which is kind of December to February.
• 10:19
  Matt: Be wary um but other than that
• 10:22
  Matt: man we're just cruising and hoping the
• 10:26
  Matt: uh the river stays wet and you
• 10:29
  Matt: know fish keep biting so that's that's what we're doing um all
• 10:32
  Matt: my contact information is on the website which is mattrileyflyfishing.com
• 10:37
  Matt: and you can you know even even though
• 10:40
  Matt: you know small mouth dates tend to be gone and
• 10:43
  Matt: things tend to book up pretty quickly you know
• 10:46
  Matt: i always tell help people um if you want to chat or or have questions about
• 10:51
  Matt: anything just give me a shout i can usually be trusted to get back to you within
• 10:56
  Matt: a couple of days um at the at the least so give me a shout however you feel
• 11:02
  Matt: best and i look forward to hearing from you yeah.
• 11:04
  Marvin: And you know also too i want to give a shout out to you actually found a
• 11:07
  Marvin: little webmaster time in the last few days and so you've dropped a player with
• 11:11
  Marvin: uh i guess all of this year's and last year's fishing reports and that'll be
• 11:15
  Marvin: automatically updated so you know one thing i would say folks is if you listen
• 11:19
  Marvin: to a year's worth of fishing reports you'll learn a whole lot about the cycle
• 11:23
  Marvin: of the watersheds that matt fishes.
• 11:25
  Matt: Well you'll just you'll just i mean you'll learn that i learn new things every
• 11:30
  Matt: year and maybe that uh i'm a little bit smarter than i was a couple years ago too that's.
• 11:36
  Marvin: A good thing to know too and you know so folks as i always say you owe it to
• 11:39
  Marvin: yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines everybody tight lines Matt.
• 11:43
  Matt: Thanks Lawrence.