Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,

Marvin: and we're back with another Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Riley. How are you, Matt?

Matt: I'm doing good, man. I'm tired and hot.

Marvin: There you go. A little bit of Gatorade, probably two or three gallons of water,

Marvin: you'll be good for tomorrow, right?

Matt: Oh man, I've been carrying about a gallon of Gatorade and two gallons of water

Matt: every day, And I've been refilling them both,

Matt: all of it, at the end of every day or the beginning of the next. So it's real.

Marvin: Yeah, I have a newfound appreciation for sun hoodies. I'll tell you that.

Matt: Yeah, no doubt. Buffs and gloves and all that stuff.

Marvin: Yeah. And it's kind of amazing. Like, you know, we kind of went from,

Marvin: like, you know, hero to zero in, like, four weeks.

Marvin: Like, we had tons of water. We had a relatively wet kind of what I would call an old school spring.

Marvin: And, you know, now we're, you know, I know you talk about how cool it is and

Marvin: you're part of Southwest Virginia. I don't believe you.

Marvin: You know, it's pretty damn hot and we haven't really had that much rain.

Marvin: And so things are getting technical and hard pretty quickly.

Matt: Yeah, I mean, I would agree. I mean, it was back around Mother's Day.

Matt: You know, we were having, we had quite a bit of rain around Mother's Day.

Matt: And then for those kind of last couple weeks of May and early June when I was

Matt: doing cicada stuff, the rivers were pretty high.

Matt: And, yeah, we're kind of like basement flow, you know, half to the third of

Matt: the seasonal average in a lot of places.

Matt: You know, where you see the big difference regionally here is just in water

Matt: temp to start. I mean, we, uh, we've been kind of starting most days around like 78, 79.

Matt: Um, my buddy's up on the James, you know, some mornings are like in the low eighties.

Matt: So, um, we're a little bit cooler in that sense, but that's just because,

Matt: you know, we're, we're a little bit closer to the mountains, I guess.

Matt: And, um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's hot and it's low and the,

Matt: the technicality, the The smallmouth fishing has gone through the roof in the last week or two.

Matt: So, you know, it's, it's, we're definitely getting, summer has definitely started.

Matt: I'll put it that way. Yeah.

Marvin: And, you know, it's funny, we were talking before we started recording,

Marvin: right? So, you know, you need longer casts.

Marvin: You're saying, you know, that really, even though you are, you know,

Marvin: probably two to three weeks out from what we would kind of consider kind of

Marvin: prime bug time in your neck of the woods that you know you really need that

Marvin: kind of long drift to kind of you know quietly float uh float the food into

Marvin: the smallie's mouth and get him to eat.

Matt: Yeah. So, I mean, in a typical year, and I mean, every year,

Matt: really, you have things happening throughout May,

Matt: June, early July that kind of takes the focus,

Matt: I guess, off of bugs and terrestrial aquatic insects.

Matt: Eggs um mainly you know

Matt: non-game fish spawning activity um

Matt: i actually saw some uh some non-game fish and some spawning colors today while

Matt: i was dragging the boat to a ripple which was pretty cool um minus the dragging

Matt: the boat part um then you also have some crayfish molts usually happen happened

Matt: around the end of June, um, early July.

Matt: And, um, you know, but all that said, we, we have, we have insects around.

Matt: We've had damselflies and dragonflies for, I mean, a couple of months.

Matt: And, uh, the cicadas, man, the cicadas are super happy, um,

Matt: even pretty early in the morning with the heat and

Matt: the sun um so so there's

Matt: there's definitely bugs around um and and the streamer fishing and kind of crayfish

Matt: bottom fishing at times has been has been good especially if you're in higher

Matt: gradient pieces of water um but you know like like you were saying the uh.

Matt: But from a stealth standpoint, particularly in the flat or water and some of

Matt: the places we're finding bigger fish,

Matt: bug fishing comes in handy because it's just a very finesse-y tactic.

Matt: And that's how we're getting a lot of bigger fish right now.

Matt: Now, the other, you know, one of the keys to the real kind of prime bug bite is water temperature.

Matt: And, you know, water temperatures tend to peak out for the year sometime in late July,

Matt: early August, before they kind of start trudging back down when we start getting

Matt: some cooler overnight temps sometime in mid-August, late August.

Matt: And we have um we've

Matt: already seen temps pretty close to peak like in

Matt: the mid mid to upper 80s in

Matt: the last week or two so that just

Matt: kind of sluggishness that can come with

Matt: that when that happens really suddenly um

Matt: we've definitely seen and you know

Matt: so so bug fishing kind of kind of helps there too

Matt: so uh you know kind of like always you know the fishing's just understanding

Matt: the uh the patterns and the mechanisms at play and and and reacting to the conditions

Matt: that you have on a day-to-day basis whether they're seasonal or not so that's

Matt: that's where we're at yeah.

Marvin: So you're just waiting for a good downpour rain to really get the streamer game back right.

Matt: Man, I would, I would just lay on my back in the yard if it rained all day tomorrow,

Matt: just, just to, just to soak it in.

Matt: I would do, I would do a lot of things for quite a bit of rain. um just

Matt: to you know people like to talk like you know a bunch of rain is setting you

Matt: up for for a good summer or whatever but i mean as we've seen in the last couple

Matt: weeks we had pretty full rivers three weeks ago and here we are pretty low and and uh,

Matt: running out of options so um regular rain is is definitely necessary and we

Matt: do have some You know, kind of quarter inch here and there forecasted in the next couple of weeks.

Matt: But, you know, that kind of stuff in the summer can disappear pretty quickly.

Matt: So, well, we'll see what happens.

Matt: But we definitely could use some.

Marvin: Yeah, while you're saying that, it makes me think about how people get excited

Marvin: about snowpack out west and then it gets warm early and then there's no water in September.

Matt: Right. Yeah. Yep. You never know what you're going to get.

Matt: And like I said, it's all, it's all just, just reacting to what we get.

Marvin: Yeah. And I would imagine probably, you know, hatches were probably kind of

Marvin: winded down up high in your trout streams, probably like a terrestrial kind of beetle game.

Marvin: And, you know, probably, you know, you got to go really high and you really

Marvin: need to take a thermometer with you, right?

Matt: Yeah, those streams are getting exceptionally low.

Matt: The heat has more effect the lower things get, even up in the mountains.

Matt: You just don't have the buffer of stream flow and volume.

Matt: Volume and yeah we we see

Matt: some we see some green drakes into june and

Matt: um you know you see some trichos in

Matt: the summertime but it's uh you know

Matt: i i honestly haven't been up there in a little while for the for the carp and

Matt: the smallmouth but um if i were going tomorrow i would definitely be fishing

Matt: uh some kind of attractor bushy dry flies and and beetles and that kind of thing

Matt: um i i would I would expect to be able to do pretty well on that.

Marvin: Yeah. Yellow or orange stimulator always works, right?

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Marvin: That's right. Well, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.

Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media. And one thing we've added

Marvin: relatively recently, we're playing with a different kind of webpage configuration

Marvin: for the podcast episodes.

Marvin: If you go to the podcast link on our website, you'll see a little recorder button

Marvin: down in the bottom right-hand corner.

Marvin: And so you can actually record your question and you may actually hear your

Marvin: question played live when Matt and I record. So that's kind of a cool thing.

Marvin: And I would also remind folks, too, that, you know, if you like the podcast,

Marvin: tell a friend and ratings and reviews and podcatchers really,

Marvin: really help us. They help us.

Marvin: They help more people find us because it helps us rank higher on Spotify and Apple and everything.

Marvin: So if you have time, you know, give us five stars, write us a review or two.

Marvin: And, you know, Matt, before I let you go, you want to let folks know kind of

Marvin: where they can find you and book you. I know you have a few days left.

Marvin: You've gotten some recent cancellations. And if you got anything else neat going on?

Matt: Yeah, I did just have... What is it?

Matt: July 8, 9, and 10.

Marvin: Yeah, July 8, 9, and 10. I saw the Instagram story.

Matt: Right. Well, the embarrassing thing is I put up the wrong dates first,

Matt: and I had to take those down because I don't know what day it is,

Matt: and I am a slave to my calendar.

Matt: And if I don't look at it, I get it wrong.

Matt: But yeah, it's July 8, 9, and 10.

Matt: Those are the last small amount of dates, They're only smallmouth dates for

Matt: the time being that have opened until the winter.

Matt: And, yeah, we have started booking quite a few musky dates, too.

Matt: Like, I have a couple left in November.

Matt: And then we're looking at, you know, real winter on the river,

Matt: which is kind of December to February.

Matt: Be wary um but other than that

Matt: man we're just cruising and hoping the

Matt: uh the river stays wet and you

Matt: know fish keep biting so that's that's what we're doing um all

Matt: my contact information is on the website which is mattrileyflyfishing.com

Matt: and you can you know even even though

Matt: you know small mouth dates tend to be gone and

Matt: things tend to book up pretty quickly you know

Matt: i always tell help people um if you want to chat or or have questions about

Matt: anything just give me a shout i can usually be trusted to get back to you within

Matt: a couple of days um at the at the least so give me a shout however you feel

Matt: best and i look forward to hearing from you yeah.

Marvin: And you know also too i want to give a shout out to you actually found a

Marvin: little webmaster time in the last few days and so you've dropped a player with

Marvin: uh i guess all of this year's and last year's fishing reports and that'll be

Marvin: automatically updated so you know one thing i would say folks is if you listen

Marvin: to a year's worth of fishing reports you'll learn a whole lot about the cycle

Marvin: of the watersheds that matt fishes.

Matt: Well you'll just you'll just i mean you'll learn that i learn new things every

Matt: year and maybe that uh i'm a little bit smarter than i was a couple years ago too that's.

Marvin: A good thing to know too and you know so folks as i always say you owe it to

Marvin: yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines everybody tight lines Matt.

Matt: Thanks Lawrence.