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: Man, I am tired, but I'm doing great. How are you?

Marvin: I'm getting there. Yeah, I guess you've become like the Jiffy Lube man,

Marvin: getting your oil changed every week.

Matt: Uh yeah yeah exactly i really don't want to know um how many times i've launched

Matt: my boat or uh how many miles i've driven in the last months or so.

Marvin: Yeah it's almost like southwest virginia is almost slightly ironic right because

Marvin: you've been down relatively close to me fishing cicadas you're telling me you're

Marvin: you know burning up the road heading back from east tennessee so you kind of

Marvin: haven't even really been home right yeah.

Matt: Not a whole lot um i have a very understanding family well.

Marvin: There you go it's important well it's okay you know periodic cicadas only happen

Marvin: every 13 or 17 years so you got to like have your priorities right yeah.

Matt: I mean or like every two or three or four depending on how far you're willing to drive.

Marvin: Which sounds like you're willing to drive quite far so you know we were kind

Marvin: of talking before we started recording you know it's It's kind of been a little

Marvin: bit patchy, kind of, you know, let's just say Southern Virginia,

Marvin: North Carolina, East Tennessee on the cicada front.

Marvin: Some people have a ton of them and some people don't really have very many at all.

Matt: Yeah, I mean, that's to be expected to a large degree.

Matt: That's just the nature of the bugs. They have a very specific,

Matt: each brood has a very specific range.

Matt: Range and for the most part it's

Matt: pretty well understood um but there

Matt: there are still places and we've seen a couple um in

Matt: fact some of the heavier you know areas with

Matt: heavier distributions for for brood 19 that

Matt: have uh you know not been

Matt: you know very much on

Matt: the radar there's there's that

Matt: um but yeah some of the some of the areas i had expected to find some heavier

Matt: concentrations were kind of patchy and um did really seem to be maturing into

Matt: much so we kind of hung around for a little bit and then hit the road again

Matt: and found some other stuff so,

Matt: that's kind of what you have to do if if you want to find the best mission that you can end.

Matt: But thankfully, I'm exceptionally lucky in the sense that I have clients that'll do,

Matt: a lot of things that I ask of them and, and trust me on that stuff.

Matt: And, and, uh, I don't get a whole lot of opportunities these days to just hop

Matt: in a car, drive off to someplace I've never been before for a week.

Matt: So it's, uh, it's welcome for sure.

Marvin: Yeah. And so it's interesting, right? It kind of makes me think about like fish

Marvin: in the salmon fly hatch out West that, you know, as this periodic cicada thing kind of keeps going,

Marvin: you know, the fish are going to get pretty satiated on them i mean kind of what

Marvin: do you have to do kind of as the season wears on you know you got you know they're

Marvin: looking up they're looking for the bugs but you know how do you get you know

Marvin: fish that are you know getting kind of fat and super happy uh to eat it.

Matt: It does happen and kind of i think it depends on i i would say well i mean the

Matt: two primary motivators for that are are the the the volume of bugs and the volume of fish,

Matt: you know, if there's fish in a big body water, that's just got a stupid number

Matt: of fish and a stupid number of bugs, they can spread that wealth out pretty well.

Matt: Um, and it takes quite a while.

Matt: I mean, most, most, most fish will just continue to eat, um,

Matt: while the biomass is there.

Matt: Um, but there, you know, I have, I have run into places in the past couple of weeks, um,

Matt: where there were a lot of bugs and frankly

Matt: not that many fish eating them and which

Matt: which is you know to be clear it's common early on

Matt: in a periodical scana emergence um but

Matt: it usually matures to a point where you

Matt: do have a lot of fish eating these bugs and

Matt: um it sounds some places where just

Matt: you know there were you know some big grass

Matt: carp or catfish or something eating them

Matt: and not much else and uh yeah you'd

Matt: hit some big blocks of time where there's just not a

Matt: whole lot going on even though there's still lots of bugs on the water um some

Matt: of the best periodical state edge and edge fishing i've had has been in places

Matt: where you get out and you can you know there's a obvious presence of bugs but

Matt: there's you know it's not super crazy heavy on the water Because,

Matt: you know, if there's a ton of them on the water,

Matt: part of the reason is because they're not getting eaten up, you know.

Matt: So seeing fewer bugs on the water and fish cruising around and eating them is

Matt: really kind of the sweet spot.

Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, I guess we're saying we're expecting to kind of see this

Marvin: kind of be heavy for maybe the next two to three weeks or so.

Matt: I would say three weeks is certainly a stretch, and it kind of depends on where you are.

Matt: It tends to last for four to six weeks as a general rule.

Matt: The lifespan of an adult periodical span is closer to four weeks,

Matt: but they don't all come out at once.

Matt: There's a bell curve there. there so you know in a lot of places in the south

Matt: the first couple bugs started popping kind of,

Matt: late april um and if you have bugs hatching for a week or two growing and not that that puts you

Matt: know early first week of may or so and then you know four weeks after that puts

Matt: you to early to mid-june so that's that's kind of what i would expect um and

Matt: you know again it depends Depends on where you are.

Matt: Emergence timing has everything to do with weather, specifically ground temperature,

Matt: and microclimates are a thing, and, you know, latitudinal gradients and weather

Matt: and temperature are a thing.

Matt: So it's not a homogenous thing across the country.

Marvin: Got it. And of course, the other story in our part of the world is we've had

Marvin: a fair amount of rain, right?

Matt: That's right. The rivers in my neck of the woods have been full to high to blown

Matt: out for the last couple of weeks.

Matt: Almost no matter where you look, short of some tailwaters. And even like before

Matt: we hopped on the phone, I was looking at the gauges and some of our trout streams in the mountains.

Matt: And they're up to kind of marginally waitable right now because we've had pretty

Matt: heavy rain about every three to four days for the last couple of weeks.

Matt: And it does look like it's drying up here in the coming week or so.

Matt: So that's a good thing. But yeah, I'm glad to not necessarily be home right now.

Marvin: Yeah. It's interesting too, right? Because where you are in Southwest Virginia,

Marvin: you know, so much, you know, varies just based on which side of the mountain the rain falls on.

Marvin: But sometimes you can get some of that stuff that's in the Smokies and it can

Marvin: really mess you up a little bit.

Matt: Yeah. You know, I mean, well, for one, you know, the New River watershed,

Matt: the head of it's in Western North Carolina. So that's certainly relevant. of it.

Matt: Um, and then, yeah, I mean, it's, it, uh, really not, not too far from the Smokies.

Matt: So if we get, if we get those big systems that are kind of moving West to East

Matt: and they hang on the mountains right there, they can very easily impact our area too.

Marvin: Yeah. So I guess, you know, whether you're fishing for trout or small mouth,

Marvin: um, you know, I guess the clue is, uh, maybe, you know, fish on structure until

Marvin: the water kind of drops out a little bit, but, uh, what do you think folks should

Marvin: expect to see on the small mouth front once the, you know, give it another two

Marvin: or three days and things kind of start to come back into kind of more seasonable shape.

Matt: Yeah, the, um, I have been smallmouth fishing a couple of times in the last couple of weeks.

Matt: And, you know, as, as I would expect, we're kind of progressively seeing, uh,

Matt: spunkier and spunkier, um, big females post-pawn fish that are just recovering

Matt: fully and, and chasing food around and, um, and then fewer and fewer males sitting on nests.

Matt: So, uh, that's a, that's a good thing because one it's, it's,

Matt: it makes fishing a little easier cause you don't have to dodge,

Matt: um, big nesting areas and stuff like that.

Matt: And two, um, you just have, just have more happy, aggressive fish in the system

Matt: and water temps aren't crazy hot yet.

Matt: Um, we're still, still in what I call the spring.

Matt: We've still got a fair bit of a, of a streamer bait fish bite ahead of us.

Matt: So, um, yeah, it's good fishing,

Matt: um, the next couple of weeks and, uh, you know, if, if, uh, nothing else,

Matt: hopefully this bit of rain kind of sets us up for not dreadfully low flows through,

Matt: you know, August and September.

Marvin: I'll remind you that when you tell me you've been dragging your raft over rocks, but at any rate.

Matt: Well, I don't have to tell you that you can just assume that's the case.

Marvin: But I know that's good news for you because, you know, even though people love

Marvin: to fish topwater, I know you really, you know, it's like so many guys that guide

Marvin: for smallmouth, they really just can't let go of that streamer bite.

Matt: Yeah, it's, uh, I mean, I would, I would say it's almost the opposite.

Matt: Sometimes people, as soon as it starts getting warm, people want to hop on the

Matt: top waterfront and, and we've, we've talked about it before.

Matt: Um, you can, there, there's usually a window early to mid to late,

Matt: you know, kind of, kind of depends on the timing of the spawn,

Matt: but it's usually, you know, early through late late may where you know topwater

Matt: bug fishing popper fishing can become pretty effective and,

Matt: um i think really what it

Matt: is a lot of times is is just people tossing bugs

Matt: on top of nests along the bank and you know nothing else seems to be working

Matt: that well because they're streamer fishing and they throw the fly at the bank

Matt: and the fish kind of follows out doesn't eat you know it's not not eating and

Matt: a lot of times that that can just be a male that's just kind of escorting your.

Matt: Your threatening bait fish away from its nest but if

Matt: you splat a bug on top of it and don't move it they'll come up and eat it or

Matt: suck it in or grab it or whatever and uh you know it kind of kind of creates

Matt: this little bit of a like you know oh bug season's happening early kind of thing

Matt: and And like I said, while that can be viable,

Matt: it also don't necessarily think it's the greatest idea.

Matt: And then there will be basically until mid-July, there's going to be some foraging

Matt: events that distract the fish from topwater flies.

Matt: And that's not to say that you can't have some fantastic topwater fishing through,

Matt: you know, May, June, early July.

Matt: But non-game bait fish, spawning activity.

Matt: Post-spawn feeding activity on the smallmouths front, and crayfish molts kind

Matt: of late, late June, early July will all be things to consider.

Matt: So, I mean, streamer fishing is definitely not in the rear view.

Matt: And I would say to anybody fishing between now and what I would call the real

Matt: start of bug season sometime in mid to late July.

Matt: If things aren't going on top, there may be a reason and you may see a switch

Matt: to some flavor, a streamer do you a lot of good.

Matt: So kind of just pay attention to what you're seeing and what's going on around you.

Matt: Don't be too hardheaded on that front.

Marvin: There you go. Good life advice, too. And we know that, you know,

Marvin: folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.

Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.

Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag.

Marvin: And we're going to draw in for some cool stuff from Matt at the end of the season.

Marvin: And, you know, Matt, I would imagine at this point, you know,

Marvin: barring cancellations, you're probably pretty well taken care of until October.

Marvin: But you want to let folks know kind of what you have available and where they

Marvin: can find you and all that kind of good stuff?

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, all my small updates are spoken for at this point.

Matt: Um but you know

Matt: i'd say that the next major thing is is musky season

Matt: and um and that

Matt: i'm probably gonna get in the swing of that probably the last week of october

Matt: um maybe the first week of november and uh and we'll roll on through early march

Matt: but the my website is matt rileyflyfishing.com and my phone number's on there,

Matt: my email's on there, and however you want to reach out, I look forward to hearing from you.

Marvin: Yeah, and don't wait until they put the pumpkin spice latte in Starbucks to

Marvin: book your dates or you'll be fishing next year.

Matt: Right? No, yeah, that's the truth, man.

Marvin: Yeah, so we'll listen, folks. As I always say, you owe it to yourself to get

Marvin: out there and catch a few.

Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Matt.

Matt: Thanks, Marv.