Transcript: Central VA Fishing Report with TaleTellers Fly Shop
S5, Ep 97: Central Virginia Fishing Report with TaleTellers Fly Shop
2023
http://www.thearticulatefly.com
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly, and we're back with another Central Virginia fishing report with Ethan Martin at Telltale's Fly Shop. How you doing, Ethan?
Ethan:
[0:12] I'm doing great today.
Marvin:
[0:14] How are you doing? Just trying to stay out of trouble and stay cool.
How are things in Central Virginia?
Ethan:
[0:20] It's been kind of wet and kind of mild for July, but the fishing's been good, so I have no complaints.
Marvin:
[0:28] Yeah, kind of have to qualify that, right? Smallmouth fishing has been good.
The trout fishing has been. Yeah, that's fair. Not so good.
So I think the last time we spoke, we were just starting to hear the cicadas.
I would imagine your bug situation is in pretty full swing, right? Yep.
Ethan:
[0:43] Yeah. You can hear the cicadas pretty much all day. Uh, I was up the other day at like six o'clock and even heard a couple, even that early.
Um, so if you are out smallmouth fishing, definitely it's top water time.
And it pretty much only gets better all the way through September, October-ish, depending on when that first frost comes.
But it's been good out there. If you fish downtown, if you were just looking for wade fishing, and I should say downtown Lynchburg is where we're at, its flows have been pretty solid.
A couple of these rainstorms we've been getting have been causing some muddy water, but you can still fish through that if you know the river.
But, when it does that too, it means pretty good streamer time, or even just top water bait fish, something that causes a little bit of noise.
And other than that, I mean, there's been some pretty hefty smallmouth caught this year.
My buddy Matt just caught a 23-inch smallmouth, and I don't know where he caught it, but he lives in Virginia.
So you can keep that for your mind if you're out there trying to figure out what's the benchmark, you know, and James or the new, um, so pretty big, small mouth around here, uh, definitely worth inspecting. Yeah.
Marvin:
[2:01] Was that Matt miles on a tequila by chance?
Ethan:
[2:04] No, it wasn't. This is Matt pillow. Another guy. It's a lot of mats.
Marvin:
[2:08] There you go. So, you know, folks that I guess the game, right.
Uh, for bug fishing is, um, you know, fish the shade line on the banks, which is kind of a bummer for the Angler, right? Cause you better have a broad rim hat and be ready to be hot.
Ethan:
[2:23] Right.
Absolutely. Yep. And most of the time, it's just cast, let it splat and sit there. You know, you're not always actively retrieving, though that does work.
You know, there's always a time for something like that.
But most of the time, the bug game is just casting it out, letting it hit the water and acting as a cicada would when they hit the surface of the water, which if you've ever seen one splat, you know, they're not typically swimming.
Kind of freak out you know they're flapping their wings and stuff so they do cause a bit of a commotion but it's not generally in a direction you know they're just kind of drifting down a line and making a whole bunch of movement within that line if that makes sense so I don't know if I've ever seen one trying like swim back towards the bank or out the middle of the river or anything like that but you know during the like broad X hatch when you get you know, the thousands of them or millions, you'll see them all the time just going crazy on the water, but there's nothing much they can do about it other than, you know, hope they don't get eaten, which obviously they get eaten most of the time.
But I would also add that, you know, the cicadas we have here are not, you know, that huge hatch that happens.
This is just our annual cicadas, so they're a little bit bigger and they happen every year, you know. That's one of the cool things about this area that people don't realize, I think.
Marvin:
[3:47] Yeah. And I think the brood this year is actually not spectacular anywhere in the country. I think it's somewhere in the upper Midwest.
Ethan:
[3:55] Yeah. I haven't even looked at it.
I just always think it's funny how many people go crazy about it, you know, tying cicadas that are orange and black and, you know, the closest one is 14 hours away.
I know guys that go that far for them, but you know, it's pretty cool.
Those bugs are crazy. I mean, I think that they're, they're really cool, but my kids, they're there, my kiddos, favorite bugs. I have three little girls and they, uh, as soon as we go outside, they're all telling me, Hey daddy, I hear cicadas. So I've trained them well.
Marvin:
[4:28] Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, and if you see them after they they're dead on the ground, I mean, and when they're upside down, they look exactly shockingly like the bottom of an Excalibur popper, right?
Ethan:
[4:36] Yep. Yeah. there's no coincidence there.
Marvin:
[4:41] Yeah, and so, you know, I would imagine, you know, it was kind of hot, I guess, for about a week in July. It's been relatively dry.
I mean, I would imagine that it's probably hard to even justify trout fishing early, Right?
Ethan:
[4:55] Yeah. I mean, our water temps from the people that I've talked to that have been up on them, they've been mainly towards the western part of Virginia where it does get a little bit more cooler or they go to the tailwaters.
And so, if you were to find yourself over there, definitely would be like beetle, ant, grasshopper game right now. Another word for that would just be terrestrials.
And so, dry fly game, if you happen upon a trout stream that's within the parameters that are that are worthy of fishing.
Definitely, that's what I would be putting on. You know, one of the ones that we've done forever, people have said to do it forever, is you take a beetle, and then as your nymph, you know, you can take two flies.
You can do like a sunken ant this time of the year, and that does pretty well.
So, worth trying if you are out on a trout stream that has the, you know, the right temperatures.
But for the most part in central Virginia, where we're at, it's gonna be too hot, And you might as well just smallmouth fish because, you know, this is about as good as it's going to get. It does get better, typically.
But, you know, we're there. This is the time of year for smallmouth.
So, I always encourage people, if they're asking me where to fish right now, I always say, go after smallmouth because there's plenty of them around.
They eat really well this time of the year and they're just a lot of fun.
Marvin:
[6:17] Yeah, and just to help people remember, you know, what we're really talking about is is when you start to see temperatures in the mid-60s, you need to kind of start planning on what you're gonna do later in the day.
And, you know, a general rule of thumb is once the water gets to 68, you really shouldn't target trout.
Ethan:
[6:31] Yeah. And again, the main reason for that is just because they can't recover and then they die.
You know, and the same thing happens with muskie and most of those cold water fish that are used to colder temperatures.
That's where they're, you know, born and raised. Of course, you could say native brook trout We're born and raised here, which is true, but you know, when the water temps hit like upper seventies, 80 degrees, that's kind of an extreme scenario for them.
Um, and so there's not enough oxygen to allow them to survive.
So if you want to, if you want a future for that fishery, you know, don't, I would suggest not doing that.
Marvin:
[7:09] Yeah, there you go. And you know, folks, we love questions on the articulate fly. You can email them to us. You can DM us on social media, whatever's easiest for you.
And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag, and we're going to enter your drawing for something cool from the shop at the end of the season. And Ethan, before I let you go, I know you've got a ton of new inventory.
I know you're probably thinking about classes starting in probably four to six weeks. You want to get folks info on all that kind of good stuff, hours and location too.
Ethan:
[7:34] Yep, absolutely. So we're located in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, and it's either going to be me or Andrew who's in the shop.
Like you said, we've been getting a bunch of stuff in. Andrew's been doing a great job.
We've got all sorts of like hats, shirts, sun shirts, all that stuff in, some stuff from Fish Pond, a bunch of Nautilus reels. So we've been kind of stocking up because in the next like two weeks, all of our college students will return.
And so once they're back is when we're going to start back up into our fly tying classes, fly fishing 101s, that sort of stuff.
So definitely if you have been searching for something like that, then just keep your eye on our website, which is tailtellersva.com.
There's a little calendar option. And if you click on that, then it's going to show you the dates for events that are upcoming.
So definitely if you are interested, or maybe you've got a buddy who's interested, push from our way. We appreciate it and we will take care of it.
Marvin:
[8:32] Yeah, well there you go. Listen folks, show it to yourself to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines everybody. Tight lines, Ethan. Vines.