Transcript: Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Reilly
S5, Ep 128: Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Reilly
2023, Marvin S. Cash
The Articulate Fly
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 Southwest Virginia Fishery Report with Matt Reilly. How you doing, Matt?
Matt:
[0:12] I'm doing good, Marvin. How are you?
Marvin:
[0:14] As always, just trying to stay out of trouble, and we were talking before we started recording, and you know, we actually, if we're lucky, might get a little bit of rain in Southwest Virginia, and you're definitely easily 10 plus degrees on the low end side, cooler than most of us down here in the southeast.
Matt:
[0:32] Yeah, yeah, it's, water is definitely something we need.
The, you know, it's kind of teeing us up for for getting heavy on the muskie train here in the next week or so, but the New River in particular is pretty low as a body.
We get some pulses and some rises of water down below Radford day to day, but pretty low.
[1:05] I've seen it down below 900 a couple of times at Radford, which is less than half of the summertime average, so not atypical for this time of year, especially the last couple of years, but we are solidly dry and we've had some kind of, you know, cloudy day misting's going on the last couple of days, but yeah, it's looking like Friday, Saturday, we might get somewhere that, you know, in the half inch range hopefully that might bring some options on board because right now, I mean, everything's low, the trout streams are low, got weeds falling, water temps are dropping.
So, the smallmouth fishing in the Creekstone Rivers is getting kind of challenging day to day.
You have your good spots and your bad spots within the week, and then aren't really even getting a whole lot of generation on their tailwaters either so.
For a person who usually has a lot of options, you still got options, but they're getting kind of skinny. Water is definitely going to help us a bit.
Marvin:
[2:24] Yeah, and we were talking before we started recording. So you've got this low water, which makes things unnecessarily technical, right?
But then the other thing is you've got kind of this transition and it kind of, you know, the musky fish will start to pick up, but then it also has a tendency to kind of make things a little bit funky, right? So it's not consistent.
Matt:
[2:48] Yeah, I'm never one to be scared of clear water on the musky front.
It definitely makes it more challenging to put hooks and fish at times, but it makes for some exciting days on the water. You get to see a lot of fish this time of year, usually.
Sometimes that's just what the doctor ordered for somebody who has not done a lot of musky fishing.
You get some interactions, get some visuals, more so than sticking it out in January when you might not move a whole lot, but you get a little bit more color in the water maybe and fish might be a little bit more likely to eat.
[3:33] But yeah, everything's in transition. I mean, you nailed it right there.
The smallmouth fishing will get better for the fall season, from here on out, more than likely things just need to stabilize a little bit.
The first couple big cold fronts can, you know, it's kind of a wild card sometimes.
I mean, especially if the water's low, I think it tends to hurt things just because, you know, they're cold-shocked fish, which aren't super great to begin with, but then they're cold-shocked fish that know you're after them, and that's a hard fish to catch, and especially if they're moving around in the river and not as predictable as they were maybe two, three weeks ago.
[4:22] So a little bit of water, a little bit of time, let those water temperatures stabilize a little bit. I mean, we're down in the...
Indeed like upper fifties and low sixties where we were you know in the in the seventies couple weeks ago so we're dropping off pretty quick.
And so once we get some october does this to us every year get a couple of days of cold weather and then we get a couple of days of.
You know, it feels like summer weather, so we just need the stability, I think, right now.
Marvin:
[5:04] Yeah, and so if you're out kind of right now where things are kind of not settled, do you generally, kind of in your game plan for a day, do you plan to try more things until you kind of find the thing, or do you kind of still have the same approach to the water?
Matt:
[5:23] That's a good question, and I'll say my answer is probably different depending on the day, but that's frankly one of the signs or symptoms, if you will, of a challenging transitional fall day.
[5:42] Smallmouth fishing for me has always been, you know, having a game plan or, I never, I never, I try never to resort to just throwing the kitchen sink, you know, I think that's, generally a waste of time, but I usually approach the river with two or three, you know, things that I know are going to work.
And usually it comes down to those, all those things do work, but, you know, it'll start out on plan one, um, plan a, you'll get a little bit of action. Things feel, feel favorable.
And then it dies off for a while. And you start going back to the drawing board and say, okay, plan B, plan B on, and, uh, you know, whack a couple of fish right out of the gate and then slows down again.
And, you know, you're just kind of like, you kind of know what's up. Cause you know, the fish, you know, the water, but, um, things are just changing you know it's it's nothing is is necessarily set at the moment you're just gonna kind of run into them and run out of them and you'll find fish in different moods and that kind of thing so it's I definitely do keep more of an open mind but you know I also try to be confident and know that I I know what that should work and we'll get them eventually.
Marvin:
[7:08] Yeah, and I would imagine on the trout front, you know, it may be low clear water, but, you know, probably nymphing and streamers, a little bit less probably variability than on the smallmouth front, right?
Matt:
[7:21] Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know where they're going to be. Water's real low.
They're going to be in the oxygen, not that they need that necessarily because the water temps are cool enough, but they're going to be in those areas of broken water, deeper water, and closer to the food source, which we're talking nymphing that's just broken water, riffles where macro of our bricks are being dislodged.
Streamer fishing this time of year on the mountain streams can be fun, especially if you have a little bit more water, but you're kind of running and gunning on foot and hitting those higher percentage areas, you know, just looking for a player, just like we would on a tailwater, but you just have to make sure to float your feet and cover some ground.
[8:14] And yeah, I mean, I guess one more word on the smallmouth is that, you know, when you're monkey fishing, you get out there, you generally have a game plan.
If you've got realistic expectations, and you're not, you know, specifically fishing to one fish, like sometimes I'll go to the river and I have a fish that lives in a certain spot and I'm going to try to get it to move or do something.
If you're slowing down the river fishing it's probably going to be lunchtime or at least a couple hours in before you start thinking about oh maybe today's a slow day.
You know if you're on the smallmouth front you know usually you're used to catching a fair few fish over the course of the day and so when you know you don't catch a fish for an hour or two, it starts to feel like things are painfully slow, but that's where just, you know, knowing that...
[9:13] Things are changing, you know, this might just be in kind of a funky mood.
Yeah, you might need to make some changes. But, you know, don't Don't get an hour in and just start sorting through your fly box, you know, give it some time and give it some different habitat types and presentations and The end of the day, this time of year.
Um, they, they will still eat a lot of things, especially if the water's low.
They'll eat on top. You can trigger them with some aggression.
Um, they'll eat on bottom, they'll eat mid column.
Um, it's just putting it to work, um, and doing it well, more or less.
Marvin:
[9:52] Yeah, got it. 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.
When you're drawing for some cool stuff from Matt at the end of the season and Matt before I let you go, you know, if you want to let folks know kind of, you know, what you're looking for from the booking side and kind of how to find you and all that kind of good stuff.
Matt:
[10:15] Yeah, the website's mattreillyflyfishing.com. Everybody can hop online, find my contact info on there.
As far as bookings go, we are, you know, fairly booked for the muskie season.
Muskie season, there's still plenty of day to open.
If you wanna get in on any winter smallmouth fishing or trout fishing, that's all gonna be viable for the next several months too.
Just reach out to me and give me a shout, tell me what you might be interested in, we can talk about it.
And then as far as As far as the small program goes, we are actively booking 2024 at this point, and things are, going fast, particularly those dates that are coming soon, the springtime dates.
So if you want to get on the river next year, don't wait too long.
Like I said, it's never too early. Just open a line of communication, and that way we can make sure we get you booked in the window and the season that's going to work best for you. Um, yeah. Yeah.
Marvin:
[11:29] And of course it's never too early to buy yourself a Christmas present, right?
Matt:
[11:33] Uh, yeah, we can start harping on gift cards and stuff too, pretty soon.
That's, uh, yeah, it's, it's not October or it's not Halloween yet.
So that must mean it's almost, almost Christmas. Yeah.
Marvin:
[11:45] Well, I was in Lowe's and boy, howdy, all the Christmas stuff was out.
Matt:
[11:48] So no kidding. Yeah.
Marvin:
[11:51] Well, listen, folks, as I always say, fall is my favorite time of the year to be out on the water and you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Matt.
Matt:
[12:01] Thanks, Byron. Thanks, Byron. Thanks, Byron.