Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly, and we're back with another Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Riley. How are you doing, Matt?
Matt:
[0:11] I'm doing good, Marvin. How are you?
Marvin:
[0:14] As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble, and it's kind of funny.
We were talking before we started recording, and it's like March weather now again, right?
Matt:
[0:22] Yeah, I mean, the classic spring, you know, bouncing around.
I think I was telling my guy today that we had water temperatures in late February, early March, pushing what we had this morning because our water temps kind of fell off a cliff with the cold front came in Friday afternoon and then cloudy weather over the weekend.
You know, keep the sun off the water so, um, water temp just keeps dropping overnight and it, uh, it happens.
I can, I can remember canceling or pushing days for snow in late April in the last couple of years. So we're, we're not far off of that, but we're still, we're still doing it.
Marvin:
[1:09] Yeah. And I know you're kind of getting ready to get on the other side of all this, but you know, when you get that, I know shocks are bad, whether they're warming things up or cooling things off but you know how do the fish react when they kind of have a prolonged period of like a a drop in temperature.
Matt:
[1:26] Yeah, I always try to emphasize to people, I talk about this a lot, is the idea of numbers as water temperatures.
People like to say, oh yeah, like 60 degree, what's a good small amount of water temperature?
Like, when are they active? That's a loaded question, because 42 degrees in February is really good if it was 36 a week ago.
[1:57] 50 degrees in August is horrible, because it's likely been in the upper 70s to mid 80s for a while.
So it's all relative, but yeah, the water temp game is a complicated one.
And this time of year, it's very common for that to happen and with cold fronts and just the big drastic changes in springtime air temps.
But one thing that definitely affects things is sun. Like I was saying, if you have sun on the water, you at least have...
If it's been a real cold snap overnight or for a couple of days.
It may be 11 o'clock or noon before sun on the water actually helps that water temperature start moving in a positive direction.
[2:58] But what the sun does is that it does penetrate the water, you'll see rock flats in shallow water start to accumulate bait fish and that kind of thing.
It just gets things moving a bit.
I can remember some days in June and July where we've had really unseasonably cool weather for a couple of days, and then the next day of sunny weather, you're seeing these big smallmouth chilling in six inches of water on a gravel bar in the middle of nowhere, but it's a reaction to, their changing environment, and just taking advantage of the heat that they have, and following food, and yeah.
[3:51] This time of year, we usually have higher water levels, too, and that's something, like we were talking before we started recording about my day-to-day, We had pretty cool water temps this morning, but we also have a little bit higher stream flows than we did last week.
Real low water with cold water and kind of lethargic post-spawn fish makes for some tough sells, just because they're not living in a world in which they have to go out and eat a bunch.
Water temps drop, so they're just kind of salting a bit.
Today, where we had a little bit higher flows, yeah, the fish are still moving pretty slow, but they're actively burning calories, so they have to replace them.
And when you have sun on the water too, they kinda know, hey, things are gonna get better and they will get out and eat.
So, it's just thinking about all the elements going into the environment you're fishing in, the time of year and all that, helps a lot.
You know, today if we had been fishing much lower water, higher in the watershed or something, I don't think we would have done as well as we did today.
Marvin:
[5:15] Yeah. And so, for this cold snap, are the fish less chasing?
So streamers aren't as much of an option, so you kind of have to go prime out, or are they still in a chase mode?
Matt:
[5:29] I think there's a couple of factors that come into play there.
One is height, water height.
Top water tends to work a little bit better in colder water conditions when the water is a little bit lower, just because there's less depth, vertical distance between the bottom of the river and the top of the river.
Clarity is a big deal too. And then of course, just current speed.
[6:01] We did most of our fishing kind of mid-column fairly close to the bottom today and moving fairly slow.
But you know that said, like I was talking about.
How fish react to their changing environment.
You will see, and we did see today, some flats that had some sun on them, and some active bait fish that are being concentrated, and some fish that are moving pretty quickly.
So, smallmouth are very well adapted at living in very cold water and very warm water.
[6:43] And when, I think just about any fish, when there's enough biomass to stimulate feeding.
Mid-50 degree water is not hard for them to be very active in.
It's just a little bit of a shock coming from mid-60s.
Like I was instructing my client today, we're fishing pretty slow, but we had a couple of situations where some of these bigger schools of a bait fish for being chased around and crashed by some pretty active bass and in that situation you don't want to be fishing real slow you know you want to slap that fly down and get some attention with it move it pretty quickly right off the bat and you know that that fish is going to come over and eat it so it kind of depends on just the attitude of the fish that you're in front of at that moment, for one.
But, you know, again, don't, at the end of the day, you don't need to stress too much about a couple of degrees and drop a water temperature.
Just understand what it can do to them and kind of start your day out catering to that attitude and adjust positively as you see fit. That makes sense.
Marvin:
[7:59] It does. And got an interesting question and I'm kind of pulling around because when Bruce sent this in, he said to ask Ellis or ask you. So, I'm just going to ask both of you.
And Bruce's experience is he doesn't fish a lot from a drift boat.
But when he does, it's frustrating for him because he has a hard time being accurate, judging distance, and not missing spots.
And so, his question was, you know, given those three things, you know, what should he do so that the next time he gets in a drift Bodi has a better experience.
Matt:
[8:35] Yeah, that's a good question, and definitely something that I have lots of thoughts on that probably are not going to come to me all at once, but the two things that kind of spring to mind is, you know, individual topics are, one, Everybody should practice more, I think, even me.
I don't practice in my yard as much as I probably should.
[9:12] The more automatic things become, the less you have to think about them and just the more efficient you become.
If you wade mountain streams almost exclusively, or fish ponds, or lakes, or whatever you eat, unless you're cast into like Buston, Chad, or Stripers or something, you often don't have to be there right now in order to take advantage of the situation.
So if you're gonna be fishing in a fairly fast-paced environment, definitely get out and practice, learn what 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 feet looks like.
And, you know, just be good at doing that fairly quickly at, you know, something I teach people all the time is the old, you know, making an auxiliary stripping guide with your line hand trick, you know, when you're shooting line, don't just drop your fly line and let it shoot through the guide.
You know, loosen your grip on it, keep your fingers and your thumb in a closed circle like a like a stripping guide and just let line shoot so that as soon as soon as that lines done moving you can grab it stick it back on your right hand and and get to work.
[10:34] Another thing that comes to mind is that, I mean, it kind of depends on the situation you're fishing in, but you should probably, I would say, at least people in my boat, you know, if there's a good spot coming up that I want people to hit, they're going to get a pretty solid forewarning, if I feel strongly about it.
And then, I'm going to do my best to make sure you're kind of teed up and ready to hit it.
Sometimes that means carrying line in the air for false casts, while we're kind of waiting for a window and some tree branches, or a current theme or a pocket to become reachable.
[11:25] It just depends, but I'm generally not going to just blast past the spot and hope you hit it, so that's another thing.
[11:35] But another thing in terms of something fairly easy you can do, Is investing in fly lines that have.
That have color changes in certain kind of strategic places, so that you're aware of when the head of your fly line is inside of your rod tip or outside of your rod tip, when to shoot line.
If you have a change in color at 40 feet, that helps you judge that a little bit better.
Being fairly communicative with your guide or whoever's running your boat as to what they think 40 or 50 or 60 feet looks like.
I also do a lot of site fishing at times in the summertime, and I use one o'clock, 10 o'clock, nine o'clock, three o'clock a lot, and And some folks are better at left and right and upstream and downstream.
Some folks think, my 10 o'clock is there 11 o'clock or something like that.
I've heard you mention that before Marvin, just having a conversation about where we can agree on 10 o'clock is before we get going.
[13:01] And another thing that definitely comes to mind is, you can...
I have people ask me all the time, they're like, when we get in the boat, if they have a buddy that's left handed or...
And they're right handed, they're like, well, what side of the river are we gonna be fishing? So that they can fish over there, cast over their comfortable shoulder or whatever.
And the answer is all over the river, But also, you need to be able to cast backhanded or over your non-dominant shoulder.
And if you're in a boat with me, it's kind of not an option.
I'm going to try to make you learn that and fish that way as much as possible, because it just makes you more, um, more adept and more efficient at getting into spots. and.
[13:51] You know, I think those are all the things that come to mind right off the bat.
Another thing that I strongly discourage people from doing pretty regularly is, you know, slapping a fly down and wishing it was it landed three feet away and picking it up again and dropping it down again and it landed in the same spot and then picking it up again and laying it it down again.
If you're streamer fishing or doing any kind of top water fishing, most of those fish are going to, in some degree, react to a piece of food entering their domain.
And so, one, if you're picking it up and dropping it down that many times, we're probably past the spot already.
Or two, your second and third cast is probably not going going to be better than your first cast.
And three, that fish is now seeing that food source, enter their domain, leave, come back, leave, come back. And now it's just not as attractive as it once was.
And you've kind of lost that surprise element or that immediate attention to what's in the neighborhood.
[15:16] So that's another, I guess, motivation for just being more accurate, being able to efficiently shoot line and get to fishing.
And let's see, here's some extraneous thoughts here still kicking around.
[15:39] Let's see, if, Fishing that first cast is almost always gonna be better than fishing that third cast just because it's already in the water, you're in relatively close to the spot.
There's a chance there's a fish that's gonna eat that fly at some point during that retrieve.
Go for it, unless whoever's running your boat tells you, no, really try again.
[16:07] In just talking about that kind of reaction to something entering the water, it's pretty important to have immediate control over your fly line when things hit the water.
[16:21] Comes to mind streamer fishing or topwater bug fishing.
It's very common for reaction strikes to occur where you just get, you know, knocked out as soon as something hits the water.
And so you need to be able to strip set or set the hook or just have some some grip on your line so again that you know line shooting through your fingers closed circle tactic is important and then particularly streamer fishing in a faster paced environment it's I try to almost always have my fly moving at me, as in, like, into my first grip, either as soon as the fly hits the water or before it hits the water, so that when it does hit the water, it's already kind of fleeing the point of entry.
So, again, just having kind of immediate control and practicing just that line management, you know, being able to make a cast, you know, tree trunk or clump of grass in your backyard, straight line all the way rolled out and then immediately just pick it up and put it somewhere else, you know, 20 feet away is pretty important. Yeah. Um...
Yeah, good. I think I think that's probably all I can dump right now.
Marvin:
[17:46] Yeah, I was gonna say just to kind of back back, you know, we talked about practicing, but you've talked about some of it.
You know, you've talked about it, like, you know, learning to shoot line.
But I think, you know, the biggest thing to do, like in terms of learning distance, right, you can get cones and measure it, right.
But then the other thing is, you know, the trick is, you know, you also talked about learning to change direction, because it's highly likely, particularly if you're like topwater fishing, right, that you're going to have to basically have your first back cast in a different plane than where you want your forward cast to go, right?
Matt:
[18:17] Yes.
Marvin:
[18:19] And then also too, you know, the secret of the sauce is basically to minimize the false casting, right?
Because you miss spots if you got to basically false cast three times.
Very true. Right. So, I don't know.
I mean, you fish with a lot of, you know, different anglers, but I would say, you know, you ought to be able to pick up and put down kind of 40 to 50 feet a line without hauling and you know we're not without hauling but without false casting a lot right?
Matt:
[18:45] Absolutely and that's that what that comes down to is just knowing how to properly load a rod and use that to create another quality cast and it's something that you know if if we're if we're, being honest here and then I fight people with constantly because you know top water fishing You don't have to worry about moving the fly right off the bat most of the time.
It's fairly straight forward, you need buckets of water, you're done until a fish eats it. But if...
[19:20] I can't tell you how many times I tell people to strip the slack end before they pick the fly up again you know if if it comes down to If we have a spot that I feel strongly about coming up and you know You don't have your slack stripped down.
You got to pick your fly up um You're not going to properly load the rod.
You're not going to get a good cast. It's going to fall down in front of you you got the either Most people will try to pick it up and muscle it out there again, or eventually you'll just become exasperated and strip it all in and make a good cast.
So just knowing how to properly load a rod, get that good bend, put a line out there, be in immediate control of it, pick it up, load the rod, put it somewhere else, just very crisp, quick.
[20:11] That's super important. And I mean, most people will tell you, particularly trout fishermen, not being, you know, this is not an aggressive statement anyway, but we're talking that you don't have to be able to cast more than 20 or 30 feet to catch fish.
Sometimes you do, if you want to take advantage of every opportunity.
And whether or not you need to be able to, if you can cast 60, 70 feet well consistently you're just gonna be able to cast at 30 feet a lot better.
So I would say name of the game is just just practicing all that efficiency and and quickness and and just I mean sounds simple but being able to put it where you want to any time as easily as possible.
Marvin:
[21:01] Yeah and it's kind of crazy right because if you go from three false casts down to basically one false cast you don't have to you don't have to feel as rushed, right?
Matt:
[21:10] Right, and you know if we put it into...
Streamer fishing for brown trout on a tailwater situation is probably, good an example of efficiency in casting and how it relates to successes as you can get the more that flies in the water and and hunting efficiently um or yeah the the more likely you're gonna pop a fish or get one to eat and so if if i can you know if i can have the boat 60 feet off the bank and somebody can stick it within six inches of the bank you know know, fish it out 15, 20 feet, pick it up again, shoot that 20 feet back out, land it six inches from the bank, fish it out 20 feet, you know, all day long, their chances are way higher than somebody who's got to, you know, make a cast, strip out a bunch of slack, then start fishing their fly, then pick it up and make four or five false casts and then stick it back in the spot.
Just eliminating all the fluff and being able to make it happen now, having some urgency with it, is a big deal.
And so, I'd just say to translate that into your practice and yeah, I mean, it sounds simple, but not many folks practice and that makes a big difference.
Marvin:
[22:35] Yeah. Well, Bruce, I think we've covered it, but if we've left something out, just shoot me an email.
And folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly. You can email them to us.
You can DM us on social media.
If we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag, and we are drawing for something cool for Matt at the end of the season.
And I know, Matt, I saw a newsletter within the last day or so.
And there are a handful of days left. You want to let folks know what you got and how to find you all that kind of good stuff.
Matt:
[23:08] Yeah, yeah, hopefully questions in the future won't resemble airing of grievances as much as this one might have, but yeah, the summer dates are, there's like two or three of them left.
Starting to, I haven't really pushed for it much, but we're starting to look at like, October, November, December for.
Smallmouth, muskie, trout, etc.
Still have plenty of mountain stream trout dates open.
I've got a guy I've been working with to help get more folks on those mountain streams, trout fishing and learning.
So, if any of that interests you, or if you just want to stay kind of up-to-date and get first shot at some of those cancellations that hopefully won't happen, but probably will, feel free to subscribe to that newsletter and reach out however you feel best and look forward to hearing from you.
Marvin:
[24:13] Well there you go, well listen folks, you owe it to yourself to to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Matt.