S1, Ep 28: Matt Reilly of Matt Reilly Fly Fishing

**Marvin Cash (00:04):**
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly, and tonight I'm joined by Matt Reilly of Matt Reilly Fly Fishing. How's it going, Matt?

**Matt Reilly (00:12):**
Pretty good, Marvin. How are you?

**Marvin Cash (00:13):**
Oh, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. Before we get going tonight, I want to give a shout out to tonight's sponsor. It's the first fly shop in Bryson City, North Carolina, the Tuckasegee Fly Shop. They also have an extra location for your convenience located in Sylva, but you owe it to yourself to go check out the shop, talk to Dale, Bobby, meet the shop dogs and the other folks on the crew for all of your fly fishing needs in that part of the world.

Well Matt, I always start and ask all of my guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

**Matt Reilly (00:47):**
Yeah, that's kind of tough for me. I've got a lot of my memories I'm kind of scared are just a product of pictures I've been shown because my dad, I'm really thankful that my dad started getting me out fishing and squirrel hunting and floating the river when I was two years old, three years old. And some of my, ironically, some of my first memories really aren't even really of fish, though I know we were fishing.

He used to take me to some stock trout ponds out in Nelson and Madison County, and one of the, I think it's my earliest memory is just remembering looking at some salamanders that we found under the rocks on the edges of some of those ponds. And he was always, I mean still is, really good about just kind of celebrating the whole outdoor experience versus, you know, particularly with younger kids, you take them out and make them fish for eight hours, you're not going to get very far. If you look at what's around and play with bugs and that kind of thing, I think it gets you farther and he was good with that.

I do remember one of the most intact memories I think I have is floating the Rivanna River, which I grew up on, a tributary of the James River, in a canoe. We were fishing for smallmouth with spinning gear. I was probably four or five years old and we were catching a bunch of kind of average size smallmouth. And I remember, the Rivanna, just like the James, is loaded with long-nosed gar. And at some point we floated over one, and I'd never seen one before, and he pointed it out. And he actually poked it with the paddle. And I just remember the whole canoe moving and the gar just sitting still. Like, he wasn't, he knew he was the king of the river. And he, you know, his kind had been there for thousands of years.

We saw a family of river otters. We saw, I remember very clearly, it was probably me, it may have been him, but somebody got stuck on a log on the riverbank and we paddled over there to get the lure off. And my face was about four inches from a log and I was kind of bending back into the canoe. And most rivers that I've been on in Central Virginia have these fishing spiders on them. They're about three inches around with their legs. And they love woody debris. And there was one on that log that when I was about a few inches from it, he just kind of popped up and started running all over the log and it freaked me out. And I still remember that pretty well. And I don't remember the fish nearly as well as I remember the whole experience like that, like I said.

**Marvin Cash (03:36):**
Yeah, very, very cool. So when did you start to really get into the dark side of fly fishing?

**Matt Reilly (03:42):**
Fly fishing, again, you know, there's some pictures of me, I think, at four or five years old at some of those trout ponds with the fly rod being helped along. But I think I was really in the eight to ten-year-old range where I really picked up the fly rod. And my dad kind of gifted to me his old Okuma gray fiberglass fly rod with the cork that was like half eaten out by mice or what.

I would, I remember tying a fly. I saw a pattern for it in the back of a kind of a general freshwater fishing book I checked out of the library. And I probably used, I think I used sewing threads and stuff I pulled off a cat toy or something like that. And I remember jigging it off of a dock one summer when my friends were swimming at the lake and not catching anything, but just thinking how cool it was. And that got me, you know, my dad started to get me into fly tying a little bit. And I did a lot of that in my room before I could really range very far from the house and fish.

But most of my fishing after, you know, I did quite a bit of spin fishing and, you know, throw a bait cast and rod every once in a while. But most of my fishing through my, you know, like that eight-year-old range to, well, probably once I hit 12, I was mostly fly fishing. And, I mean, it was stuff near my house. I mean, before I could really, was trusted to ride my bike long distances and seek out those fisheries, you know, more than a couple hundred feet from my house, I remember dabbling some Hare's Ears with that old fly rod in the creek and catching, I mean, shellcracker that were probably born yesterday, like a half an inch long, that had spawned, or been spawned in there in the spring.

And, you know, I fished the Rivanna a lot. Once I could ride my bike and I was trusted to go fishing by myself for the full day, you know, a couple of summers I remember being out there like four or five days a week fishing for smallmouth and bluegill and keeping a lot of bluegill, eating them pretty much on the river. And then it just kind of kept progressing.

I remember when I had my learner's permit, I remember my dad made me drive us out to the mountains one day after work, and I caught my first native brook trout on an, I want to say it was an olive Elk Hair Caddis that I had tied up in my room one night. And, you know, those experiences just kept compounding, and I just wanted to catch everything on a fly rod. It was just so cool to me after that.

**Marvin Cash (06:35):**
So that's really cool. And, you know, I know you've talked a lot about your dad. He sounds like he's obviously been a mentor in your fishing life. Who are some other folks that have had an influence on your fishing?

**Matt Reilly (06:46):**
Yeah. So my dad, for sure. I mean, definitely he was the one that started it all and got me out there. And still to this day, you know, I talk to him a lot and kind of fester over the details of my fishing and all that kind of thing.

The other really big mentor of mine was Chuck Kraft, who was also a mentor of my dad. But Chuck was a guide in central and Western Virginia for at least 30 years. I can't remember when he said he retired, but at least four years ago he was still taking people every once in a while on trips, even up into the brook trout streams. So he's been around quite a bit and has really mentored a lot of people, at least in Virginia and sort of the mid-Atlantic, a very recognizable figure.

And Chuck is, I think if you talk to most people, people would describe him as a very thorough and observant and innovative kind of person. And that kind of personality and that legacy just has really driven me, I guess, to be that way. You know, Chuck has helped me quite a bit and he's taught me a lot. And, you know, I have a lot of mentors and the thing with that, you know, for me I really respect the people who have been there and done that, people older than me and people who have been in the industry before me and kind of paved the way for me.

And so my mentors, you know, speaking about Chuck and some other people I'll talk about, but I just, I like to, I like to be a positive reflection of them. They're, what they've given me really drives me to be the best that I can be, to perfect my craft and to be as thorough and knowledgeable as I can be. And Chuck kind of, he, in a sort of roundabout way, taught me that.

Some other guys, Jim Richmond is a guy that I've fished with quite a bit and still, you know, over the summer and even into the shoulder seasons, you know, I fished with him a couple of weeks ago. In the summer, we fish probably two or three days a week if we're not busy because we do get busy in the summertime with smallmouth bass. Jim's a guide, a local guide here, a friend of Chuck, so kind of part of that circle as well.

William Heresniak, Eastern Trophies Fly Fishing. He's a fly fishing guide up in northern Virginia on the Potomac and Shenandoah River. He's shown me a lot, and we fish together every summer and in the fall some, and he's helped me get into this whole fishing guide business.

Like I said, people that I consider to be mentors, I'm pretty young in my career, so I'm still learning from everybody that I can. Another guy would be L.E. Rhodes. He's another smallmouth guide that I actually grew up, up the river from. He's a guide in the Scottsville area in Virginia on the James River. And I didn't really get to know L.E. until four or five years ago or so. But he's just a guy that is always willing to help you out. And again, he's taught me a lot and just knowing him, you know, makes me want to represent him well.

Other guys, you know, like I said, guys like Joe Mahler, who I met through, you know, Reilly Rod Crafters, our family rod company, and then Brian Shumaker, another guide up in Pennsylvania on the Susquehanna River. Those are guys that I've just been really fortunate to know and that have just supported me and I think want to see me do well. And again, that makes me just want to be the best that I can be.

**Marvin Cash (11:18):**
Yeah, that's a pretty amazing list of people to kind of help you hone your craft. When did you decide that you wanted to be a fishing guide?

**Matt Reilly (11:27):**
So I've actually, I've got a business card hanging up above my desk that I made in first grade when they kind of gave us this assignment to make a business card for your dream job. So I hang it next to my current business card as a fly fishing guide in western Virginia. And that business card was as a fishing guide on a lake in northern Vermont that my grandparents live on that I grew up smallmouth fishing and pike fishing and yellow perch fishing on.

And so it was back then, you know, before I guess I really had a concept of what a job was, that I, probably shortly after I realized that a fly fishing guide was a thing, that's what I wanted to do. And, you know, I definitely had some other interests as well. But from a really early age, I think I knew that I wanted to take people fishing.

And then sort of in the middle of my high school career, I started writing, and writing to me taught me that sharing the outdoors was something that I was passionate in. Sharing through writing, it gives me the opportunity to, as I say, kind of translate what I hear in the outdoors, the experiences that I have and the passion that I've found. Writing gives me the opportunity to share that with other people.

And writing also fits my personality, which can be very analytical and kind of detail-oriented. And so I get to pursue all these kind of rabbit-holey kind of topics. When you write an article about fishing for pre-spawn smallmouth bass, you kind of have to do some research and know the why and how and the when of it. And that fits with guiding very well.

And I actually, so after my high school years, I took a gap semester before I went to college, Emory & Henry College down in southwestern Virginia where I live now. And that was the first time that I was really given the opportunity to strip my life down kind of to what made me happy. And all I was really doing in that period was writing generally in sports bars and wherever I could find the Internet and fishing and meeting people. I met a lot of people, people that for some reason ended up kind of befriending me while I was living out of my car in random places on the East Coast.

And so I learned in those couple of months that I really liked people and that adventure and kind of learning fisheries and writing were just, you know, what I wanted to do.

**Marvin Cash (14:35):**
Well, that's really cool. So, you know, you're based in Southwestern Virginia. Why don't you share with my listeners, you know, the rivers that you fish and what you fish for? Because you know, Virginia, we're really lucky in that state. We have such a diverse, you know, number of options.

**Matt Reilly (14:54):**
Yeah, super diverse. It's not, I always say I would probably burn out pretty quick if I lived, you know, in Montana and fished for trout for six months out of the year, pedal to the metal. And then it was winter. You know, we have something to do every day of the year. And that can be frustrating sometimes because it's like, what do you do in April when, you know, the crappie are spawning and the smallmouth are spawning and you got great trout fishing and all that. But I've narrowed it down to smallmouth bass, which is really my first love from a fishing aspect, musky, which we also have in a lot of our warm water rivers, and then wild trout.

So in southwest Virginia we're really lucky to have this elevation advantage and a lot of national forests that makes our trout streams able to carry naturally reproducing populations of trout. Rainbows and brown trout, they're not native but they're descendants of hatchery fish from back in the 40s and 50s that have just been able to naturally reproduce and make a life in the creek because the habitat is so good.

And those creeks, generally in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, which is an inset of the Jefferson National Forest, streams like South Fork of the Holston, the headwater stream to the famous tailwater of the South Holston, White Top Laurel Creek and a few others. And then most of my smallmouth fishing happens on the New River as well as my musky fishing. But like you said, we're super diverse and there are a number of smaller rivers that I don't really talk about. I hardly even tell my clients the name of them until we're there if they ask, but they have great populations of fish. And yeah, that's mainly where I guide.

**Marvin Cash (17:00):**
Well, that's really cool. And, you know, I always ask all of my guide guests to share what they think the biggest misconception people have about the life of a fishing guide.

**Matt Reilly (17:06):**
Well, I'll spare you the answer that I think I hear the most, is that we fish all the time. I think I do fish more than the average person for sure, but I don't fish more than my clients collectively. Just because, you know, I can't fish, I can't, you know, if I do 100 trips in a year, it's hard to fish another 150.

But I try to, you know, if you're the kind of person that's going to have a hard time rowing the boat all day while your clients are catching fish, it's not going to be a good job for you. But if you can kind of find enjoyment in the challenge of, you know, when you're fishing on your own, dissecting the fishery and understanding all the finer points of it, for, you know, to be able to explain that to your clients and really show them an experience, a Virginia outdoor fishing experience. And I think it's the best job in the world. And that's part of what I love about it.

But I think probably the biggest misconception is just, I don't think people really understand what goes into a single day of guided fishing. You know, some people kind of balk at the rate of a guide trip. Most people don't, but some people do. You're really paying for super in-depth local knowledge. You're paying for fishing knowledge, and you're paying for the experience of being rowed down the river and all the gear provided, you know, rods, reels, flies, lunch, et cetera.

But for every day that I'm on the river with clients, there's several days of scouting, countless days of being on that specific water, learning it, studying the food that's in the river, designing flies to fit those food sources, understanding the fish and their habits and their movements, understanding the river, tying flies the nights before during the winter so that you don't have to tie flies every night in the summertime, packing lunch, keeping up the gear, you know, cleaning fly lines, tying leaders. Like I said, tying flies, keeping up your car, the boat, all that kind of stuff.

You know, when it's done well it looks really easy. Client shows up, they hop in the boat, you have a good day on the water, they go home. But, you know, there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes that I think a lot of people just don't quite realize. And I would say that's one of the biggest things that people don't quite understand when they think about a fishing guide in their day to day.

**Marvin Cash (20:07):**
Yeah, no, I'm always trying to get people to understand what's involved and, you know, you're lucky, right? Because you don't work out of a shop where the shop's taking half of the guide fee.

**Matt Reilly (20:15):**
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, guys look at that number and are like, well...

**Marvin Cash (20:20):**
You know, I try to help them, particularly with guys that go out West, do the math. I was like, they're like, Oh, I'm like, exactly. You know, not to mention all the stuff you're talking about, you know, which is, you know, that river is a living, breathing thing and it changes every day.

**Matt Reilly (20:35):**
Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, for instance, you know, we've had a lot of rain this year. I think everybody knows that it's not even worth saying anymore. Because we've all been complaining about it for the last year at least. But you know, there's a section of river that I do some trout trips on where, you know, a major section of the river, a spot that we hit every day has changed dramatically like three or four times in the last six months, just because we've had so many heavy rain events that it's, you know, carved out the bottom of the pool. It's deposited sediment, it's moved trees, it's broken trees, it's done all that kind of thing.

And the last thing I want to do is show up to the river with clients and, you know, one of my main spots is different. You know, now you can react to that kind of thing. But another example would be, you know, when a friend of mine, we were out scouting a musky float this past November and we caught two fish over the course of a couple floats off of a particular section of bank.

And during one of those really heavy, you know, one of those really heavy rain events where the ground got real wet and it got real windy, a big sycamore fell and landed kind of parallel to the bank and the hydrology of the river after that tree fell caused that whole bank to kind of change character. And it just didn't fish the same after that.

So being out there and being really observant and knowing the river is huge, and that's what's going to make people successful versus unsuccessful. And that's, like I said, a lot of what you pay for.

**Marvin Cash (22:29):**
Yeah. Yeah, the difference between fishing 10 to 20 days a year versus 150 days, right?

**Matt Reilly (22:35):**
Yeah. Yeah, it's a big difference. And, you know, I noticed it in my own fishing, you know, when I get to fish fairly infrequently for a period of time, the day on the river is just you kind of readjusting. It's you kind of getting back into the mold that you were in your last trip.

When you fish five days in a row, it's kind of a continual learning curve. You know, you're not, there's not really too much of remembering and kind of getting back into the swing of things. You're thinking about what happened yesterday and how are we going to react to that. And that's something, you know, if you have the opportunity to fish for a week straight on a piece of water, I would highly recommend it because the number of details that you'll notice and take into account that you just never even thought about before will really change your fishing, I think.

**Marvin Cash (23:36):**
Yeah, I mean, there's no substitute for time on the water, that's for sure. You know, and I know we talked a little bit about your writing, but I mean, you're also known as a freelance writer and photographer. When did you really get that writing bug and the photography bug?

**Matt Reilly (23:51):**
Yes, yes, sir. I, again, I was really lucky to find some editors really early on to take a chance on me in high school. I think I had just turned 15. It was in February. I won a high school essay contest that the Virginia Outdoor Writers Association puts on.

And that same month, I got my first paying magazine feature assignment from Chris McCotter, who's the editor of Woods and Waters Magazine, which is kind of a regional publication that circulates in Virginia and Maryland. You can pick it up in a couple of tackle shops and gun shops and that kind of thing. But he's also, Chris is also a guide, a bass guide on Lake Anna. And my dad and I fished with him when I was in 1999, so I was three. Another one of those things that I don't remember but I've seen pictures from.

But I kept up with Chris and, you know, I had expressed interest in writing and so I got an assignment from him and then I got another one the next month and the next month. But I think it was after I got home from that high school essay contest thing, the VOA meeting, I was kind of on this like writing high and emailed a bunch of editors including the local paper, the Daily Progress. And it was like two or three months before I heard back from the editor of the paper, but they actually offered to give me, or they wanted to know if I'd write their outdoor column for them, their weekly outdoor column, which circulates in several counties in Central Virginia near my then home, you know, Fluvanna, Buckingham, Nelson, Madison, Greene, Albemarle Counties, that kind of area.

And I said I'd do it and I'm still doing it. So that was, I think, seven or eight years ago. And I was 15, and I kind of built it up fairly quickly, and I'm kind of where I want to be now. But, yeah, I got really lucky early on.

**Marvin Cash (26:08):**
That's really cool. Who are some of the people that have influenced your writing and your photography?

**Matt Reilly (26:14):**
So the main guy that I cite a lot, kind of a weird connection, but his name is Bob Gooch. And Bob was a pretty well-renowned outdoor columnist and freelance writer in Central Virginia. He actually lived a few doors down from my childhood home in Troy, Virginia. But, you know, he had a syndicated column, Virginia Outdoors, I believe it was called. And he actually passed away before I really got to know him. But he came over for dinner, you know, while I was a kid and hunted with my dad a lot. And again, just knowledge of his legacy, you know.

And in my mind, I was kind of filling part of the void that he left when he passed away and stopped writing because I was literally from the same street and was writing about the same places and the same kinds of things, you know, the Central Virginia outdoor experience as he was. So just knowing him kind of fueled me to be the best that I could be at that.

And ironically, also, it was Bob Gooch that gave Chris McCotter his first paying writing gig. And like I said, Chris was the one who gave me my first. So it really is, you know, both in the guiding thing and the writing thing, there's a whole community that supports me as an individual. And I'm very understanding of that and very thankful for that.

**Marvin Cash (27:59):**
That's really neat. How do you pick your topics?

**Matt Reilly (28:04):**
In terms of writing, my outdoor column is, I'm really lucky that they just let me do what I want to. You know, it's a weekly thing. And I generally don't even have to pitch them an idea. I just kind of submit it on my deadline day. And I try to stay pretty consistent with the seasons. You know, write about shed antler hunting in the early spring and squirrel hunting in the fall and smallmouth fishing in the summer. And, you know, I don't necessarily have to know anything about those subjects.

It's the thing as a writer, you know, you really need to strive to be a journalist, not just writing about what you know and trying to be the source of the knowledge. You know, I interview a lot of people. If I'm not knowledgeable on a subject, like spring turkey hunting, I didn't grow up doing that, and I don't know much about it, I'll find a local expert within my readership who does do it, and I'll interview them and cite them in the article. And that just brings the whole circle closer, which I really love. I love having that community.

With the magazine features, my subjects are generally things that I'm passionate about. I write a lot of stories about smallmouth fishing, a lot of squirrel hunting. I love to squirrel hunt. It's something that I don't talk about a lot. But I love to squirrel hunt. It's what I grew up doing after school in the fall.

And some, you know, some things are just maybe a certain region or fisheries caught my interest, and I'll pitch something to a magazine that will give me a reason to go there. You know, I'll be honest about that. I've been to a lot of really cool places, and most of it's been on work, you know, kind of unofficially, you know, on my own as a freelance writer. But I'll go and I'll spend my own money doing it and I'll come back and I'll write a story and it kind of gives me a reason to go there.

And the others are just related to my day-to-day experiences. You know, I have some outlets that I can sell some short, you know, five to 800 word stories to. And those would just be, you know, stories about a particular day on the water or particular pattern, you know, fishing pattern, not a fly pattern, but, you know, a fishing pattern that I've come to understand, you know, high water trout fishing is one that I've done a lot, that kind of thing. But, you know, working for yourself, there is a bit of flexibility. The editor always has to say, yeah, go ahead. But generally I can pick what I want to write about.

**Marvin Cash (31:04):**
Well, that's awesome. And I know you mentioned a little bit earlier in the interview the family business, Reilly Rod Crafters, and I know it's a pretty young company, and I know you do things with them. What do you do for Reilly Rod Crafters?

**Matt Reilly (31:19):**
Yeah, so obviously I've kind of been pretty tight with the company. I've been around since its inception. I do a lot of product testing, if you will, you know, taking rods that we're kind of developing out and fishing them and help with kind of conceptualizing the ideas behind rods and tapers and that kind of thing, talking about business. And most of that really transpires as drawn-out conversations with my dad in the kitchen or on the road to the river or something like that.

But we also have the guide program, which I'm a part of. You know, we have some other guys around. You know, like I mentioned, L.E. Rhodes and Brian Shumaker, guys that I respect quite a bit and have learned from. They're both in the program, and it's kind of unique within the industry, I think, because as a guide in the Reilly Rod Crafters Guide Program, you know, you have the rods on the boat.

So, for instance, I carry a lot of the Chuck Kraft Signature Series 7 and 8 weights as smallmouth rods. And, you know, my clients will fish them during the day, you know, unless they want to bring their own rods, which, of course, is fine by me. But they'll fish them during the day until they get a real good opportunity to field test the rods. And then at the end of the day, you know, if they, I generally give them to my clients, whether they express interest or not in the moment.

But, you know, we have the opportunity to provide discount cards to our clients. So if they like a rod, they can go home and hop online and buy a rod at discount, which is nice for them because they get an incentive to, or they get some money off of a rod. It's also an incentive for them to, you know, like I said, buy a rod. It's an incentive for the guides in the program to sell the rods, you know, while they're fishing them. Never aggressively, but it gives us the opportunity to kind of push them in that direction. And, you know, it just benefits everybody around, so I think that's kind of a unique thing.

I also do some, you know, I write some blog posts and do some social media management and that kind of thing, but that's fairly minimal. All of us pretty much in the guide program contribute to that because we're always getting pictures on the river and kind of helping to promote the brand in that way.

**Marvin Cash (34:15):**
Very cool. And if we back up just a little bit, I think the company is, what, two or three years old? Tell us a little bit about how it got started.

**Matt Reilly (34:23):**
Yeah, so my dad was working in the corporate world and got out of it and just decided, looking for a new project. And we kind of, at the time, were kind of frustrated by the super fast, super light rod, fly rod movement. And we're trying to get back to kind of the rods that, I mean, him in particular, I don't really have the historical perspective, but that he was used to fishing, you know, the somewhat slower, more relaxed, classic kind of feeling fly rod. Instead of making fly fishing a sprint, you know, down the river.

And so we just started designing rods with some fairly notable people. And the product is what we have now. You know, we have several different models on the market. And most of them are a little different than, you know, what you see kind of dominating the market.

**Marvin Cash (35:30):**
Yeah, no, I mean, it's really interesting, right? Because I guess you've got the Chuck Kraft, right? I think you've got Stu Apte, Debbie Hanson. And I know it was interesting because I was looking on your website and it really is, you know, to build rods with a little bit of romance and soul and not kind of get caught up in that, you know, we got to show every year we got to make something new and making something new just to make new, which I thought was really interesting.

**Matt Reilly (35:58):**
Yeah, I remember having that conversation. We didn't want to fall into that trap of just coming out with a new rod every year to have a new rod to push. We really focus on making quality fishing rods, and I want to kind of emphasize fishing. We're not talking about rods that you can bomb 100-foot casts in the parking lot with.

We don't use commercially available blanks. We work with a blank maker. We roll our own tapers that fit the specifications of the people that we're working with to design these rods. So, you know, like you said, Chuck Kraft, Stu Apte, Joe Mahler, casting instructor down in Fort Myers, Florida is another one, Debbie Hanson.

And sort of the unintended result of building rods to the specifications of those kinds of people is, you know, they know how a rod should and needs to perform to most effectively and efficiently fish. And that makes most of our rods sort of a moderate action, meaning that they're easy and pleasurable to fish with. You can feel the rod load into the middle of the rod, which allows for more relaxing casting stroke. It provides some shock absorption for casting big flies and fighting big fish.

So like I had some guys in the boat the other day, it was Sunday, I can't remember the days very well, but they brought their own rods and they kind of got tired after a couple hours. They're saying their elbows hurt, which is easy to do casting big musky flies. But, you know, we, I switched them out to the rods that I carry, which this particular moment are Stu Apte 11 weights, and they have a lot more flex to them than the rods they were carrying.

And I truly believe that that makes casting bigger flies easier because your elbow and your wrist is no longer the shock absorber. The rod tip is, and that's the way it should be. But that moderate action also, it still has enough backbone to make a hard hook set into a fish like a smallmouth bass that you sometimes have to make a pretty hard hook set into, like musky. They have fairly hard mouths as well. It still has enough backbone to put pressure on a big fish like that.

And again, the tip being more flexible, you know, flexing into the midsection has enough of a shock absorber to, you know, you hear the term tip protection a lot. But what that really means is there's enough of a spring in your rod tip to really absorb head shakes and quick movements by the fish. So you can lean on a big fish and, you know, your rod is really working for you. It's helping you fight that fish.

**Marvin Cash (39:01):**
Yeah. There's nothing worse than being out on the water in about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, kind of hitting the wall because you've kind of worn yourself out.

**Matt Reilly (39:08):**
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Joe Mahler, you know, one of the guys, you know, one of our signature series creators, if you will, you know, he talks about trying to make casting effortless. And if you watch him, it, he really has. And that translates into his rod design and the rest of our rod designs.

You know, like I said, the people who've designed these rods, for the most part, are guides or casting instructors, and most of their clients are either fairly new to fly fishing or they don't get to fly fish that often. And so having a rod that takes a lot of the work out of it is really nice. And being able to feel the rod load, you know, that moderate action, it allows somebody who doesn't get to do it all the time that may need to refresh their casting skills. Or somebody who's learning, it gives them the ability to hop in the boat and get fairly proficient fairly quickly.

**Marvin Cash (40:10):**
Yeah, getting that feedback from the rod is so important. And, you know, I think people, particularly when they start out and some of us still forget, you know, the rod is really an incredibly efficient tool. You don't really need to overpower it. It'll do a lot of things with not a lot of oomph.

**Matt Reilly (40:27):**
Yeah, and I talk about a lot, you know, like I said, I do some guiding for musky, and I also do some trips for trout, and a lot of our trout streams are fairly tight. Some of them have some pretty big fish in them. I had a guy last week catch a 27-inch brown trout, if that tells you anything. And in a creek, it's not very big with a lot of overhanging trees and all that kind of thing.

So I talk about having sort of an escape plan, you know, a fight plan before you even hook that fish when you move into a new spot. And a lot of that comes down to knowing how to use the different parts of the rod to your advantage. And that's where that moderate action rod also becomes a very versatile tool because it has a very effective spring in the upper half of the rod and the tip. But it also has a strong sort of lower and butt section that allows you to move fish and put pressure on fish. So, you know, the moderate action, like I said, is very versatile as well.

**Marvin Cash (41:32):**
Well, that's great. I really appreciate you sharing that with us tonight. And, you know, you'd mentioned that you've got a regular weekly column in the Daily Progress. What day of the week does that normally come out?

**Matt Reilly (41:44):**
Typically, it's supposed to come out on a Wednesday. Sometimes they jump the gun and kick it out on a Tuesday. But it's a subscription-based newspaper. So a lot of people, I think they kind of are just automatically, so I don't know if they know they're subscribing or not, but they move into a house and they get the newspaper. But it generally comes out on a Wednesday, and I can't tell you the circulation, but most people in those counties that I mentioned do get it.

**Marvin Cash (42:18):**
Yeah, no, I remember when I was in law school in Charlottesville, I got the Daily Progress. I remember it well.

**Matt Reilly (42:23):**
Yeah.

**Marvin Cash (42:25):**
You got any upcoming articles you want to share?

**Matt Reilly (42:31):**
Shoot, I don't even know what I'm writing about next week to be honest. I've been working so hard otherwise I haven't gotten to stop and think about it. I am working on a cool kind of person or movement, I guess, if you will, that I've been writing about recently for American Angler is a guy named Matt Hart who owns and runs the Forged Fly, which is, he's an artist and he does some metal sculpting of flies.

So he'll build everything from like, I'm not sure how he would term it but like a tabletop kind of like a foot tall fly, you know, like a Royal Coachman or Adams or something like that. So like he made a Clouser Minnow for Chuck that's like two and a half feet long and he's made a Deceiver that's, you know, a couple feet long. And so I've been working on a piece about kind of profiling him. But I think that's my most recent. Yeah, I've kind of been slacking off a little bit here lately with things have been getting pretty busy on the water here lately.

**Marvin Cash (43:50):**
Totally get it. Yeah, Matt's super talented. I guess I met him last year at the Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival.

**Matt Reilly (44:06):**
Yeah. And actually he was not there this past year but he usually goes. Yeah. And I have one of his pieces sitting on my desk. He's super creative.

**Marvin Cash (44:06):**
Yeah. How about speaking engagements? I suspect you're probably out of the speaking game since fishing season's kind of...

**Matt Reilly (44:06):**
Yeah, yeah. So I typically do the South River Fly Fishing Expo which is an awesome show. I believe this year it's the, let me look at my calendar here real quick. I think it's the last week in April, the 26th and the 27th I believe. I hope I'm not wrong about that. But I usually do that one. But, yes, show season is pretty much behind me at this point. I just got kind of booked a lot of trips for April and just got busy and kind of had to cut that one. But it's a great show, and I'll probably be there the year after.

The next thing I really have on the calendar, I think, is I'm doing a talk with the Fly Fishers of Virginia in Richmond on July 18th. And that'll just be about fishing in Southwest Virginia, you know, smallmouth, trout and musky included. But other than that, I'm pretty much done for the year.

**Marvin Cash (45:09):**
Yeah, all on the water. Well, where can folks find out more about your guide service and Reilly Rods?

**Matt Reilly (45:15):**
Yeah, so my website is www.MattReillyFlyFishing. That's my business name, pretty straightforward. It's M-A-T-T-R-E-I-L-L-Y flyfishing.com. And then my social media accounts are linked on there, but they're all under Matt Reilly Fly Fishing as well, Facebook and Instagram.

And then Reilly Rod Crafter's website is ReillyRods.com, R-E-I-L-L-Y-R-O-D-S.com. And I believe the social media links for the rod company are linked on the website as well. But you can find those by searching Reilly Rod Crafters as well.

**Marvin Cash (46:01):**
And what's the best way for folks to get in touch with you, Matt?

**Matt Reilly (46:04):**
Definitely the website. I, you know, I love phone calls because I can talk to somebody real quick and really figure out, you know, what I can do for them. But email is, to be honest, usually the best way to get in contact with me because I'm not always in cell service, and I've been relatively busy lately, and I think I'm still pretty behind on my phone calls.

**Marvin Cash (46:31):**
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's particularly with the days getting longer, you know, you fish later, and it's just harder to get people on the phone.

**Matt Reilly (46:04):**
Absolutely. Yeah.

**Marvin Cash (46:31):**
I really appreciate you spending some time with me this evening. Folks, thanks for listening tonight. I ask you to do me a favor. If you like the podcast, please give us a review in iTunes, and it would really help us out with our advertisers if you would subscribe to us in the podcatcher of your choice. Thanks again, Matt. Tight lines, everybody.

**Matt Reilly (47:02):**
Thank you, Marvin.