S2, Ep 135: Gettin' Buggy with Matt Green

Marvin Cash (00:04-01:05): Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by Matt Green. Matt is a PhD candidate in aquatic entomology and systematics at Clemson University and the buggiest guy I know.

Matt is a frequent speaker on the show circuit and his articles have appeared in our sport's most prominent magazines. Join us as Matt shares his passion for insects and fly fishing. I think you guys are really going to enjoy this one.

But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And as we continue to create and distribute more diverse content, you may want to consider downloading our iOS or Android app. We organize our content by category so you can go straight to the content that interests you the most. The apps are free and the links are in the show notes. Alternatively, just search The Articulate Fly where you get your mobile apps. Now, on to the interview.

Well, Matt, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

Matt Green (01:07-01:11): Good to be here, Marvin. Glad I could carve out a little bit of time for you.

Marvin Cash (01:12-01:21): No, I appreciate it. I know you're a super busy guy, and we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. We always want to ask our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

Matt Green (01:22-01:59): Oh, earliest fishing memory has to be fishing with a cane pole. This little Black Beauty Shakespeare rod when I was about three years old. And I actually still have it back in some of my more memorable tackle that I've kept from family and some friends. And it still has some line attached to the end.

And it was just for panfish in a local pond. And it was great fishing and really good memories. And I used to have birthday parties where I'd just tell my friends, hey, we're going to go fish at the pond. Come on. And my aunt and uncle really got me into it.

Marvin Cash (02:01-02:04): Yeah, really neat because you grew up in the Winston-Salem area, right?

Matt Green (02:04-02:51): Yeah. I mean, there's not all that many places to fish if you didn't have family that was taking you to the mountains or really any place local. You know, my parents didn't really fish, so I'd go visit my uncle in the mountains. He was really the guy that got me into trout fishing and fishing in general, including fly fishing.

I had the Yadkin River growing up right by my house that I think later in life I caught Bodie Bass out of. In the winter, it'd get clear enough that smallmouth would come all the way down from Wilkes County area, actually, and populate it. We'd fish them there. Otherwise, I had to wait until I got a car in high school to really take up trout fishing.

Marvin Cash (02:52-02:55): Neat. And so when did you get pulled to the dark side of fly fishing?

Matt Green (02:56-03:59): The dark side? I don't know if I'd call it that. It's more light because it's so intellectually stimulating. Any fishing with bait that imitates an insect or a natural prey item is just intellectual fishing.

Probably when I was 13 or 14, I started out in the upper French Broad watershed, the Davidson Courthouse Creek, which is the extreme north end of the North Fork of the French Broad up in the Balsam Mountains. And then the West Fork and East Fork, just right around that area, around Rosman.

My uncle took me and we started with rod and reel and bait. And then I kind of graduated and he did too to fly fishing later. I actually took a casting class with the great Mac Brown, believe it or not. You know, he showed me a little bit. I learned more along the way. It was fun. It was good times.

Marvin Cash (04:00-04:11): Yeah, and so you took a class from Mac, and your uncle sounds like he played a key role in your development as an angler. Are there some other folks that mentored you on your fly fishing journey?

Matt Green (04:12-06:22): Well, so I was really just an okay fly fisherman that knew a little bit about bugs by the time I graduated NC State, where I did my undergraduate. And I was starting to transition to becoming a graduate student, and I was picking up a project over on the South Holston.

And I met a fella really by accident. I had this hat from Appalachian Angler Guide Service that I took to the mall and I had somebody embroider a fly fishing guide on it. I wasn't even working for App Angler at the time at all. I think I told the fella, I'm about to tell you this one time, he kind of laughed it off. I was in Boone area on vacation with my parents. and I went in there and he saw the hat and he picked the brim of it and turned it. He had a weird look in his eye and he said, you give me a call and come back.

So I did right about the time I graduated undergrad and I started at NC State, graduate degree. And it was Theo Copeland at F. Angler. And he really took me under his wing and showed me really how to walk the walk and talk the talk at the same time. I was okay with a fly rod, but my casting was a little off, and it didn't have rhythm, and I didn't have much technique. He said, you know bugs, but you don't know technique, and that's going to really hurt you down the road.

I'm proud to say I learned some good technique under that man, and he was a great guide. For a long time, I called him the Appalachian Cowboy because he was a little rough and tumble, but at the same time, he's a good fisherman. And so I'm very blessed. And he was mentored a little bit by Joe Humphreys and some folks up in the northeast, Al Coochie, who I fished with a couple of times before he started getting up there in age. And anyway, I really think Theo had a big impact on my life as a fisherman. Great fisherman imparted a lot to me. And then I took it to the next level.

Marvin Cash (06:24-06:36): Yeah, very neat. And, you know, I've been around a lot of people in the fly fishing space. I've been really fortunate, but I've never met anybody as passionate about insects as you are. Where did your interest in bugs come from?

Matt Green (06:38-09:27): I don't know. When I was at NC State, I was trying to get into labs as a fish person, and I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. You know, no one would let me work under different graduate students as an undergraduate. A fellow by the name of Dr. Joel Silverman gave me an opportunity to do aquatic entomology work in his lab. And to be perfectly frank, I just felt a little sad by the fish folks. I felt a little betrayed. And I just really took to aquatic entomology after that.

And the more I learned about the diversity of insects, I realized I was in the right place. Fishes are diverse, don't get me wrong, especially in the Tennessee River Valley. Largest diversity of fishes in the United States, North America, potentially parts of the whole world. But in the Southeast U.S., definitely some of the most diverse for what we call the big three in the aquatic insect world. Ephemeropter, plocopter, tricopter, so the mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies.

There's just immense diversity of insects. Their feeding habits, their microhabitats that they inhabit, and that's really just what draws me to it. This diversity can be explained in how these species got to where they are and what they do. It was less exciting to me to study fishes at that point in time. I just went with it.

I've been very fortunate to have some good aquatic entomology mentors as well. One of my current mentors is a world authority in tricopter or caddisflies, and I've learned a lot from him. And a fellow at App State, Shea Tuberty, who gave me another opportunity to complete my master's there, he had a big influence on me as well in showing me how to do good introductory science. really how to bring the science that I do to the general public, which I've really tried to really strifle most of my career in academia so far.

If you ever looked at my CV, I was looking back on it the other day, and I realized I'd started with the fly fishing show by myself in 2013. I said, has it really been seven years? looking back on 30 or 40 different presentations over that time. I mean, someone would look at it, say you overworked yourself. I say, I'm just sharing my passion with the world.

Marvin Cash (09:29-09:42): Yeah, that's really neat. So, you know, you kind of weaseled your way into bug labs at NC State. What was that light bulb moment for you where you knew you wanted to make entomology your life's work?

Matt Green (09:44-12:14): Well, I was going back and forth. My background as an undergrad was actually in archaeology, and I was going back and forth of whether or not I wanted to be an archaeologist or a biologist. And I actually took a capstone course in ecology, and it was taught by a fellow named Dr. Rob Dunn, who does work with really small things, ants, microbes, fungi, and even does work with head mites.

Anyway, Rob really encouraged me to seek out insect labs and fish labs. He gave me the confidence to do it. But he also helped me realize that I could do this kind of work. I mean, that's just the way my brain works. I see a problem, I develop questions, then hypotheses to test those questions, and then do the experiment. and my brain is very straightforward, very analytical. I tend to think that there's going to be an answer for any question that you have about the natural world. You're going to spend some money and some time getting to the bottom of it. But my brain worked like that of a biologist.

And I really didn't look down all that much. And what I mean by that is entomologists tend to look down all the time. And I learned to look down. Just look at the ground when I walk. Look in streams as I walk. If you look in a really clear stream as you walk up as a fly fisherman or a bait angler, whoever you are as an angler, female, male, neither, it doesn't matter. If you walk through that water, you will see insects move on rocks.

And if you're just always looking up, and some people go, I'm looking up so I don't fall, lose my balance. You get comfortable enough to wait, and you look down all the time. You'll see the bugs move. Just like you're walking around on a trail, you'll see bugs move. And as you learn to look down, that's all it takes to really develop an interest in and to knowledge. You're looking all around, you're seeing everything move, and you're seeing this depth of life that you really weren't as aware of because you were just looking up all the time. It's as simple as that.

Marvin Cash (12:15-12:34): Yeah, really neat. And, you know, I've known you for a pretty good while, and you've worked on some really interesting research projects. You know, I don't know if we met when you were an undergrad, but I know certainly when you were working on your master's degree. And I thought it would be really interesting to have you share some of the more memorable projects with our listeners.

Matt Green (12:36-18:59): Oh, I remember the first real project that I was ever given true ownership over. We were trying to understand how the life history, so the developmental history of a mayfly, is affected by cold water releases from a dam. And so this work was occurring over in South Fork of the Holston River in Bristol, Tennessee, Hickory Tree, Tennessee, Bluff City area.

And I remember end of the day sampling. I had worked hard at a couple of sites along the river, and I decided I was going to fish a little bit at the end. And I saw my first real good spinner fall of the sulfur mayfly. And I remember just kind of looking upstream. There's nobody around. Everybody's going in and fissurizing and saying, oh, I can get used to this. This is pretty darn good, man. You can't beat this for a profession. This is pretty good.

And so that was kind of an eye-opening moment to me. Like, you know, this is pretty cool what I'm doing. It turned out that right below the dam, there are just multiple generations of this insect. That's likely tied to there being a narrow thermal range. And so temperature really doesn't vary all that much below the dam. But as you go downstream, where it has an opportunity to warm, both by heat during the summer or tributaries that come into it and warm it up just a little bit, you have less cohorts. A cohort is just a group of insects that develops at the same time. So you have fewer cohorts downstream, more cohorts upstream.

Then upstream of the reservoir, because this is a dammed river, you have about the same amount of cohorts as you see all the way downstream, so the last site. And that's pretty cool because that tells us that the dam really is having an effect on the developmental history of this insect. So that was my first real project that I had ownership of. It was really cool.

The second project was a Didymo project. It was great to get stakeholders into that work, both through TVA, the fly fishing community, and private landowners that gave us access to stream sites we wouldn't have had access to. We just had to ask. I'm still trying to get TVA on board with some of the different strategies we recommended in a paper that we published in Aquatic Ecology on that work, where if you have good flushing flows, so if you raise the current velocity in many of the different habitats that we sampled, so riffles, we have fast current, and then runs, we have slower current. If you increase the current velocity, especially in the runs, you distribute the macroinvertebrate community, so the bug community composition, a little bit better over sites a little bit more evenly because you reduce the Didymo biomass or just the map material. That's those run habitats that have lower flow rates.

And so I'm trying to work with TVA still to this day to get them to increase the base flow a little bit more and then to vary those flows over time. So we have this kind of flushing effect where we really try to vary the flows, like what you would see in a natural river. Because this tailwater really does have only a couple of different flow rates because the flow rate is whatever TVA is releasing that day. So if it's more varied and mimics that of a natural river, you're going to have more variability.

And that nuisance diatom, it's maybe not invasive. The jury's still out on that. You're going to just be able to reduce suitable habitat for it. And the bugs really don't eat it very well. Some of the midges that we studied as part of that work do eat it. Some don't. most of the mayflies don't and certainly that that diatom didymo it out competes some of the longer mosses you ever go into South Holston and you see this reddish green moss that's flowing downstream and in the summer it kind of sticks out a little bit especially in the upper river hunks of that stuff contain great habitat for different mayfly species and didymo really out competes that moss for what we call substrate attachment space.

So the moss is really just kind of sitting on the rock, and it has different mechanisms for attaching itself to the rock, but it's really just kind of sitting on top. And where Didymo out competes it, kind of leaves that habitat for those sensitive mayfly species. And so you just get different insect species that inhabit those habitats. And we always wondered if you have midges that inhabit those new habitats, are they going to be less nutritious for trout, for example? And so we always wondered that. We didn't really get to answer those questions, but it might affect the trout biomass that's there in the demography.

And then all of a sudden now the anglers are saying, hey, where'd all my good trout go? And we're talking about the Browns here. That TWRA, Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency, doesn't stalk anymore. Keep putting rainbows in, great. Now there's a little wild reproduction of those rainbows. That's a different story. But anyway, it could affect the trout in some way. We just didn't have time to understand that question better. My research has taken a little bit different route since that point, so I'll let someone else answer those questions.

Marvin Cash (19:00-19:35): Yeah, it's interesting, too. So, Matt, when you're doing research, you know, there's the kind of Matt has an interesting question, creates a hypothesis, tests it, comes to a conclusion. You know, what is that process like? So, for example, on your South Holston Didymo project, in terms of taking that information and how do you make it, you know, I understand, for example, like TVA, they have staff scientists and things like that. So you guys can speak the same language. But how do you kind of take the technical and make it accessible to other stakeholders so that you can actually get better management decisions?

Matt Green (19:36-20:45): Well, so on South Holston did the Didymo work. It really wasn't an experiment. Everything was observational. So if our question was like, how does Didymo affect aquatic insects in riffles versus runs? So we would go sample Didymo in those riffles and runs, and then we would sample aquatic insects in those riffles and runs. And we'd have replication. So we'd have sample, more than one sample at each of these sites, and they would be randomized. So we'd have a random number generator, and then we would pick which sites within those habitats to sample.

And then those would all be pooled at the end, and we'd run some statistical procedures on analyses. So that's how we would generate the data. We just have different sites that we sample at random, and we'd have different samples from within those sites to compare either within the site or between sites. Is that what you were asking, Marvin, or were you getting at something a little bit different?

Marvin Cash (20:45-21:07): I was really kind of maybe getting it kind of the, I mean, that's super interesting. And we'll talk about kind of how you do your field work next. But I was really kind of interested in how, you know, you take the raw data and the conclusions and then almost kind of solve the policy problem, right? Because you can't just pitch a research paper at a fisheries management group and say, hey, now fix it.

Matt Green (21:08-21:46): Well, I came up with like, you know, at the end of that work, I came up with some bullet points. You know, what are we really trying to say? One, Didymo does affect aquatic insects, but in certain situations. It affects them more in low-flow habitats because this diatom outcompetes the primary habitat for these sensitive aquatic insects like mayflies, like some caddisfly species in that river. And so in a nutshell, that's what we found.

Marvin Cash (21:48-22:06): Got it. And, you know, you have some pretty neat gizmos. is I think I've been out with you a couple times when you've done some sampling. And I know you also wanted to talk about your light trapping. So I was wondering if you could kind of share with our listeners kind of some of the kind of more interesting tools that you use when you do your field work.

Matt Green (22:07-26:17): Yeah, so we have nets that really just looks like a long rake you might use in your yard. And at the bottom of it, that's the handle. And then it has a net portion. the bottom of the net has like a fine mesh it's typically finer than window screening so if you've ever replaced a window you'll look you have an idea of how big the screening is and this is so that some insects don't escape even the small ones but that has drawbacks too you can get stuff dislodged or lodged in it reduces the efficiency of the net and and then we have screens so it's it's more like window screening it's called nitex screening and two poles are attached and the screen's in the center and you have one person that holds the screen typically downstream of another portion that just does a little shuffling movement with their feet and my primary advisor now describes it as the benthic shuffle that's all it is the benthos just means the bottom so you're just moving your bottom kind of dancing on the bottom of the bottom of the river and you can't see me right now but I'm kind of tapping my feet as I would do it and as you do that you're just disturbing rocks plants sometimes leaf leaves detritus is what we call it that floats down into the net so everything moves literally just moves in one direction downstream and then you'd be super surprised when you get that screen out the water what all you've collected it's a lot of material and we'll just wash that into some sort of white tray it can be some sort of you know shallow not very deep tray you're going to buy it a Walmart actually sells them for $1.22, believe it or not. Or it can be something a little bit wider and even more shallow that you get from a specialty store that sells this kind of equipment.

And that allows us to really pick things off the tray. We'll preserve it in ethanol. And it can be denatured if it's just general aquatic work. Just going to go back and look at the bugs under the microscope. For DNA, you want it to be undenatured because denatured means that methanol is added to the ethanol, typically. And methanol will denature proteins that are useful for DNA work. Not very good. And so that's a lot of the work I do now is looking at the relationships among these individuals and just seeing how they're related to each other using DNA.

Marvin was talking about light trapping, and that's a good way to get adults of these insects. You know, most of the techniques I'm talking about that happen in the water, they're going to be for larvae only, the immature versions of these insects. If you see something with wings, that's going to be an adult. Normally, sometimes for mayflies and sometimes not. I don't know if we'll really get into that level of detail, but anything without wings is going to be a larva. You've probably heard the term as a fly fisherman or a woman, nymph. Well, that's just another term for larva.

Most of the academic community now is going away from nymphs to explain mayflies and stoneflies, for example, and they're going to larvae. Just everything's larvae. Let's stop using nymphs as a specialist term for things and just kind of go with the flow. There's some people that still don't really do that, but I would say the vast majority, 80, 90 percent of professional entomologists now say that.

Marvin Cash (26:19-26:34): yeah well that's neat and you know talking about your current work you know for folks that don't know you're a phd candidate at clemson university tell us a little bit about uh you know what your research is and your dissertation topic and kind of what a normal day in the life of graduate

Matt Green (26:34-32:08): student matt green looks like oh man it really does vary from week to week i normally set out goals for the week and i like to set ambitious ones because that makes me complete a little bit more than i really would if i just set them right below the bar and it can be anything from just a week-long exercise and statistics to a week-long exercise and field work whether that's larval sampling or adult sampling via light traps it can be just time at the microscope identifying bugs These bugs are so small in some of the morphology, so how their legs look, how the back of the insect looks, what's called the posterior end, where the genitalia are for an adult, or how the head looks, or the antennae, or what's called the thorax, right behind the head to the abdomen, which is behind that. The thorax is where the legs come out of, and then the abdomen is right behind that. How that looks is all informative for identifying these insects under the microscope. Believe it or not, folks have spent hundreds of years working most of this stuff out. Whole degrees or careers devoted to it.

So it can really vary. My project is twofold. So the first part of it is looking at how different land uses or forest types. So this is like deciduous forest, like oaks, hickory trees versus coniferous forests, pines, conifers, and then a mix of those forest types. And then what's called physiography. So you probably heard of the Piedmont or the sand hills and the coastal plain and the mountains and elevation. You've probably heard that. That's kind of another group of things I'm looking at.

How all these things affect the feeding groups of these insects. And so we know through research and the projects of other folks about what these insects eat. We've put them into arbitrary groups. There's things called shredders, things that eat leaves that fall in the stream versus scrapers. These are things that eat algae off of rocks. They have specialized mouth parts for that, normally like a scraping mechanism. It's just a straight blade. It's really cool to see under the microscope. Then we have predators. Obviously, these are guys that eat other bugs, including their own kin, believe it or not. And then we have collectors. These are things that make nets, that collect very fine particles or really fine bits of food in the water column. They position themselves in really fast current to do this.

How all of these different environmental parameters, these environmental things, affect the abundance of those groups. And you can use some pretty complex statistics to get at those answers, which I won't get into.

And then the second half of my research is just looking at the general diversity of a group of insects called the October caddisflies. And these are, you've probably heard of these called stick bait. They're big pumpkin caddisflies as adults. They're orange. And they actually emerge right around this time of year. When it starts to get a little bit colder. And the early fall is really their bulk emergence time. You know, when they hatch from being a pupa, actually, not a larva, into an adult.

And then I'm also trying to figure out what larvae or what adult. So we haven't really been able to tell the larvae apart. And one way to do this is to use DNA to do something called association, where if you had a DNA sequence, and I'm not really going to get into it, but let's just use numbers. It could be insect 1, 2, 3, 4 is a larva. And you just extract DNA from it and you try to match it up with adult 1, 2, 3, 4 in an analysis. And when you match those two things up, you go, oh, these two are the same. This larva, this immature, is this grown adult. And then you can do that for other larvae and adults. And then you can start to tell the larvae and a part.

So remember when I was talking about people spent their whole careers working out the small details that separate out what is a species of different aquatic insects. Well, this is the starting block for at least the modern version of doing that, using DNA to separate things out. And so that's a big component of what I do on a daily basis. identify things, go into what we call a clean lab, do some sequencing, and then head back to my apartment where I have a home lab set up to answer some of these same questions. And it's weird. Coronavirus has made campus still pretty much a ghost town. So you go in, you do your work, you head back, and it's interesting.

Marvin Cash (32:09-32:17): Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny you say that about the October caddis. I guess, you know, it's interesting for people that don't know. It's a pretty big bug.

Matt Green (32:18-32:27): Oh, man. Yeah, it's about a 10 or a 12. There are some smaller versions, but those are strictly northeastern or northern plains.

Marvin Cash (32:28-32:49): Yeah, and it's kind of cool, too, because I can remember, you know, seeing them in the Smokies when they were still larva. I mean, you can literally, to your point, if you look down, they're so big by the time they, you know, glue sticks and twigs and stuff and leaf stuff to the outside and make their case, you can see them kind of moving along the bottom of the water. It's very interesting.

Matt Green (32:51-35:05): Yeah. I mean, if you're out in the summer, believe it or not, you know, May, June is about, is larvae, they actually go into more of a resting phase, or at least that's what we think it is. and they become cryptic. That means they become difficult to find. They go to the edge of the stream and they get up real deep underneath either root wads. Trees send their roots out into water and they get well up deep under there and difficult to find. But right before that period, they're super abundant. They're very, very easy to spot. They're very inconspicuous. or conspicuous. What's the real term there? Having a brain fart. Either way, they're easy to find.

I remember on the Davidson this summer, we were just coming back with the gobs of them. It was just I felt bad. We found so many. But if you think about that from a fly fishing perspective, you're normally thinking, all right, what mayflies am I going to throw? What soon flies am I going to throw on top? No one's really thinking about what big stick bait am I going to fish underneath today? You know, the mop fly, everybody gives that thing a bad rap, but that fly really does imitate a cased caddisfly extremely well.

There's, you know, I like to do things that make biological sense because I approach fly fishing from the intellectual pursuit. Not everyone does that, but, you know, if someone gives you crap for fishing a mock fly in may june or has before you can write to me or have them write to me for biological validation that you're doing okay that's a decent decision i think it is because i tell you what there's a buttload of these caddisflies picking psyche is the genus in these rivers about that time and it's not a bad decision and anyone can fight me on it but i can take you to plenty of streams that have them.

Marvin Cash (35:06-35:37): Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of gets me kind of to my next question. You know, you've got all this really technical information, right? I mean, you, I mean, you know more about bugs than most people that fly fish will forget in their entire lifetime. Right. And so, you know, you're a frequent club speaker, you know, you do the show circuit, you know, you've written articles. I know, I think the most recent one I can remember, You've had several in Fly Fisherman Magazine. How do you take all of that technical information and make it accessible to the average angler?

Matt Green (35:39-41:42): Well, I think in the early part of my career, I didn't want to do that because I felt like it took something away from the science. But I had to convince myself that if you're going to take your science to the fly fishing world, then you're going to need to put it in a way that they can relate to and they can understand.

And so I think people that saw what I did at the Atlanta Fly Fishing Show, for example, earlier this year, pre-COVID, I made it so that they could really follow along and boiled it down to just a couple of things that you really need to know. I mean, I think any angler would benefit from carrying a small Tupperware container, like a Ziploc Tupperware container, just putting some rocks in it, moving the rocks, getting the bugs off, looking at the bugs, just getting an idea of, one, how big are they today? What's the predominant size class that's in my stream? If you want to break it down into small, medium, and large, that's really all you need to know. Are the bugs small today? Are they medium today? Are they large today?

And this is for a freestone stream. If you're working with a tailwater spring creek, you might need to be a little bit more specialized. But in the southeast, those waters make up probably a thousandth to a millionth percent of all fresh water. Most things are freestone. And, you know, most things aren't going to have truly selective trout in it the way we think of that. And one exception I can think of is waters like the Davidson and some of those more specialized club waters.

But regardless, how big are the bugs? Small, medium, and large. What color are they? That's the next thing. Are they golden? Are they brown? Are they black? So we've got color. We've got size. You can throw in how do they move. so what kind of movement do they move with do they wiggle their abdomen and that's how they swim like a stem fly or is it a mayfly that's a swimmer and its abdomen actually goes up and down when it moves so it kind of just speeds through the water like a little torpedo that's something you need to impart you need to have that kind of knowledge space just by looking Just looking. You don't have to have any prior knowledge of what you're working with. All you just need to do is look and see how it is. That's the third thing.

And then the fourth thing is body profile. Is it wide? Is it flat? Is it skinny and long? And if you can tie flies that imitate these four things, you're going to do perfectly fine. You don't really need to know the difference between a caddis, a mayfly, or a stonefly.

In the end, a lot of fly fishing is about form. It's about technique. You can fish the right flies, but if you don't have any technique to fish them, you're not going to do very well in the end. You're going to catch fish accidentally. If you're dragging your flies and you're not nymphing properly, you're not going to catch very many fish. If you're not tied on the nymphs and you have too much slat in your dragon, you're not going to catch many fish. If you're using a New Zealand system or a straight line technique like the Europeans do, that's really caught on here in the U.S. and you have indicators, indicator leaders for doing that, and you're not detecting switches or you're not tight so you don't feel switches a little bit, you're not going to catch fish.

And so really, technique separates the great fishermen from just the fishermen and women that make odd mistakes, especially with nymphing. And so with adults, it's a good bit different. You know, color, size, form, great. But really making sure that bug stays dry and floats well, that's your biggest priority.

And I don't know, you've fished with me, Marvin, and you've seen my hands after a good dry fly day on South Holston. My hands are so dry from frogs and infused silica, I can put them in the water and then see them light up like a hologram. If your hands don't look like that, then you're not applying enough for those seaed sea flies that I fish with. And I carry a paintbrush around with me. It's small modifications that you make to technique. that catch fish yeah you can have all the knowledge in the world on bugs but to some degree it's just a novelty after a while now with selective trout sometimes you really have to have an idea of what you're looking at but that's not the majority of our rivers here in really most places else in the mid-atlantic when you start getting to the northeast and you have very really rich bug streams and Even freestone trout are pretty selective. Then you really need to have a good background in entomology to be successful all year round and all the time. There's a lot of good angler entomologists that are old timers and new timers alike up through there. My time spent in Pennsylvania has taught me that. There's really good anglers that know bugs. They're what I call bug fishermen and women. They fish for the bugs, and I fish for the bugs.

Marvin Cash (41:45-42:05): Yeah, it's funny. And so, you know, for folks that haven't fished with you, to say that Matt uses a lot of frog's fanny, basically fumed silica, I think with the time we fished together, you had basically a food service size mayonnaise jar literally hanging around your neck, if I remember that day.

Matt Green (42:07-46:11): Yeah, yeah. And that's what you need. You can buy that stuff from a fellow over in Weddington, North Carolina, or in Mount Holly Springs. I can't remember, but it was like $20 on eBay. And go get you a paintbrush at Michael's, cut it in half, and then stick it in a jar, and then you're good to go. Most folks I see, they're not using enough.

and here's a story about technique so this is about the Trico mayfly which you don't really get in the southeast it's very predominant starting in northern virginia and then out through the northeast and the Trico to fish it well is an adult requires a little bit of the nest and so we haven't talked about this but mayflies have two cycles as an adult or kind of a sub-adult adult. They have what's called the dun, which is the sub-amago. That's when the wings of the insect are actually kind of cloudy. And then you have the spinner, which is the imago, where the wings are shiny. They see through. They have kind of a transparent look to them with some red or kind of orange hue. It's really cool to look.

The adults form what are called mating swarms or spinner balls. And they sometimes form tornadoes along the sides of streams. Sometimes it's just a big cloud for other species, but for the Trico it's either a tornado out west, and in the east it's just a big ball. Sometimes it can be so thick they look like smoke along the water. Really cool to see.

Well, later, and these insects emerge in the morning. So as the insects start to mate, they form these clouds. The females will drop out of the cloud and lay their eggs on the water. And that's where the fish come up to grab them. Well, when I first started fishing, I said, oh, let's put a lot of frog spani on it. Let's see. Let's see what happens. So the bug looks pretty big on the surface. And that became an issue. The bug was too big. And yeah, I'm fishing 26th, 24th. The bug was still too big. Use Zeylon for the wing material. And you cut it to size and you can trim it a little bit circular so that it kind of resembles that. And that actually is good because it holds less water.

And that becomes important in the end because fishing Tricos is an exercise in just keeping the fly dry without floating. If you don't use floating, either oil or fume silica, which is folks fainting, the fly becomes the right size for the fish to have interest, especially selective trout. And so when I realized this, I started just racking up fish, man. It was awesome. It's just a simple modification to recognize that the fish were eating the spinners drifting down. But the addition of the float made them appear one size too big, and that was enough for refusal.

And so just kind of a little aside, you know, you've seen me use a lot of float. And then there are times where you don't use any at all, because if you do, you just won't catch as much. And, you know, we're fishing 6X, 7X on some of these fish, and, you know, there's big fish coming up, you know, 20-plus on these little things, just pounding the crap out of them. Anyway, they're taking the bugs without floating.

Marvin Cash (46:12-47:16): Yeah, absolutely. you know you talked a little bit about um not making things too complicated by really just using the power of observation and uh to kind of determine kind of how to fish uh particularly nymphs right but i also but i think kind of the you know you don't have to go get a phd in bug science but you know i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the behavioral things for maybe the three major food groups like caddis mayflies and stoneflies that if you know, anglers would spend a little bit of time. Like I always suggest people read something like Dave Whitlock's guide to aquatic trout food or something like that, that they can really kind of tilt things in their favor. And I guess I'm thinking mad about things like, you know, most stone flies like to crawl up out of the water to emerge or, and so that kind of tells you where you might find them before they hatch and things like that. But if you could kind of, and I know that's a super broad question, you know, particularly for someone who knows as much about bugs as you do, but if you could kind of give people kind of like one or two kind of life cycle tips for those three major food groups, I'd really

Matt Green (47:16-54:27): appreciate it. A river really is such a diverse habitat. I mean, when you start sampling it, you'll realize there's so many different microhabitats, way more than a fly fisher person would ever know. And so that question really is very difficult to answer. And I used to think that there were only just a couple. And I used to preach, oh, you know, if you're in a ripple habitat, you can fish this, this, and this, and you'll be fine. And I can't really say that anymore with confidence.

My best advice, if you're going to try to match the hatch, so to speak, and fish nymphs before you fish adults, or well before you fish their adults, so earlier in their development, the best thing to do is just to go out and sample every once in a while by yourself or with a buddy. Get you a friend, get you a Nitex screening mat, and then just two buckets in a white pan, and just go sample every once in a while in different habitats and really get a feel for your local water of where things are.

Because you have some stoneflies that they do. They'll crawl over to a rock and emerge, and some mayflies even do that too. For example, the mahogany gun, the isonecheia, isonecheia-dee mayflies. those are the ISOs, slate drakes, there are other common names for them. They'll do that too, especially the ones that emerge in August or early September on most everywhere on the East Coast. Those same mayflies also have a spring emergence as well. So they're what we call bibloting. They have two developmental periods a year. And so that's just another family or group of insects that does exactly what most of the stoneflies do.

But there are stoneflies that will come to the surface and emerge just like mayflies. Some of the chloropyrlidae will. Those are the little yellow sallies. They emerge in April, sometimes March. Normally, a lot smaller creeks, too. So they'll be only really small little brook trout headwaters for the most part. And then perlodidae, those are the little golden stones or sometimes called yellow sallies. They'll emerge in April and they'll do just like those little yellow sallies. Well, they'll just emerge directly in the water a lot of times, head on out, just like many mayflies do.

And one thing we didn't really talk about that kind of ties back in the technique, and I don't know if I'm answering your question fully, Marvin, And maybe it's because I just know there's so much to know. It's just almost impossible to boil it down to just a couple of sentences of this is what you do. I had to think on that one a little bit. But something we didn't talk about was that many insects, as they emerge or hatch, they go from a larval phase, the immature phase, to an adult phase. or they go from a pupil phase to an adult phase. If they have what's called a complete life history, that means they're what's called colon metabolists. They have a larval, a pupil or resting phase, and an adult phase. The hemi-metabolist insects just go larvae to adult, and they don't have that pupil phase. Caddisflies are one of those insects that have a pupil phase, for example.

that any insect that's emerging is going to pump protein, air, into its exoskeleton. It's actually, believe it or not, for a pupa, like a caddis pupa, it's actually developed within that exoskeleton as an adult. It's got wings, it's got everything it would need for the most part as an adult, and it pumps air, protein, into its exuvi, the thing that surrounds it. exoskeleton and that makes it rise to the surface that makes it less buoyant than the water is and that's how they emerge perhaps and so if you see one of these insects doing this you'll notice that one that exoescalate that exoskeleton it has a kind of a orange reddish sometimes tan tint to it that seems kind of it's polarized in a way. If you ever look at your sunglasses and you tilt them, you'll see that it kind of gives off a sheen. And that's what this looks like. And if you ever see things like Z-Lon, that's what that is to imitate, that shuck, that shuck of the insect.

And so how do I get it to rise like that. How do I do that as a fishing person? How do I do that? Well, you can use floating oil, frog standing, just dounce the dubbing of that stuff. With Xeon too, if you want, a sparkle pupa, like a Gary LaFontaine sparkle pupa, this is exactly what Gary was calling for with this, that fly, is to pull that sparkle material back over, tie it off at the head to create this sheen of the exudas where you can take that flock put some sort of float down it down sit overnight shake it up in a ziploc bag get it real nice and in there and then fish those and you can fish them on a tight line with a little bit of weight and you use a listen ring lift technique to do this so the rod tip stays at a 45 degree angle long leader lift the leader off the water at an angle and just lift the rod tip and the rod butt so the whole rod at the same time with your elbow as it gets tight fishing downstream and as you lift that rod if those flies are good and down from that frog standing you have just a little bit of weight i'm talking like one triple BB split shot kind of thing, fishing fast water for the most part, but it doesn't have to be, during a good caddis hatch or mayfly hatch or even stonefly hatch, you're going to catch fish because you're now imitating that in between, that emergence period, that hatching period, in between the immature phase and the adult phase. And this is a phase of fishing that can berate a fisher person. I mean, it really does. A lot of people scratch their heads. They're a little clueless. That kind of technique, that can really help you out.

Marvin Cash (54:28-54:34): Yeah, it's amazing what a trigger that is for trout because they know that meal is getting ready to go away, right?

Matt Green (54:35-54:35): Right, right.

Marvin Cash (54:37-54:41): And that also, to me, is why I think fishing soft tackle sometimes can be so productive.

Matt Green (54:41-54:48): oh sure those spider flies those flies were designed to do that

Marvin Cash (54:49-54:56): yeah and I think the only other thing I can kind of think about about that is when you try to kind of time your lift to where you think the fish are

Matt Green (54:56-58:19): yeah yeah but you know if you see a rising fish then you cast to that you know I was always taught you got five seconds to go to that fish you got to be there in five seconds that's really i think by that time after that goes away the fish has it could be either somewhere else if it's moving a lot needing or it could just hey that was that one hit wonder that 20 incher came up once that was your opportunity and it's lost let's move on let's find different water find a different fish for you to work over hey that's what i kind of say to any client or person that's fishing with me that wants proper advice.

And one other thing you can do is you can cast in front of the fish. Kick a little line the fish's way. Al Cucci showed me how to do this on a little bit heavier rod and a little bit heavier line. You just shake the rod tip a little bit and use the buoyancy of the water, the capillary action of the line in the water, that surface tension, to just have a little bit of line go out, and then you immediately go into your lift and your 45-degree angle, and you just lift right in front of the fish. And that's really the most effective thing you can ever do for fishing soft tackles and emergers.

Those techniques are real important right before there's enough adults on the water to get the fish to switch up to something else. And for all the listeners listening here, we're talking about selective fish. in this case. Most freestone fish are going to care. But you've got good risers. You can even get selective drought on stock water. Any kind of delayed harvest fish that's really been worked over and worked over and worked over, especially in the early spring or late spring in many of the North Carolina waters. You've got good bugs coming off. Those delayed harvest fish get worked over. They actually provide some real It's fun driving by fishing when the bugs really start to come off in the spring. I know, man. It can be fun.

And I used to say, oh, delayed harvest fish. No, I'm not going to waste my time. No, this isn't for me. It's just a bunch of pigs messing around, getting shed. I kind of took a step back there a couple of years ago and said, wait a second. This is a little bit different animal. This tonight was a little fun. I had some big fish coming up, some nice fish, and they were being a little selective on mayflies. It was fun. So if you're out there listening and you're a trout purist that I'm only going to fish the Davidson, I'm only going to fish South Holston, I don't care about yada, yada, yada, man. There's more out there than those creeks. There's a whole world out there to be discovered unless you just relegate yourself to certain waters. You're going to discover enough on those that eventually you're going to want to move on to bigger and better things. You'll come back to it eventually over a while. You'll say, oh, I kind of missed this. This was fun, but let me get a bunch of elves too.

Marvin Cash (58:20-58:30): Yeah, absolutely. And as we kind of head into the main part of fall and hatches in the southeast are kind of slowing down, what suggestions do you have for anglers?

Matt Green (58:31-01:03:55): I don't know. I think that's a matter of opinion. I like tracked on some streams in Tennessee last week that would just make you reconsider that. One big, big emergence we're going through right now is what's called neophylax. It's a caddisfly that if you look from the top, it has a diamond shape on its wings. And they actually make stone cases through most of the spring and summer and then pupate and emerge right about now. And they can provide really good opportunities for dry fly fishing.

That and the October caddisflies, some Blue-Winged Olives, some midges. Then we'll start getting into what are called the winter caddisflies, what are called philipotamidae. They're these orange larvae that roam the rocks and the ventos and construct little fine mesh nets that they collect fine particulates in. they'll start to emerge all through winter and provide really good fishing opportunities through some of the good warm days through winter. That and the small black stoneflies, so the catniidae, that's the family name.

But if you're going to fish nymphs through the winter and it's a colder day, let's just say for example, then you're going to want to fish a variety of nymphs. And like I said earlier, the best thing to do is just to pick up some rocks, look for what size the nymphs are, the majority of what color they are, and then what's their profile like, and then how do they swim, and how can I impart that kind of motion to my rod tip, either with a couple of squeezes along the cork, just really kind of getting like a really good little twitch going, or maybe I want to have a little retrieve.

So, you know, I'm left-handed, so I'll explain it that way. You keep your line tight with your index finger along the back of the cork. And then as you take your right hand, which is normally going to be a hand you pick up the line to cast with, you're actually going to, as an open palm, so if you're kind of doing this at home and you're kind of messing around, Okay, you have your left hand. You're going to be holding your rod. That index finger is going to hold the line tight. With your right hand, you're going to have an open palm. And you're going to make a movement towards your left hand as you're grabbing the line as it's tight. So it's going to be straight. And as it's straight, you're going to turn your hand to the left. And as you do that, you're going to start to look at your back of your hand. And this is your right hand. I'm going to look at the back of it. I'm looking at mine right now.

And as you turn toward that right hand towards your left hand and you turn it to the back, you're going to grab that line as it's tight and a straight line being held with your left hand. And then you're going to make a motion as if you push your wrist down and bring your shoulder back just slightly as you're making a fist. And then you're going to rotate your hand to the left so that you see the back of your hand. And then you're going to push your wrist down so that your knuckles are caught down to the bottom, down to the floor. And then you're going to, and that motion makes a little bow with the line. And as that line is tight in your hand, being held tight in your left hand by your index finger on the back of the court, you're going to repeat the same motion. And it's kind of like a grabbing motion. And as you do that, you're going to just take in about three inches of line at a time.

And in the winter, that's a pretty good retrieve rate for imitating moving bugs. And as you do that, you can squeeze the cork just a little bit, just enough to impart movement. And it works probably better if you're fishing downstream and you're fishing past water with a little bit of weight than if you're fishing down and across. And, you know, I kind of picked this up from Joe Humphreys a long time ago, and I would just practice with it in front of the TV watching football. You know, it was back when the Panthers were good. It was good to watch them go to work. And as they went to work on good drives, I'd just get out the reel and then do it right in my hand as I was watching the game. And you can pick it up like that. And man, is it effective when applied correctly, especially with a little squeeze. There was a point in my career where I did not have that kind of technique, and I'm glad that I built it every time because that is highly effective for nymphing in the winter.

Marvin Cash (01:03:56-01:04:06): Yeah, and the great thing, too, is by having all of that line in your hand, then when you go to cast again, you don't have a big mess of line around your feet. So it makes line management so much easier on the casting side, too.

Matt Green (01:04:06-01:04:29): Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, that line is constantly freezing. It's getting tight. especially if it's on the water. And so as it goes through your fingers, you'll feel that ice come off of it. And that does help. Now, if you're messing with old line, it'll cramp up on you a little bit. But, yeah.

Marvin Cash (01:04:29-01:04:46): Yeah. Well, Matt, before I let you go, why don't you let folks know where they can find you? I know COVID has got everybody in limbo, and I know you're super busy with school, but I also know you can be tempted to do a presentation every now and again. What's the best way for folks to reach out and get in touch with you?

Matt Green (01:04:47-01:05:54): Well, so if you're on social media, you can get me up on my Instagram. It's at Matt Will Green, like the color. So that's M-A-T-T-W-I-L-L-G-R-E-N. Or if you want to reach me by email, you can do that too. That's MWGreenLikeTheColor at g.clemson.edu. I check both very frequently, probably email way more because I tend to have social media notifications disabled and email just I'm on that all the time.

And I tell you what, something I didn't mention, but part of the work I do is just responding to a diverse stakeholdership. Lots of emails to get through during the day. Yeah. As with most people, but I mean, you know, it's just, it gets out of hand.

Marvin Cash (01:05:55-01:06:04): Yeah, it does. And I'll drop all that stuff in the show notes. It'll be easy for folks to find. And, you know, Matt, I really appreciate you carving some time out for me this evening.

Matt Green (01:06:04-01:07:00): yeah Marvin I've devoted my career to to aquatic insects you talked about you know most people may not know more than I do but you know folks are different things in their careers you know some folks are engineers some are mechanics some build houses some are plumbers others are writers for a living and I just do bug stuff for a living so this is just what I do but I also know that for any of this to stand the test of time to keep going people other than academics like me need to know about it So I'm more than happy to give you my time to share a little bit of what I know.

Marvin Cash (01:07:01-01:07:08): Well, I super appreciate you sharing all that, you know, I guess really just a little piece of everything that you know with us this evening. Thanks so much.

Matt Green (01:07:09-01:07:11): Sure thing, Marvin. Anytime.

Marvin Cash (01:07:13-01:07:24): Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.