S6, Ep 71: Adapting to Heat and Low Flows: A Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Reilly
Join host Marvin Cash on The Articulate Fly for another insightful Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Reilly. In this episode, Matt shares his experiences battling the summer heat and how it has impacted fishing conditions in Southwest Virginia. He discusses the dramatic shift from a wet spring to a hot, dry summer and the challenges it brings for anglers.
Matt delves into the current state of the rivers, noting the low water levels and the need for longer casts and delicate presentations to entice smallmouth bass. He highlights the importance of understanding seasonal patterns and adapting to changing conditions, emphasizing the role of aquatic insects and the finesse required for successful bug fishing during the summer months.
Whether you're a seasoned angler or just getting started, this episode is packed with valuable insights and strategies to enhance your fishing experience. Tight lines!
To learn more about Matt, check out our full length interview.
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Speaker:
Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
Speaker:
Marvin: and we're back with another Southwest Virginia Fishing Report with Matt Riley. How are you, Matt?
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Matt: I'm doing good, man. I'm tired and hot.
Speaker:
Marvin: There you go. A little bit of Gatorade, probably two or three gallons of water,
Speaker:
Marvin: you'll be good for tomorrow, right?
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Matt: Oh man, I've been carrying about a gallon of Gatorade and two gallons of water
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Matt: every day, And I've been refilling them both,
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Matt: all of it, at the end of every day or the beginning of the next. So it's real.
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Marvin: Yeah, I have a newfound appreciation for sun hoodies. I'll tell you that.
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Matt: Yeah, no doubt. Buffs and gloves and all that stuff.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah. And it's kind of amazing. Like, you know, we kind of went from,
Speaker:
Marvin: like, you know, hero to zero in, like, four weeks.
Speaker:
Marvin: Like, we had tons of water. We had a relatively wet kind of what I would call an old school spring.
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Marvin: And, you know, now we're, you know, I know you talk about how cool it is and
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Marvin: you're part of Southwest Virginia. I don't believe you.
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Marvin: You know, it's pretty damn hot and we haven't really had that much rain.
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Marvin: And so things are getting technical and hard pretty quickly.
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Matt: Yeah, I mean, I would agree. I mean, it was back around Mother's Day.
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Matt: You know, we were having, we had quite a bit of rain around Mother's Day.
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Matt: And then for those kind of last couple weeks of May and early June when I was
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Matt: doing cicada stuff, the rivers were pretty high.
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Matt: And, yeah, we're kind of like basement flow, you know, half to the third of
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Matt: the seasonal average in a lot of places.
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Matt: You know, where you see the big difference regionally here is just in water
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Matt: temp to start. I mean, we, uh, we've been kind of starting most days around like 78, 79.
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Matt: Um, my buddy's up on the James, you know, some mornings are like in the low eighties.
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Matt: So, um, we're a little bit cooler in that sense, but that's just because,
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Matt: you know, we're, we're a little bit closer to the mountains, I guess.
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Matt: And, um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's hot and it's low and the,
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Matt: the technicality, the The smallmouth fishing has gone through the roof in the last week or two.
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Matt: So, you know, it's, it's, we're definitely getting, summer has definitely started.
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Matt: I'll put it that way. Yeah.
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Marvin: And, you know, it's funny, we were talking before we started recording,
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Marvin: right? So, you know, you need longer casts.
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Marvin: You're saying, you know, that really, even though you are, you know,
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Marvin: probably two to three weeks out from what we would kind of consider kind of
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Marvin: prime bug time in your neck of the woods that you know you really need that
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Marvin: kind of long drift to kind of you know quietly float uh float the food into
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Marvin: the smallie's mouth and get him to eat.
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Matt: Yeah. So, I mean, in a typical year, and I mean, every year,
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Matt: really, you have things happening throughout May,
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Matt: June, early July that kind of takes the focus,
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Matt: I guess, off of bugs and terrestrial aquatic insects.
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Matt: Eggs um mainly you know
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Matt: non-game fish spawning activity um
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Matt: i actually saw some uh some non-game fish and some spawning colors today while
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Matt: i was dragging the boat to a ripple which was pretty cool um minus the dragging
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Matt: the boat part um then you also have some crayfish molts usually happen happened
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Matt: around the end of June, um, early July.
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Matt: And, um, you know, but all that said, we, we have, we have insects around.
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Matt: We've had damselflies and dragonflies for, I mean, a couple of months.
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Matt: And, uh, the cicadas, man, the cicadas are super happy, um,
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Matt: even pretty early in the morning with the heat and
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Matt: the sun um so so there's
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Matt: there's definitely bugs around um and and the streamer fishing and kind of crayfish
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Matt: bottom fishing at times has been has been good especially if you're in higher
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Matt: gradient pieces of water um but you know like like you were saying the uh.
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Matt: But from a stealth standpoint, particularly in the flat or water and some of
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Matt: the places we're finding bigger fish,
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Matt: bug fishing comes in handy because it's just a very finesse-y tactic.
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Matt: And that's how we're getting a lot of bigger fish right now.
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Matt: Now, the other, you know, one of the keys to the real kind of prime bug bite is water temperature.
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Matt: And, you know, water temperatures tend to peak out for the year sometime in late July,
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Matt: early August, before they kind of start trudging back down when we start getting
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Matt: some cooler overnight temps sometime in mid-August, late August.
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Matt: And we have um we've
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Matt: already seen temps pretty close to peak like in
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Matt: the mid mid to upper 80s in
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Matt: the last week or two so that just
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Matt: kind of sluggishness that can come with
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Matt: that when that happens really suddenly um
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Matt: we've definitely seen and you know
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Matt: so so bug fishing kind of kind of helps there too
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Matt: so uh you know kind of like always you know the fishing's just understanding
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Matt: the uh the patterns and the mechanisms at play and and and reacting to the conditions
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Matt: that you have on a day-to-day basis whether they're seasonal or not so that's
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Matt: that's where we're at yeah.
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Marvin: So you're just waiting for a good downpour rain to really get the streamer game back right.
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Matt: Man, I would, I would just lay on my back in the yard if it rained all day tomorrow,
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Matt: just, just to, just to soak it in.
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Matt: I would do, I would do a lot of things for quite a bit of rain. um just
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Matt: to you know people like to talk like you know a bunch of rain is setting you
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Matt: up for for a good summer or whatever but i mean as we've seen in the last couple
Speaker:
Matt: weeks we had pretty full rivers three weeks ago and here we are pretty low and and uh,
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Matt: running out of options so um regular rain is is definitely necessary and we
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Matt: do have some You know, kind of quarter inch here and there forecasted in the next couple of weeks.
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Matt: But, you know, that kind of stuff in the summer can disappear pretty quickly.
Speaker:
Matt: So, well, we'll see what happens.
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Matt: But we definitely could use some.
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Marvin: Yeah, while you're saying that, it makes me think about how people get excited
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Marvin: about snowpack out west and then it gets warm early and then there's no water in September.
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Matt: Right. Yeah. Yep. You never know what you're going to get.
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Matt: And like I said, it's all, it's all just, just reacting to what we get.
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Marvin: Yeah. And I would imagine probably, you know, hatches were probably kind of
Speaker:
Marvin: winded down up high in your trout streams, probably like a terrestrial kind of beetle game.
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Marvin: And, you know, probably, you know, you got to go really high and you really
Speaker:
Marvin: need to take a thermometer with you, right?
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Matt: Yeah, those streams are getting exceptionally low.
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Matt: The heat has more effect the lower things get, even up in the mountains.
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Matt: You just don't have the buffer of stream flow and volume.
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Matt: Volume and yeah we we see
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Matt: some we see some green drakes into june and
Speaker:
Matt: um you know you see some trichos in
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Matt: the summertime but it's uh you know
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Matt: i i honestly haven't been up there in a little while for the for the carp and
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Matt: the smallmouth but um if i were going tomorrow i would definitely be fishing
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Matt: uh some kind of attractor bushy dry flies and and beetles and that kind of thing
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Matt: um i i would I would expect to be able to do pretty well on that.
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Marvin: Yeah. Yellow or orange stimulator always works, right?
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Matt: Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
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Marvin: That's right. Well, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
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Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media. And one thing we've added
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Marvin: relatively recently, we're playing with a different kind of webpage configuration
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Marvin: for the podcast episodes.
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Marvin: If you go to the podcast link on our website, you'll see a little recorder button
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Marvin: down in the bottom right-hand corner.
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Marvin: And so you can actually record your question and you may actually hear your
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Marvin: question played live when Matt and I record. So that's kind of a cool thing.
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Marvin: And I would also remind folks, too, that, you know, if you like the podcast,
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Marvin: tell a friend and ratings and reviews and podcatchers really,
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Marvin: really help us. They help us.
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Marvin: They help more people find us because it helps us rank higher on Spotify and Apple and everything.
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Marvin: So if you have time, you know, give us five stars, write us a review or two.
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Marvin: And, you know, Matt, before I let you go, you want to let folks know kind of
Speaker:
Marvin: where they can find you and book you. I know you have a few days left.
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Marvin: You've gotten some recent cancellations. And if you got anything else neat going on?
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Matt: Yeah, I did just have... What is it?
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Matt: July 8, 9, and 10.
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Marvin: Yeah, July 8, 9, and 10. I saw the Instagram story.
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Matt: Right. Well, the embarrassing thing is I put up the wrong dates first,
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Matt: and I had to take those down because I don't know what day it is,
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Matt: and I am a slave to my calendar.
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Matt: And if I don't look at it, I get it wrong.
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Matt: But yeah, it's July 8, 9, and 10.
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Matt: Those are the last small amount of dates, They're only smallmouth dates for
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Matt: the time being that have opened until the winter.
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Matt: And, yeah, we have started booking quite a few musky dates, too.
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Matt: Like, I have a couple left in November.
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Matt: And then we're looking at, you know, real winter on the river,
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Matt: which is kind of December to February.
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Matt: Be wary um but other than that
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Matt: man we're just cruising and hoping the
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Matt: uh the river stays wet and you
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Matt: know fish keep biting so that's that's what we're doing um all
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Matt: my contact information is on the website which is mattrileyflyfishing.com
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Matt: and you can you know even even though
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Matt: you know small mouth dates tend to be gone and
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Matt: things tend to book up pretty quickly you know
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Matt: i always tell help people um if you want to chat or or have questions about
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Matt: anything just give me a shout i can usually be trusted to get back to you within
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Matt: a couple of days um at the at the least so give me a shout however you feel
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Matt: best and i look forward to hearing from you yeah.
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Marvin: And you know also too i want to give a shout out to you actually found a
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Marvin: little webmaster time in the last few days and so you've dropped a player with
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Marvin: uh i guess all of this year's and last year's fishing reports and that'll be
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Marvin: automatically updated so you know one thing i would say folks is if you listen
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Marvin: to a year's worth of fishing reports you'll learn a whole lot about the cycle
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Marvin: of the watersheds that matt fishes.
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Matt: Well you'll just you'll just i mean you'll learn that i learn new things every
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Matt: year and maybe that uh i'm a little bit smarter than i was a couple years ago too that's.
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Marvin: A good thing to know too and you know so folks as i always say you owe it to
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Marvin: yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines everybody tight lines Matt.
Speaker:
Matt: Thanks Lawrence.
Matt Reilly
Guide | Fly Tier | Outdoor Writer
Matt grew up stomping around the warm water creeks and rivers of his native central Virginia, just a stone's throw from the James River. He's been blessed with a great many mentors, including his father, who introduced him to fishing before the age of two.
In his teenage years, Matt took his first professional venture into the outdoor industry as a freelance writer and photographer, and soon secured a weekly outdoor column in The Daily Progress' Rural Virginian.
After heading south for college and falling in love with the fisheries of southwest Virginia, Matt established his guide service in 2018. Today, he is a father, husband, USCG-licensed captain, and a leading fishing guide specializing in smallmouth bass, musky, and other predatory game fish. He speaks regularly on a range of topics. His writing has appeared in several national and regional publications like Eastern Fly Fishing, American Angler, Fly Tyer, Southern Trout, Hatch Magazine, and Virginia Wildlife. He is also an ambassador for Reilly Rod Crafters, a producer of premium fly rods based in Virginia.
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