S7, Ep 29: Smallmouth Strategies: Pre-Spawn and Beyond with Matt Reilly

Marvin Cash 00:00:00

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly. And we're back with another Southwest Virginia fishing report with Matt Riley.Matt, how are you?

Matt Reilly 00:00:11

I'm doing great, man. How are you?

Marvin Cash 00:00:13

As always. Just trying to stay out of trouble. And we were talking before we started recording and you may not even know what day of the week it is.

Matt Reilly 00:00:21

No, I'm not sure I do. It's been a pretty wild last several weeks. We've had some good pre spawn smallmouth fishing.Have just a couple weeks left and hope we don't get messed up by any rain here. Doesn't look like we will, but we've. We've gotten a little bit and have a little bit still to come.And my only complaint would be if somebody could figure out how to turn the fan off or at least drop it down to like 5 to 10 miles an hour every day. But I won't complain too much.

Marvin Cash 00:00:57

Yeah, it's funny you say that. I was talking to Blaine and I was like, you know, March and April just makes me think about being a kid in Virginia and flying kites. Right.

Matt Reilly 00:01:05

Yeah. And you know, this.I hesitate to even say things like this because I feel like I might say it every year, but I just can't remember having sustained heavy winds for this long through the spring. I. I swear I've been dealing with it since like probably the 20th of February to end a muskie season.And we've had a break here and there, but man, there's been a lot of like 10 to 20, you know, gust and heavier and on the big new river. That's a. That's a bear.

Marvin Cash 00:01:43

Yeah. And it's interesting. I looked at your forecast and I didn't see rain, but I saw a cold snap in about five to seven days. Right.

Matt Reilly 00:01:50

Yeah, we, you know, that's spring for you. It's almost not worth talking about. We're going up and down, you know, over the weekend. We were starting out at like 55 degrees in the morning.This morning we started out about 28. We have a high of 86 on Saturday or Sunday. And then we're back down to like mid to low 50s as a high we.And that just keeps our water temps bouncing around in those like mid upper 50s this time of year, which is a great place to be. Some places it gets a little warmer than that, but the photo period won't. Won't kick off that first big wave of spawning for at least another.At least another week and a half or so. But yeah, they're Calling for a little bit, you know, maybe half to three quarters of an inch of rain on Sunday.We just had, you know, a half to an inch, depending on where you are in southwest Virginia yesterday. So that means full rivers, which is good. Something we haven't had most of the season.If there's been an issue to contend with other than the wind, it's been low.Kind of like summer, like water conditions keeps the fish sort of scattered after they've exited their, their winter zones, spreading out into, you know, feeding zones. But, you know, you gotta make it work.

Marvin Cash 00:03:26

Yeah. And so with the temperatures bouncing around, does that kind of make the fish a little funky?

Matt Reilly 00:03:32

Um, you know, I could say yes some days. And, but this time of year, I mean, spawning is so imminent.And I mean, even with a, Even with a 28, 30 degree overnight, when you have water temps in the mid to upper 50s, I mean, it's, it might knock it back, but you're still looking at, you know, low to mid-50s in the morning. And this, this fish have to eat. So, yes, momentarily.But in the grand scheme of things, you know, this is one of the times a year that they're fairly resilient to that, you know, summertime, when they've got, you know, four months to just lay around and eat, I think it's a lot more significant.

Marvin Cash 00:04:19

Yeah, got it. And got a question for you from Michael Felton.He's already looking past the spawn and wanted to get your thoughts on kind of, you know, how your tactics change in the weeks to the month following kind of post spawn before we get into kind of the full summertime groove.

Matt Reilly 00:04:36

Yeah. So if I had to, if I could give summertime a start date, I mean. Well, it has a start date.It would be right around sort of the calendar start of spring or summer, you know, mid to late June. Typically, most of our spawn's gonna go off like between the 12th and 18th of April or the, the first big wave anyway.So post spawn, you know, you're really talking late April through early to mid June, probably more. You know, the bulk of it would be May, certainly mid May through mid June.And to, to have a tactical approach to those fish in the river that time of year, you have to know what you're looking at and where the smallmouth are in their, in their, you know, life history. And like I said, the first big spawning event's usually going to happen in mid April.And what happens, you know, females will spawn and once they drop eggs and, you know, they're pretty much done the males Are the ones that garden nests for a couple of weeks. And so there is a window where, and, and because it's a, it's a progression, it's a bell curve. Not all the fish spawn at one time.You're going to have males on nest for about a month and that's, you know, like mid April to mid May.And those fish, you know, nests are usually created in areas that are protected from current with a fairly, you know, gravelly small pebble substrate bottom. Where that is depends on the ambient stream flow when the spawning occurs.So if the water's really low going into spawn, then they can spawn in a lot of different places. Sometimes it's like the tail outs of pools, you know, behind a small rock.If it's high, it's in a lot more protected areas, you know, back bays and behind little rock points and stuff in the river where there's still some flow but, but it's protected from real swift water. So those areas are going to have males in them that, you know, they could be, could be large fish.It could be, you know, 14, 15 to 18, 19 inch fish sometimes.And they will, when they're guarding nests, exhibit some pretty aggressive behavior at times they're, they're defending their eggs from nest predators.So if something lands on the nest or above the nest, like a top waterfly or it's just kind of hanging in their zone, a lot of times they'll come over and pick it off and they may not be eating it. Sometimes they'll kind of lip grab it and try to carry it away.If you're streamer fishing at this time of year, you'll often times throw a bug up on the bank, strip it out. You'll have a fish kind of lazily following it out and then they'll hang up and they'll turn back.And again, if you don't know what you're looking at, you might think, well, that fish just refused my fly or didn't follow. And what that is usually is just a male on a nest that doesn't want to strike too far.And in a lot of, you know, I would, I would pretty much advise just, just moving on. So it's, it's important to, to know what kind of habitat you're fishing in, whether you have nests in that area or not.And those males, those kind of mid teens, upper teens, males can, you know, a lot of them are tied up that time of year.The bigger females will be pretty well exhausted after they spawn and they'll often kind of retreat to Sort of lazy habitat sometimes, usually vertical structure, mid river sometimes. And they'll just be kind of lazy and hard to come by for a couple of weeks usually until, you know, mid to late maybe.And then they'll start feeding up again, they'll get their strength back. You know, water temps are still low, you know, in the, in the, you know, around 70 usually.And so they'll be chasing bait fish and, and being fairly aggressive in that like mid to late May, early June timeframe.And then throughout this whole period, I mean you have sexually immature fish, small males and females that you can find in current pocket water and all that kind of stuff.But you know, as far as tactics go, I mean just sort of catering to where the fish are in the river, trying to stay away from big nesting areas or at least not, you know, anchoring and beating up on them for an hour, you know, maybe probing some of those, you know, deeper kind of slower with big ledge systems, you know, pieces of habitat that might have some bigger females in them.Usually fishing pretty slow if you're looking to catch a post spawn female, sort of dead drifted, you know, neutrally buoyant bait fish flies, even top waters fish pretty slow, work fairly well that time of year.And then just as things ramp up from there, um, like I said, water temps will be, you know, from, from May to mid June, anywhere from 60, 65 degrees to 70, 75 degrees which is still pretty comfortable for those fish to be out and about chasing bait fish and things.Generally speaking, I'm going to fish smaller than I do pre spawn and you know, so that's, you're gonna start and you're, you're also catering to the water conditions. You know, in June you could have higher flows or you could have summer like flows.We're downsizing, you know, fishing more of like a three, three and a half, four inch fly as opposed to like a five, six, seven inch fly. Like I might fish right now will make more sense.But that bait fish bite and some top water, you know, poppers and stuff tend to work fairly well through, you know, that May, early June timeframe. And, and then let's see what else as well. That's, that's summer, you know, getting into July, you start talking about crayfish a little bit.But that's, that's where I tend to live.You know, intermediate floating lines most of the time, sort of mid sized, mid sized streamers and then just really trying to understand the, the mechanics and, and progression of the spawn and take what you're seeing from fish behavior and how they react to your fishing and, you know, try to, try to interpret what you're seeing. You know, are you seeing guarding males? Are you seeing lazy postpone females?You know, fish that haven't spawned that are just eaten away in the riffles and, and current seams and stuff. So that's, that's, that's where I would say to start.

Marvin Cash 00:12:21

Well, there you go. We know folks. We love questions on the articulate fly. You can email me or DM me on social media, whatever's easiest for you.And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag and may even include a sticker for the new butcher shop podcast too. And when you're drawing for some cool stuff for Matt at the end of the season.And Matt, I know you don't have a lot of dates left because I just saw your newsletter because you were off the water a couple days ago, but you want to let folks know kind of, you know, kind of what you're booking probably, I don't know, gosh, now kind of maybe through October.

Matt Reilly 00:12:53

Yeah, couple summer dates open. I actually did just have three days next week, for what it's worth, get canceled.So those are open pre spawn dates and then yeah, like a week in early to mid October. Just sort of when I tend to conclude my regulation small mouth season. That and what else?Couple striper slots in May, early May, and that is about it. Yeah, just, I mean, maybe maybe 15 days or something over the course of the next. This, this smallmouth season and spring season. So.But like I said, you know, days get canceled all the time. Schedules shift around. So, you know, I never want to discourage anybody from calling and talking.If they're interested in something, we can usually figure out a way to do it.

Marvin Cash 00:13:56

Well, there you go. Well, folks, as I always say, you know, things are warming up. Pre spawn bites going to wind down here in a few weeks.Or maybe you want to go start chasing panfish or trout. You owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines. Matt.

Matt Reilly 00:14:10

Yeah, buddy. Thanks.