S7, Ep 37: Cicadas, Stripers and Smallmouth: A Spring Fishing Update with Matt Reilly

Marvin Cash00:00:00

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

Matt Reilly00:00:12

I'm doing pretty good, man. How are you?

Marvin Cash00:00:14

I'm getting there. I'm glad to be home, I think. I. I don't know if I told you this before we started recording, but I've been traveling a lot.And next weekend, Cameron graduates from Chapel Hill. And when I get home from that trip, I will have been out of town five of the last six weekends.

Matt Reilly00:00:29

Yeah, that's. That's a lot, man. That's. That's. I'll tire anybody out.

Marvin Cash00:00:35

Yeah, I'm. And I'm not as old as I. Well, I'm not as young as I used to be.And it's kind of funny, you're a little croaky because you're down in Brook, Neil, and the. The pine pollen and the dust is kind of getting to you on the striper game, right?

Matt Reilly00:00:47

Yeah, it's been pretty wicked last couple of weeks. I have probably been through more cough drops than I've had in my lifetime, just in the last couple weeks.Just trying to take the edge off a little bit, but we just don't. We don't have that in the mountains where I live for the most part. And it's been dry, so lots of particulate matter in the air, period.

Marvin Cash00:01:14

Yeah. It's amazing, too. Like, you know, you get to those times.I can kind of remember, you know, I've got family kind of in eastern North Carolina in that part of the world, and it's like, you see these just clouds of basically yellow, green pollen, dust from the pine trees.

Matt Reilly00:01:26

Yep. You feel it hitting you in the face. Running up the river, too.

Marvin Cash00:01:30

Yeah.And so you were telling me before we started recording that things have kind of popped off a little bit kind of earlier than normal on the striper front. So you're pretty close to kind of rolling the sidewalk up on that.

Matt Reilly00:01:42

Yeah, we've had some sort of early warm weather, just been the story the last couple of years, but also very little water, very little rain. We're supposed to get some this weekend that may be fairly significant, but otherwise it's been pretty low, pretty dry, most in most of the state.So it's pretty much the story on the new back home, all the way up through the Shenandoah Valley, up into Maryland, Pennsylvania. Um, so, you know, hopefully we'll have another summer like we did last year, but I'm not real hopeful at this point.

Marvin Cash00:02:23

Yeah, I Guess the silver lining if we come a little bit closer back to home is we didn't have a scouring flood during the smallmouth spawn.

Matt Reilly00:02:30

Yeah, for the most part, you know, we're still not out of the woods for that yet. If we get through, get through the first half of May without anything crazy happening, I'll be pretty happy.

Marvin Cash00:02:43

Yeah. And so you've got, I don't know, handful.You'll fish kind of, you were telling me, kind of you'll do the striper thing through the weekend and then you're gonna head back home. And that's gonna be smallmouth with a parenthetical for the cicadas are coming.

Matt Reilly00:02:56

Yeah, I may do a couple more smallmouth trips with some of my folks that, you know, can kind of hop in last minute, but otherwise I'm hoping to hit the road and go look for some bugs.Hopefully, you know, that warm, warm, dry weather with, you know, potentially some more significant rains coming at a critical, you know, early May timeframe may bring those bugs out a little bit. Kind of right on time with, with this closing up shop up here and we're starting to see some pop up in different places around the southeast.So we may be right on the cusp right now. Yeah.

Marvin Cash00:03:40

And so, you know, when you get back home, you know, where do you expect kind of in the, you know, done with the spawn, fully in post spawn kind of mode for the smallmouth fishing to be.

Matt Reilly00:03:50

Yeah, usually by, usually by mid May, most of our females are, are kind of back into bait fish chase and shave. But outside of that, you know, you'll have males coming off the nest by, you know, by mid May too.So that, that's really kind of the turning point, I think. You know, 15th through the 25th or so amaze when you see a lot of that transition happen.So, you know, if I were smallmouth fishing next week, I'd be, especially with the low flows, I'd. I'd be probably throwing some, some top waters around, some poppers, some, you know, slider diver kind of things.Fishing fairly slow for some of those bigger post spawn females.Trying to stay away from nest sites if I can, and then, you know, working more and more sort of pretty active streamer presentations into the program as we get later in the month.

Marvin Cash00:04:56

Yeah, and I know on kind of the pop or slider front, you know, where are you kind of on that, the, the frog hatch?

Matt Reilly00:05:04

You know, I, I have done some frog fishing. I think it's a, it's a legitimate approach. I, I'm not Real positive that it's a major foraging event on, on frogs specifically.But so much of targeting smallmouth bass has to do with, because, you know, they're very opportunistic predators, they'll eat just about anything they can fit in their mouths.So the patterns at any given time of year tend to be where opportunity overlaps with, you know, the presentation as it relates to fishing, that style of fly or type of imitation where that sort of meets the smallmouth in their general behavioral sphere at that given time, you know, so if you've got lazy postpone females in low water fishing something that's going to stay on the surface or very near the surface, that can be fished slowly and still trigger a fish is a, is a good approach, you know, and vice versa.In the spring, you know, early spring, pre spawn, you know, larger offerings that, you know, pack a bigger protein punch tend to meet the smallmouth where they're at then too. So I think the frog, you know, the diving bait fish kind of thing, I think that has a lot of place this time of year because it's fairly versatile.You can fish them fast, you can fish them slow. But I'm not entirely sold on the like smallmouth or keying it on frogs idea.

Marvin Cash00:06:47

Got it. And we'll back up just a little bit on the cicada front because I'm sure you get a million questions like, you know, when are they coming?And it's like, I don't think most people really appreciate how incredibly localized the hatch is.

Matt Reilly00:07:01

Yeah. So every, every brood, I believe we have 12 broods. Some of them are 13, some are 17 year bugs and they're temporarily staggered.So in each breed has its own very specific geographic range.Um, and knowing sort of the observed geographical range of the specific brood that's scheduled to come out on any given year is the key to finding bugs and fishing that year. So, you know, you hear a lot of this like, yeah, you know, we had them four years ago and they're coming back again this year.And you know, that's just not how it works because the breed you had four years ago, if it was a 17 year bug, isn't going to come out for another, you know, 13 years. So understanding that concept is, is, I mean, pretty, pretty paramount to the whole thing. And you know, I tell a lot of people this too.You know, 17 years is a long time, relatively speaking, to development to the Internet. You know, we're at a pretty great place right now for remote Internet based citizen science reporting. And that was not the case.Two emergences ago for the brew that we're going to have this year. You know, 34 years ago, we were in a very different place with the Internet.So some of those maps, some of those, some of those county lists and things are pretty, pretty accurate. But there's, there's a lot of missing information in some cases.So, you know, and like I said, development, some of those areas that had a lot of bugs 17 years ago that have been clear cut and pine trees planted and housing developments put up and parking lots paved, you know, there's no bugs there anymore. So things do change. But starting with the geographic distribution of the specific brood that's emerging that year is import. Yeah.

Marvin Cash00:09:13

And it's even super localized kind of within that geographic distribution. So it reminds me a little bit of like, if you're serious about it, you really almost need to get out there and put your scouting time in.Just like you were hunting for, you know, deer or turkey, right?

Matt Reilly00:09:26

Yeah, you do. You gotta do a lot of driving sometimes. But you know, like you said, even a county name is, is too general sometimes.Sometimes they're just in a corner of a county or, you know, in 50 acres of a county. I've seen places like that too. So yeah, there is a lot of scouting involved.

Marvin Cash00:09:49

Yeah. You know, in an amazing. No substitute for putting in the time that is correct. Well, you know folks, we love questions on the articulate fly.You can email me or DM me on social media, whatever is easiest for you. And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag.Might even include a new butcher shop sticker and will, you know, drawing for some cool stuff from Matt at the end of the season.And Matt, before I let you go, I know, you know, days with you at this point, absent some knock on wood, major weather event are scarce as hen's teeth. But you want to let folks know kind of what you have available, how to reach out and all that kind of good stuff.

Matt Reilly00:10:25

Yeah. Still got a couple summer days left, couple early fall smallmouth days. Talking about cicadas. If anybody's interested in, in that program.I just have people reach out to me to let me know so I can kind of keep you appraised of the situation. But I've been looking at muskie fishing in the fall and winter. That stuff will be here before we know it too. So just thinking about the future. Yeah.

Marvin Cash00:10:59

Well, there you go. Well, folks, as always say yo it yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines everybody. Tight lines.

Matt Reilly00:11:05

Matt.