S7, Ep 47: Cicada Chronicles: Navigating the Buzz and Bites of Southwest Virginia with Matt Reilly

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

I'm doing great. How are you?

As always, just trying to stay out of trouble.And I was a little concerned when you were able to record a little bit earlier today that you might have gotten washed off the water for the next week or so like so many of your brethren.

No. Well, we were actually slated to get a bunch of rain today, so I moved to. Moved a couple of trips up to try to get away from it.But thankfully, the way the weather and the stream flows have been lately, I'm not too reliant on my normal smallmouth rivers these days. Been mostly fishing out of town and still waters. So we're. We're pretty in pretty good shape.

Yeah, I know striper's wrapped up, but I guess the word of the day is cicada, right?

Yeah, we'd been. So, you know, unfortunately, striper run kind of petered out very abruptly about a week, week and a half early back in early May.And, yeah, it took about a week to run around, scout some bugs and. And look at some. Look at some waters that I wasn't super familiar with and confirmed bug presence. And we've been.Been rocking on that fishing for probably, I guess, almost two weeks now. So the. There's a lot of anxiety for me in that time kind of between. Between when the bugs come out and the fishing starts.But it's all bliss now, thankfully.

Yeah. And of course, we know they don't all, you know, emerge at the same time.So kind of, you know, we're recording here almost at the end of May, just on the other side of Memorial Day, you know, kind of, you know, how many more weeks do you think we have?

Yeah, I mean, it. It largely depends on where you are.Like, we had a lot of the bugs in sort of my area of the Southeast, you know, western North Carolina, east Tennessee, northern Georgia, Kentucky, southwest Virginia. A lot of those bugs sort of started popping sometime between the last couple days of April and, you know, mid May. And we.We had a lot of sort of colder, cooler weather, cooler rain, lots of cool rain in that timeframe.And I think what that has done is sort of broken the typical latitudinal gradient that you see with expansive periodical cicada emergences in the spring.You know, areas that got a lot of cold rain kind of got set back a little bit or had that emergence curve spread out a little bit and so you've got some areas around that are, you know, further south than others that are further behind. Has complicated things a little bit.But I think what that'll do for us is just depending on where you are and where you're spending your time, it can, it'll give us some fairly local options to extend our fishing.So I would think somewhere, you know, that is relatively convenient to me, we'll have fishing into, into mid June regardless, certainly for, certainly for another couple weeks. But I'm, I'm thinking we might get a third out of it.

Yeah, it's interesting.I was looking at the map and I mean the footprint for this emergence is relatively large and I think that they really haven't even started to regularly see them up in like Central pa. Yeah, so.

Well, they actually got a pretty big, pretty big rain event up there maybe week and a half ago with, with some warm weather associated with it. And that those warm rains, just because they soak into the ground, they can affect ground temperature.They can, they can push bugs to come out and that's, that's what happened up there. There was a pretty early push about a week and a half ago and I think a lot of folks have gotten excited.But you know, I think that was like I said, still early up there and we should see, should see some fishing starting up there in the next couple of weeks. But you know, it's a good ways. I mean we're talking four or 500 miles north of me.So if things have just started cranking in the last week, week and a half down here, then you know, there's still a couple weeks before they really get going.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, any kind of, you know, fly or kind of tackle, you know, tips you want to share with folks.

Let me think about that. Well, I'd say it depends on what you're doing.I predominantly target carp and, and usually large carp, so I, I don't mess around with my, my leaders and tippets. I'm usually fishing 16 pound tippets and fairly, you know, stiff large diameter butt sections.So I will usually adapt my smallmouth top water leaders, maybe make them a little bit shorter just because you're dealing with a heavy, dense fish. You know, we've caught some, caught some grass car up in the last couple weeks that are in the 50 to 80 pound range.And when you get those fish close to the boat and your rod is literally doubled and you've got a nine foot leader, it's, it's really tough to, really tough to get Them close enough to the boat to, to land easily if you've got a long leader.So I'll shorten them sometimes for that reason, but otherwise, gosh, just, you know, paying attention to the bugs you're seeing on the water, trying to match them.I try to fly or tie as durable a fly as I possibly can just because, you know, some days we're, we're literally cycling through like 50 to 100 carps and you get those fish in a net and they hang, hang bodies in, in the mesh and flop around and you know, flies can, flies can, can fall apart pretty easily. So try to use lots of glue and tight thread tension and everything, but yeah, that's everything that, that comes to mind right off.

Yeah. Have you tied any flies with any of Blaine's new kind of cicada wings and things like that?

I have, yeah.I been, been having a lot of fun with, with this sort of like crippled wing concept, using some, some span flex and, and punching holes in the wings to, to create some extra flutter. I don't necessarily think it's super necessary. I really don't think it's necessary at all.Especially when the bugs are, or the fish are, are really going. And it, it depends on, depends on the size of your fish too.You know, we've been in some situations recently where we've been catching a lot of smaller fish, you know, four to eight, ten pound fish.And those, those fish realistically have fairly small mouths and so bigger bugs with lots of sort of protruding and extending appendages sometimes will harm your, your hookup ratios. So sometimes a smaller profile kind of tighter, tighter flies is more necessary. Bigger fish, bigger mouths, it can get away with a little bit more.But yeah, I like them a lot. They work well too. Just tied in know, traditionally kind of tinted like, like Blaine did with his original gummy wings on his cicado pattern.So yeah, they've been a lot of fun to play with.

Yeah. And I would imagine, I guess, you know, figure, you know, cicadas will burn off and you'll be firmly kind of in postpone smallmouth.What do you expect to see then?

Yeah, so it'll, like I said, I'll, I'll carry, carry this for another two to three weeks hopefully and then we'll be kind of mid, mid to late June, which realistically should be, should be summer fishing in full swing. I would anticipate. Still some, still some, definitely some top water opportunities, especially if like last year we lost a lot of revenue.Lot of precipitation about now and things started to dry out and we've got low clear water, which we don't right now.We should have some top water opportunities, but business could will very likely still be keyed in on, on bait fish and going into early July crayfish as they start molting and doing their thing. But you know, should have top water opportunities pretty much every day once this is all said and done.So hopefully we'll carry the top water site fishing thing from here until October.

Yeah, there you go. And you know folks, we love questions at the articulate fly.You can email me or DM me on social media and if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag and you know, drawing for some cool stuff from Matt at the end of the season.And I know you're already super booked up, Matt, but I know you have days here and there you want to let folks know before I let you go, kind of how to get in touch and kind of what you have available and all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, as far as, you know, in the immediate future, I do, you know, I book cicada dates fairly last. But there's, there's some opportunity there potentially, if you're interested in that, just shoot me an email or text or something. Let me.Otherwise, smallmouth wise, we're talking a couple of dates in July, I think one in August and a couple in September. And then we're, we're looking at muskie season.So like I always say, if you're interested in anything that I do, just, just, you know, shoot me a note and we'll start talking and figuring out how we can get it done.

There you go. Well, folks, this time of year, as I always say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Matt.

Thanks, Marvin.