S7, Ep 99: Winter's Approach: Matt Reilly's Tips for Catching Musky in Low Water

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?

I'm doing all right, man. How are you?

As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. And you've got big news since the last time we recorded.

Yeah, man, we're officially a family of four now, so things have been a little busy, a little bit, a little bit off kilter for the last couple of weeks, but we're doing just fine.

Yeah. You sound unusually chipper to have a newborn in the house.

Well, he sleeps pretty well. Not that I'm the one doing a whole lot of that middle of the night stuff, but it. I think we're gonna get lucky, man.We've had two, two really good sleepers and, you know, very amenable children. So I think we're, we're going to be all right.

Yeah, I was not so lucky. Both of ours were super colicky, so count your blessings.

Yeah, it's funny how people, especially people who have had difficult children, when they hear you got an easy one, it's like they want you to have, they want you to have the experience that, that they did. So everyone.I think there were a lot of people secretly hoping that our second child would, would put us in our place, but it hadn't been that way yet.

Well, hope it stays that way. So, you know, you've put smallmouth in the books for the season, really, and you've fired up on the muskie front. What are you seeing?

Yeah, yeah, that, that hospital trip pretty much, pretty much ended smallmouth season. And I got, you know, did a handful of muskie trips over about a three week span of being, being at home mostly.But things have not really changed a whole lot in the last couple of weeks other than maybe the water temperature. We've had real low water.I was out today and the, the new is particularly the lower news, sitting at like a quarter of the summertime average right now. So things are very low, pretty clear and fishing's been a little tough, but, you know, they, they will still eat.You know, we had a couple fish eat today. Probably been, you know, getting an opportunity most days. So it's nothing to be too scared of.That said, I do wish we'd get a little bit of rain or supposed to get some tonight. Um, so hopefully we can go into the weekend with a little bit more water in the river. But we will, we will see.Um, we have had some pretty, pretty cold, I think it was. Yeah, I Guess last week, last week we had a couple of days that it didn't get above freezing.We had some crazy, you know, basically like 15 to 30 mile an hour winds for a week straight. So didn't do much fishing that week.But it's dropped our water temps down to the like right around the well kind of depending on the day because we have had very different daytime temps, you know, seeing everything from like the low 40s to the low 50s in the last week or two.So we are slowly sliding towards winter but things are still fairly warm and with the clear water, you know, been fishing fairly quick and you know, trying to employ all those tactics to talk about in the fall.Every year it's trying to make long casts, downsizing a little bit, using speed and just doing everything you can to be stealthy and get fish to eat away from the boat. They're going to do it.

Yeah, it sounds, I'm having all those visions right now of fish seeing boats pushing wakes, rocking the boat, casting all that stuff you want to avoid. Right?

Yep, yep. That's, that's one skill that everybody's a little bit different in how they and how they cast.But if you can and it, you know, you do have to shift weight a little bit when you're trying to haul a 12 inch Muskie fly, 8 inch Muskie fly 70, 80ft.But if you can keep your, keep your feet still and you know, rock a lot more of your upper body as opposed to shifting weight heavy, you know, forward and backwards and, and rocking the boat, it's always a good thing. And then yeah, just anything you can do to, to be a little bit stealthier than you'd normally be. Can't, can't hurt.I don't think it's always super necessary but I tell a lot of people it's easier to catch a fish that doesn't know you're there than a fish that does know you're there. So can't hurt.

Yeah, a hundred percent. And got a question from Marty. And Marty, I apologize. These email questions got into a spam folder and I found them so.But we are going to answer your question and Marty's a kayak fisherman, likes to fish the New river for smallmouth and Lake Norman for bass. And he wanted to get your thoughts on the length head you like on your intermediate lines when you're streamer fishing for bass.

Yeah, I'm gonna. So I would, I would say for the most part within with an intermediate because it's not a real dense line.You know, we're only talking about like an inch, inch and a half per second sink rate. Those heads tend to be a little bit longer. I'd have to, I'd have to look. But I'm pretty certain most of mine are like 25 to 30 foot heads.And I for the most part fish well. So you said he fishes lakes, Lake Norman and the river.

It sounds like he needs to buy two fly lines, right?

Yeah, maybe. I mean, so I, I don't do a lot of bass fishing on lakes, but I have do striper fish on, on the lake quite a bit.And that's, that's a full intermediate that I use as opposed to an intermediate tip. And that's just, you know, you got flat water, no, you know, nothing moving the line really.That the, the best, best intermediate line I have found, at least for my striper fishing, has been the Rio striper line. I've tried like half a dozen full intermediates and you know, again, we're, we're going off on something that's potentially unrelated.But for striper fishing, most of my lake fishing is in the fall and winter. And so you're, you're asking for a cold weather full intermediate, which I think is a fairly rare, rare animal.But that, that line in my experience has been the best in terms of, you know, not coiling up, not having a lot of memory. It's got a little bit of a, a glow feature too, which helps. But in the river I do not like a full intermediate specifically and I, I will fish a tip.I think it's just the scientific anglers, you know, intermediate tip, sonar line.But the reason I don't like a full intermediate in the river is, is just because, you know, in our relatively swift, relatively big rivers, particularly the new river, especially in the springtime during the pre spawn window or anytime you have heavy flows, you'll find yourself casting across a lot of current seams and sometimes they're fairly heavy. And you know, if you want to fish the current seam, you don't want to be sitting on the current seam casting into slack water.You're going to be a little bit off of the current seam so that you can fish through it. And that just means that you're going to have, you know, if you had a full intermediate, you're going to have line in the fast water.And that fast water tends to push a big belly into that line.And so if you can picture, you know, chucking, chucking a fly 30ft into a pocket or an eddy and you've got this big 10, 10 foot belly or just, you know, line that's not straight because you have a bunch of billowing currents and stuff between you and the currency and the fish eats and you have to strip set and you're only taking in like 2, maybe 3ft of slack and maybe you've got 10 or 12ft of slack because of that, all that coil and billowing in your line. You can, you can miss a lot of fish that way.So I like to fish an intermediate tip and that just gives me a running line that floats coming off of my rod tip so I can mend it or you know, at the very least sometimes, you know, if you get a, a, a belly blown into that running line, if a, if a fish eats, you can, you can straighten it out relatively quickly because it's on the surface as opposed to, you know, buried a foot down in the, in it. So that's my two cents on that.I'm not, I can't say I'm real picky about the head length other than the fact that I do like that, you know, 25, 30ft or whatever. It seems to be a good length for, for everything that I do, you know.

Well, there you go. Well, Marty, I hope that helps. And I apologize again for the delay getting this on the, the fishing report.And you 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 FL swag you're drawing for some cool stuff for Matt at the end of the season.And Matt, before I let you go, you want to let folks know kind of now that your calendar stabilized, kind of what you have available and how to get in touch and all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, still booking winter musky stuff. You know, I've got some availability in November. December pretty much spoken for.There may be a day here or there, but got some stuff open in January, some in February too. We'll do some intermittent smallmouth fishing through the winter time too.So if you like, you like any kind of streamer fishing for, you know, strong fish, that's a good program too to get out and catch a bunch of fish in the middle of the winter when everything else is kind of cold and slow. But yeah, that's about it.I won't start thinking about the spring for a couple more months, but if you're interested in any of that, just hit up the website. It's mattreillyflyfishing.com and reach out to me however you feel best.

And as I always offer this time of year as we head into winter, I've got like I think two or three gallon bags of the the wine corks that you like if you need them for popping bugs.

Yeah, sounds good, man.I'm gonna try to try to get an early start on that this year because I got after I got back from Strifer fishing and cicada fishing for, you know, a month apiece this past spring I kind of got caught with my pants down.It came to bug season but thankfully we, well say thankfully we didn't have bug water for until about mid August and then thankfully, thankfully I don't lose too many bugs so I've had had plenty in my box for a while without actually making any.

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

Thanks, Marv.