S8, Ep 61: Smallmouth Chronicles: Matt Reilly's Secrets to Success in SW Virginia

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

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

Just trying to stay out of trouble. Getting ready to get my ducks in a row to head up to Madison, Wisconsin for the annual OWAA meeting.

Nice, man. That'll be fun. I hadn't been to one of those in quite a while, but always been good events.

Yeah, I'm just looking Forward to the 15 to 20 degree cooler temps.

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.

But you know, it's funny, you know, I always give you a hard time, like I don't believe your weather forecast, but I looked at it and like you're legitimately probably 15 degrees cooler on your side of the mountain than we are here in the Piedmont in North Carolina. And I was just kind of curious. I know you've had a fair amount of rain too. You know, what are you seeing on the water?

Yeah, we. Man, it's been pretty relentless depending on where you are, you know, north and south.But we have had just storm after storm after storm come through like Johnson City to Wytheville. Ish. It's sparing the New River pretty well.But you know, gosh, back in like late July, we were having these big flash floods where, know, parts of the watershed are getting like 6 and 7 inches of rain in an hour in the evening. And so it's. Things are settling out a little bit. The storms have kind of stuck around a little bit longer than typical.But I think after this weekend, knock on wood will start to stabilize into our kind of late summer program. But that's, that's all to say that, you know, there's. There's water that's more or less blown out and there's water that's in pretty good shape.So just been a continuation of the dog days, you know, having to keep tabs on water conditions all over the place and be prepared to, you know, shift quickly when things happen. So that's, that's what we've been dealing with.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Cause I think you told us last time, like your trick is to go find clear water.So it sounds like you've been watching the radar and then getting above the dirty water or fishing below it. Right?

Yeah, I mean, it just kind of depends. Every, every system's got its. Got its intricacies. You know, tributaries that put dirty water in on the new are the, you know, kind of the wild card.There in terms of clarity, they'll operate the dam at Radford in reaction to rain that occurs upstream in the watershed at times. And then we've had some days where we're just leaning into, leaning into the high dirty water program because, you know, we've had a lot of.I really kind of hate fishing. Dirty water and high sun. Um, but you know, we haven't, haven't had a ton of that.We've had a lot of rainy, cloudy days and you know, that can, that can make for some good kind of moving fly fishing, streamer fishing, aggressive top waters, that kind of thing. So it's just sort of depended on the day and where folks are coming from and staying and what our goals are and all that. But.

Yeah, interesting. And so has it been enough water kind of when it's up and dirty to kind of push the fish on structures and send you to the banks?Or is it just kind of, you know, higher than it normally is, but not like high, high. I guess, for lack of a better word, both.

All of the above. I mean, we fished. I fished the new river at pretty dang high flows and not, not super successfully with flies.But, um, I mean, I, I'll, I'll fish it a lot higher than a lot of folks will, especially if we have conventional gears and option. But I mean, we fished it a couple weeks ago. What I would, most people would consider like two or three times the, the CFS range for being too high.And, and that'll certainly do that. You know, it'll isolate, concentrate fish to sort of mid river, slack water habitat, bank habitat.But for the most part you're trying kind of just been dealing with like middling, not real high, not real low, but with some clarity, you know, diminished clarity. And frankly that can, that can be some of the most challenging to deal with at times.But you know, the benefit of the new river is that 90, you know, barring any major flooding that occurs that fills the lake with dirty water, 95% of the flow is, is lake water particularly higher up. So, you know, you've, you've got some options there.Even, even if things are, even if the number and the stream flows is going way up, you know, you can usually find decently clear water somewhere.

Yeah, and before we started recording, you were telling me you've actually got kind of like a good problem. Like, you know, we've, I don't know, for the years we've done the fishing report, we've lamented poor recruitment. Right.And now you've had several years of a good spawn. But now you have all these little dinky fish that are chasing flies that are too big for them to eat. Right?

Yeah, it's the new. That has been something that, that I've observed.I mean and I would say, you know, historically, 10 years ago we had a lot of 10, 10 or more years ago we had, we had a fair number of like, you know, four, five, six year old fish that were kind of what you want is your numbers fish like 12, 13, 14 inch fish, 15 inch fish. Don't seem to be running into a ton of those fish this year.But we do have a lot of like 0 to 3 year old fish which you know, small, small to like 11, 11, 12 inches. And it's a great thing for the future.It is like I don't love seeing that big, big age class gap, but what it kind of turns into on the, on the river is, is just that they're at, at times to target a bigger fish.You're just, you're just not going to get many fish just because you know, normally it's like, you know, you throw a bigger streamer, you fish bugs, you know, you do these things that sort of skew you a little bit bigger and you pick up the odd, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15 inch fish and we're just not seeing a ton of those. So. But you'll get these little pecks and grabs from fish that are just not really big enough to get the hooks that, that I'm using on those flies.So that, that's definitely created a little bit of a unique situation really. I would say the last couple years, but it seems more noticeable this year for whatever reason.

Yeah, we'll just have to hold on for three or four years and you'll be talking about how you're just wailing on 22 inch plus smallmouth, right?

Yeah, yeah, hopefully it should be, should be pretty good.Those, those kind of middle and, and sort of mid to upper teens fish just keep getting bigger and hopefully we'll just have smaller, you know, younger fish just keep piling in.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, as we, we're getting, I don't know, gosh, kids are going back to school, right.So I would imagine on the smallmouth front you maybe have like a handful of days between now and the middle of October.You're probably taking muskie deposit money and looking forward to maybe having a break and then kind of picking up the muskie game in November, right?

Yeah, man. Booked for the rest of the smallmouth season and yeah, we're filled quite a few. Quite.Quite a few musky days already for, you know, November, December, couple, you know, couple later. But yeah, it's all happening. Seasons are gonna change pretty abruptly here in another month, month and a half.

Yeah. And then I would also say, too right, you're probably filling your. Your striper program up, so you probably.People wanna fish with you for the striper runs. They probably need to get on it, right?

Yeah, all of it, man.I mean, really, at this point in the year, I do start, you know, I start getting some of my regular folks just booking, and I had some of my fellows yesterday booked like eight days next year for various programs, so, you know, that that stuff will. Will filter in and. Yeah, so it's. It's really never too early.You know, like I always say, you at least start a conversation about something that you want to do or, you know, if you're interested in learning something or whatever, you know, make sure to get to me when I've got some calendar flexibility so we can be as effective as possible. Yeah.

Plus the cicadas are back next year, right?

Sort of. Yeah. The. I believe they call it the Baton Rouge brood or the New Orleans brood.Vast majority of them will be down in, like, west Mississippi, Louisiana. Stay tuned on whether we're making that.

Track or not for a handful of select clients. Join me at my Airbnb or VRBO and we'll go chase cicadas, right?

Oh, you better believe I got some folks asking about it.

Well, if folks want to reach out and start that conversation, how should they get in touch with you?

My. My website's where everything is, mattreillyflyfishing.com, my email, phone number, all that stuff is on there.And just reach out however you feel best.

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

Hey, thanks, man.