Transcript: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Flower, back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward. How you doing, Ellis?
Ellis:
[0:12] I am doing well, Marv. How are you?
Marvin:
[0:14] I'm just trying to stay cool, you know, I looked at the weather and I mean, damn, it's 20 degrees cooler where you are than where I am just four hours away.
Ellis:
[0:22] Yeah, it's been nice. There's some asterisks around that, but it's better than the mid to upper 90s.
So kind of some typical summer on the free stones is low and clear, blown out, and we thankfully have a little bit of insulation with the tailwaters, our free stones have been going through that process, which is kind of nice for the fall.
We've been getting a good amount of rain, both locally and then through all the feeders up in Virginia and North Carolina.
Coming with some decent cloud cover and those lower temperatures.
So not too many complaints for me. Yeah.
Marvin:
[1:15] Did you guys get hit with all that water that kind of ripped through the Tennessee side of the Smokies?
Ellis:
[1:24] Yeah, yeah.
It's been about a week of kind of torrential, you know, the two or three different days.
You certainly wouldn't have wanted to have been on the water.
And I actually had, one day were a few people who know that I'm going to be out and about when there's inclement weather had checked in with me that you can read into that however you'd like.
Just because it ended up being real bad. One of them was a touchdown of a tornado nearby. So, you know, I always liked that stuff and liked the precipitation.
There was, I think, some flooding damage. And of of course, some other property stuff, so I don't want to be too lighthearted about that.
But for the purposes of this podcast and my fishing, it is certainly not a bad thing, especially after, you know, six to eight weeks of just real dry weather and real low water.
Marvin:
[2:42] Yeah, so does that mean you're getting a little bit better generation on the South Holston?
Ellis:
[2:47] Yeah, the Holston's had a few days. They're pretty quick just because of the...
The different constraints they have above and below.
They're pretty quick to, you know, if you look at the schedule and there's a storm coming or forecasted rain of an inch, and this was a couple weeks ago, maybe just last week, we were supposed to get three quarters of an inch in a day and we're right on the edge of a high ridge between here and the state line in of North Carolina, about 20 minutes away, and things just miss us, or it hits us without warning.
And that's just the nature of being that close to one of the highest regional peaks.
[3:38] And the South Holston's just pretty quick to have...
We're going to be generating, I say we in the South Holston, but the TVA will be forecasting full generation for a day or two, and you can be looking on that the day before, and either that night or the next morning, if it's going to miss us, they're going right back to the 165, which is all low water, and then a couple, a handful of hour-long pulses.
So it's still, you know, not enough water or not a surplus of water on the South Holston.
And Watauga is sort of the same thing, you know, it's really just that 1 to 5 in the afternoon and even after these storms, you know, they're going, or sorry, the 1 to 6, they're going 12 to 6, it looks like in the next few days they're going to be increasing that a little more to extend into the morning, but yeah, kind of still just working with lean water here.
Marvin:
[4:48] Got it. And so how does that translate to what you're seeing on the fishing side?
Ellis:
[4:55] It really is dependent on, especially with what we're looking at.
With the bursts and the influence of the tributaries, and that word is definitely air-quoted for the South Holston.
One of the primary differences between the South Holston and the Watauga is the influence of the Dell River on the Watauga.
The Dell River is a freestone, it's a trout, in Smallmouth River, and it's got a lot of good... And there's a couple other larger creeks that feed it that have a lot of good insects, big stoneflies.
You'll find yellow sallies on the Watauga in the lower section. There's big...
I mean, the girdle bug is super effective for a reason, though.
You can catch fish on the upper South Holston with those things.
But even the little creek at the top, the tippy top right by the weir of the South Holston, that'll be, I'm guessing, five to 10 CFS.
It was probably 200 to 300.
[6:20] And it colors up the whole river, for me, it's great for one purpose, and really it's for streamer fishing.
[6:34] You really don't see as many bugs, fishing dries, which it's a double-edged sword, because the streamer fishing can be great.
Also, it can be tough and it can still require both work physically and then just the execution on a per-cast basis.
But throughout that process and throughout a day of fishing, to only streamer fish and to only use that as your tool for the day, it can just be a lot.
And when you don't have bugs going, it can just make it tough.
So I've been doing a lot of the kind of 50-50, three, four hours fishing streamers and four or five plus hours fishing mice.
And so going up to some of the upper sections and fish in low water.
[7:41] Kind of just exploring all of the different options I've come to enjoy and communicating that with anglers up front and going over the game plan.
And also, fishing low muddy water, it's an opportunity to get flies in front of faces that you'd otherwise not be able to get to. to.
And with that muddy water, the big fish aren't as spooky.
And so in a way, it can be harder to get some engagement from the fish because you do have to have them seeing it, but there's a pretty wide and easily found happy medium.
You can make it easy just by saying, can I see my fly at all? If yes, then let's fish.
[8:45] Once it starts clearing up, it kind of starts going back to the brown trout acting like spooky brown trout.
But yeah, There's opportunity for all of it, and you just have to make the most out of the conditions that you're given, and thankfully our rivers are happy and healthy enough to make something possible whenever you are out there, if you're out there long enough and if you're open to exploring different options.
Marvin:
[9:18] Yeah, got it. And speaking of brown trout, I got a question for you from Tom, and it's a little bit early, we're gonna be here before it's gonna be here before you know it he just wanted to know you know when do you expect to see the Browns start to move to their spawning areas yeah I would say things start happening I means it really specific to the movement to spawning areas, I'm going to say mid-November to late November.
Ellis:
[9:57] I think I get asked somewhat frequently when talking with people who are coming in September or October about whether or not that's an okay time.
Now for anglers who are coming here to to streamer fish or to mouse.
I get somewhat less concern just because who and what we are targeting are not fish that are actively spawning and where we are targeting.
So not fishing the middle of the river. I'll say that a couple more times in the next few months.
[10:43] But that, I think free stones and out west and higher latitudes, you start getting activity in the late September, October range, and these tailwaters, you just don't see that type of activity until November-ish.
Now, I did say things start to change. The lake below starts dropping, the rivers start to shift a little bit, fish do start moving, but that spawning activity movement is probably late November, I would say at the earliest, and you start seeing reds in that period of time in early December, but the rivers do start to change a little bit earlier than that, sort of mid to late October.
Marvin:
[11:37] Got it, and you know folks, we love questions on the articulate fly.
You can email them to us. You can DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag and then we're going to enter a drawing for two days of fishing with Ellis and one night at the Rotago River Lodge.
And Ellis, before I let you go, you want to let folks know where they can find you so they can book you and fish with you.
And maybe since we started talking about spawners, maybe give them a heads up that the bucktail season will start probably in late December, early January.
Ellis:
[12:11] Man, yes, I was just thinking about that earlier today. But yes, website's elliswardfishing.com.
Instagram, you can find me at elliswardguides.
There's some YouTube stuff out there as well.
And that will, I'm gonna have Bucktail in, detail in probably late November and after last year, which was just a little tough for a couple different reasons.
I'll be making a somewhat concerted effort to up the supply and have a couple other things in the works on the time material department.
So yeah, fall be a busy time.
[13:10] Yes, this Thursday. We are so Thursday, August. Help me.
17th. Thursday, August 17th at Yeehaw Brewing in downtown Johnson City.
And every two weeks after that, I'm going to try to do every two weeks in the summer and really in mousing season.
There may be some some days where we're pushing either to the next week or to the day before on Wednesday but this week is 17th and then every two weeks after that so I'll be putting on I'll be putting stories on Instagram and as YouTube starts to make sense we'll be updating folks there.
But yeah, it's, you know, it's relatively informal. We're making it up as we go and we have a pretty good space and some good attendance and we've been tying everything from hoppers to drunken disorderlies and we'll keep going.
Marvin:
[14:31] Yeah, well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, show it to yourself to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines everybody. Tight lines, Ellis. Appreciate it, Marv.