Transcript: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward
S5, Ep 130: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward
2023, Marvin S. Cash
The Articulate Fly
http://www.thearticulatefly.com
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:
[0:11] I am doing well, Marv, how are you?
Marvin:
[0:14] As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble and you may not be getting much rain, but you're definitely cooling off here in the near future.
Ellis:
[0:23] Yeah, next week is looking, I see 20s on two different days, so it's November all of a sudden.
I think it's the 10 day forecast, but yeah, it's going to be chilly, but we got one last little week of the upper 70s is the highs, so the transition will be somewhat complete to fully autumn, if not late autumn.
Marvin:
[0:54] Yeah, and how long does it have to be kind of cold like that before it kind of messes up your rodent bite?
Ellis:
[1:04] Oh, well, that's an interesting question, and that the answer to that is effectively who is fishing.
So the rodent bite is going to be based on whether or not we're putting rodents onto the water, not whether or not we have rodents out and about.
So one of the unique parts about the tailwater is that, unlike a lot of the free stones and spring creeks and a lot of places where mousing is made famous, I'm thinking of Michigan, Pennsylvania, those are iced out, and if they're not, minimal flows or muddy, and also just those areas.
You're looking at 10, 15 degree days as the norm.
So with the tailwaters here and the relatively temperate climate where we're looking at upper 30s, mid 40s as kind of our average run rate winter day, our banks are green 365 days a year and mice don't hibernate.
[2:23] That's why you start hearing little scratches in your shed or hopefully not in your kitchen cabinets come this time of year when it starts getting cold.
They need to find somewhere where they're safe for the winter.
And if they're still out in the fields, they have fresh water and there is food right next to the river.
And it starts to become limited, their food supplies and their water supplies, those start to become limited, not near the river.
So the notion that winter might slow things down, It really starts to fall on its face on just about every facet, including the fact that mice are mammals.
So the colder it gets, the more calories they need in order to keep their body temperature at a healthy temp.
So all that, the nocturnal stuff does not stop throughout the winter.
Just do you want to go out and do that when it's kind of windy and you know below a 28?
Marvin:
[3:39] Maybe we focus on daylight fishing Fair enough and so, you know, I would imagine uh, since I was out with you the streamer bites just been getting better, right?
Ellis:
[3:51] Yeah, that's another one that You know throughout this period of time It changes, and it changes mostly on a day-to-day basis because of ambient conditions, inter- and intraday.
So between day-to-day, are we getting any influence from the tributaries?
Is it colored off at all? Those are good things. things. Is there cloud cover?
That's another big one. Are we getting waters of generation? That's another big one.
Just did the lower South Holston in low water, which is... That's That's about as tough as you can get.
We got a nice fish.
[4:43] Pretty high afternoon sun, bluebird day, gin clear water, but it takes work and you're really... I'm back rowing through 80% of the float and we're hitting the hot spots because otherwise it's just...
You can see everything that you're coming up on and everything can see you.
So, the streamer bite, I tend to start shifting away from the trout streams as much.
Now, my focus starts going towards muskie in the next month or two.
And there's a lot of big fish moving up into the middle river, and we can still fish streamers on generation, But it provides a good excuse to shift more of my time and energy toward the muskie.
[5:41] Staying off the rivers during that period of time isn't a bad idea anyways.
Not that you can't fish to fish who are either pre or post spawn.
You're fishing the structure.
It's not a red, you're fishing up against the bank and pulling them off of rock shelves and deep water, and yeah, I think that feedback starts to go on, I would say, as early as two months ago, and then things quiet down.
Are less concerned about eating for a good couple of weeks.
And, and then you, then you start to get into thinking about post-spawn, which I actually started thinking about.
As soon as it stops.
Marvin:
[6:33] Yeah.
Ellis:
[6:34] Which is a perfect segue because our boy fleas and meat sent you another question and wanted to get your thoughts on, uh, you know, the best ways to kind of target Postponed Browns in terms of tactics and flies and sounds like he's a little mouse and curious as well We should all be In the perfect world I Got a trip tomorrow and it's South Olsen's not run until 12, It's like yeah, you know, we'll push so dark and then maybe I don't know I feel like I'm convincing people against their will that's for an hour or two Yeah post on Browns Again, we're talking about streamer fishing and we're talking about big fish.
[7:21] If you have gin clear water and you have no bitey conditions around, it's going to be tough fishing. You're not nymphing for five-inch fish.
You're trying to get one or two in the boat that day.
And some of them might be 14, 16, 18, like you're not going after two-footers all the time when you're fishing post-fawn grounds with streamers.
There are days, though, where that bitiness is a little something special, and that happens all the time.
That could be yesterday, that could be a week from now, that could be in the middle of the summer, so you get the bitey conditions.
The difference there is that there's a lot of lake-run fish, and there's a lot of fish redistributing throughout the system where there's different pockets of the river that have higher densities of bigger fish.
And so you'll see certain runs, certain sections, certain day floats that are, I mean, relative to most of the year, packed with big fish.
[8:37] And I would say when you start getting bitiness there and you're catching a couple of fish on let's say a peanut envy or a sex dungeon, stop fishing those.
See what happens when you do something. Go to a drunken disorderly, go to a triple drunk, start fishing game changers.
Last year of going through this progression, I watched my good friend Jack land personal best 28 giant fish.
There's nothing else to do that day. I landed at 26 that day.
I started fishing musky flies and got one of the coolest eats from a, quote unquote, smaller fish, 21-inch male trout, blowing through the surface through the stomach of a musky fly.
[9:22] Those are really the times to explore.
What you want to do in terms of your fishing and also what those fish are capable of because that post spawn is really a they haven't eaten in weeks and and some of them aren't used to getting pressured they're they're heading back towards lakes so it's i would say it's a time to explore yeah it almost reminds me a little bit of like fishing steelhead when they're dropping whether they're coming in or dropping out right and they just they move from spot to spot to spot as they you know try to get to where they want to go?
[10:02] Yeah, one I would say one difference there would be that a lot of what we're talking about is even when they do redistribute in on the South Holston and the Watauga that is because of the fact that Boone is and this isn't necessarily addressing his question but Boone Lake is dropped 30 feet and so we're getting a couple extra miles of river that would be lake and we're talking about lake run fish moving back down into the lake so I haven't had conversations with these fish yet but I do suspect that some of them are going to be holding where they would be in the lake which is for a couple months river.
I'm guessing some of them are going to be treating the river as a place that they're not going to hang around in and get more towards the lake.
So yes, similar in that they're moving and then that kind of cool, unique difference of you're fishing to a river that is starting to lose ground.
Starting to turn back into the lake when you get towards the early to mid-March.
Marvin:
[11:19] Yeah, got it. And so, what can you give fleas and me to scratch his fall mousing edge?
Ellis:
[11:28] Man, go out and chuck rodents. I mean, there's really one of the, which is the open-ended question.
I think one of the coolest parts of fall mousing is that, especially in more, in higher latitudes, it's starting to get dark at 7, 730, and then you get hit with the fallback.
You can mouse for three hours and be in bed by 10.
[12:03] So even if it's going to be freezing that night, go out and do it for a couple hours after sunset and kind of a general guideline on mousing.
If you can do it without any moon at all, that's awesome.
You can look up different solunar calendars, Farmer's Almanac, and look at the moon rise and moon set.
I've seen a little bit of a correlation to how active game is supposed to be based on that calendar.
It's really, you want to have that moon on the other side of the earth.
So if you can get out on a, a night when the moon set occurs near sunset, that's awesome.
Otherwise, you know, try, try to get that, try to get that new moon phase or close to it.
Marvin:
[12:59] Well, there you go. And, you know, folks, we love questions at the articulate fly.
You can email them to us. You can DM us on social media, whatever's easiest for you.
And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag, and we're going interview into a drawing for two days of fishing with Ellis and a night at the Watauga River Lodge and Ellis, before I let you hop this evening, you want to let folks know, you know, where they can find you so that they can book you and fish with you, but I bet you also maybe have a little bit of a status update on the bucktail situation too, right?
Ellis:
[13:28] Oh, I love the teaser. Yeah. Uh, Instagram is Ellis Ward guides.
Best way to contact me, book trips, pick my brain about what your trip might look like, ask about Bucktail, my cell phone at 513-543-0019.
And I have probably about 200 tails out in the shed that are dried from archery season. We got...
The young bucks are there's a um, I think under some sort of youth opener this weekend and That'll probably give me a couple hundred more and then You know gun season is right around the corner and and it really starts to become Um as much as my freezer space can hold so i'll probably start putting them out either on Flyzotics or you know I'll make an announcement on my Instagram page in the next week or two.
Marvin:
[14:35] And so if someone wanted to buy you another chest freezer how many tails would you give them?
Ellis:
[14:42] Depends on what they're tying. They might change your tails.
I'd be open to bartering.
Marvin:
[14:51] Yeah fair enough so folks you know if you have a spare freezer and you like bucktail, you might want to work something out with Ellis.
As I always say, fall is my favorite time of the year to get out on the water and yell at yourself to get out there and catch a few.
Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis. Appreciate it, Marv.