Transcript: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward
S5, Ep 147: 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 Fly, and we're back with another East Tennessee fishing report with Ellis Ward. Ellis, how you doing?
Ellis:
[0:12] I am doing well, Marv. How are you?
Marvin:
[0:14] I'm getting there. It sounds like you've gotten over whatever the kiddo gave you right before Thanksgiving.
Ellis:
[0:21] I think a couple of days ago was the last time that I was making funny noises breathing. So yeah, I think I'm okay now. I hope I'm not speaking too soon.
Marvin:
[0:34] Dude, if I hear the kazoo whistle when you breathe next time, I'll know that's the case.
So, you know, we got a big shot of rain right around Thanksgiving.
I would say we're going to get a bump up in temperatures to be a little warm, but we're kind of grooving into that kind of gray, you know, 50s, upper 40s, kind of, you know, early winter crud. What are you seeing on the water?
Ellis:
[0:58] I couldn't be happier. I know a lot of these days that it's overcast and let's say you're getting up when the sun's coming up, the days that it's gray, it still feels dark outside for a good hour around when you normally wake up.
I'm getting up. Those are my early mornings. And if it's, you know, if I have my daughter, it's because I want to be tying before she's up.
If I'm going on a trip, it's probably because I'm tying.
[1:33] The transition away from...
Big sun, high pressure, those unsettled days in the fall, which those can be great, but getting into a little bit of stability, having temperatures get to a place of stability.
Some of it goes to predictability in fishing.
I mean, talking about wintertime, brown trout and musky, there's only so much predictability that you're going to get, but the gray, the gray, the rainy, getting away from one of the most severe droughts in record-keeping history, last 100 or so years, and a lot of these watersheds in East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Southwest Virginia, yeah, It's, it's, it's feeling good right now.
Marvin:
[2:38] Yeah. And I would imagine as it gets colder, it's going to make it even easier to pattern the muskie, right?
Ellis:
[2:46] Yeah. You would imagine that, wouldn't you?
Marvin:
[2:49] I would imagine that.
Ellis:
[2:51] You can, you know, they get in their winter pools and when you find them, they are, we'll say their location is more easily patterned.
They tend to not move as far.
I think there's something to be said for the fly, and this will get to the question we we had discussed, but approaching the muskie with the fly relative to bait casters, lures, bucktails, blade baits, things of that nature.
When you do start to slow things down...
[3:37] Be it fishing with, you know, depth, bigger flies, whatever your idea is that you're going with, I think there's merit to a lot of them, but, you know, slowing that retrieve down a little bit.
[3:55] You have, there's like secondary and tertiary motion within flies, so you're You're getting not just the movement of the fly from your hand, but because generally speaking it's buoyant, bucktail flies, you're getting these kills and that hang time.
So you can move it slow and when it stops, it doesn't look like a block of wood with paint on it.
It's moving. The whole thing's moving. There's different flash points that are moving.
And so some of that stuff, when you are able to, and look, this is after four years of fishing and three, just a couple sections of two different rivers to get to a place where I felt comfortable guiding.
[4:50] And once you start guiding, it's really the rich get richer, where you all of a sudden and have one to two people on your boat versus just you, and made a small network and fish with local folks in both Knoxville and Brevard, Hendersonville, and North Carolina.
But you can't beat, in terms of patterning, being able to see ...
I do this with trout all the time. your anglers.
[5:28] I think when appropriately schooled up, when you're doing things right, you get to use them.
And I tell people all the time, I'm gonna be your, you are going to be my guinea pig with this one, or if I have two, I'm gonna have one person fishing one thing and the other person fishing another, or kind of same thing, but change the retrieve up.
I had a guy this last weekend fishing fly and the dude in the back was totally capable of fish and fly, but fish is conventional too and I was having him throw the baitcaster.
And yeah, I have a good idea of where they are, what they're going to want to see, and, we just get to use all of our time on the water to figure out what it is that's going to make them go.
So, a long way to get to the fact that colder water can, when you know where they're going.
[6:34] Wintering lies, make them a little more predictable. And then with the fly, when bait's slowing down and everything, you start seeing these lazy follows coming in, getting the hackle off the big flies, almost stuck in their nostrils, falling so slow and so close, you're not necessarily missing the, seven to one gear ratio on some of the bait casting reels.
And you can, And a lot of the times, and especially in some of the sections of the French broad where it's smaller than the South Holston or the Watauga, it's pretty intimate.
[7:24] Yeah, for people who are super familiar with and very good at fishing baitcasters, and you have a small arsenal of different presentations, very dangerous.
But to get a fly in there, a lot of times you just need to be able to get the cast in, come tight to the line, and from there after your cast is in and you're tight, it can really slow down.
So a bunch of other important stuff that happens after that, but the, the approach game is, can be muted in terms of its chaos, I would say, compared to all of the brown trout fishing.
Marvin:
[8:07] Yeah, got it. And to kind of really drill into Brenner's question, you know, he wanted to, like, I understand, you know, you're talking about water gets cold, bait slower, you know, predator can be slower and more patient.
And so you can kind of adjust your pacing and how you present the fly for that.
But, you know, Brenner wanted to get a little bit more of your thoughts in terms of how you change your retrieval patterns, kind of based on water clarity and kind of flow.
Ellis:
[8:36] Yeah, and so going from my interpretation of that question, And I think obviously some of that is about what happens or what the perception is around, fish behavior or what they want to see in those conditions.
I think it's also important to look at what the angler can do, what the rod can do, what the fly is doing in those different conditions.
So, for clarity...
[9:18] You have... thinking about clear water as a window into which an osprey or a heron is looking, I'm not going to say that there is any fear driven into musky.
A good way to shut down a small field of bait or trout or smallmouth, musky food, is to to put a bird over them.
So clear water just dampens everything that's happening in the river.
Big sun, lots of clarity. It's just, it's not good.
So again, this is where you have all manner of schools of thought.
I again think there's merit to a lot of them.
I'm And I'm becoming more of the mind that getting a presentation near where a muskie is, I know this sounds stupid, is the best way to get a response from a muskie.
[10:33] Whether or not they're They're going to eat something that is larger, something that is more lifelike.
Yeah, I think there is something to that, but the problem becomes getting it to that spot on a repeated and consistent basis in a position that also has you retrieving with a straight line in your figure eight ready to strip set.
And it's really hard to do that when you're casting flies that are uncastably large or just weighted too much to counteract too much bulk.
So that's why sizing down, and I want to be careful about that word, but going to something in between like 8 to 10 inches, even in some of the bigger water.
[11:34] I'd rather have more cast getting to likely spots and being pulled across likely troughs and in front of likely structure.
I'd rather have that happening than struggling to get something that is quote unquote a bigger presentation or a better fly out there.
And that's going to go with clear water and murky water, I think that once you start going to.
[12:11] Retrieve cadence on clear versus murky, speed is your friend in clear.
[12:22] I struggle to see where that isn't true. And that can be on your strips.
So you don't necessarily need a two-hand, but you're putting hundreds of casts in, sometimes fish and pools, certain runs, high confidence areas.
Put two, three casts in the same spot for every single spot.
There's no reason not to since you're out there unless you're chatting with your buddy or you're checking your phone and at that point It's unfortunate because it's hard work, but you are giving up shots at catching a muskie, So if you're able to get those two or three shots out there Change it up.
And the first thing I'll do is is change up that cadence of How often you're stopping your retrieve and how long that retrieve is stops And so when you have sinking line, and a lot of these things are three, five, seven inches per second, some are nine, you can be fishing the same fry with the exact same speed and distance on your strip, and then just change how long you aren't stripping.
And that's gonna allow your line to sink, and you'll be fishing different parts of the water column.
Fish in clear water.
[13:52] You know, that speed, maybe you start with those pauses being a little shorter, and I would really not hesitate from doing more stripping and less stopping.
And then with with murkier water and fish in lower...
[14:16] Up that distance that you're stripping, but keep the quickness being the same.
[14:21] And what you're doing with these bucktail flies, crapper heads, whatever it is, you're giving these twitchy, fast, pushy movements that either from light, the profile throwing down behind, below around predators or the actual pushing of water.
I have rattles in all my flies. I don't think that's a bad idea either.
But you're getting these rapid changes in direction.
And if it's going to be one side of the profile or something, what we're up against is having a musky see our fly first.
And so to keep it in there longer, keep it in that kill zone longer and don't be afraid to get hung up.
So obviously don't be dredging on the 10th cast after you've hung up nine times but give those those quick twitches and then let your line sink and pull it down.
There's times when you change out flies to something a little smaller, maybe it's more buoyant, it just has less mass, that sinking line, same sinking line, allows that thing, it's more mass pulling down on all of a sudden a less massive fly.
You're a foot lower than you were and same cast, same type of retrieve.
[15:50] We'll say the same color, all of a sudden you see a muskie.
So, finding that depth and exploring.
How you're getting there, not necessarily by these slow, long strips, but just simply not moving it, giving it those big kills and letting that line sink it.
And as it's working its way down, you're giving it twitches the whole time and continuing to let the line and the rod do the work.
I think I'm going to stop at that number of rabbit holes.
Marvin:
[16:29] Well, I'll ask one clarifying question. I'm assuming that when water is clear, the desire for speed is you're trying to get the muskie to eat as far away from the boat and as quickly as possible.
Right.
Ellis:
[16:46] Yeah. And that's not always going to happen.
I think that I struggle with this one because I've seen the opposite hold true.
And I've also seen small flies quick movement generate a follow up to the boat, and once they're there and once they're engaged, they don't care.
It's tunnel vision on the fly. And yeah, you want to do things like keep your eight moving out in front, off to the side, away from the boat, not into it, keeping it low, not pulling it up into the boat, but to get there...
[17:33] Yeah, yes. Of course, you want them to eat away from the boat after a cast while your rod is pointing at the fish and your line is tight and a musty eats, that's perfect.
When you see something that you're not sure what it was and you keep fishing and then you get into the first turn of your eight and get smashed from under the boat, yeah, That's still awesome, but from a boating-to-fish perspective, it can be challenging.
[18:05] I don't think that moving it faster is enticing in a predictable way whether or not that fish is going to eat away from the boat.
I think that in those higher clarity conditions, the way I view it is there's generally speaking more spookiness and the benefits of doing that start to compile pretty quickly because you're hitting more spots and you're putting more potential eats out there, more potential bite triggers out there.
And again, the hardest thing that we're doing is getting a muskie to see something that it might want to eat during a time when it wants to eat.
And with clarity with with clear water.
[19:07] The good part is they're seeing it pretty confidently and if they're seeing it and they're not going, which is most of the time, it's better to get another cast out there.
Which again, it sounds simple and kind of silly, but all these things of just continuing to get, flies in positions where it might be in front of the fish, that's the hardest thing to do.
And everything can be done right, and you should have been there an hour before or an hour later because that's when they were going to eat, which is not always the case.
But to have that mentality of just continuing to put as many presentations out there, generally generally speaking, probing as opposed to fishing a pool where you know that they might be.
[20:11] At that point, we start to get into a little bit of the temperature and what the bait's doing.
And slowing down the retrieve could be the ticket there, even in clear water.
So, again, there's so many different ways to approach different water speeds.
Are they wintering? Are they coming out of it?
Are you fishing your address book?
Are you fishing to fish you know where they are, or are you just fishing, you're prospecting?
Yeah.
[20:51] I think that you use that speed as a tool in your toolkit, but keep it in mind that the farther you are away from the surface, as a rule, the less spooky fish are going to be.
And even with a little bit of tinge, where it seems kind of clear, when you start to lose your fly around two, three feet, or maybe there's a little more tinge, you start to lose around one or two feet.
Staying around that depth is a good way to make sure that the fly's somewhere where you can see it most of the time, but fish aren't going to be too spooked about eating it when they want to eat it.
Now, to go back to what you said, Mara, fish eating away from the boat.
Again, I love that. Sometimes it takes the eight. Sometimes it takes five turns.
Sometimes it takes 10 turns.
Is that the rod guides ripping through the water, making noises?
Is it speed changes, direction changes, pauses during the eight?
I'll let you know when I find out.
Marvin:
[22:10] Well, there you go. 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's easiest for you. And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag.
And we're going to enter a drawing for two days of fishing with Alice and a night at the Watauga River Lodge.
And Ellis, we were discussing before we started recording, we are actually going to do that drawing next time, right?
Ellis:
[22:34] Yeah. I'm excited to see who's hanging out with me in a boat for heck if it's in the summer, it's dangerous.
You could be with me for 10 to 12 hours a day.
Marvin:
[22:46] Well, that doesn't include nap time and it doesn't include full grade mountain doing munchkins either.
Ellis:
[22:51] So we're mousing, we're talking 24 seven.
Marvin:
[22:55] Yeah, exactly. And so I imagine too, as we head into the holiday season, your bucktail game is probably kicking up. want to let folks know about that and know where they can find you so they can book in fish with you?
Ellis:
[23:09] Yeah, fishing, you can send me a contact, contact me form and look up bucktail.
There's flies intermittently available at elliswardflies.com and I'll be generally making announcements of when bucktail is available.
There is a whole mess of bucktail out.
As a disclaimer, most of them are grades four and five.
Those are fantastic tails, 3.5 to 4.5 inch fibers.
I just, I took a little extra time to separate out the really nice tails, because deer tails, once they get to be five, five and a half, six inches, they become real rare and more unique.
So if you have any questions on that, feel free to text me, shoot me a message on my website.
Find me on Instagram at Ellis Award Guides.
And again, shortcut to all of this is texting or calling at 513-543-0019.
Marvin:
[24:29] Well, there you go. And you know, folks, we're, you know, fall's disappearing.
We're heading into winter and, you know, you may think it's cold now, but it's gonna be really cold in February.
So you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
Ellis:
[24:43] Appreciate it, Mark.