Transcript: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward
S6, Ep 2: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward
2024, 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 for the first East Tennessee Fishing Report of 2024 with Ellis Ward. Ellis, how you doing?
Ellis:
[0:14] I am doing well, Marv. How are you?
Marvin:
[0:16] As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. Was Santa Claus good to you this year?
Ellis:
[0:22] Yeah i was a good boy this last year so i didn't get coal which is always nice my daughter actually asked me not why do kids get coal but what what do you do you know what's the purpose i was like oh man let's we'll talk about that next year the industrial revolution all that that kind of good stuff right yeah i was like well you're a good kid i'm a good kid well we're gonna, gloss over that question for right now yeah and so i know your heart grew three sizes because over the christmas holiday you got a ton more rain in east tennessee, yeah better be careful making great references that'll also set me off um Who do I?
[1:14] There's a pretty cool on NOAA.org. There's an hourly forecast that gives you rain or sky cover, precipitation probability, humidity, temperature, wind chill, all that.
And it can be good to, you know, that's like one data source that you can use.
Of for me prepping uh if the trip's going to happen one way or the other we'll sort of people just to say is this a good time to go fish and they give these little bars when when it says a high probability rain it'll highlight that they do it between four and six hours and when it's a quarter inch over that period of time that's like a good amount of rain and for for a full day it It was, you know, one and a quarter for two or three of those four to six-hour segments in a row.
So I know that I've said this before, that amount of rain can cause problems, and we have...
[2:26] We're up at the top of the Tennessee River system, and the dams do a good job of keeping everyone safe.
It's been so dry since last fall that we need a couple more of those.
Obviously not going to hope for anything that does others harm, but just in isolation of our water tables and all the reservoirs, the priestown, around just the general health of the wildlife around here.
We need a few more of those.
It was nice to finally get like a multi-day cold drenching.
Marvin:
[3:08] Yeah. And I would imagine too that you took advantage of the holiday season to spend a fair amount of time probably on your own chasing muskie, right?
Ellis:
[3:18] Yeah. I think I got out there.
I was out there on christmas and that was the day before it started coming down that day and then it really opened the throttles up um and then.
[3:41] Yeah it took a break for a few days had a had a trout trip last trout trip of the year, which was it was fun guys first time um actually contacting me through listening to this podcast so, shouts out to ryan and yeah we we just we saw we saw the post-spawn activity of the brown trout out and got some risers and i mean it was a cold day upper 30s a little bit windy for nine hours so, it's hard and um i kind of spent the the previous day or two taking care of the the things that one needs to take care of when otherwise they're all, pacing musky and, bouncing around the tail hours at basically 24 hours a day so a couple good days of admin in there good trip and, back at it day after tomorrow and then trips sort of pick back up starting next week mostly musky still So, yeah.
Marvin:
[5:05] And, you know, it's interesting, too, right, because I would imagine that having the more stained flows right from the high water and also the fact that it's kind of been colder, I would imagine that patterning the muskies probably getting a little bit easier than it was probably four or five weeks ago.
Ellis:
[5:23] Yeah, so you get to benefit from your times on the low water.
In that low water where the fish can be very finicky.
[5:36] If you're out there enough and if you are fishing enough, it doesn't happen over one season. It certainly doesn't happen over one day.
You can stumble into it over the course of a day or just a couple hours, hours, but you can, over the course of years, you can figure out where, where they're probably going to be, what they're probably going to be doing.
Um, you know, pick your weather days, your moon days, and really get those things dialed in for my own fishing.
I get to qualify follows and, you know, new zones as wins because, you know, if I catch catch them it's like all right well that's if i have a trip in two or three days like, gotta think twice about really wanting to feed too many fish on your own um if you don't have other spots so doing all that work in low water and getting the follows and even on some trips you know i i have guys putting in so many more casts so many more presentation than i can do on on my own.
And I actually get to explore and sort of bank that data from the guys who are paying me to guide them. And.
[6:57] Getting all of that and putting all of it together over years, you come up with, all right, I'm going to focus on these areas.
You start seeing more fish.
They can be tough. It's the same as every other fish, low and clear.
They can really need some convincing and um you just might not have too many shots at convincing them by the time they're under the boat and saying see you later so some of that staying when you know where they are you have the confidence to say no i know i'm fishing over you're not just saying it to make yourself feel sane oh i can't i can't imagine how many times we've presented to to a muskie today and haven't been eaten there's there's places where you know the fish are that, when the water's off the likelihood of them eating and eating pretty quickly as opposed to following in the eight six times at the boat and clear water and not going.
[8:05] Um the the chance of that happening is of those full commitment eats is going to be a lot higher So I'm certainly thankful for that.
There's gives and takes there because this is more on the French broad, less on the clench.
You're not able to see more than maybe a foot.
The French broad is just a little sandier and you lose visibility quickly and.
[8:37] If there's a lot of structure we're casting into and so you get the feel of the river pretty quickly but um first couple hours can feel pretty snaggy and you just you got to be pretty heads up and what you're doing with your fly and how you're working it so as always somewhat um redundant speaking from me and walking back on my own words but there are there are pros and cons to the the the high dirty yeah got it and you know of course you know heading into the uh to the full-fledged jaws of winter is also tying season and uh had a have a pretty good uh time question for you from james culp and uh he apparently has been watching your time videos on youtube and i guess in one of your previous ones you talked about uh the value of shorter wedges on drunken disorderly heads heads and he was wondering if you could maybe talk about that a little bit more um about why it's valuable and maybe some tips for you know how to time a little bit more effectively and i guess he specifically wants to know about how to make a smooth transition uh between the bunny strip of the head and the deer hair yeah and i i've noted this on all of my time videos related related to the drunken and to the swim bug and i've talked about it a bunch.
[10:00] I learned this stuff from listening to tommy and from tying i really can't even guess how many awful flies and and then you start getting a little better and then you i still cut heads off um sometimes the the hair is just too buoyant and yeah maybe i went maybe the head just ended up being too long i'm switching from size one to size one ops or going down to the twos for minis and um, Yeah, so along the way, whatever I'm talking about with this, it is worth finding a couple of the podcasts that Tommy has been on.
If you just look up Tommy Lynn's Drunk and Disorderly podcast, you'll be able to find a few.
[10:52] And a lot of what he says, I suspect that it can be similar to how I speak.
Peak a lot of what he says it's very clear he's um i i fish with him he is almost speaks a different language but when you when you understand what he's talking about and he's talking about just your fingers as opposed to even wrist as opposed to even forearm just these little light tap tap tap tap tap and and angles and all that stuff um he talks about time a little bit too and this is what the reason i bring it up is because i'm gonna i'm gonna quote him on on one of the the tying components of it um definitely go try to find those things and and um he wouldn't even take credit for me trying to extol his virtues when i was telling him thank you because i got You know, Larry Dower is the one to tie deer hair in with the intention of carving it for a specific purpose in the water.
I was like, all right, you're just not going to. Cool.
But what he had said was.
[12:10] And he said it in two different ways. The width of the head is proportional to the length of the body.
And i must have paused and re-listened to that one sentence when i first heard it i don't know 20 or 30 times i was like all right so that's completely unhelpful well after you tie a few and i mean even one you tie a few more like that you start to dial in what that width actually looks like with respect to what is going on with the rest of the fly and and you stay within those bounds and sort of figure it out from there the other one he had said is that, you start from the eye so you you take that razor blade up from and you put it flat down against the eye and you don't want the edge of that it's not supposed to be a block there is no edge it's it's what the water is supposed to be cut and he talks about chucking and jiving and you know tight cuts and all this all these different phrasing it's that that front edge is.
[13:30] Cutting down into the water and it is not like a a crankbait or a jerk now it's a little more like a jerk but it's not like a crankbait such that you hit it and because the rest of the body is buoyant and because the lip's doing this there's a bunch of other mechanics involved there, it starts to wobble in a certain way it's it's cutting down because of the way.
[13:58] The fly wants to travel, wants to travel in the path of least resistance, when you give it a little tap, and then when you give it another tap after it's started to float up a little bit, and Tommy talks about float recovery, you give it another tap, and because of how it's oriented and the shape of your head, which is narrow at the front, wider as it goes in the back, it wants to, the path of least resistance is to go down and back the other way.
And so in order to, I would say, maximize that, what I just described is the dog walk.
It cuts one way, it starts to float up. You hit it again, and right when it's done going the other way and starting to float, tap it again, and it goes down and over to the other side. That right there is one left to right.
[14:52] And when you're out fishing these things, and it took me so long to get there.
You're watching it go left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right.
You can control that dog walk really, really well.
And in order to, one way to maximize that, I think, is to just view the edge, the front edge of that fly as the driver of that entire motion.
And so you worry less about that flow recovery and getting this big head.
[15:29] Tommy's quote was, once you have that edge, it matters very little what is behind that edge.
And so if you just think about the mechanics of what's happening in the water you can give that line a tap it's not being told to go down into the left because of what is behind the front edge of the deer hair there's a lot of helpful stuff that that can be encouraged as that happens but when you start when you start going longer heads.
[16:04] Heads during that kill so as it's supposed to be floating up and you're about to hit it again to go back down to the right if you have a longer head there's more surface area and it can actually get pushed down so instead of floating back up it sort of folds over onto itself so.
[16:26] And for those folks listening that this makes absolutely no sense to, I completely understand that.
I'm sure it makes sense to James. I'm sure it makes sense to however many people are listening that have tied a drop in disorderly and said, why is this thing holding up on itself as I'm stripping it?
Shorter and faster strips. And then, yeah, go with a shorter, wider head.
Head it tends to not be the that long head that is that is driving the the dog walk it's, um those the short compressed heads that really focus on that tight cut at the front starting at the eye without anything without any width to it um and then a nice beefy collar you can cut that thing down if it's adding too much buoyancy but that that collar adds a lot of stability and actually stops it holding on to itself along with some other things so you know i'll start getting into flash selection and getting the right mallard guy if i don't stop myself now i i do think that will be helpful for james though yeah and james you know hit us back if you want us to dig into to this a little bit more and I just called off the SWAT team.
Marvin:
[17:48] So you're lucky.
I appreciate it. Yeah, you bet. Still in the holiday spirit.
And folks, we love questions. It's the articulate fly.
You can email them to us. You can DM me on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
And Ellis and I will put our heads together and come up with what we're going to do for our drawing promotion for 2024.
Ellis:
[18:10] But I know from talking to you before we started recording that uh you may not be up to your elbows and borax but you have plenty of bucktails still, yeah i did a a little bit of a push there and and all the grade ones and twos so the the super long and uh also super expensive tails had sold and you know most folks got a lot of a number of tails So not just the grade one and twos, but I have a lot of the, the grades three and fours, which, um, you know, next to the five, five and a half inch.
I mean, for anyone who ties with bucktail, uh.
[18:53] If you go to whatever your largest tail is, and look how many five, five and a half inch fibers there are.
When you're getting a tail that is mostly five inch fibers, it looks insane.
And the ones that are mostly fives with a lot of sixes in there, it doesn't look like, it's a genetic anomaly.
So I have a lot of the, we'll say like, you know, four, four and a half, which they're really, really nice tails.
And those are the grade threes and then a lot in the grade fours.
[19:31] Those are the $15 and $20 tails. and basically just want to say that those those are there and available and let me know if you if you have questions or want to see pictures on some of them i will i'll keep them for quite some time and i'll keep watching myself but at some point i'll probably end up dying a good number of those and naturals tend to be hard to come by so um yeah for for those interested in getting some some good natural in the the four four and a half inch and up to the five um i will have plenty of those for a little bit and a bunch still in the freezer so up till season is not over by any means there you go and you know folks we're in the process of the articulate fly building out a a patreon community and one of the benefits we have we have two different tiers and at one of of the tiers, you get 10% off of Ellis' bucktails.
Marvin:
[20:33] And there's another tier where once a year you get $100 guide credit with Ellis.
So great way for you to support Ellis. It's a great way for you to support the show.
And you can find the link to that in the show notes. And Ellis, before I let you go, I know you're getting ready to kind of get back in the water, kind of full bore here.
But you want to let folks know how they can reach out to you so they can get on your guide calendar?
Ellis:
[20:56] Yes. Website is EllisWardFlies.com.
You can send an inquiry, you know, email me through that.
Texting me is always, texting, calling is always, I would say, a better option at 513-543-0019.
Nine and mostly for entertainment you can you can follow on youtube at ellis ward fishing instagram is an ellis ward guides and i i tend to not put up i'd say 90 of what goes on in my life um they're they're good indicators of of what's happening but if if you are interested in And specifically now for the next month or two, post-spawn browns, fishing streamers still have a lot of great dry fly activity and fishing for muskie until the spawn in late April. Give me a shout.
Marvin:
[21:55] Yeah. Or if you just need a suggestion on your next bait pack, that works too, right?
Ellis:
[22:00] Oh, yeah. I've been, I'm the one on the ground doing the leg work.
And it's, I don't know what else you need from a guide.
Marvin:
[22:11] Yeah, well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, you know, just want to wish everybody a happy new year. Happy new year, Ellis.
Ellis:
[22:19] Happy new year, Mark.
Marvin:
[22:20] Tight lines, everybody.