Transcript: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward
S6, Ep 9: 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 with the first East Tennessee Fishing Reporter of the Year with Ellis Ward. How you doing, Ellis?
Ellis:
[0:13] Doing well, Marv. How are you?
Marvin:
[0:15] As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. Have you turned into an icicle yet?
Ellis:
[0:21] Not yet. There is still time, and I might be dumb enough to wash some bucktail outside when it's 17 degrees. So, oh, if you don't hear from me, that's what happened.
Marvin:
[0:33] Yeah. Well, you know, you were a little late tonight. I was afraid maybe you'd gone musky fishing and fallen in.
Ellis:
[0:40] Nope. Just in my kitchen, surrounded with boxes of different numbers corresponding to the grades, putting a ruler up against tails, heading them for a moment, and then putting them into a box. And I forgot what time it was.
Marvin:
[0:53] So what kind of music do you listen to when you sort bucktail?
Ellis:
[0:58] Oh it depends you know there's the typical playlist of you know mid-2000s rap um i will say the game has a new album that's awesome and otherwise it's audiobooks and podcasts i've been doing a lot of audiobooks recently with the, It's a lot of time on your own, not doing a whole lot, processing bucktail and fishing for muskie.
So audio books can be a good way to break that up.
Marvin:
[1:35] Yeah, as long as you didn't say Wilson Phillips, I figure you're okay.
Ellis:
[1:41] Yeah, I don't know who that is, so I think I'm okay.
Marvin:
[1:45] There you go. So, you know, to bring it back to fishing before everybody tunes out, you know, obviously you've gotten, you got a ton of precipitation and it is insanely cold on the western side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
You know, obviously you haven't been on the water. You're not going to be on the water in the super near future.
But how do things look, you know, when you kind of get back on the water after a little bit of a deep freeze?
Ellis:
[2:12] Yeah um there's a very real possibility that i'll be fishing tomorrow and um, if not tomorrow then certainly thursday friday which just goes to what you said about the west side of the large mountains so the the french broad the musky water water that I fish in, you know, today, it was a high of 43 today there, and here it was 23, and windy and arid, and so there's just, there's a significant, water boundary insulator in this little ridge between Johnson City and Asheville, so maybe just to escape some of the cold here but you know as for muslin fishing and in particular to the waters I guide on the the clench and you know some of the waters in the.
[3:15] The tennessee reservoir the tba reservoir system and i fished that latter day and it was a tough morning you know low 30s it was probably 20s overnight the weather was 46 degrees so it's, you know we can have these nights in the 20s and days in the 40s and um i don't really anticipate anticipate just looking at the forecast that for the free stones with you know if you're high up in the system it's going to be back up into the 50s and with no rain and um there's there's just been a lot of water in the systems for a good couple weeks here when it has not been you know know in the teens so and you know it'll i'm just a bunch of context around probably a couple different ways to arrive at the same conclusion which it's it's going to be you know those temps are going to be dropping significantly over the next few days.
[4:30] As it relates to musky, I've kind of already seen that wintering you know they're finding their holes and you're seeing more than one fish in certain areas so I'm not sure it's going to change any behavior significantly, outside of slowing things down keeping you know keeping your fly in the water, working slower water working deeper water but it's kind of been you know a month or so doing that anyhow and and then yeah the next week to coincide with, a good good week or so good couple days of moon phase um this this area is going to have some pretty fishy conditions and and more water um Um, so yeah, starting here in a few days when this cold snap gets out of here, it is going to be back on full steam.
Marvin:
[5:37] Yeah, there you go. And how about your, uh, your streamer for your big brown trout?
Ellis:
[5:44] Yeah, man, there's too much to do, even when it's miserable outside.
So it was somewhere between the musky trips last week.
I would say the post-bond bite is about as on as it can get.
And we have gotten, like you said, a lot of precipitation.
So water is good. And even when it's this time of year, and this is for anyone listening who has considered the fall to be streamer fishing, and it is on freestones out west.
I've heard it from close friends of mine. I know it's just the general industry mantra of streamer season.
That's right now. It is right now to be fishing musky-sized flies.
It's not required but you can do it and fish are going to eat them um you know pulling on the outside edge of of what is realistic with that but it's it's a time to if you're learning how to streamer fish you're going to get feedback if you are wanting to hunt a big fish fish frog water.
[7:09] You know maybe see a few big wings and test your ability to just breathe for a second before you strip set that's right now and i'm not going to say it ends abruptly but it sort of peters out and and that it kind of comes with the lake going back up we got more bugs in the system starting in in March, but January, February, early March, it can be the time to, If it weren't for the dry fly fishing and some of the days that can happen throughout that period of caddis hatch, stripers moving in, et cetera, I would say this is the best fishing of the year.
Marvin:
[7:53] Very, very neat. And got a tactics question for you from a local Johnson City guy.
His name's Logan Mooney, and he's asked questions before, and he wanted to get your thoughts on when you use a loop knot.
You know, is it fly specific? specific is it when you want to fish a specific cadence or is it just kind of you know whenever it you know hits your fancy.
Ellis:
[8:14] Sure um it's a good question i'm going to answer that.
[8:25] Uh literally so when i use a loop knot is every fly except for game changers and And mostly, you know, the changers with a trailing hook, some of these changers, you know, I have a single hook.
But there's so many different articulation points.
And I can see a scenario where a loop knot could add an extra something.
Something but largely speaking and in particular for trout um i'm fishing changers pretty fast and i'm fishing them on 20 25 minimum i don't go down to 15 fishing those and so some of it's for control i don't like the thing spinning around and catching on a leader and when you have a loop knot and you know going down to 15 or god forbid 12 pound fluoro not for breaking purposes but just for controlling your fly if you shorten your leader up and go 20 25 and.
[9:45] Um you know bigger fly heavier fly lots of articulations two hooks way spread out I go clinch knot.
And the loop knot...
[10:00] You know, I guess another example would be for fish and small flies, like the peanut envy, something that not even time went, the tungsten heads, and I mentioned that before.
But that nuke knot was something really jiggy.
Give the fly more freedom because there is less, you don't have that tight connection point.
But if you're going down to 12 anyways, you got to start thinking about, I mean, if you're not comfortable with the loop knot or you're just simply more comfortable with the clinch knot, kind of got to think about, you know, is a tungsten-headed peanut envy, is that mass, is it inertia, what it wants to do in the water?
Is that going to be impacted a lot by going loop knot versus clinch in the scenario where you're fishing 12 pound?
Probably not. Once you start getting up into the 15 and smaller flies, yeah, I would say clinch knot.
And then going up to 20, and that's kind of my home base for fishing larger flies.
I'm doing loop knot on everything.
Except for changers. And then final note on this one, if you're.
[11:28] I guess this is more of a a note on the leader but if you're wanting more action out of.
[11:36] A fly be it a hair bug plows or peanut whatever extend your leader and drop down so instead of going you know a couple feet of 30 to 20 or going down to 15 if you're fishing really spooky stuff or even you want the plot to sink a little faster if it's uh if you're trying to get down um extend that 15 more it's just it's less of a rigid mass and it is farther away from the the more rigid more massive line and 30 pound mono and the way i like to you know give the pressure test here is imagine fishing a clouser minnow attached to 80 pound fluoro it would look like it was being moved through the water on a stick now imagine fishing it on 6x it would not be you couldn't control it with 6x so i would say that you know going down to 12 pound fluoro would be sort of the the 6x equivalent there where you're kind of maximizing how much freedom of movement it has and still keeping it strong.
I went off on a few tangents there, but I think important.
Marvin:
[13:00] Yeah. And so you said everything except for changers.
Are you talking about streamers or do you also really like loop knots on nymphs and dry flies?
Ellis:
[13:10] Great question. I will do loop knots on my trailing nymphs somewhat situationally but if i'm going like uh, size 20 we'll say size 26 this is kind of a weird pressure test but that's 26 and this is typically a dropper that is a second drive behind something you can actually see like an 18 or a 20 but that they're not eating so a little merger um super sparse doesn't tail you know a little zebra midge with with some gink on it type thing you want to feed a fish on the surface doing a loop knot in that scenario unless you're really really good at loop knots that that loop might be the way it sits on the water and catches the meniscus just the surface extension of the line itself in front of the fly, that might be doing you more harm than good and it has a tendency to foul up.
So generally speaking, loop knots reserved for bigger flies and in particular nymph. I mean, if you're.
[14:29] If you're running them in line as opposed to doing tags, loops can get a little funky.
But doing a loop knot off of a tag, you can't get a better drift than that.
And you can increase, you know, fishing 4X where you would be fishing 5 or 6 as long as it's not too big to get through the eye of the hook.
But, yeah, small loop nets using 4X and 5X can really drop the amount of effort you need to put in on getting that drag feed drift and doing the tag deal, it's almost a guaranteed free movement on every cast.
Marvin:
[15:25] Yeah, well, there you go. And you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag.
We're bringing some new swag here very soon. soon and uh ellis and i will put our heads together uh for uh what kind of cool drawing thing we're going to do for 2024 and uh you know ellis since you were out uh sorting uh bucktails um i imagine you're getting ready to drop a big chunk of bucktails on the market you want to let folks know what to expect yeah.
Ellis:
[15:57] We're going to stick with kind of do what i did last time which which is a bit of a staged lots of naturals.
And so a lot of white tails and some of the grade ones and twos that will be gone very quickly.
I'll have these up on.
What day is it? I know it's Tuesday.
Marvin:
[16:28] It's the 16th.
Ellis:
[16:31] Okay. I'll have these up on the 18th.
Marvin:
[16:33] Well, there you go. And, you know, folks, remember that we're working on building out our Patreon community in 2024.
And so we've got two tiers of membership. There are more, but we have two tiers.
And at one tier, you get 10% off of Alice's Bucktails.
But there's another tier where you get $100 guide trip credit every year.
So great way to support Alice. Ellis, great way to support the show.
Link is in the show notes. You should check that out. And, you know, Ellis, I know you're booking and doing all that kind of good stuff.
You want to let folks know where they can find you and all that kind of good stuff?
Ellis:
[17:07] Yeah. So website is ellisworldflies.com. Best way to reach me and ask about trips or book a trip is calling or texting at 513-543-0019.
Nine and Instagram captures, uh, a little bit of what I got going on, which is at Ellis for guides.
Marvin:
[17:31] Uh, well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, I want to wish everybody a happy new year. Happy 2024. Happy new year, Ellis.
Ellis:
[17:39] Hey, happy new year, Marv.