S4, Ep 122: An Evening with Ellis Ward

Marvin Cash: Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by guide and tier Ellis Ward. Ellis left corporate America to pursue his dream of being a full-time guide. He settled in Johnson City, Tennessee and guides year round in East Tennessee and its surrounding waters. I think you're really going to enjoy this interview.

But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And a shout out to this episode's sponsor. This episode is brought to you by our friends at ArtisanAngler. If you're looking for a better way to organize your flies, tippet and tools, you should check out the fly trap at artisananglerllc.com. I've dropped the link in the show notes. They sell direct through Amazon, so you get prime shipping and free returns. And it doesn't get any easier than that. Make your time on the water more productive and check out the fly trap today. Now onto our interview.

Well, Ellis, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

Ellis Ward: Thank you for having me.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I'm looking forward to our conversation. And we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. We like to ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

Ellis Ward: That would be up in Michigan on Torch Lake, it's outside of Traverse City, fishing for smallmouth and perch and a couple other things. But my mom would take me out. We still have the boat, this old Boston Whaler. And I go with my cousin who's a couple years younger. I was, I don't know, six, seven. So he was a little squirt.

And the nights get pretty cold. We went out pre-dawn and we were heading out to the boat and he was wrapped up in a blanket and just fell asleep standing up and tipped over into the lake. So that's maybe my earliest fishing story. But a lot of good fishing memories up in Michigan, since before I can remember.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's funny you say that. I've actually fished Torch for the Atlantic salmon.

Ellis Ward: Really? Down by the south end.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I don't remember the name. It was probably either under the bridge, the Clam, or the Bel Air. Like up near the dam where they kind of run.

Ellis Ward: Sure. Yeah, that's kind of the north end of Torch. That whole area is just crazy fishy.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting. I caught a few. Yeah, I was up there fishing. Gosh, that's probably been six or seven years ago with Matt Sipinski.

Ellis Ward: Okay, yeah.

Marvin Cash: So kind of interesting. So that was your earliest fishing story. When did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?

Ellis Ward: That was a little more recent and I think we're working with about seven years now. Which when people ask me about tying or fly fishing, I'm pretty quick to qualify the answer, maybe restate the question. And how many years ago or how many hours on the water ago?

Marvin Cash: Just when did you start? How old were you?

Ellis Ward: Oh, yes. 27.

Marvin Cash: Well, there you go. That's not too late for fly fishing. How'd you get into fly fishing?

Ellis Ward: No, not too late. My stepbrother took me to—we were out visiting, so two stepbrothers and the younger one, who's older than me was, took me out to the tailwater below the San Juan Dam. And you know, for whatever reason, we were out visiting his older brother. My oldest stepbrother. And for whatever reason, man, I was in neoprene. The water is, you know, upper 40s. It was March, high desert. Borrowed gear. He didn't really know what he was doing specific to, you know, it's a pretty pressured tailwater fishery.

And I don't know, something about it just ate me up. We didn't catch a fish. We didn't see a fish. We got broke. Broke the reel that we had borrowed. I was freezing the whole time. We got, you know, thunder sleet rolled in after two or three hours. We'd driven two or three hours and turned around and headed out. And that could speak volumes about my appetite for punishment. But there was something that got me going and I think a big part of it was just a different avenue or approach to fishing in general.

And going back to D.C. northern Virginia, it didn't take too much Googling to figure out there was, you know, not just spots, but there was a bit of a community in D.C. So things started to pick up pretty quickly on that front because, you know, you have the Potomac, which is pretty diverse fishery. Stripers, smallmouth, largemouth, catfish, 10, 15 minutes from my house. And so between that and the trout streams that were, you know, hour, hour and a half almost in every direction. And then saltwater trips. It just really opened up. I wasn't fishing as hard. I was working too much and just, you know, on that young to mid-20s corporate grind in D.C. and it just opened up something new, something different.

Marvin Cash: And so did you by chance get hooked up with the Tidal Potomac fly riders?

Ellis Ward: Not directly. I imagine that they either would have recognized me or I recognized them. I did stay pretty quiet there, you know, kind of stick to just fishing on my own. But I was down on, you know, I was at Fletcher's boat ramp, which, you know, they always do the fishing tournament down there. But during the shad run, man, you know, I would—well, also striper run. I would be out wade fishing at 3 or 4 in the morning before work and then, you know, at lunch, go out and get a rowboat and make that an extended lunch, but be there for a couple hours. So I got to know a couple of those guys down at Fletcher's Cove pretty well.

Marvin Cash: And is that how you found your way to District Angling?

Ellis Ward: No, that was, you know, part of my style of, I think fishing tying, kind of finding something that interests me be a place or material pattern and kind of sort of going heads down. So I was just, I was totally taken by fly fishing and hadn't really thought of, I don't know, reaching out, seeing what else was out there because there's already so much. And at this point it was for me, wade fishing stripers and bass.

But getting into the, you know, once I started to fish for trout, I was talking with a friend of mine, ended up being a roommate and he had just gotten a starter kit and some flies and I was tying at that point. He was just showing them to me, mentioned District Angling. And that was just after that switch from urban. I should know the name, but I don't. I didn't meet Richie and that crew until just after they became District Angling. But yeah, that got me in there.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I guess. What was it? Urban Angler, maybe.

Ellis Ward: Yes.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so you kind of briefly mentioned tying. You know. How long after you started fly fishing did you get the tying bug?

Ellis Ward: Oh man, almost immediately. I think that at the beginning and you know, this was again the wade fishing for bass type deal. You know, Woolly Buggers and just muddlers and smaller type bait fish. And then there's some, you know, some top water stuff. But really I have pictures of some of the first flies. It wasn't, I don't think, until I started probably my second year fishing.

I started seeing bait when I was wade fishing in some of these little feeder creeks on the Potomac up towards Great Falls where all these fish are heading to do their business. I would—you could look down at your feet and it looks like a live well in some of the slack water, some of the eddies that form between the feeder creeks and the larger Potomac. And it was just—I knew these big fish were in there. I caught a handful of decent stripers, you know, fishing Clouser Minnows and whatever. But seeing all these fish, that put me sort of headlong into the streamer design, you know, tying flies with a very specific purpose to look or act in a certain way.

And almost at the same time, I was starting to fish some of the spring creeks and limestones and trout fisheries of that nature that are pretty similar to the tailwaters I fish here. But consistent flows, temperatures, clarity, all that stuff. And relatively small in the name of the game there, as I was told at that time, is the, you know, the small bug game. So I was kind of simultaneously getting into—I mean it was another example of there's so much stuff for me to be able to focus on and explore. So getting into tying both the bait fish, shad herring type stuff and, you know, size 20s and 22s basically is the first handful of patterns.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. Really neat. And I know you fish gear too. And you know, most of the guys that I talk to, that tie and fish gear kind of bring that gear experience to their tying. Is that the same for you?

Ellis Ward: Yeah, it is. Yeah. I've been fishing gear, throwing Rapalas for smallmouth. Like that's what we did up in Michigan and spinners and crankbaits and Ohio, where I grew up. To think that a fly or fishing a fly could give you insight into what's going on in a river system is just—it's selling the river short. It's selling the water, the fish short. The ability to—I don't know. I can talk about fly design or efficient approach.

Marvin Cash: Absolutely.

Ellis Ward: Okay, so I'll start with fly design. You look at some of these lures and I'm just going to use the Rapala Shallow Runner. I always called it the Square Bill, the Shallow Runner, no rattle. It's got this funny little Square Bill coming off of it and it just runs so true in the water. It's said another way you can dip your rod tip in and burn that thing back as fast as your reel will go and it will not spin or come out of the water. It just moves. And I've caught big fit browns and stripers, big fish on, you know, the size 5 and 7, you know, pretty small lures.

And you know that's two things come to mind on that, which is castability. So for fly design and you know, great if you have something that moves awesome or looks sweet, it doesn't mean anything unless you can get it to where it needs to go. Same with gear fishing. You know, that's, I think something that people might not fully appreciate is that yeah, you can get more bites fishing gear for sure. It's easier, you can cover more water, all that. When you're fishing for the same type of fish or fishing in the same way that we do with streamers, you know, you're really sight fishing. You're approaching the river with intention and thought on every single cast.

And when you do that with gear, you're just simply able to do it more often to get it in there faster and then retrieve it faster. And you know, the gear ratio on spinning bay casters, it's just two hand retrieving on steroids. You know, for people that don't fish gear shows you. I have people, you know, clients on my boat where I'm just saying, faster, faster, faster and couple casts in the day. I'm taking the rod saying this is what I mean by faster. And they're just saying that, you know, it just doesn't make any sense to them until they see what it does. You can't move it fast enough. Our hands just don't work even on a spinning reel. Our hands don't work fast enough to emulate the speed of a fleeing bait fish.

So when the bite's on that just triggers, if you get it to where it needs to go and you start moving it quickly, it can do some pretty outrageous things. And it doesn't need to be anything crazy big. So on the other side of that is some of these giant, you know, the newer, I'll call them bass lures and you know, I fish soft plastics and a variety of different, call them experimentations and you know, approaches to fishing for trout, smallmouth stripers. But I somewhat partial to the jerk baits just because they're so fun to fish.

Some of these bass ones like the Vision 110s and, you know, a few if you just go through the dicks, whatever your local sporting goods is, or your independent bait and tackle shop and look at some of these. They're the holographic flash. The noise when I have a rod rigged up in my car. Every time I go around a turn, I can hear that lure. It's not a little rattle that you put on the back of a fly. It's the whole thing is a chamber. And I'm also talking five plus inch, you know, hard baits versus—that Rapala is probably the one I was talking about before is probably about two inches, maybe two and a half.

So these are big lures and they're so loud in their presentation. And I'm fishing, largely speaking floating, so they're not getting down deep. You know, we're not dredging or fishing weedless soft plastics, which again I will do. But that type of fishing and those types of lures and what I've seen that do again to think that a fly can, I don't know, scratch those itches that some of that gear does for these fish, is, I don't want to say wrong, but it probably is wrong.

And so for me, both the fishing approach, using those two examples, kind of the opposite ends of the spectrum, you know, you can't go wrong as long as you're—I know this sounds so cliche, but as long as you're fishing hard, fishing with intention, making your cast, trying to stay out of trees, but getting it into those good spots, if it's a 5-inch floating jerk bait, giving giant sweeps and getting that thing rattling, shaking and then just stopping, giving it a big kill, doing it again, stopping. Same with the same exact principles with tying and with fishing flies.

If someone is approaching the water, if they're fishing with confidence and with that energy and with that thought and they're making the cast and they're working the retrieves and changing it up. I'm really hard pressed to say that there's—yeah, there's going to be certain actions or streamers that are better on some days than others, but it's really angler preference and so I know I'm going all over the place here, but the gear fishing is just—it's another one. It's another avenue to explore, which I love to. It's just a testament to—there's no right answer. And, you know, even in gear, there's no right answer. But within that gear, to be fishing, you know, some of these lures that are just so different. You know, it just points to that style, your approach on the water. And if you're into whatever it is that you're fishing, I guarantee you that's going to be what ends up yielding fish.

Marvin Cash: Got it. You know, to fast forward a little bit. You know, you started tying, but, you know, now you tie commercially. And I think you, you know, while you tie the small stuff, you really are kind of known for tying kind of bigger streamer patterns. You know, what's your design philosophy for your larger patterns?

Ellis Ward: Yeah, I do tie a lot of little bugs. But the streamer game is, again, there's just so much more in there, mechanically speaking, going to try to stay on the rails with this one. Largely speaking, I would say that my design philosophy relies on action and profile. Pretty close to those two things are castability and, I don't know, variation. I'll say to fill out the fly box.

So I want to have—I want to have flies that are pretty big for, you know, the anglers that want to fish those and like, fishing them too. You know, this Blane stuff, just ridiculous. You know, five to seven inch changers and, you know, to some of my deer hair stuff and my swim bug fly. Getting flies that you can get, you know, tying streamers that you can—and this goes for smallies and musky as well. Getting—having a fly that you can make do different things. And this is something that I had borrowed heavily from Blane and from Tommy Lynch with the drunken disorderly. But having a fly that you can swim in a number of different ways and having that be able to yield different kills, different swims, I like to find ways to have one, you know, one streamer, one fly that you can do multiple things with.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And, you know, it's kind of interesting, too, because you kind of go down this streamer path and, you know, next thing, you know, right, you're selling bucktails. How did you get into the tying material game?

Ellis Ward: Oh, my gosh. I think I can blame Richie. I was at—I was at Lefty Kreh's Tie Fest a number of years ago and I met the guy who, you know this my friend Morgan. Eddie's on Instagram, is va Muddler. Great tier. He come over to me and said, you gotta check this out and show me this mint colored bucktail, like a pastel Easter green type deal. And I was like, oh man, gotta go see this guy.

And there was this dude tier who dyed his own bucktail and we got to talk. You know, fast forward a year—wait, check that. Fast forward two years. I think I was here, I was in Johnson City. And he was just gonna do some other stuff in life and he knew how much I loved tying and that I was just kicking off this new gig, lifestyle, whatever you want to call it, and basically offered for me to take over. It's called Fly Exotics. And I really haven't changed anything about that. Just offered for me to take that over and you know, gave me a tip or two and some sources for materials. Even though at this point I'm getting most of my bucktail from a couple butcher shops around here.

But yeah, him sort of handing that off to me got me into the bucktail processing is such a nice euphemism. It can get pretty gnarly. But that got me into the bucktail game and then just the clientele, the network, his, the followers. He had whatever you want to call them on Fly Exotics. So most of our striper guys, a lot of musky guys now, but so many of them fish gear and they just, they're constantly—the feedback's largely positive and they're also asking about different things and you know, nyat, yak, fox body hair, belly hair. And so they're kind of always, I guess a source of inspiration for me to keep looking at what else is out there.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and I know too like people have different kind of qualities they want when they tie, but kind of for what you do and what your customers tie, you know, what makes the perfect bucktail?

Ellis Ward: Oh man. Should be some video footage of me looking at two bucktails, trying to decide which one to send a guy based on his request. So for the—there's a couple different categories. I think one of them is the beast fly type category. And within that is what people want or think they want and then what is actually reasonable. You don't need 6-inch fiber. A 6-inch tail. A tail with stuffed with 6-inch fibers looks alien compared to what people are normally exposed to.

So to get fibers that have, and I'm going to quote so many of the notes on these orders that I get, slight crinkle is I think my favorite term. And that I think encapsulates the perfect bucktail. So there is, it's not super wavy if you look at it, you know, from butt to tip, it's straight, but it's crinkly and there's a little bit, you know, towards the butt. There's some hollow components to it. And then you can feel, I guess after, you know, thousands in my hands, I can feel the compressibility of this stuff.

And some of it's just dense and it doesn't matter if it's super wispy or kind of bulky, but that little bit of crinkle just, it adds so much movement in the water because that water is traveling over all of that, all of those different little crinkles. And it also just looks nice and feels nice to tie with. Which at the end of the day, since none of this is really required to catch fish, the looks nice and feels nice to tie with is a pretty significant component, I think, of what makes a material perfect or good or as good as it can be.

Yeah, I was just gonna say for some, you know, then for some of the musky stuff getting the stouter, little shorter column change or tails, 3 to 4 inches, you can really don't have to feel like you're cutting out material and you can make some pretty extraordinary flies with three and a half, four inch fibers and neat.

Marvin Cash: And so it's interesting too. You know, we haven't even gotten to your guide service yet and I was really kind of curious, you know, because you started, you know, fly fishing in your late 20s. When did you get the guide bug and kind of. How did you break into the guide game?

Ellis Ward: It's hard to say. I got the guide bug until after I had moved to Johnson City and got a boat and plan to guide. Because without doing it, it's, I would think it would be very difficult to say I love this. So, you know, it wasn't until being here and fishing here and taking people out that I could not get enough of doing that. And it, you know, surpasses fishing, tying. There's no way I could have known that. So definitely a big gamble.

But I had been fishing so much before moving here that, you know, taking—when I would go out with my stepbrother Will, you know, I fish with my mom a whole lot. I'm not fishing. You know, I wanted—I would go out and I would fish so much on my own that when I went out with them, I wanted them to catch fish. And, you know, I think that, you know, definitely a gamble, but I knew I liked—I like fishing with people. I liked putting people on fish, and I fish enough on my own that it wasn't like, you know, all it was doing was adding before guiding while working in D.C. that when I went out with others and was helping them fish, all I was doing was adding to my own experience.

And so I thought there was an opportunity to make that happen. I knew I didn't want to tie commercially. And this is—we'll probably have to sidestep a few background questions since we'll be on the phone till tomorrow. But leaving my corporate life, I knew that I was ready to be out and I didn't want to tie commercially as my gig. And I will say that, you know, listening to Kelly Galloup talk about one thing or another as he does, and then, you know, looking at guys like Tommy and Blane and Chris, Will and Matt Reilly is a regular on your show. You know, these—Kelly had said to influence or change or impact the sport of fly fishing. He just strongly believe that you need to have guiding experience. And I didn't really know what he was talking about, but I definitely see that now. You just see so much more and it—so we'll get back to the question.

The guiding bug fully bit me after I got here and I fished these water, fell in love with them and got people onto my boat and watched them fall in love with them too. And they did it in the way that I guess I would say I did it. You know, I was giving them suggestions of, you know, a lot of streamer fishing and dry fly stuff and just not super easy. But watching people come here and sometimes being awe, especially if they've never been to this area because it's—you forget you're in East Tennessee pretty darn quickly.

And as far as breaking into the guide game, I mean, this is my third year and it's just feeling recently, you know, last couple months, it's just feeling like, I mean, you know, bills are paid, you know, I can get groceries without worrying about having to pay my cell phone bill type deal. Like it was a grind. And I, you know, I'm not out of the woods yet by any means. But to say how did I break into the guy game is that might be giving me too much credit because while I do feel more than incompetent and confident and I have a lot of great clients and had a great year, I guess I'm just, you know, the comparison to being into the guy game like some of these other folks out there, I think and proud to say, you know, just getting started and happy with where I'm at. But it's just time on the water.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. It's interesting too though, right? Because you're from Ohio and you're working in D.C. you know, how did you decide to go to East Tennessee?

Ellis Ward: All right, we should have a word counter. The music starts. You can just start playing music. So I knew that I wanted to—I wasn't going to retire in D.C. I wasn't going to retire in the corporate setting. I was in a position at the company I worked in to sort of see a layoff or two and saw another one coming. And so had had some time to plan with some folks at my job and plan with my ex-wife about what we're doing. We had just had a kid and a lot of it was kind of pin seeking, Cincinnati being home. That's where my family is. And so being a little closer to them and otherwise, you know, from D.C. to, let's say Nashville, which is where I went to college, sort of just looking in that arc and seeing. Picking out blue dots, I mean, to be honest with you. And then really zooming in on Google Maps and saying what is that? And then looking at what it was.

And I had sort of locked in on the—not locked in really, but, you know, a lot of my interest was focused towards the Hiawassee, the Ecowi, some, you know, some of these river very close to me. And you know, I ended up getting to Johnson City. I'm seven minutes from the Watauga, 15:20 from the South Holston. But that was, you know, we started tweaking things with school districts and, you know, cost of living, rent availability, all that stuff. And so living in Johnson City proper was a good mix of things. And not fully out. It's definitely not a big city, but not fully out in the country. Moving from D.C.

Marvin Cash: I mean, and the really fortunate thing, I mean, you know, people, when they think about East Tennessee, they think about the Watauga and the South Holston. But, you know, you've got a really diverse fishery, and I was wondering if you could give our listeners kind of an overview, kind of of the species that you pursue and kind of what that the arc of your guide season looks like.

Ellis Ward: Yeah, I think a lot of people—I've had a number of folks on my boat who have been here more than once and didn't know that Watauga was here. So, you know, first and foremost, that's—it's not just the South Holston. The Watauga has some incredible fishing for stripers and for brown trout and good hatch stuff too. Those both go into the—the South Holston and Watauga both going to Boone Lake. And so we'll go with the species first and then I'll try to get to the arc of the guide season. You see me trying to keep myself on track there.

Marvin Cash: I do.

Ellis Ward: The—with South Holston and the Watauga emptying into Boone, that's really happy, healthy cold water going into a lake. At the mouths of those are lake run fish, stripers, browns, rainbows, and then carp, which are just, you know, if you like sight fishing. I know that carp have really picked up and price inside. Since I was just getting into this whole deal, last 10 years, fishing for carp is—it's the closest thing you can get to saltwater fishing. You know, flats fishing. It's a lot of fun. And there are some fish there that will create problems for you if you hook into them.

And I think sort of moving down from there in the water system. You know, Boone Lake, two dams down, you're into the Holston proper, and there's awesome smallmouth fishing there. And I think the best way to describe some of these different pieces of water that the smallmouth are in and the ones we fish, some of them are just not accessible by jet or bigger boats. You know, you're on a river that's some of the Little channels are relatively small, but you're fishing, you know, tailwater smallmouth is the best way for me to describe them. So again, consistent temperatures and clean water and happy vegetation and it's just—it's a recipe to stack the cards and—or stack the deck in your favor for getting some big fish.

So kind of sticking with smallmouth, the Nolichucky, which the lower middle Nolichucky is—it's like 25 minutes from my front door. Upper South Holston being about 25 and French Broad, which is, you know, the—has headwaters to 2 hours 15 minutes away. And then, you know, some great smallmouth sections starting at about an hour away, but the kind of sweet spots around hour and a half. And I'll use that to segue into musky, which are endemic to a lot of the river systems near me. But the French Broad in particular has a good population density and they're, you know, unlike the—the James, the upper Midwest fisheries, all that. Most of the fish, if not all are—they're stocked as fingerlings, but they aren't streamborne. They've been—there's some that have been in there for a while and you know, number of reports coming out of both the French Broad and even as low as the Nolichucky below where I am of 50s.

So for the—for arc of the season, I think we'll just start with now, which is kind of a cool time. Things are—things are changing and it's always fun to see because the summer. I love fishing in the summer. Long days. A lot of daylight. The ability to fish late, get up early, whatever you want to do. But we're getting into the time of year where, you know, the hatches, the big mayfly hatches are sort of dwindling. And the tailwater game for me, you know, the way I like to approach this time of year is—and I should say every time I'm talking about any of this, there's a 4- or 5-weight with dry flies rigged at all times. No one's getting a free pass on attempting to cast to risers, even if they don't want to. It's just too fun.

So there are—they are feeding a lot there. The pressure is just fully off these two systems. You know, summer vacation's over and a lot of these guides that you know are here every day over the summer are just not here anymore. So it's fun to see the, you know have the river to myself or to yourself depending on if you're fishing with me or not. But doing that, you know approaching that water in the afternoon streamer, evening dry fly slash streamer and having a sandwich and getting our casting down into mousing is what I, you know that would be my recommendation for the next month and I love doing that all summer. But now is—I'm not going to say especially good. But with the bug activity dropping down, the night's getting longer. There's just the opportunity to be out and fish in real darkness for longer than a couple hours is here and it is just getting longer.

Starting in said November things late October maybe. Both rivers have their days as all waters do. Things start to get a little weird with you know the brown trout spawning and I'm cool with that because at that point water temps are getting to the point where presentations with a fly and fly rod to musky are—you know I have a better chance and you know I'm fishing them with gear as well. But I, you know my guiding for them is at this point somewhat restricted to my previous clients. I'm just you know for streamer clients for trout. I'm not throwing my hat in that ring yet. But the ability to target them and just sort of change things up from the local tailwater fisheries is you know it's present right now. I was up on the Upper French Broad last week. You know it's 70 and it was a hot day. By the end of the day it was 73 degrees. So from a warm water concern perspective it, you know it's there. There isn't one.

You know that said the cooler temps can provide for some more predictable, patternable, less erratic whatever you want to call it. You know still musky fishing. So yeah that's sort of shift in focus there already. But that's kind of looking forward to the next year or two. Really picking that part up. And then a handful of trips that do have on the books with folks. January, February, the you know the browns that are all up at the top are going to start to head back down and throughout January and February because there are so many fish that have moved, other fish are now there and you know you can get these pods of pretty big lake run rainbows eating you know it's winter, but it's a tailwater, you know, eating blue wings. And they're feeding on top and they're just—there's no pressure. Some of the lower parts, there's a lot of bugs. They're up from the lake. They haven't been fished with flies. So there can—there's a few weeks that you'll find some of those pods and it's always pretty fun.

The browns start to move back down late January, February. And at that point in time, the lake, Boone Lake has been lowered by 30ft. So our river, you know, use the Watauga. It's an extra three miles. We have an extra three miles of river that goes down the lake. So January, late January, February, you're fishing for these lake run fish after, you know, post spawn lake run browns that are sometimes eating. I affectionately say they're eating very stupidly. They're just smashing flies and then they're tail walking into the boat. You know that it's—they're lake run fish. And I have people knocking on my door if I say steelhead. But that's the type of their—you know, they're silver. The, you know, the browns are—the rainbows just don't have any color on them. And they just, if they fight so hard.

March, March, April, start getting some bugs. Those lake fish are still very much present in the lower sections. April is the big Caddis hatch on the Watauga. And when I say big Caddis hatch, I mean like dropping into a riffle or around a bend and spitting them out and having to tip the boat up and wash it out when you get home. It's for about two weeks and a little on the front and back end of that. But it's, you know, that can be a lot of fun fishing in the off hours as I do normally just to avoid a lot of crowds. But the fish are feeding 24/7 at that point.

And that leads into the stripers coming up into the river systems. When the lakes start warming up, that coincides with the shad run. Most of the time it's these inch and a half tiny rain bait. It sounds like if you were to throw sand or gravel onto a body of water. That's what it sounds like when they're leaping from a fish. But those are all over the mouths of the river. And mid May to June, I'm kind of living down on that lower end, there are some great hatches. And then you know, evening time you start getting fish swirling on bait and busting them up against the bank. And you know, you can approach that with little streamers, big streamers, gear just kind of anything goes with that. Swinging Clouser Minnows is an awesome way to approach those fish too. So even though we're down in the lake, there's, this is a section where there's still some good current.

And I think that takes us July, August, which we just finished up, which was awesome. You know, a lot of good trips and good days and handful of really nice fish in the boat. It can, this year's been a little different. We ended up getting rain, a good deal, which is nice. So we had some good flows. It can be low water fishing, but again that night game's always there. The last month or two has been a lot of streamer fishing on both rivers. And you know, if the rivers are generating and we have any semblance of weather around us, it's a good time to be fishing. It doesn't matter if it's in the middle of a 90 degree day that, you know the tailwater water's at 50 degrees and those fish are eating and they're really not seeing that many streamers, especially in certain sections.

Marvin Cash: Got it.

Ellis Ward: Did I do it?

Marvin Cash: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And you know, I also wanted to ask you too to kind of give our listeners an idea of what a day on the water is like with you and kind of how it's different from what other guides and outfitters offer in your area.

Ellis Ward: Sure. And I mean, you and I spoke about this a little bit a couple months ago. I think there is a—there's a market and a place for the typical trout trips. I guess I'll call them. Don't want to take anything away from that because it's there. I don't think it's—I just, you know, that's not necessarily my thing. There are some great guides and people who are very good at their jobs doing that. I don't want to make nymphing a four letter word, but when you're on a drift boat and you're nymphing, you're really not doing much.

And I have found time and time again that once—once you put a rod in someone's hand that they're casting and then that's dry flies, streamers and gear. Once you do, once you give them that option Even if they're, especially if they're not good at it, where they're learning and improving and experiencing something new, they don't want to go back. They don't want to sit there and watch and hope.

Now that said, I will, you know, throughout the day. There are some places that—now I always like to tell people to put their blinders on both forget about what we've done, what we're going to do, and the rest of this giant river and just look at these couple pieces of water, these runs, riffle pools kind of in the middle of bigger run riffle pools. And it's all anchor up and kind of transport us into, as I like to think of it, the small creek type fishing. And you know, great way to approach fishing trout. And particularly for new anglers and those who have smaller water trout streams around them, that anchor and water load, getting your mends changing weights, you know, all that type of thing, that's small creek fishing. That's what you have to do while wading. And so the—I will do that. I think that might be an asterisk or some sort of caution.

But otherwise it is, depending on flows, probably a lot of streamer fishing if we have water and if that is something an angler is interested in. And again speaking candidly to you and whoever's listening to this, there are so many people who love streamer fishing. And so whenever I say something like, you know, if the angler is interested in streamer fishing, they are normally. So we'll basically streamer fish until, you know, some of those nymphy runs. And I'm not going to press us to stop too much on those.

We will stop for risers. And there are a handful of places that I like to stop even if we're not seeing them and just, you know, chill for 15 or 20 minutes and see what's developing. And you know, to cut the gear, spin rods are always tucked up under—I retrofitted my hide aluminum boat to hold two gear rods and four fly rods on each side. So you know, we kind of have an arsenal that we can approach any section of either of the tailwaters with.

And you know, I guess the one difference with me is, and again, not to say this is the right or a good difference, but I don't catch a lot of fish. I don't want to. I think it takes away from how much fun fishing is and in order to do that you are—you're likely just nymphing the whole day. And I get, again, I get that there's a market for it. It's perfecting that game is not easy. But my approach to fishing, and we'll just say streamer fishing and use that as an example. If you're boating 15 fish in a day fishing streamers, that's a really good day because you're probably losing 10 plus and you're probably getting another 30 follows on that 15 boated fish day.

You know, throughout this process is, if you can imagine I'm talking a little bit during the day. Throughout this process is a lot of education and it's kind of whichever direction they want to go. But casting is a big thing for me and getting whoever is on the boat super experienced. Everything's awesome. I just see one or two things that might be able to get tweaked. I like to work on casting a lot. It's such an important part of fly fishing because it's a requirement. And to make casting easier and more fun, you make the whole day more fun and you make the prospect of going out and fishing again, it's fun without the concept or the notion of I want to go catch fish. Because once you're casting and you're working on your casting and you're trying different techniques and all that stuff, it becomes more about—and again, loaded with cliches here, but it becomes more about going out and fishing and you know, when working on your skill, your hobby, whatever you want to call it, as opposed to I'm going to go out and catch fish.

So I do like to, you know, if it's possible, expose an angler to as much as I can. And that can sometimes mean going a touch over the 7 1/4 bumper to bumper day. But I do like to show them everything, not just that I have to offer in my knowledge of this place, but you know, in a lot of ways, kind of let them loose on these waters because they're, you know, they're beautiful. They're also pretty wild and depending on the day, feel a little Jurassic Parky.

Marvin Cash: There you go. Well, you know, Ellis, before I let you go this evening, is there anything else that you want to share with our listeners?

Ellis Ward: I would just say if you are—if you're interested in streamer fishing, you know, absolutely. Contact me if you're interested in streamer fishing. Not even with me, it was for a long time for me. It was this big—it was such a different thing. And it doesn't have to be. And you know, all types of fishing can be whatever you make it. So, you know, obviously, if you're interested in trips, give me a shot. But if you just want to connect and talk about rods, lines, fly design, you know, whatever it is, I have this all over my website. Never hesitate to reach out. If I don't pick up, I'm going to call you back.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very cool. And so just to kind of help folks, you know, if they want to ask you a question, book a trip, buy some flies, maybe get hooked up with some bucktails and kind of generally follow your fishing adventures. Where should they go?

Ellis Ward: Yeah, my website is Ellis Ward Flies, F L I E S, elliswardflies.com and Instagram is the same deal at Ellis Ward Flies. And, you know, both of those and Google, my business have my number everywhere. But you know, trip booking and all that, call, text, whatever. 513-543-0019. And you know, I've started to go on Yelp and a few other places, but website and Instagram are the best places to get in touch with me.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and I'll drop all that stuff in the show notes and you know, Ellis, I really appreciate you taking some time out to chat with me this evening.

Ellis Ward: Marv, thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. And thanks for not turning on the walk off music too loudly.

Marvin Cash: There you go. Well, listen, I hope you have a great evening.

Ellis Ward: All right, you too. Appreciate it.

Marvin Cash: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.