S6, Ep 106: Mousing and Muskies: Ellis Ward's East Tennessee Tactics

Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,

Marvin: and we're back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward. Ellis, how are you?

Ellis: I am doing well, Marv. How are you?

Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know,

Marvin: I know from just watching, one, how you've been slightly incommunicado at odd

Marvin: hours, and also watching your Instagram feed that you have been mousing 24-7, 365.

Ellis: Yeah mousing and musky and i

Ellis: it it's sort of my i know we were just talking about this and um i don't want

Ellis: to come across as disingenuous when i say things like i'm pushing more stuff

Ellis: towards mousing and musky and that all this stuff that i talk about with guiding i I,

Ellis: I'm very proud of, of guiding this way because I, I do it and it's not just,

Ellis: oh, let's go here because it has some potential.

Ellis: And, um, you know, I, it's, as you called it, uh,

Ellis: musky fishing for brown trout, like going after the big Browns and then also,

Ellis: yes, musky fishing, be it fly or conventional, Like there's,

Ellis: there's an element of gambling on,

Ellis: on every single trip, just because I'm, I'm not going to do the thing that is

Ellis: done by so many people, which is, you know, get a rod bent, boat,

Ellis: some fish, keep people happy.

Ellis: I want to see that moment for people, and sometimes it doesn't happen.

Ellis: And for the folks that know what the score is, they understand that it can be

Ellis: a tall order over the course of four, even eight hours.

Ellis: And those are the ones that end up fishing with me more.

Ellis: And those are the ones that end up mousing and fishing for musketeers.

Ellis: So I really love it, and it is something that you and your son moused and had

Ellis: a tough couple hours there.

Ellis: And of course, the brown trout did their thing by eating when one was just hanging

Ellis: off the boat, and then he ate another one right at the boat ramp.

Ellis: But it's a...

Ellis: Both of those things. Mousing is definitely different. You take away a lot of

Ellis: that visual, you know, why people like streamer fishing, dry fly fishing,

Ellis: but it checks a lot of the same boxes.

Ellis: And it's pretty wild being out there when it's dark i really as much as i can

Ellis: try to i schedule with people to ensure that we're fishing without a moon and

Ellis: try to get us into the stretches with,

Ellis: almost no light and not near streets so i continue to go a little further down every summer.

Ellis: And it's been getting a little spicier and just looking back at pictures and

Ellis: videos from the last couple years,

Ellis: I'll go out in April, May, and you'll get activity.

Ellis: We can leave the pre-spawn discussion for another one,

Ellis: but there's a little bit of a

Ellis: pickup up in the September October zone and

Ellis: it also comes with 50 degree

Ellis: nights and I-40s and you know

Ellis: changing water we're off the summer schedule so there's there is a bunch to

Ellis: it and I appreciate your noticing that I have been I've been going hard at it and have a pretty

Ellis: booked calendar for the rest of the week and, um, here and there throughout October, but,

Ellis: still enough days off to scratch the itches myself and continue to,

Ellis: you know, find, find new fish and new zones and new flies and lures and all that.

Marvin: Yeah. But I think the great thing, you know, right. Like we talk about,

Marvin: you know, people should fish the way they want to fish. Right.

Marvin: And, you know, this really, yeah, I mean, and, but I think the cool thing,

Marvin: right, is, you know, I mean, when we started working together,

Marvin: it's been, I guess, a little over two years now, you know, the,

Marvin: like, you know, you're ecumenical, right? You'll fish with anybody and you'll help them get on fish.

Marvin: But, you know, to be able to build your business, to be able to guide the clients

Marvin: that like to fish the way you like to fish and guide in particular is super cool.

Ellis: Really appreciate it. I just got goosebumps. bumps.

Ellis: Yeah, it's something that,

Ellis: It has been really hard. I worked in an office and I played sports.

Ellis: I went to school. I studied physics.

Ellis: I did things that I think were checked some boxes for people as rewarding or

Ellis: difficult or something.

Ellis: Of something like, I, I can't, none of those things touch the work that goes into this.

Ellis: And, and so much of it at this point is, is just strictly related to how can

Ellis: I teach better? How can I guide better?

Ellis: And yeah, there, there is a whole lot that goes into it. So I, I really appreciate it.

Marvin: Yeah. It's a, it's funny. Like you gave up consulting to basically have big

Marvin: Brown trout and a musky put cigarettes out on your soul every day. Right.

Ellis: Yeah. Which honestly, when you look at it that way, I'm doing the same thing.

Ellis: It's just beating my head against a wall. And at least with the,

Ellis: um, you know, with the Browns and the muskies, you can say, well,

Ellis: fishing cloud cover, make up some other excuses.

Ellis: And, um, you know, with consulting, it's, it'll end up being your head.

Marvin: Yeah. So I got a question for you, uh, from Brenner.

Marvin: He wanted to get your thoughts and And you touched on this a little bit a few

Marvin: minutes ago, but he wanted to get your take on kind of what happens as we start

Marvin: to kind of start to move into this like early autumn transition and the water

Marvin: temperatures start to change.

Marvin: And what does that do, you know, to fish behavior and does it make them more

Marvin: aggressive, you know, kind of

Marvin: what do you expect to see kind of as you get consistently cooler evenings?

Ellis: Sure. so I will say,

Ellis: something that I may have said on a YouTube time video which quite honestly

Ellis: I don't listen to after I record them and so it could be out in the ether somewhere,

Ellis: and I've been looking at this for the last this will be the fifth year of looking

Ellis: at it and two years ago I felt like.

Ellis: This theory became inarguable. So it's, as we get cooler nights,

Ellis: the sun's shining less, the days are shorter.

Ellis: It's also, you know, the angle of the sun is hitting the water with a less direct angle.

Ellis: Um but the you know that that transition point as you call it there's something

Ellis: that happens on tailwaters that

Ellis: is roughly unpredictable but certainly a reason where i i start to say.

Ellis: Early to mid-november i get i get real cautious with people wanting to come

Ellis: Um, and, and fish and it's because the lakes turnover, the, the tailwater lakes,

Ellis: it happens in the spring too.

Ellis: And I'm, I'm not sure if it's that it isn't known or isn't talked about.

Ellis: It certainly isn't talked about. I haven't talked with anyone who this sounds

Ellis: where in the discussion, it seems like it's a familiar concept to them.

Ellis: Um so maybe it's because i've

Ellis: just been so 100 fishing streamers

Ellis: for browns where it's i mean mark you've been on the boat when those bite windows

Ellis: open up and you've been on the boat when they are closed you notice it it's

Ellis: you can't not and then when you you when you layer in this.

Ellis: This montage of, you know, my confidence banks and what I call barometer zones

Ellis: of, all right, we should be getting some form of feedback from,

Ellis: let's say, these different types of presentations and then sort of adjust.

Ellis: It's zero. It's zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. Every single spot,

Ellis: 0.0. We're not moving any fish.

Ellis: And I'll see the water turn off and the fish immediately respond in a positive way.

Ellis: And then when it's turning on, like Fishing the Rise, it's like that first half

Ellis: of the rise, it's positive and somewhat frantic. It's as though someone's poisoning the water.

Ellis: And they just, they know that nothing is going to be happening until it shuts off again.

Ellis: So as soon as it's coming on, there's this, we need to, you know, it's the last call.

Ellis: And then when it comes off, it's like, oh, thank God. and you see it there's

Ellis: you don't you're not seeing herons you don't see bugs ospreys are gone,

Ellis: and honestly like that that is such a it's such a binary,

Ellis: event that i think can be figured out and expanded upon by brenner by other guides by whoever.

Ellis: And it really, you know, relative to the more subtle changes in temperatures,

Ellis: because when you think about the tailwaters, the temperatures,

Ellis: those fluctuations are happening throughout a very large piece of water.

Ellis: And then through convection are finding their way into the river via the bottom of the lake.

Ellis: So when that bottom of the lake changes and the dissolved oxygen content changes,

Ellis: it's not a freestone river where as you have falling temperatures,

Ellis: you know, 53 to 55 degrees is an example.

Ellis: For example, crawfish tend to go from more active to more dormant,

Ellis: and maybe you fish jigs, and these are real things.

Ellis: You start to experiment with whether or not they're picking them up on the fall,

Ellis: on the rise. Trout are less sensitive.

Ellis: Their happy zone with dissolved oxygen content is going to differ by species.

Ellis: It's also going to differ by size and whether or not they're lake fish or river

Ellis: fish. And so there's so many variables just within that that it honestly can

Ellis: be hard to discern because there's also pre-spawn implications.

Ellis: And then I basically stay off of the rivers.

Ellis: They turn into a zoo, both with boats and a very strange form of fishing guide

Ellis: egos during the spawn season.

Ellis: And people fish reds here in east tennessee it's it's pretty alarming um so

Ellis: i try to stay away as much as possible fishing risers fishing to the banks you're

Ellis: not fishing reds like not everyone's spawning at once um so don't think you

Ellis: can't fish during this spawn but there's all these different,

Ellis: things that change and there certainly is a a period of transition here but i would say that uh.

Ellis: There's some lore and some different strategies that you should explore as we

Ellis: get deeper into fall and the temperatures start to drop a little bit.

Ellis: But man, I'm two-handing craft fur changers in the second week of January and

Ellis: watching two-foot trout scream through the water and waking on it when the water

Ellis: temperature is 44 degrees.

Ellis: And the same thing is happening at 55 degrees.

Ellis: And so there's you know that's post-spawn versus a bunch of these other conditions

Ellis: and I just I would say that this is another one of those things where yes there's

Ellis: a bunch of stuff here that could be,

Ellis: influential there's there is that big one of.

Ellis: Let's try to find out more about that lake turnover thing and dissolved oxygen

Ellis: content but then otherwise it's a lot of the stuff that we talk about,

Ellis: almost every episode which is start changing up your cadences um get it in the right spot and,

Ellis: and having that thing pause and drop and fishing

Ellis: weighted flies and experimenting with more of the swimmy buoyant flies like

Ellis: all that stuff's gonna play and you really pros and cons the good part is you

Ellis: have to go out and fish hard and and try to not be restrained or limit yourself to,

Ellis: any one thing um and that's

Ellis: also the other side so it's

Ellis: it's good if you like to do that it's bad if you just want to do one thing so

Ellis: um keeping an open mind and continuing to work the water column and speeds and

Ellis: and uh profile changes can do you well yeah.

Marvin: There you go and you know folks Folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.

Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, or you can even go to the

Marvin: website and send it to us as a voicemail, and you may hear it on the episode.

Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag and a

Marvin: drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.

Marvin: Ellis, before I let you go, I know you touched on your calendar a little bit,

Marvin: but you want to let folks know kind of what you have available,

Marvin: how to reach out, and then maybe tell them how excited you are to play with

Marvin: Rit, Dine, Borax during deer season.

Ellis: Yeah the the best

Ellis: way to get information on trips look at some

Ellis: um some cool fish pictures

Ellis: and some flies and all that find out more about mousing muskies

Ellis: is at elliswardflies.com and i do a decent job of bragging and advertising and

Ellis: trying to communicate to the world what i'm I'm doing on Instagram at Ellis

Ellis: Ward guides and best way to reach me, talk about fishing trips,

Ellis: et cetera, is my cell phone at 5 1 3 5 4 3 0 0 1 9.

Ellis: And I think there is a, it's, it's micro economics, but there's a small pocket

Ellis: of inflation that has influenced or X.

Ellis: So it's like upwards of seven or eight bucks. If you see it in the store for

Ellis: under $6, which it was, please let me know.

Marvin: Well, there you go. Well, folks, as I always say, yo it to yourself to get out

Marvin: there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.

Ellis: Appreciate it, Mark.