S6, Ep 113: Fall Fishing and Musky Strategies: Ellis Ward's East TN Insights

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'm doing well, Marv. How are you?

Marvin: As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble, and you know,

Marvin: it's kind of funny. I was joking with Matt last week that you screwed up the

Marvin: weather again, and it's gotten hot again.

Ellis: Yeah uh i i think that as much as i can curse the the forecast,

Ellis: mother nature is doing us a favor this week and we're getting i actually had

Ellis: a guy call me today and he's coming up here with some friends and just call

Ellis: me to ask some questions and see if

Ellis: the impending hurricane was going to make it not good for them driving up from Alabama.

Ellis: And I've had my eye on, there was a tropical storm, quote-unquote, like a week-plus ago.

Ellis: And it's, I mean, the tropical storm season is,

Ellis: again, to preface, I don't want to be whatever,

Ellis: insensitive piss someone off

Ellis: or saying that I like it when we get them because

Ellis: I know that I mean even

Ellis: what last month or whatever Charlotte got it got your son's school was closed

Ellis: like it it causes damage so but but by the time it's and this whole thing is

Ellis: about me we know that so by the time it's here it's,

Ellis: dissipated, it's spread over the mountains, it's filling up all the little creeks,

Ellis: and it's just been, you know, the third year in a row of really, really low water, and.

Ellis: That's really not changing outside of these depressions coming in.

Ellis: So, we have gray skies and precipitation on and off over the next week,

Ellis: including including, looks like a day or two of some more focused rain that

Ellis: won't just be the drizzly stuff,

Ellis: but we'll actually get some watering rivers and, you know, it'll kind of.

Ellis: It'll, it'll make things probably unfishable in, on the upper French broad for a little bit.

Ellis: Um, I was fishing Melbourne in middle Tennessee or near Knoxville a couple of days ago.

Ellis: And that, that water's at 65 and there's, there's fish moving and,

Ellis: uh, they managed to catch a 50 inch muskie.

Ellis: A couple days prior on the French Broad and that water is kind of in the 68

Ellis: zone and I've said it before you know it normally peaks around mid to lower 70s,

Ellis: which is just about on the upper edge of that comfort zone where you don't want

Ellis: to be fishing them anymore and,

Ellis: yeah so it'll we'll get with Some cooler temps, which has not been the case,

Ellis: and some rain, which has not been the case.

Ellis: Things will be in pretty good shape and in the fall here.

Marvin: Yeah, and I've noticed from your Instagram feed, looks like you've been fishing

Marvin: pretty full water when you've been out pulling streamers.

Ellis: Yeah, you know, I've been fortunate to have trips the last two Saturdays,

Ellis: and prior to that,

Ellis: basically I had the last three or four trips have coincided with some windows where we had water.

Ellis: And prior to that, um, had a, had a couple of tough, tough days in low water.

Ellis: Um, but, but push those boats towards the housing and, uh.

Ellis: Yeah, it's been, you know, it's, it's always interesting trying,

Ellis: trying to make anything and everything due to the needs of anglers. But, um, Um,

Ellis: It's been good in the last couple of days and this last weekend.

Ellis: I don't know if he'll be listening. I'll try to get him to, but shout out Bart

Ellis: for the second time on my boat.

Ellis: He just texted me on Friday. I was actually, I'm going to try to make this one

Ellis: fast, but it's kind of a funny story. I'm out fishing.

Ellis: Melvin, it's a couple hours away. I wanted to be there for a few days and ended

Ellis: up staying at a hotel near Dandridge.

Ellis: It's like an hour away, everything in Knoxville Crazy expensive And it's because

Ellis: of the Bristol races So client,

Ellis: Borrowed text me And says you want to fish tomorrow We worked that out and we're

Ellis: going to meet So we end up meeting and not until the end of the night Do I discover that.

Ellis: He's from Southwest Virginia He came down here and realized all the hotels Were

Ellis: super expensive and told me he stayed

Ellis: In some shitty Red roof inn near Dandridge and I was like, what now?

Ellis: So when he was texting me and I was like, yeah, dude, I'm in Melton. I'll be back in the area.

Ellis: We might be able to do a later trip, whatever.

Ellis: He was a couple rooms down.

Ellis: I don't know if that's small world or just two strange dudes doing the same

Ellis: strange stuff, but we ended up getting, man, we moved so many big fish And that

Ellis: was his, his second time streamer fishing.

Ellis: He's a all around great angler, lots of saltwater experiments.

Ellis: But the whole doing it from a boat thing, as you know, is a different animal.

Ellis: And man, it's been, when that water's up, it's been cooking recently.

Marvin: Yeah, that's neat. And we've got a question for you from Brenner.

Marvin: Brenner wanted to get your thoughts on, he's kind of getting musky fever like

Marvin: everybody else kind of in the southeast.

Marvin: He wanted to get your thoughts on

Marvin: how changes in moon phase and barometric pressure affect the musky bite.

Ellis: Yeah, I start to get hesitant with this one because there's so much information

Ellis: available and it does become overwhelming.

Ellis: One of the things that I want to avoid is.

Ellis: Stopping someone or instilling a low degree of confidence with moon phases that

Ellis: aren't quote-unquote active and you know that said,

Ellis: my booking like when i when someone calls me and say do you have a time in late november,

Ellis: or how's your schedule looking in october and i'll kind of i'll look through

Ellis: that two or three days in a row in October.

Ellis: So I'll look through, see where some of those blocks exist.

Ellis: And the first thing I do is, is go from my availability to the moon phase calendar,

Ellis: just because we'd never know what conditions are going to look like.

Ellis: That's kind of my tiebreaker because I've seen it with, I've seen it with trout too.

Ellis: And you know, mousing 100%, I'm not fishing someone when it's moonrise at 7

Ellis: p.m. and it's a full moon.

Ellis: We're not mousing. We have to mouse the following week or the two weeks after that.

Ellis: I will say that there is...

Ellis: There's an unavoidable correlation. And I really approached,

Ellis: this is my fifth year of fishing the French Broad, and the clinch system and Melvin Hill Reservoir.

Ellis: And Matt's shown off to me a couple times on the new, but I don't guide there

Ellis: and I'll just occasionally be taken to whale on fish with them so I don't pay attention up there but,

Ellis: I try to not pay attention to it when I'm fishing and I try to not pay attention

Ellis: to it when for the first couple years really I was thinking okay well you know I'm gonna go fish.

Ellis: It's sort of the same with streamers where What color are you fishing?

Ellis: I don't care. What color do you like to fish?

Ellis: Why do you like to fish?

Ellis: I mean, on Saturday, I love the swim bug. I love the drop.

Ellis: If I can get someone going on a swim bug, man, and they're feeling it.

Ellis: And how we just pound fish, it just happens.

Ellis: And the eats are extraordinary. And so Barb's feeling it.

Ellis: He's fishing it with confidence and we we

Ellis: go through phases we go through periods of time even

Ellis: good banks where it just not happened and you

Ellis: know stayed the course and um i mean now we move some very serious fish missed

Ellis: more than he wouldn't like to talk about ever again and um landed a couple nice

Ellis: ones so kind of the same deal with musky where

Ellis: if you go in there with this set expectation of they're only going to bite during

Ellis: this period of time or this expectation of they're less likely to bite now.

Ellis: You just start kind of T-Rexing stuff,

Ellis: getting the short arms and not putting

Ellis: it up under the junk or getting the

Ellis: down you know looking you pass a down tree

Ellis: and that v when you look back

Ellis: upstream that v from two branches

Ellis: meeting you gotta put it up right in the middle of that thing and maybe check

Ellis: it two or three times if you're moving slowly enough and and so this this idea

Ellis: of and marv i remember you telling me fishing with blaine where you're fishing

Ellis: some deeper troughs and you're.

Ellis: He was kind of coaching you to, you know, what the fly looks like,

Ellis: you know, what it's doing and just know what it's doing down there.

Ellis: And so after you have this, whatever you want to call it, this relationship

Ellis: built with your fly rod, with the fly, and you can envision everything happening.

Ellis: It sounds silly and it can feel silly until it very quickly doesn't.

Ellis: But you have to fish like you're going to catch a muskie every single cast and,

Ellis: I've been fortunate to fish with a wide variety of anglers from all different

Ellis: backgrounds and one of my good buddies Matt from I've been,

Ellis: I grew up in Wisconsin and we were fishing a little bit and just getting ripped

Ellis: apart with the wind And we changed pretty quickly, went to a nearby river and,

Ellis: and got a fish pretty quickly thereafter.

Ellis: And I was kind of like, you know,

Ellis: I just felt like we had wasted time just getting ripped around by wind.

Ellis: But the whole time I was getting ripped around by wind rowing, he was, he was fishing.

Ellis: He was trolling when we were getting pushed by wind on the way out.

Ellis: And he was like, that's not, that's not a waste of time. i i got 200 casts out

Ellis: it's just as good a chance as any other cast and i think that was just like

Ellis: three years ago at that point so kind of putting all these things together it's,

Ellis: yeah you know do your own research i would encourage you to do that i don't

Ellis: want to either poison the well or or have you drink some kool-aid that that doesn't help you but um.

Ellis: The deal with Muskie is that, and this is one of the only cliches that I like.

Ellis: I dislike cliches most of the time, but you can't catch them from the couch

Ellis: is such a good one because it isn't that you need to go out and be there with

Ellis: the fly in the right place at the right time.

Ellis: You know full stop period that's how

Ellis: you catch musky it can be said for sure that that is a way to get a musky to

Ellis: eat um but you have to check all the boxes and and another one i like is uh

Ellis: fishing with chris will and i know you talked to him a few years ago,

Ellis: He was talking about Larry Dahlberg Using

Ellis: A lottery ticket Where You don't have to get You don't have to match up the

Ellis: bars And the bells and the cherries It's a big scratch off ticket And all you

Ellis: have to do Is get one It doesn't matter the order It doesn't matter Nothing.

Ellis: One has to hit and so to just not scratch some like if you're going out fishing

Ellis: you scratch every single one it's so stupid to just not scratch a couple because

Ellis: those might be those have just as good odds as anything else um.

Ellis: So, yeah, I would just say for assuming that you're not fishing seven days a

Ellis: week or for every single day of the moon phase, go out and fish as hard as you

Ellis: can for as long as you can when you're able to.

Ellis: And, um, if you have the flexibility of schedule around moon phases,

Ellis: then I would, I would encourage you to look up the Solon or calendar and,

Ellis: and, and try to try to navigate some of those active periods,

Ellis: which have some, some of the bigger and longer peaks around the ball in the new room.

Marvin: Them yeah and i always say you're never going to be back at the office regretting

Marvin: fishing for that extra half an hour yeah.

Ellis: That's exactly right and i mean you.

Marvin: Know wish i'd gone home sooner i.

Ellis: I put a cast out at the boat ramp almost every trip um Um, and,

Ellis: and for the, for the folks that have fished with me, it's, it's very rare that

Ellis: I have the, you know, that the ramp gets in sight and, and we kind of, we start to pack up.

Ellis: Like when you're out there, especially fishing for big, big rounds, fishing for muskie.

Ellis: Um, yeah. Check, double check. exactly you're not going to regret that extra

Ellis: half an hour for sure and musky in particular man,

Ellis: i've heard some colorful stories from from matt riley i've had a few myself

Ellis: he's he has way more musky guided trips under his belt than i do but um.

Ellis: Some people want to bail. Some people call it with 45 minutes left,

Ellis: lights kind of going down.

Ellis: And we have this calendar as a guide who knows what they're doing or who has

Ellis: a plan and who has fished this water on their own and who understands timing

Ellis: and light and all that stuff.

Ellis: Off man that last 45 minutes were

Ellis: hitting the juice and it's it's

Ellis: because we also want that low light and there's implications with sunset and

Ellis: again not that you you don't fish any less hard during the in between times

Ellis: but yeah that that last low light period of the day is certainly a time you

Ellis: should be fishing hard yeah.

Marvin: There you go and you know folks we love questions on the articulate fly,

Marvin: you can email them to us or DM us on social media.

Marvin: Or if you go to our Instagram profile, there's actually a button you can touch

Marvin: and record the question.

Marvin: And we may, you may actually hear your question on the fishing report.

Marvin: And, you know, if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly

Marvin: swag and you're into a drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis.

Marvin: And Ellis, you want to like update folks on, you know, bucktail prep,

Marvin: you know, how to reach out and get get on your God calendar and all that kind of good stuff.

Ellis: Yeah. Um, I am, I don't know if I'm, I'm pretty sure I had gotten a couple more

Ellis: boxes of Borax since the last time we spoke.

Ellis: But whenever I'm at the home Depot or loves getting something mostly for,

Ellis: you know, to fix something on a trailer, um, I'm grabbing a thing of Borax too.

Ellis: So that's, That's going to be right around the corner.

Ellis: I'm going to have a bunch available at Tailwater Fly Company,

Ellis: which is a fly shop opened in Bluff City near the South Holston by my buddy John.

Ellis: And it's the tying material and hook selection and all.

Ellis: He's just, he's doing the whole fly shop thing.

Ellis: Flies and stuff to get to tie very very well and he's going to have a section for,

Ellis: bucktail which will be pretty cool and the the majority of it will be available

Ellis: on my website where i'll bring this full circle you can ask me questions or

Ellis: send me an email to get on the

Ellis: calendar and that is elliswardwise.com and you can follow along with some of what I'm doing,

Ellis: on Instagram at elliswarddietz.

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

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

Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.