S6, Ep 148: Winter Waters: Musky Pursuits and Tailwater Tactics with Ellis Ward

Foreign.

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

We're back with the last East Tennessee fishing report of the year with Ellis Ward.

Ellis, how are you?

I am doing well, Marv.

How are you?

As always.

I'm just trying to stay out of trouble and took a look at your weather, and you got to be pretty damn happy in East Tennessee.

Yeah, I think it was up to somewhere over 60 with gray skies and some rain.

Both rivers are pushing some water, and my head has been.

I'll restart that.

I.

I smell not great, and it is like a dead animal.

And so that's sort of a testament to how much I've been fishing.

Um, I've just been working on bucktail whenever I can, and so I haven't really had my eye on the weather.

Thankfully, I've gotten a bunch done the last few days, which has been a little painful.

I did sneak out yesterday for a couple hours.

All right.

I went musky fishing for a few days last week, too, but other than that, not.

Not been getting out as much and changing that, hopefully starting tomorrow.

And you got to update me on my weather.

So it sounds like we're.

We're gonna hang steady and then get to where it's not as cold as it was a few weeks ago, which I would consider to be unfishable.

It's in the, you know, 20s, low 30s with wind.

That's not bad for late December.

Yeah.

So at least now we.

Everyone understands why you smell like BO and death, right?

Yeah, I will.

You could.

You could hear me hesitating a little bit as.

As I decided how much detail to offer and.

And how I smell, but it's sort of wet dog.

And then, you know, depends on.

Today was pretty humid, and I was.

I was washing some.

I'm doing some deer belly as well.

And, you know, there was a cut or two that didn't get much exposure to borax when I first picked it up.

So.

Yeah, we'll stick with Bo and wet dog.

Yeah.

So, you know, and you sandbag.

That's because you've been out muskie fishing.

What.

What are you seeing on the water?

Yeah, I.

I went out and.

And actually hit some new water on the French fraud.

It was.

It was a little too pushy, but it was.

It was good to be out.

And, you know, the muskie fishing has been as good as it gets.

And I know I talked about this last time.

It was.

It's just been nice to.

To feel and.

And see that the.

The muskie homes are all still there after Helene.

And there's, there's nothing catastrophic that happened to the fishery up there for the trout.

I would say sort of the same deal where we're in the, the winter pattern of, you know, dry fly fishing is midges, blue wings.

And a couple weeks ago, right after we aired the podcast, I think this was two episodes ago, where I was talking about the finicky nature of the South Holston dry fly fishing.

Had a guy on my boat who experienced exactly that.

So, you know, fishing like your 18 or 20 is a cider and, and going down, we, we got a few on a 26.

And at that point, you're fishing 6.5x.

You can fish 7x.

You just gotta be real careful on that hook set.

Watauga is still pretty off, I would expect.

It's starting to generate with, with some of the rain we've gotten.

There's.

They're pushing water through and, you know, part of it is settling, but another part of it is there's a.

This big chunk of sediment that came from runoff after Helene on the bottom of Watauga Lake that just needs to move.

And it's, you know, it's unlike the other instances of muddy water on Freestones where levels sort of drop and sediment settles and, and things clear up.

So this is just.

We need the, we need the lake to release more water and push more of that sediment out.

So that's happening right now.

And it's, it's down to like.

I don't know how to describe that.

Like a, like a clay, a teal clay that might make no sense, but it's, it's still pretty off color and opaque and I'm, I'm.

We are waiting, you know, any big hatch activity, but it's right around the corner.

And honestly, with respawn or with post spawn coming up and having that water be as off color as it has been, I'm excited.

That's about as much as you can ask for.

Yeah.

And got a question for you from Josh, and he wanted to get your thoughts on tips and tactics for fishing deeper, slower water for larger tailwater trout.

Yeah, well, there's a couple different avenues.

It really depends on what your goal is.

And so I've, I've been thinking about this a bunch and I may have talked about this, but you know, when, when you go out and you're fishing, you know, a big white fly or something like, you know, big swim fly changer swim bug, drunken disorder or something like that, you're really, you're going out fishing for an eat as opposed to, you know, you get a, you get a 12 inch brown, it'll come out and smash one of those things.

And then of course you get the big ones too.

So I do just want to kind of have that preface that you can go out and hunt big fish knowing where they are, knowing where they're more likely to be and understanding that the odds of it happening are, are, are pretty low.

So fishing the, the, the deep and slow with streamers for big fish, I, I just want to be careful that I, I don't want the thought to be, you know, streamer fishing in that specific scenario is the best way to get a big fish to commit.

You may be better off, I mean if it's, if it's deep and really clear, you might be better off doing you know, size 24 midge off of an 8 foot drop or a 6.5x, you know, drop shot.

There's guys have businesses and, and, and careers doing that on the South Holston for a bunch of the big lake run fish.

And I, I have nothing against it as a, like it's hard to do.

It's, it requires patience.

You have to, there's stick to itiveness involved.

You have to go out there and, and kind of set your eye on the prize and recognize that you're not going to get very many bites and you might get the big dog.

I personally just don't enjoy fishing that way.

So that's, that's why you don't hear as much of it coming from me.

But the, yeah, the deep slow tail water where it's, where it's also most of the time gin clear.

The reason why that might be more affected is, is because getting something, getting a streamer to one of those fish where we're talking five, six feet down the water column, they aren't there because they are.

And, and to, I guess for clarity, what I'm talking about would be fish holding mid channel in, in the deepest part of some of these pools.

So not adjacent to a weed bed, not you know, not on the bank, not near a rock.

They're there for.

They're not going to move and they're protected.

And sure there's food nearby, but they're not there to eat.

They're there to hold steady until it's time to eat, which is probably at night or high water.

And, and so it's, it's.

Those fish are less quote unquote predatory not by their genetics but just by their positioning.

They're they're not there to eat.

Right now when you're, you know, when you're hitting some of these banks that are maybe 812 inches deep, but then you know, drop off to maybe a foot or two in the medium speed water and you see a big fish come out and, and try to take the rod out of your hands.

That fish is waiting there and specifically waiting to do exactly that versus the big fish in the deep slow.

That requires a bunch of convincing.

So on the streamer front you want to think about, I wouldn't worry about longer leaders for spookiness, but for, for fly mobility it does become important.

So going, you know, 15 pound, then 12 pound and then giving it as much speed as you can.

So two handing and you know, it doesn't matter what you can do with a changer, but do it with a dungeon, you know, burning that thing across its line of sight if you're sight fishing it.

And then there's also, you know, weed beds and, and banks where if you take for example, a, a drunken disorderly and you know, get that thing right down against the bank and, and dog walk it Every time it, every time you're hitting that, I, I refer as tap, tap, tap, tap.

Each time you're hitting that and it's walking back and forth, I'm moving my head back and forth right now.

Every time it's doing that, it digs a little more.

And that's, it's.

One of the beauties of that fly is that even though it's buoyant when you're, when you're walking the dog, it digs a little more each time.

So you, you can get a presentation lower in the water column and especially in those deep slow pools.

You're, and I'm stealing this from Tommy, but you have a sales pitch that is so much more effective, so much more convincing than a couple pieces of marabou tied to a few hooks and trying to change up and extend what those kills are.

So you know that tap, tap, tap, tap is really tap, kill, tap, kill, tap, kill, tap.

Giving big pauses, letting that slack go, letting your sinking line pull it down, say your next little tap it, it, it reorients and goes down.

There's just, there's so much to explore with, with some of the, you know, how can I find depth and do so in a convincing way other than let's fish a jig fly.

That said, putting on something small like a really sparsely tied marabou type streamer with, with some weight and fishing it more like a jig and then if you want to go ahead and cancel me, you can use a conventional rod, shout out TFO and you know, throw on a little jig, see what happens.

It's.

It's effectively the same thing as Memphane.

You could even jigger crelex, right?

Yeah.

Oh, God, absolutely.

Man, that thing in, in saltwater just bouncing across the bottom in front of a redfish.

Yeah, there, there's.

Call it whatever you want, but the, the presentations you can get with a little bit of weight and the sparsely tied whatever.

What, what becomes the difficult part is doing it with fly line.

And so nymphing, you bypass that because you just have tippet.

You know, there's that whole school of thought with the mono leader, or I'm sure there's a different name for it at this point, but.

But basically bypassing the, the fly line itself and just using monofilament, which more or less is just Euro nymphing with streamers.

I mean, whatever you want to do to get down there with something small and kind of wiggly is probably your best bet.

And then if you do want to go bigger, I would say work in the, the drunken disorderly with really long casts or anything from a changer to a clauser minnow.

Same, you know, big cast and get that, get that butt off under your armpit and strip.

Two hand burn.

There you go.

Well, 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 and you enter a drawing for something cool from Ellis at the end of the season.

And you know, Ellis, it's the end of the season.

So we actually have a drawing winner.

I took everyone that sent a question in this year, ran up to random number generation with Google and came up with a number and pulled a winner out of a hat.

But before we announce the winner, you want to let them know what they're going to win.

Yeah, just after you got me all fired up watching a trout chase stuff in a flat.

It's the right time of year.

Full day trip with me and a variety of bucktail.

That sounds horrible now.

It's.

Yeah, it's awful.

And I put very little work into both products, so not proud to offer it.

There you go.

And so the, the lucky winner is Jared.

And it's either, it's either McCabe or Maccabee.

So I got it wrong 50% of the time.

And for that I apologize.

Hopefully the fact that you want a day on the boat with Ellis and some bucktails makes up for that.

And, you know, we're going to keep doing this folks in 2025, so keep the questions coming in.

It makes it fun to kind of, you know, as I like to say, kind of find our people and you know, Ellis, before I let you go, you want to let folks know kind of what you're booking, you know, now that you're the merchant of dear death when the bucktails are coming on and all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see which pictures I, I send you of sort of the, the in process processing here.

January and February are the times we're mid December all of a sudden and have a number of chunks booked up in January and a few floaters in February.

So I want people on the boat for sure then.

And that's.

That's for trout muskies.

Muskie's going to be cooking till late spring and, and again, I'll continue pushing that through the summer.

It's pretty rare that it gets too hot to fish.

Bucktail, man, I have a bunch.

I have a bunch ready.

It's just, it's now I have to figure out colors and we're going to say it's going to be a week or two out before the first push goes up.

On my website, which is ellis ward flies.com you can find me on Instagram at Ellis Ward Guides and best way to reach out, talk, trips, tales, whatever is my Cell phone at 513-543-0019.

There you go.

And you know, folks, just a reminder too, that we host our community on Patreon.

And there are two tiers that will get you.

One will get you a discount on bucktails and another will get you a.

An annual 100 guide credit with Ellis.

So something to check out and you know, as we're cruising into the end of 2024, you know I'm going to always tell you to get out on the water and catch fish, but I also want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas.

And a happy New Year, Ellis.

Merry Christmas, Marv.

Tight lines, everybody.