S6, Ep 23: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward
Join Marvin Cash on The Articulate Fly as he reconnects with Ellis Ward for an East Tennessee fishing update. Fresh from the Kentucky River Musky Classic, Ellis recounts the challenging conditions faced by anglers as they navigated the swollen waters in pursuit of the elusive musky.
As Marvin and Ellis discuss the impending cold front and the unmistakable signs of spring, they delve into the seasonal dynamics affecting lake temperatures and fish behavior. With the lake levels rising, the conversation turns to the exciting shifts in baitfish and predator locations.
Addressing a listener's question, Ellis offers a nuanced take on targeting early-season smallmouth bass, emphasizing the importance of adapting to river conditions, food sources and personal fishing preferences. Whether it's baitfish or crayfish patterns, Ellis' insights encourage anglers to stay versatile and observant.
Before wrapping up, Ellis teases the availability of his bucktail and invites listeners to reach out for trip bookings or simply to chat about fishing strategies. With a reminder of the exclusive benefits available to The Articulate Fly Patreon community, including discounts and guide credits, this episode is a treasure trove for anglers eager to make the most of the changing seasons.
So, gear up, stay tuned for more updates and, as always, tight lines!
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Speaker:
Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly.
Speaker:
Marvin: We're back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward. How you doing, Ellis?
Speaker:
Ellis: Doing all right, Marv. How are you?
Speaker:
Marvin: I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know, kind of funny we had
Speaker:
Marvin: to move things around a little bit because you were out at a muskie tournament last weekend.
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah, we fished the North Fork
Speaker:
Ellis: Kentucky River and this is
Speaker:
Ellis: the Kentucky River muskie classic
Speaker:
Ellis: and man the
Speaker:
Ellis: conditions were tough for I mean just honestly for the two days it had dumped
Speaker:
Ellis: Thursday night and so Friday things were still coming up and Saturday might
Speaker:
Ellis: have been alright there's some impoundments that were still kind of draining
Speaker:
Ellis: water out so it It was tough,
Speaker:
Ellis: but with a fishery like that, that is really so big,
Speaker:
Ellis: and not, I mean, the river itself is pretty big, but just the options.
Speaker:
Ellis: I was fishing with a couple guys that sort of knew the area,
Speaker:
Ellis: but hadn't fished the river. And so we actually fished just somewhere that was
Speaker:
Ellis: closest to me since I was just coming up that morning.
Speaker:
Ellis: Um, and it was, you know, it was tough sliding on the main river that day.
Speaker:
Ellis: Next day we, you know, we had a jet boat. We were going up.
Speaker:
Ellis: We checked below, uh, a spill dam.
Speaker:
Ellis: There's a smarter word for that. and um and then found some creeks and you know
Speaker:
Ellis: went up three four miles into one and um,
Speaker:
Ellis: we didn't get anything that day turns out someone the
Speaker:
Ellis: day before had gotten one twice the
Speaker:
Ellis: distance up and we saw
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Ellis: a guy trapping beavers who informed us
Speaker:
Ellis: that that creek was was torn
Speaker:
Ellis: up with musky so you
Speaker:
Ellis: know even when you have a blown out river you're still
Speaker:
Ellis: fine and we were you can go up
Speaker:
Ellis: these this creek like 12 miles in a jet boat and that's just one of many different
Speaker:
Ellis: sections and um it's pretty cool to have halfway between me and where my family is in cincinnati and.
Speaker:
Ellis: You know, another big chunk of water that I think has a lot of potential.
Speaker:
Ellis: And then, you know, the guy who organized it, Dave Raff from the Wolf Rod Company,
Speaker:
Ellis: is just such a good dude. His rods are awesome.
Speaker:
Ellis: I've been fishing the 12-weight for a few years now.
Speaker:
Ellis: So just a lot of good stuff that came together.
Speaker:
Ellis: And I think I mentioned this to you before we kicked off, but Thursday when
Speaker:
Ellis: the water was in great shape, before the timely deluge,
Speaker:
Ellis: is that word right?
Speaker:
Ellis: But before the mini-flood, some team that was there scouting went 6-for-15.
Speaker:
Ellis: And, I mean, that's just, I'll quote Matt Riley calling those NCAA stats,
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Ellis: but to give you an indication of sort of what the potential of that fissure is.
Speaker:
Ellis: So, yeah, I'm excited for next year and excited to poke around in between now and then.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah, and, you know, coming a little bit back closer to home,
Speaker:
Marvin: You know, you're west of me, so you're getting it now, but there's a pretty
Speaker:
Marvin: nasty front moving through and we're going to see about a 20 degree drop in
Speaker:
Marvin: temperatures here in about the next 24 hours and some rain.
Speaker:
Marvin: But, you know, I think that, you know, if any, if things in East Tennessee or
Speaker:
Marvin: anything like they are here in kind of the Carolinas, you know,
Speaker:
Marvin: it's pretty clear that spring is like pretty much here. Yeah.
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah, I think last time we talked, the buds on the little magnolia out back were gone.
Speaker:
Ellis: We got, my tulips are like, this is how I know I'm old.
Speaker:
Ellis: I was actually really excited to see that the tulips were, you know,
Speaker:
Ellis: you can almost see flower coming out of them.
Speaker:
Ellis: So, but that, you know, relative to fishing, you start seeing,
Speaker:
Ellis: and we're seeing this now, the lake temperatures are warming up.
Speaker:
Ellis: The lake is that winter drop where they take it down 30 feet for flood control
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Ellis: and a couple other things.
Speaker:
Ellis: That starts to go back up. And so the mouth of the river starts to get farther and farther up,
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Ellis: and the lake itself is rising, and that just changes where the bait fish are,
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Ellis: where the predators are.
Speaker:
Ellis: And then as it warms up and there's sort of an inflection point where shad are
Speaker:
Ellis: less comfortable in the warming lake and more comfortable near the mouth of
Speaker:
Ellis: the rivers with the cooler water,
Speaker:
Ellis: things start to get funky down there.
Speaker:
Ellis: And that dynamic can kind of be found throughout the lake all year.
Speaker:
Ellis: Um but but you know now and for the next month or two you have that coinciding with.
Speaker:
Ellis: We'll just say it's march now so in a month from now we're going to have um pending weather.
Speaker:
Ellis: Whether some of the caddis starting to go on the Watauga and the sulfurs will
Speaker:
Ellis: be quickly following on both rivers.
Speaker:
Ellis: And yeah, it's very much, it's cool to come out at 7 a.m. and have it be 60,
Speaker:
Ellis: even though it's going to be 25 tomorrow.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah, that'll be a little bit of a reset. and you know with the warmer temperatures
Speaker:
Marvin: you know how much longer you think you have before the musky in your neck of
Speaker:
Marvin: the woods start to spawn and you need to leave them alone.
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah I was just out today and up in the headwaters and,
Speaker:
Ellis: It's the temperature variance isn't as great as some other free zones like low
Speaker:
Ellis: 40s, mid 40s is kind of a winter norm.
Speaker:
Ellis: It just doesn't get as frosty here as it does on the new or the James.
Speaker:
Ellis: So it's 49 now and i don't really anticipate that getting up to the low to mid
Speaker:
Ellis: 50s i gotta think daylight has a little bit to do with with their internal clock so,
Speaker:
Ellis: it's more or less i i class with a couple folks that live on the river and i'm
Speaker:
Ellis: up there fishing pushing on my own a good deal.
Speaker:
Ellis: And, you know, when it starts to get into the low 50s, it's time to pull the plug.
Speaker:
Ellis: But my last muskie trip booked is March 8th, and I anticipate that that'll be right.
Speaker:
Ellis: That's a good date for the last trip.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah, that sounds about right. And, you know, kind of shifting gears a little
Speaker:
Marvin: bit, that Brenner shot us a small mouth question and he wanted to get your thoughts
Speaker:
Marvin: on, you know, targeting early season smallies.
Speaker:
Marvin: And is it better to kind of start out with bait fish or start out fishing crayfish patterns?
Speaker:
Ellis: Sure. So you can cut this question apart in a thousand different ways.
Speaker:
Ellis: Oddly enough, my inclination in answering is going to be who's fishing?
Speaker:
Ellis: You know, what rod are you fishing?
Speaker:
Ellis: What line are you fishing? What type of water are you fishing?
Speaker:
Ellis: And you know some example of that would be you're fishing skinnier ratter,
Speaker:
Ellis: some kind of jiggy placer sure that's a bait fish you got crawfish imitations
Speaker:
Ellis: that are jiggy as well fishing that on the floating line working it through pockets,
Speaker:
Ellis: in a situation where you have have some more bouldery, cobbly,
Speaker:
Ellis: crawdaddy structure and, you know, go in there and pop some rocks over.
Speaker:
Ellis: And the temperature is above 50, 53, 54.
Speaker:
Ellis: That's kind of a crawdad active temperature.
Speaker:
Ellis: I'd honestly not wed yourself to a fly too much.
Speaker:
Ellis: I think that, you know, going into the TBA reservoir system,
Speaker:
Ellis: for example, when you have shad moving in, you start to look at like,
Speaker:
Ellis: you know, are you fishing a peanut envy and that looks kind of like a bait fish
Speaker:
Ellis: and smallmouth are crushing it, but it's also kind of jiggy and has rubber legs and it's a crawdad?
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah, the answer is yes. So it's really trying whatever you have in your arsenal.
Speaker:
Ellis: And sure, if there's shad getting blown apart, throw some bayfish patterns.
Speaker:
Ellis: And I've actually seen smallmouth striper, brown trout eating shad and refusing anything.
Speaker:
Ellis: Even the clousers that are too big or too densely tied, they're not eating them
Speaker:
Ellis: because they're eating two-inch shad, inch-and-a-half shad. These things are tiny. tiny.
Speaker:
Ellis: So it's really, what is your river structure? What type of food is around?
Speaker:
Ellis: And that's what you're going for.
Speaker:
Ellis: If you're wade fishing a lot of these creeks and you want to go natural, go crawfish.
Speaker:
Ellis: My personal preference is if I can find out that they're actually going to swim
Speaker:
Ellis: through a seven-inch changer, I'd like to find that out at the beginning of the day.
Speaker:
Ellis: And if they're not, I can pretty quickly check it off and move on to some more
Speaker:
Ellis: reasonable presentations.
Speaker:
Ellis: But I do kind of like to approach it in that order.
Speaker:
Marvin: Says the streamer junkie, right?
Speaker:
Ellis: And yeah, it's just too fun.
Speaker:
Marvin: Uh, dude, I'm with you. And you know, folks, we, uh, we love questions at the articulate fly.
Speaker:
Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever's easiest for you.
Speaker:
Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag.
Speaker:
Marvin: And we're going to draw for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.
Speaker:
Marvin: And, you know, Ellis, before I let you go and drain all the rain out of your boat, um,
Speaker:
Marvin: and hunker down for the storm, you know, we will let folks know, you know,
Speaker:
Marvin: if you've got got any kind of you know uh bucktail releases coming up soon or
Speaker:
Marvin: if you got any you know just to let folks know kind of how to get on your guide
Speaker:
Marvin: calendar for you know smallmouth trout musky the whole nine yards yeah.
Speaker:
Ellis: So bucktail will be there there's some available now but i got some,
Speaker:
Ellis: some more colors um a wide array of naturals and some different just like four shades of gray,
Speaker:
Ellis: and all of that's on elliswardflies.com there's some information on on booking and that's,
Speaker:
Ellis: run your own website is uh it's a moving target so if you ever have questions
Speaker:
Ellis: um but you know about booking or just about what a trip looks like or fishing
Speaker:
Ellis: whatever you want to book a trip,
Speaker:
Ellis: best way to do that is my cell phone at 513-543-0019.
Speaker:
Marvin: There you go you know don't forget folks that uh
Speaker:
Marvin: you know in our patreon community the articulate fly you got a couple options
Speaker:
Marvin: to support the show and and to support ellis at one tier there's a 10 discount
Speaker:
Marvin: on bucktail but there's another tier which is particularly apropos for this
Speaker:
Marvin: time of year where you get a hundred dollar off guide credit every year so you
Speaker:
Marvin: might want to check that out it's in the show notes and And, you know,
Speaker:
Marvin: we're in this great time of year, you know, get your gear ready,
Speaker:
Marvin: get ready to get out there.
Speaker:
Marvin: And if it's warm enough, get out there and catch a few.
Speaker:
Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
Speaker:
Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.
Ellis Ward
Guide | Fly Tier
I am a full time, year round fishing guide in East Tennessee, based out of Johnson City. I also design and tie flies from midges to musky, process a thousand or so bucktails every season, teach at East Tennessee State University, and raise my daughter.
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