S6, Ep 60: Ellis Ward's Guide to East Tennessee: Streamers, Hatches and Big Fish
Join host Marvin Cash on The Articulate Fly for another informative East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward. Ellis shares his latest adventures, from a memorable fishing trip in the Florida Keys to setting up his new workshop. Despite needing an oil change and some sleep, Ellis dives into the current fishing conditions in East Tennessee. He discusses recent trips, the excitement of catching large fish and the intricacies of fishing with streamers and dry flies.
Ellis also provides valuable insights into the local weather patterns, hatches and the best times to hit the water. From the aggressive eats on caddis to the persistent mayflies and the appearance of hoppers and beetles, this episode is packed with tips and tricks for anglers of all levels. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a newcomer, Ellis' experiences and advice will help you make the most of your fishing adventures in East Tennessee. Tight lines!
To learn more about Ellis, check out our interview!
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Speaker:
Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
Speaker:
Marvin: and we're back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward. Ellis, how are you?
Speaker:
Ellis: I am doing well, Marv. How are you?
Speaker:
Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble, and I kind of wonder,
Speaker:
Marvin: you've been burning the miles up going down to the Florida Keys and back.
Speaker:
Marvin: Do you need an oil change yet?
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah, I do. I needed one, I think, a thousand miles ago, but I'm going to be
Speaker:
Ellis: okay with it. The Subaru has, I might be getting a truck sometime soon.
Speaker:
Ellis: I'm already going on tangents. Yes, I need an oil change and I need a little
Speaker:
Ellis: more sleep, but I got to witness some really cool stuff.
Speaker:
Ellis: My buddy Dave White out of Anna Maria just dialed in and I fish with him every
Speaker:
Ellis: year when my family's down there.
Speaker:
Ellis: Kind of interesting story how
Speaker:
Ellis: we met but that'll be for another day and
Speaker:
Ellis: six years running this last year he was he was kind of like well i'm taking
Speaker:
Ellis: pictures of my cousins holding sheep's head that were throwing back and he's
Speaker:
Ellis: just kind of laughing like you want to come down here and take pictures with people therapy fishing,
Speaker:
Ellis: and semi-ingest and said it once more as I'm baiting shrimp onto my family's
Speaker:
Ellis: hooks and he was just chilling.
Speaker:
Ellis: It's like, dude, you should come up here for a week. Made it happen and.
Speaker:
Ellis: I watched seven fish i'm i'm gonna say six of them over a hundred pounds,
Speaker:
Ellis: get to the boat and another two more or less get close enough to call it leadered um and those,
Speaker:
Ellis: are just you know 150 plus pound fish
Speaker:
Ellis: that are so big you're you're
Speaker:
Ellis: winching the drag everyone's had enough if it's fun you
Speaker:
Ellis: know we did fun fishing um for two
Speaker:
Ellis: hours and hooked four leered three
Speaker:
Ellis: and you know
Speaker:
Ellis: when he's with clients it's the guys
Speaker:
Ellis: are done fighting them we have an hour left and they're
Speaker:
Ellis: he's saying let's we're gonna go back and they're legitimately looking to each
Speaker:
Ellis: other like i'm not sure i want to and so when you you're not breaking them all
Speaker:
Ellis: you just you cinch that that drag down and sort of a land or losing type d hell
Speaker:
Ellis: and sometimes the hook pops and,
Speaker:
Ellis: no one is upset so it's been between that and moving i'm standing on the back
Speaker:
Ellis: porch of the a new place, looking at a,
Speaker:
Ellis: very large workshop,
Speaker:
Ellis: with two big garage doors.
Speaker:
Ellis: So Bucktail and Tyne have a home that is not right next to my bedroom,
Speaker:
Ellis: which will be kind of nice and a little weird.
Speaker:
Ellis: But it's been a lot in the last week.
Speaker:
Ellis: A couple trips this week with some folks out here to it's streamers and,
Speaker:
Ellis: and mouse and flows on both rivers are looking great.
Speaker:
Ellis: So I'm excited to get an oil change and, and get my, get my vice set up.
Speaker:
Ellis: It's, it's been a little too long.
Speaker:
Ellis: You know, I think I start twitching after a few days, it's probably been a week
Speaker:
Ellis: and, and start hammering it this summer, starting tomorrow.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah. It's funny, right? So I wonder if like maybe next year during deer season
Speaker:
Marvin: you're going to tell me you can't sleep because you have to have the smell of
Speaker:
Marvin: borax and death to be able to fall asleep at night.
Speaker:
Ellis: Well, I've been working with a couple different folks,
Speaker:
Ellis: Yankee, Candle, that's sort of a stretch, but some local Candle distributors
Speaker:
Ellis: to get five-day-old and eight-day-old dead deer tail scent.
Speaker:
Ellis: In the works. So sort of TBD on that, but just try to diversify, you know?
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah. And so, you know, it's interesting, you know, you've got re-entry,
Speaker:
Marvin: which will be a little bumpy, but fun, right?
Speaker:
Marvin: And, you know, when you're starting to kind of, I checked out your weather,
Speaker:
Marvin: you're kind of sliding in to kind of a little bit more of a normal kind of early summer groove.
Speaker:
Marvin: You got a little bit of rain next week, but it looks pretty good, right?
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah i would say i don't
Speaker:
Ellis: know what re-entry is for for taking i mean five six days not fishing for for
Speaker:
Ellis: me is certainly feels like i'm coming back to a different planet but um it's it's a good time to
Speaker:
Ellis: be jumping in and I'm, I'm happy that I have a couple of guys coming here specifically to,
Speaker:
Ellis: to do what I do this and next week.
Speaker:
Ellis: You know, we're looking at the, the first year I moved here,
Speaker:
Ellis: I asked Siri or Alexa, sorry to whoever is listening and that just pinged it.
Speaker:
Ellis: If it was going to rain in Johnson City. And every single day has a 51% chance
Speaker:
Ellis: of rain in the afternoon.
Speaker:
Ellis: And so we're kind of starting that summertime, those clouds build up and you
Speaker:
Ellis: can sort of get these heavens unleashing thing.
Speaker:
Ellis: But in the meantime, this week, and looks like well into next week,
Speaker:
Ellis: We have sort of hazy patches of sun and the thunderstorm here or there,
Speaker:
Ellis: which highs mid to upper 80s, so we're not creeping into the 90s.
Speaker:
Ellis: And with that cloud cover and a little evening rain, man, that's about all you can ask for.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah, so how are your hatches hanging on?
Speaker:
Marvin: Obviously, that kind of cloudy weather and the rain is going to help,
Speaker:
Marvin: but what are you seeing out there? I know you've been on the road,
Speaker:
Marvin: but at least what do you hear maybe from your people?
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah, I mean, I was out,
Speaker:
Ellis: six days ago, so I'm guessing this isn't dated information.
Speaker:
Ellis: I don't want to say the Caddis hatcheter. I think I talked about this last time.
Speaker:
Ellis: There's the 12-14 Caddis on the Watauga. You start seeing...
Speaker:
Ellis: There's a couple of very distinct dry fly eats.
Speaker:
Ellis: And if you can hear it and you see water splashing to the left or the right,
Speaker:
Ellis: more often than not, if you look around,
Speaker:
Ellis: you're going to see caddis and you see it on the South Holston.
Speaker:
Ellis: And this is Reed Gary LaFontaine's caddis fly.
Speaker:
Ellis: Lie um look up if
Speaker:
Ellis: no one's gonna do that so look up
Speaker:
Ellis: skitter your caddis look at look at youtube
Speaker:
Ellis: i have a time video about the the
Speaker:
Ellis: two birds one caddis and it's
Speaker:
Ellis: moving whatever it is that you're moving there's there's some different excerpts
Speaker:
Ellis: that are talking about these these bugs you know diving in and coming back out
Speaker:
Ellis: of the surface and when you're seeing that splashy eat and not getting They
Speaker:
Ellis: eat such an aggressive eat, and then they won't eat a dead drift.
Speaker:
Ellis: It can be a little perplexing, but that's happening.
Speaker:
Ellis: It starts to dwindle to maybe 10%, 20% of the time.
Speaker:
Ellis: And there are chalpers, PMDs, yellow bugs in the, let's say, 14 to 18.
Speaker:
Ellis: You can fish up to a, I would say, 12.
Speaker:
Ellis: I mean, beetles and hoppers. i saw
Speaker:
Ellis: easily two inch grasshopper
Speaker:
Ellis: just this is two weeks ago on the upper watauga sitting in the film flying over
Speaker:
Ellis: from the field this was you know we're not even in june and i had some new anglers
Speaker:
Ellis: on the boat and pointing that thing out saying yeah that that is why you have
Speaker:
Ellis: grasshopper flies so So, um,
Speaker:
Ellis: you know, may, may flies, the sulfurs, the PNBs, those are kind of the big deal.
Speaker:
Ellis: But at the same time, I don't know if there's going to be any of my folk.
Speaker:
Ellis: I had three different, um, pairs of brand new anglers and all of them caught fish on dry flies.
Speaker:
Ellis: I may have, um, gassed up some of them last time, but we, we were fishing 16s, 18s as our sighters.
Speaker:
Ellis: And they're catching fish on 20s, 22s.
Speaker:
Ellis: And I'm still fishing 24s. I mean, there's such, you just think about the biomass
Speaker:
Ellis: in that river or in these rivers.
Speaker:
Ellis: Being tailwaters and uniform, consistently cold, et cetera, there's a lot of biology behind it.
Speaker:
Ellis: But there's a lot of small bugs, and that's what the fish are used to seeing.
Speaker:
Ellis: I mean, they're going to start more actively feeding on bigger bugs,
Speaker:
Ellis: but I don't want to be too cliche about it.
Speaker:
Ellis: But maybe it's what you can't see or what they're not eating on the end of your
Speaker:
Ellis: leader that might be the most important thing.
Speaker:
Ellis: And you'll see those big ones flying around, but that's because you can see
Speaker:
Ellis: them pretty easily. They're bright yellow.
Speaker:
Ellis: They're little highlighters, and they're 20 times the size of the bugs that
Speaker:
Ellis: the fish might be eating in the film.
Speaker:
Ellis: So I like double dry. eye i've
Speaker:
Ellis: you kind of have to balance uh
Speaker:
Ellis: tendency to foul up versus um you
Speaker:
Ellis: know what you get out of fishing too but it can
Speaker:
Ellis: be fun to throw two pretty different
Speaker:
Ellis: patterns and and kind of get dialed in that way and yeah we did talk about this
Speaker:
Ellis: last time that just you know we have have unlike the cat is where it's a little
Speaker:
Ellis: bit of a flash in the pan two weeks maybe three.
Speaker:
Ellis: Peak of five days peak of 10 days the mayfries and just this general.
Speaker:
Ellis: Source of food low light mornings moving hatches are great that's that's through july into august,
Speaker:
Ellis: with beetles and hoppers rounding things out.
Speaker:
Ellis: I will throw a streamer every once in a while, too.
Speaker:
Marvin: I've been told. I've heard that.
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah, once or twice.
Speaker:
Marvin: Anything you want to point out for folks on the streamer bite right now?
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah. If you're in this area and you have been paying attention to flows a couple
Speaker:
Ellis: different things come to mind not the least of which is right now,
Speaker:
Ellis: yes I stop for risers we're not going to cast anyone throwing streamers into rising fish,
Speaker:
Ellis: I don't know that's not what I do I like to cast your rising fish if I cast to them.
Speaker:
Ellis: But when we're moving, when we're not stopping, we're not seeing noses.
Speaker:
Ellis: Man, it's tough to beat. And one of the reasons it's tough to beat is that,
Speaker:
Ellis: I don't know, I think there's a little bit of feast or famine for me because
Speaker:
Ellis: outside of the first year I was here.
Speaker:
Ellis: We don't really have consistent periods of time with big water.
Speaker:
Ellis: Now, the Watauga will generate from one to five for six days a week,
Speaker:
Ellis: but that's four hours, and you experienced it last year.
Speaker:
Ellis: You run that four hours in the afternoon on a fourth Sunday in July, and it's 98 degrees.
Speaker:
Ellis: Breeze congratulations on the full you know
Speaker:
Ellis: generation schedule but probably better off to
Speaker:
Ellis: wait and fish um low light when
Speaker:
Ellis: it's low water if you're going after the big ground suits it's
Speaker:
Ellis: not always great conditions if you're having precipitation you're getting some
Speaker:
Ellis: color from the creeks from the doe on the watauga um some of those little ag
Speaker:
Ellis: creeks on the south holston and you're getting more cloud cover and the rivers are pushing water.
Speaker:
Ellis: It's just, I struggle with this because I've said all the time is now I shouldn't
Speaker:
Ellis: be wasting days that are good conditions.
Speaker:
Ellis: And you really should if you have the opportunity to do it because it's in a
Speaker:
Ellis: month from now, we don't know what the water table is going to be doing.
Speaker:
Ellis: And for the last four years, we haven't had current conditions.
Speaker:
Ellis: So it is a good time to be going out and at least taking what we're offered
Speaker:
Ellis: right now because you see weeks at a time of just no generation.
Speaker:
Ellis: You see months at a time of no generation. Yeah.
Speaker:
Ellis: It's better than that right now.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah, there you go. Always fish tomorrow instead of the day after tomorrow, right?
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah, I think my pappy and his pappy and his pappy before that would say that.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
Speaker:
Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
Speaker:
Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag.
Speaker:
Marvin: We're going to be drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.
Speaker:
Marvin: And Ellis, before I let you go and, you know, I don't know, read a book,
Speaker:
Marvin: tie some flies, keep unpacking, get some sleep, change your oil, whatever.
Speaker:
Marvin: Why don't you let folks kind of know how to reach out and get in touch with
Speaker:
Marvin: you, book you and all that kind of good stuff?
Speaker:
Ellis: Yeah, I'm just going to go into the workshop and probably stare at some bucktail
Speaker:
Ellis: and not move it until two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker:
Ellis: Best way to contact me for trips and just to ask questions, poke my brain.
Speaker:
Ellis: 6 versus 7 versus 8, what line?
Speaker:
Ellis: Cell phone at 513-543-0019. And information, pictures, et cetera, website and Instagram.
Speaker:
Ellis: Website is erisworldschweiss.com.
Speaker:
Ellis: And I'm on Instagram at erisworldguides.
Speaker:
Marvin: Yeah, well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, you owe it to yourself to get
Speaker:
Marvin: out there and catch a few. 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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