S7, Ep 17: Pressure Points: Navigating Weather's Impact on Fishing Success with Ellis Ward

Marvin Cash
00:00:03

Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly. We're back with another East Tennessee fishing report with Ellis Ward. Ellis, how are you?

Ellis Ward
00:00:12

I am in East Kentucky. Not really east, but I'm good, how are you?

Marvin Cash
00:00:18

That's good. That's the cradle of civilization, right?

Ellis Ward
00:00:21

Yeah, I think it's. Some people talk about, you know, Mesopotamia, I think that was, you know, they talk about the cradle, Samaria and then eastern Kentucky.

Marvin Cash
00:00:36

Well, there you go. And so, you know, for folks that don't know, you're, you're getting ready to fish for two days in a Muskie classic, right?

Ellis Ward
00:00:44

Yeah, the Kentucky River Muskie classic put on by, I think it's chapter 54. I'm just going to speak with confidence. Chapter 54, Muskies Inc. But namely Wolf Rodco and the, the founder Dave, who did the inaugural one last year.

And I think we got.

Marvin Cash
00:01:13

We'Re, we're.

Ellis Ward
00:01:13

Already diving into some hard hitting content here.

We got, it was super post frontal so that, that, that massive dip in the barometer, the cloud cover, the precipitation, all of that occurred two days prior. And so that was on Thursday and, and the water was cresting and we were in the post frontal, you know, zero stability in the barometer.

You know, it's just high winds.

That's when you're getting the, if you just look at a forecast and there's a seven day forecast and you're, you, you see numbers go a little bit up, a little bit up, a little bit up. Kind of a bigger spike, kind of a bigger spike, big drop. And then on a lot of these forecasts you'll see both the high and the low.

And when, when you're getting a, a shift like a day to day shift from you know, a high 64 to the next day is a high of 48. And you know, that previous day the low was maybe 58 or something. So that bar is just not very big.

And then the, on the cold day it's like a low of 22. So that, that bar is really big. That's your, that's where things go from.

We wanted to be there, you know, those two days prior and then the days before it's like, yeah, you know, sort of hit or miss. But we were last year here firmly in the couple days after and it was just mostly chocolate milk on both stem south and north fork.

And you know, people, folks who were here scouting ended up finding some good spots. And day two, the guys I was with, Drake from Little Miami River Outfitters up in Cincinnati and his friend.

Now my friend Joey found a good creek, and that's really. These little tributaries is how you got efficient. But clearly I've been thinking about this a whole bunch along with, you know, some.

Some of these trying to capitalize on good days and been. Been going back and forth a good bit between the muskies and. And the trouts recently. And so good to be fishing the tournament and then back.

Back to it with four trips next week. So the. The train is continuing to move.

Marvin Cash
00:04:02

Yeah, absolutely. You know, speaking of wolf rods, I, you know, had a chance to fish one of those sticks with you, I think. You know, gosh, we've probably.

We've been apart less than 12 hours at this point, probably.

Ellis Ward
00:04:11

That's right.

Marvin Cash
00:04:12

Maybe a little bit longer than that. But, you know, it's kind of funny talking about the weather, and I think you probably have a better situation this year for muskie.

But, you know, we were.

The two days we fished were right on the cusp of a front coming through and kind of made, you know, we got, you know, it's kind of funny we were laughing today. We're like, gosh, if we'd had today's weather yesterday, it would have been even better.

But that kind of dovetails a little bit with the question we've got about how barometric pressure makes a difference in streamer fishing.

Ellis Ward
00:04:40

Yeah. And, you know, the. Our. Our days fishing. And this is. This has been the case. I want to say a little more this year.

You know, right, wrong or indifferent, my job as a guy is to capitalize on. On situations that we get. And there's. There's occasionally an inexplicable what.

What I like to just call, you know, an amnesia day where we say, okay, we. Clarity was a little off. We had good flows. It was socked in. So it's. It's big. It's not just clouds. It's sky cover. It's a low ceiling.

So there's that the cloud cover is low. It feels insulated. There's. It's a lot of humidity. It's. There's maybe a little precipitation, but it's not. It's not raining. It's. It might be misting.

There certainly isn't a lot of wind. And like those days, it's more than nine out of ten. It's. It's really.

To go out on those days, fishing streamers, man, when you get those days, spring, summer, like those. Those can be some. When it's not raining, those can be bananas. For the dry fly activity and so, same deal.

Marv, you are gonna have to tell me to stop talking at some point, but until then, I'm gonna keep going. So the, the dry fly activity, like all of this stuff becomes related very quickly.

And some of it can be like, oh, well, you know, that's just because, like this, that and the other, it's like, no, there's like very much positive correlation with all of these different data points.

And so, you know, that dry fly activity is again, haven't talked to the fish, haven't talked to the bugs personally, but you, you reduce the, the profile that they're putting out. So if they want to come up in clear water, they want to come up when it's. When it's easiest for them.

So when it's low and it's clear and there's not a lot of sediment, there's not a lot of flow, they can get up, get out, dry, get on their way. Like that's easiest for the bugs. They're going to get munched if it is super, super sunny out.

So a lot of these, you know, really bluebird days, you're not seeing what would be. It's like, oh, this is a, you know, a perfect evening in late April. It's like, no, not for Catus.

Because they, they want to come out and not get snacked on. They want to come out and shed, go from a pupa to an adult and mate and then die. They don't want to get to the surface and get scooped up by a trout.

So when they're at the surface there, and Mark, we experienced this a couple times. When something's at the surface, it's putting out the most obvious, the most significant profile. And that is also the time when there is no escaping.

It's at the surface. It cannot fly yet if it's a bait fish, they don't fly.

So for them to go up there when it's 2pm and it's Bluebird is, you know, it just, it's hard to say evolutionary, evolutionarily, but it's a, it's a stupid idea because they're gonna get crushed. And then same with the fish, they don't want to be screwing around because that's, that's an easy.

The ospreys and the herons can see them at that point.

So getting to the question now with all of that in mind, when you look at the implication of, of the barometric pressure on streamer fishing, or I'm just going to say fishing, those are good fishing days. When you have these Dips and the flats and that's where the barometer is.

You know, it had been climbing for maybe a couple days and then it starts to trend down for you know, a day or two and then you'll see these, you'll see these somewhat pronounced dips and then they go into these flats before they tick back up. And those dips and those flats are, I mean, dude, that, that's when stuff's dying.

And it's a lot of the times on the fall and on those dips you're going to have good activity. And then on that flat it's again, I'm not a fish.

So this is just, it's, it's just witnessing, you know, thousands of eats and, and hundreds of days of dry fly fishing of okay, when is this happening? When is it not? Those flats are adjacent to things about, you know, things are going to change.

A lot of the times that's rain all of a sudden just dumping. So if you go out and you have black clouds hanging over the mountains, that barometer is probably dipping.

You're right in the flat, it's about to get wonky.

And like, you know, there's a lot of big pictures of brown trout that I look back on and think, yeah, we got absolutely murdered with rain 15 minutes after that. And so some of this can be, there's a, there's a migraine app, weather act.

Some of this can be tracked a little bit, but, but sort of using that temperature in the forecast, if you just like look at accuweather or whatever and then on, you know, finding that, basically getting those the day or two of peak, but looking at cloud cover as well.

And a lot of the times the, the dip and the flat and that barometric pressure that is associated with fronts moving in and settling and hanging and then moving out. And so when you're talking about barometric pressure, it's a lot of the times you're also talking about cloud cover.

You're also talking about more food in the system, insects coming up. And so things are just, things are stirred up and they're, they're right. The visibility is down. Things are a little less spooky.

The last thing I'll leave folks with is noah.org you can look up, it's a two day, it's a 48 hour hourly forecast. And you can look up on that hourly forecast. It gives you, you know, projected sky cover, projected rainfall and projected wind.

And that's another like if you're seeing high sky cover with you know, a low like 0.1 or 0.2 inches of rain and low wind. Like that's the day to call off work. All right, with, with that bad influence, I'm going to, I'm going to put the mic down.

Marvin Cash
00:12:00

Yeah, there you go. Well, you know, it took a little bit longer for the drones to reach out in Kentucky, so we were close.

But, you know, one of the interesting things that it really struck me was, you know, we're, gosh, we're close to six months post Helene and you know, both the Watauga and the South Holston still have a very, you know, milky green tinge to the water.

Ellis Ward
00:12:23

Yeah, it's. I really like it. I mean, like you, you move the trout in frog water.

It completely slipped out fishing a swim bug so pretty close to the surface and it swung once missed. It ate through the surface and then you got it to eat at the boat. And like that. That requires a lot from you.

A lot of the times it requires a lot from conditions. So I, I just, I don't think that's going to happen. You know, I was talking about stripping out. Okay, let's take all of our fishing data.

These casts, these retrieves. I'm rowing this way. We do everything the exact same except it's five hours later. Like we, we got a few eats early and then it was, it was a slog.

Once that sun comes out, I, I think just even though it was bluebird, with that sun being down a little bit and having some of that, those clarity, that clarity drop from Helene, that's. That still exists. Like normally, the South Holston is gin clear.

So if you're telling me all right, 9:30 in the morning, are we going to be spending a whole lot of time fishing swim flies in frog water on the South Holston if it's generating without any clouds in the sky, I would, you know, I would maybe want to check a few spots, but I wouldn't do what we did. So that, that little bit of tinge is. Is really helpful because it's just, you know, it's another part of that, that algorithm of how.

How bitey do we feel like it is? And gin clear is. Is not biting. So that whatever that super fine segment is, it's there. There has been. There was a lot of it. And it's.

It's moving through. But yeah, man, it's. I'm not going to say it's. It's even really moving through.

It's like every time they cut flows and then re release, it's like it resettles back on the bottom of the lake. So kind of puts into perspective just the size of these reservoirs and, and how much water was.

You know, the, just the, the, the entire ecosystem that exists above these tail waters is, is still different and was really impacted by, by Helene. But you know, for us does take down some of the dry fly activity.

But I think it promotes some of those, some of those eats through the surface and at the boat that are otherwise hard to come by.

Marvin Cash
00:15:19

Yeah, and pretty neat too. You know, we were playing around with kind of putting the fly right kind of where you could just barely see it. Right.

So to kind of counteract that sun, which was kind of an interesting thing to do too.

Ellis Ward
00:15:32

Yeah. That visibility line is.

I started hearing about this and I know that talks about this a little bit on the boat, but doing this with muskie where it's, it's dropping down basically where you're not able to see anything and, and that's just, it's a safer place to be. It's also, you know, from a predator hard to, hard to think about that with an apex predator.

But it's, it's, it's a better place to hunt because your prey isn't able to, to see where you are. And I've, I've had a few eats from muskie where it's, you know, they're following in the 8 or, or I'll see them at a distance, then they're gone.

And, and getting that. You know, I, I had one that, this, I was fishing a bait caster.

So it's, it's not nine feet, but my fingers were wet like I was, I was all the way down and it was in the like 16th turn. I was closing in on double digit figure eights and I could still kind of see it moving.

Once I got all the way down there and gave it a little bit of a kill it committed. So I, I have seen that happen.

You know, we, we started fishing some jiggier flies with the sculpt and helmet and that's not, not a whole lot of fun to cast and, but, but I, I have seen that dropping in and out of that visibility line, letting it sink down a foot or two to where it disappears, getting it right back up to that edge, letting it drop down, getting it right back up.

I, I've definitely seen that generate not just an eat but like consistently good, good fishing when otherwise it's like fishing just low or fishing just high is not producing the same thing.

Marvin Cash
00:17:28

Absolutely folks, we love questions on the articulate fly. You can email me or DM me on social media, whatever's easiest for you. And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag.

We're going to draw for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.

And Ellis, before I let you go get your beauty sleep so you can go chase muskie tomorrow and the day after, why don't you let folks know where they can find you so they can talk fishing, book a trip, buy bucktails and all that kind of good stuff?

Ellis Ward
00:17:52

Yeah. So, best place to. To. To do the. The talking and, and trip booking is my cell phone at 513-543-0019. You can reach out to me on Instagram.

You know, I say cell phone's the best just because it'll be a day or two before I see messages on Instagram. I'm on there at Ellis Ward Guides is elliswardflies. Com.

Marvin Cash
00:18:23

Well, there you go. Well, listen, good luck this weekend, Ellis, folks. If you can get out and fish, get out and fish. If not, tie some flies, go to a fly fishing show.

Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.

Ellis Ward
00:18:34

Appreciate it, Marv.