S7, Ep 50: The Art of the Follow: Streamer Strategies and Fishing Tales from East Tennessee

Welcome to the early June 2025 East Tennessee Fishing Report! In this episode, Marvin Cash and Ellis Ward share the latest streamer tactics, brown trout tips, and real-world advice for fly anglers. Read the transcript or listen for actionable fishing insights.

Marvin Cash00:00:00

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 Ward00:00:11

I am doing well, Marv. How are you?

Marvin Cash00:00:13

And as always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. And you know, I wouldn't quite say we have Ellis weather anymore, but you should be happy. You've got a fair amount of rain later in the week.

Ellis Ward00:00:22

Yeah, yeah, I am happy. And that's just because I'm working on me, Marv.Now the, the normal schedule of, of getting five hours on the Wataga six days a week is, it's good for the river. It keeps things cool. You get high and low water dry fly activity.Obviously I, I do like to, to notate the, the non one trick pony here, but obviously I'm partial to streamer fishing. Like it's, it's just very fun. Fishing streamers in big water is something I like to do.And so being able to do that, man, I was just, I've been talking with a number of people about how it was just, I'm pretty sure I said a couple weeks ago as well. It was just a long, long winter and early spring with very irregular if any releases. And for a couple months there are no releases.And so it's, it's hard work to catch a big brown trout, period. Sometimes that means having your, you know, the benefit of going out with me is dry fly game.Like you have to take the rod and cast and you know, set the hook and fight the fishing. But, you know, doing that on your own, you got to figure out what is needed and, and that could be the fly, it could be the.Are you drifting it from 10ft? Can you get away with 5.5 or 5x? Are we fighting this thing in on 6? You know, if you're weight fishing, what are the currents and RuPaul situation?So there's just, there's a lot of tough stuff with streamers. It's mainly, it's the, it's not lifting your rod at all on the set and then a couple things after that. But that's the biggest one.After you get them to eat, getting them to eat can be a really difficult thing to do.And that, that was something that over the course of, you know, six, eight hours, when we're not seeing the dry flies, when we're not getting these high low water bug activity, you know, intermittent, let's pause and, and snap up some fish. And some of them are big. So it's, it's not like a waste of time at all if you're, if you're, you know, hunting big fish. But it, it is fun.You're sight fishing two risers with the dry flights. If you don't like that, then, I don't know, fish with someone else.But like that's, that's just, it's something I love to do and, and I love teaching casting and, and that dry fly presentation and all the variables around it so that, you know, yesterday was giant sun. There was a little bit of haze, but not really. And my clients looking around saying, I've never seen this many fish, right?I mean he couldn't cast a dry fly into the water without getting eaten. And we're just, we're surrounded by fish. Not in a slick, not in a seam, not in a ripple.I mean, bank to bank, the river's boiling and you know, those things only last for 15, 20, 30 minutes, ish, maybe a little more. But when that's happening, the, the before and after is also really good.And you know, for everything I say about the influence of the moon and bitiness and, and all that, like it was a bad moon day, bad Sunday, and it was pretty clear water and it was real bitey.We went through like a three hour period where it was just super tough and you know, we only maybe moved a fish or two and then it just, that window cracked open and, and it was on.So as much as I look forward to fishing when it's overcast and I got out on my own last week, I guided myself on a monster day and it felt very good and it was raining overcast and just very, very active all day. I have some videos that I'll be sharing on social media. So yeah, always look, look for that.You know, the, the big clouds coming in and some of these summertime fronts can be really productive, but it's, it's, it's nice out there right now and it's in terms of the fishing on, even on the, the bluebird days. And we really, we have more than a couple months of that in front of us.So I'm excited for it and I would say get your, you know, I said, started saying this last year, but don't, don't wait till October if you want to fish streamers. That's not streamer season here. It's, it's a different thing. We don't freeze. It's just, it's different here.So if you're in the area and you're, you're thinking of efficient streamers, it's, it's May, June, July, sort of August, and you know, we make it happen in at all times a year. But you start getting into September, October, and I start liking things less and less. So I'm going to step away from both.You barely even asked me a question. I'm talking for 10 minutes and a little bit of a soapbox there.

Marvin Cash00:06:16

Yeah, I've recalled the drones, so you're good.

Ellis Ward00:06:18

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Marvin Cash00:06:20

They are going to refuel just in case we run long on the listener question.

Ellis Ward00:06:24

It's never safe.

Marvin Cash00:06:26

So James, who's, who's sending questions before, had a question for you, and I think this one will make your head explode a little bit. He wanted to know what do you do when you get a long brown trout follow, but no eat? You know, do you pause? Do you speed up? Do you figure eight?You know, what's the trick?

Ellis Ward00:06:44

Yeah, I wish that there were an easy answer to this one. The, the. The biggest and, and brightest answer is Figure 8. And it's, it's a little.I'm gonna, I'm gonna stay away from getting too spooky with this one here, but, but it's strange that that's the question tonight because that's a, that's a really specific question. And, and I have a video like edited and, and ready on the, the drafts in Instagram right now to post of. Of me from the other day with a trout.He must have turned around on the fly three or four different times coming to the boat, and then followed it all the way through 18 or it's. It's a circle. When you, when you're river fishing and things are kind of tight, the, the figure O can be effective.And I mean, you can see the fish follow the entire time. And then I ran into a bush and kind of lost some light, but. So I stopped the video there.But after running into the bush and just keeping the fly and kind of blindly moving it, I looked up and he was still there. And I had given it a brief pause. That's normally what my answer is. If when working it back to the boat, I was fishing it drunk, right.So it's not like I'm burning something back. So kind of rewinding, definitely send the drones rewinding.If you're working something back quickly or at a constant retrieve or you didn't cast in a tight angle and your line is getting swept and you're fishing something with lead eyes or a cone head, stop it, lift up and drop. Do something that will absolutely Kill the action of that fly.Because those lead eyes and conehead, one of the most effective uses of those things is to use. I talk about the strip and the kill all the time. They have a built in kill.It's not necessarily one that I like or find exciting, but that little drop when you release tension.And again, if your line is getting swept, if you're wade fishing and you're not, you know, you're doing some sort of modified swing, either purposely or on accident, you are going to have to. This is where the, the jerk strip will come into play. And I dislike that for a lot of different reasons.But when you're in that position, mostly because it takes you out of the strip set just by default, but when you are in that position of your line's kind of getting swept, you have a brown trout following, it's not committing and you're stripping and you're not able to give it a proper kill because the current's pushing it. Lift the rod, sweep the rod, do something, and then immediately go back to where you were.And that'll just provide that brief little acceleration that might do it, Some sort of change in what you're doing.I talk about this a lot of, you know, you're, you're dating and then, or, you know, you're just friends or whatever and you gotta close the deal at some point you gotta make a move, ask them to go out to dinner, do something that you haven't been doing.And most of the time it's creating some sort of abrupt change in pace, which I don't want to just say stop it, because then, you know, it, it's just sitting there, it's dead. But doing short, fast, shorter, faster, shorter, faster, little pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. That can be it.I used to do that because I want to maximize the number of whatever we want to call it. How do we elicit a predatory strike, those bite triggers, whatever other $10 words and phrases we want to use.I want to get as much stuff jammed in a confined space because I'm going to end up at the boat and then, well, we're out of luck. No, we're not.And so for the last year or two, definitely for the last year, I've been encouraging people to keep their, you know, jam the tip in, keep their fly in the water. Marv, you got a knee to the boat and that was, that's just holding your fly down in the water with some current moving.So if, if, if you're getting a trout who's coming up and Approaching the tip of your rod and you're not very far away from that. The blinders are on. Dip your tip and figure eight em. And then in that eight, if they're not.Or figure out if they're not committing after a couple eights or a couple O's, start, start doing some sweeps and kills. So when you're moving it through the eight, stopping it every once in a while. Yeah. Near and dear to my heart and very timely.So I'm gonna, I'm going to call that answer good for right now.

Marvin Cash00:12:15

There you go. And you know, 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 I use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag that will probably include a butcher shop or two sticker or two. And we'll enter a drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis and Ellis I saw on social media, I think it was last week.You had a bunch of bucktails out, right?

Ellis Ward00:12:37

Yeah, got a bunch of bucktails. Really nice chartreuse color that is. Is just barely tipping towards green, but, but still, chartreuse is tough.A lot of times it ends up being like a hot lime. So I do take some of this, some of the, the coloring things, the olives, the chartreuses, I take pretty seriously.Nice orange and then kind of some throwback colors of lavender and mint. And I, I have so many that I've processed and just kind of been sitting on. So I'll.I'll be continuing to update colors there and yeah, that's available at Ellis Ward Flies. I do want to shout out John at Tailwaters Flyco locally here.I was actually just fishing with him today and good friend of mine and the way he is running his shop, it's. We're now nine months in. I just, I have so much respect for him and, and I think he's doing a fly shop the right way it.And I get that there's different opinions on what that might look like, but his heart's in it and he's smart and he loves fishing and he' a super fishy dude. So he is. He's going to have Blaine here this weekend to do a tying class and then a meet and greet afterwards.And if you're in the area, if you've met John or, you know, are doing the tying class with Blaine or want to meet Blaine, obviously you're going to be doing it anyways just because of who those two people are. If you haven't I highly encourage anyone and everyone to make some time to get there and meet John and check out the shop.It's stocked for tying in such a great way. He has so many products and such a wide variety including. Look at this. I can go full circle. Some of my bucktail.

Marvin Cash00:15:05

Well, you know, it's funny too because I would say, you know, for folks that if you're listening and you are kind of you like the butcher shop stuff or you like the Predator fly stuff that Alice and I talk about. I was actually having this conversation with, with Brendan Roche yesterday. You know, you know, one of the ways, you know, it's a tire shop.First of all, you've seen the pictures I put up on Instagram of all the Whiting Ackle and that usually pulls the Predator fly guys out of the woodwork.But I would also say too, you know, they're just not very many retail stores that you can walk in and they're probably six to eight different brands of hooks hanging on pegs on the wall.

Ellis Ward00:15:41

That's such a good point, Marv. And it's one of the reasons why, I mean, I just got goosebumps when I say he's doing it right. It's not like, oh, he's supportive of me.He's supportive of everyone. I mean the num. The number of, not just the number of types of squirmy wormy material like the, the, the actual gel stuff, the, the chenille.I mean there's different brands, different colors. The hooks down to a size 22, 24. I think of this, this one little story, someone coming in and asking for a size 12 specific TMC.I forget the actual model. He didn't have it. He had in three days. And you know, Daiichi, all of the A Rex stuff that, that a lot of people like to tie.I like Daiichi and A Rex Gama Gatsu. I mean, yeah, it's that, that takes thought and it's also he's, he's a great tire.That takes someone who has the reps to understand that there's utility for all these different things and stylistically that people like different things.

Marvin Cash00:16:59

Yeah, 3x streamer hooks are not all created equal.

Ellis Ward00:17:04

That is true.

Marvin Cash00:17:04

Yeah. So enough about that. I will try to drop, remember to drop a link in the show notes.You know, classes at 8:30 on Saturday morning at the shop and then there's a meet and greet at the brewery next door in the afternoon. A great opportunity to pop by. Particularly if it's going to be rainy.Rainy but then also, Ellis, before I let you hop, you didn't even tell people how much you love to talk about fishing, how to get in touch and how to get on the boat.

Ellis Ward00:17:28

Yeah.If you can't sleep at night and you just want to listen to the sound of my voice, rationalize why I am, in fact, correct about things that I really don't know much about, you can reach me at 513-54-33-0019. And also do that to book your trips and get out because it's. It's been hot.

Marvin Cash00:17:50

Yeah. Well, there you go. Well, folks, as I always say, this time of year, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines, everybody.Tight line. Zealous.

Ellis Ward00:17:58

Appreciate it, Marv.