S7, Ep 78: Casting into Autumn: Tips and Tricks for Fall Fishing in East Tennessee

EPISODE SUMMARY

Guest: Ellis Ward - Full-time fishing guide in East Tennessee, based out of Johnson City

In this episode: East Tennessee guide Ellis Ward shares fall transition strategies and advanced floating line techniques for technical trout fishing. Topics include pumpkin spice latte weather patterns, shoulder season advantages, floating line physics at distance and hook setting geometry for success.

Key fishing techniques covered: • Dry flies trailing size 20 droppers • Upstream lift and drop line control technique • Downstream hook setting for better connection rates • Mousing and musky targeting during fall transition • Vector pull line recovery method

Location focus: East Tennessee - Watauga River, South Holston River

Target species: Trout (fall patterns), musky, brown trout

Equipment discussed: Floating lines, 16-22 size flies, indicators, streamers, October caddis patterns, bucktail flies

Key questions answered: • How to set hooks effectively when fishing floating lines at distance • What techniques work for fall transition fishing • When shoulder seasons provide better fishing opportunities • How to control line drift for technical presentations

Best for: Intermediate to advanced anglers interested in East Tennessee fall fishing conditions, floating line mastery and technical hook setting techniques

Marvin Cash00:00:04

It's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. And we're back with another East Tennessee fishing report with the man himself, Ellis Ward. Ellis, how are you?

Ellis Ward00:00:12

Oh, feeling like the man himself. How are you?

Marvin Cash00:00:16

You know me, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know, we've been kind of lucky.We had a little bit of a warm up here in the mid Atlantic over the weekend, but we've kind of knocking on wood like we're getting really close to pumpkin spice latte weather. It's kind of cool and dry, really sunny, not a lot of rain. What are you seeing on the water?

Ellis Ward00:00:34

I mean, out outside of my own PSLs. That's. That's an acronym for pumpkin spice latte. For the uninitiated, it's. We're going. We're. We're fully into.It's kind of felt this way for a little bit even when it was hot, which just feels like bad fishing. But into the. The fall patterns of smaller bugs, you. You'll. You'll hear and see some of the caddis.I think that I and many others want there to be a more prominent October caddis hatch than. Than there ever really is. But, you know, but then those are 16s, 18s so bugs are in the 16 to 22.But this is the time of year where I really start trailing most dry flies with a 20 where that, that initial. That front dry fly is almost the one that you're. You're able to see in the back. One's real sparse and real small and flows are.We're off the recreational, you know, one to six guaranteed releases on the Watauga. So the Wataga has been low. South Holston's been generating pretty reliably and I'm as I have in the last few years pushing more for mousing and.And muskie. And that's mainly because I get, you know, we.There's a good number of folks who are coming somewhat consistently for streamer fishing and I'm sure we'll have that again this year.And I'm just kind of trying to push for continuing to expand horizons and get the guys who have done the streamer fishing thing and have them experience other parts of this area and fly fishing and mouse and muskie are both good, good ways to do that. It's nice though. It's nice being out not even terribly early and it's still chilly.So the feels of pumpkin spice lattes and little bit in the back of my head thinking this happens every year.What am I thinking with guiding for Muskie and you know, I got some dates on the books for postponed browns in January and February and just those, those long 40 degree days. But every year that you just, you acclimate. So it feels chilling now.But you know, this is, this is a cool time of year that I think shoulder seasons get a bad rap and it's just stuff changes. But you get out and spend enough time doing it, you're. It's, it's just as predictable as the rest.

Marvin Cash00:03:53

Yeah. And you know, gun season will be here before you know it and you'll be have. You'll have garbage bags of bucktails to process.

Ellis Ward00:03:58

Right. Yes. Uh, that, that is a different sick conversation for a different day.But I have already been making calls and, and organizing some things to expand operations this year and I'm excited about that. So that, that process started for me in August and it was I think last year maybe this time late September, early October.I'm just thinking, okay, right around the corner. And this year we're, we're shifting up and I still have a bunch that are going to be going into shops. I know tying seasons.Just say it, it takes a back seat for at least for the bucktail stuff for July, August. But we are back in it and I'm excited for it.

Marvin Cash00:05:08

Yeah. Have you found a domestic borax source so you can minimize the tariff hit?

Ellis Ward00:05:14

That's a great question.No, I was planning on talking with the guy down at the boat ramp who's always there around like one or two in the morning and I feel like he could probably get me something that'll work.

Marvin Cash00:05:33

There you go. We'll leave that one there. Random people that you meet in the wee hours of the morning mousing in East Tennessee at boat ramps.

Ellis Ward00:05:40

But we do have, they have a borax hookup. I guarantee it.

Marvin Cash00:05:45

I'm sure they do. I bet you they can hook you up for a bunch of other stuff too.

Ellis Ward00:05:48

That's right.

Marvin Cash00:05:50

I got a question for you from Austin.And he to wants wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, tips for fishing floating lines and in particular probably, you know, fishing them at distance. Right. Which creates a, you know, one, there's accuracy and then there's like what on earth do you do when you need to set the hook?

Ellis Ward00:06:05

Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's. There's a couple things that you just have to accept about that.And one of them is that if your angle is, is not right, such that when you set the hook you are either coming slightly to the side of Downstream or you are coming downstream. It's, it's tough. Especially if you're fishing under an indicator.It is really hard when things are picky because normally if you're fishing like that, it means things are getting picky. It's, it's hard to keep fish penned if you don't get that downstream set.And I, I know that a lot of the times when you and I talk, especially if I am all of a sudden talking about sinking line and elliptical back casts in a streamer cast versus X, Y and Z, it's just, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So, so this is kind of going to Fly Fishing 101.Most of the time when you're fishing current, you are, you are fishing to a fish who is facing upstream and they eat looking forward or up.And when that happens and you are upstream of them and set with your rod coming backwards or to the side in an upstream direction, you're pulling in the direction of the mouth opening as opposed to, it's eating upstream and you're maybe casting from the side and you're able to then set downstream. You're putting it either into their cheek or into the top of their jaw.When you're fishing at a distance like that, that's just so much more important because everything becomes muted, everything becomes elongated. That set time, that little you see the bioreactive tick down, tick, snap, you give it that set.That snap is muted by the fly line and it's muted by your rod tip. It's muted by the stretchiness of your fly line. It's muted by all of the S's that you have artfully put into your fly line to get a drag free drift.And if, if all of that combination ends with a set that not only is coming somewhat upstream and that's, you know, angle of approach, but is also coming lateral so in the direction of the surface of the water versus coming up which would be, you know, into the fish's top jaw. You're, you're just, you continue to set things up for failure and a way to get around some of this stuff.And, and I know I'm, I'm creating a, an image and a problem set here that might be tough to comprehend.But a way to get around this problem is that instead of when you cast, say you're fishing out to your right, you cast, you throw some men's in, your water is moving right to left, it's pulling some, some of your line down, you're throwing more men's in all Of a sudden, when you set, and even if you set to the left there, there's been so much movement in your line that you have to set through like six or seven feet, maybe more just of those little S's that you've thrown in until you actually get real tension on that fly. And one thing I like to do with both nymphing and dry flies is after you get that cast out up to the right, lift hard and fast up upstream.So you're not just lifting your rod tip up, you are moving it upstream and you're lifting it up.And that allows you to, after you get it all the way up, you drop it and you let it drop as your line moves downstream and you're able to get a really, really controlled dead drift and position yourself as you're dropping, you're always positioned to, to get that hook set downstream. This was a somewhat specific question, and I think a lot of people who are in that situation might understand what I'm saying.But I, I really would encourage people to, if, if they're, if they can't quite envision what I'm, I'm talking about, reach out to me.I have so many videos on this where I'm not necessarily giving the instruction, but the, the cast out, let it land, lift all the way up and then drop down with the current instead of cast all the way out and then throw a giant, somewhat uncontrolled mend in that big lift up. You know, it skates the fly.You can, in a really controlled way, position your, your indicator or nymph, rig, whatever it is, and then you can get a really controlled drift downstream. So it is very helpful and I would encourage folks to reach out if what I'm saying sort of makes sense. Doesn't make sense at all, or it does.And they still have questions.

Marvin Cash00:12:27

Yeah. And you also too, I would say, you know, like, one of the things I talk with Mac Brown is he's got a technique he calls the vector pole, right?Which is a way not to pre, pre position the line, but when you need to recover a lot of line quickly, that allows you, when you kind of do the lift, to basically the way you kind of pull back, you're pulling back kind of 2x the line, right. So, you know, however long your arm is, you're actually getting, you know, a line leg on the ride side and then away from you as well.So you can recover like 5 or 6ft of line to get all those S's out. If you haven't been able to set it up kind of the way you talked about.

Ellis Ward00:13:02

Yeah, I. I think one of the. I'll. I'll do it. Not that it makes any sense at all, but I'll do a light plug for my ETSU fly fishing course.One of the, the parts that I, I try to impress upon everyone because we're just, you know, we cast in the lawn for a little while. It's. It's really just. We're focused on how to cast different rods from a 5 weight to a 12 weight.And then we go out and fish however the students want to fish. And I think the most important thing is, like, nothing that we do is going to translate. Nothing that we do in practice is going to translate on.On the water because things are moving. You're getting, you know, there's. There's a tree there, there's wind, blah, blah.So learning those things from Mac doing, you know, learning all these little things to. I'll call it play your slice like you want. You want to do as best as you can, but it's just, you're not going to every time.So there's a lot of little tricks like that that are really valuable to understand because just takes a junk cast and turns it into something that's actually really good and you have control over versus the just guessing. Yeah.

Marvin Cash00:14:28

And I'll raise you a plug. The best way to learn this, right. Is to get in the boat.

Ellis Ward00:14:33

Wow.

Marvin Cash00:14:33

See, I raised you a plug. So we'll go from class plug to guideboat plug and we'll leave.We won't even remind people that they need to send in questions to get swag and cool stuff in a drawing. So, you know, why don't you. We were talking before we started recording.You know, you're in the transition season, so you've got kind of ideal mousing conditions. You can transition to muskie fishing. You know, if you want to. Really want to get out there and be super proactive on the plan front.You got post spawn, January, February, streamer fishing. Why don't you let folks know kind of what you have available, how to reach out and all that good stuff.

Ellis Ward00:15:07

Yeah. Very happy and very proud to say that a lot of, um, a lot of chunks are getting booked up through September and October.There are still some good days left. November, December. I'm. I push almost everything to muskie at that point. Trout's still viable.It's just they start acting funky because they're doing their business and we're not fishing over reds. So it's, it's not a a total deal breaker. But I like muskie fishing and I want to do it with people. So best way to reach out and get your dates.Ask about what days are available. Should we be stringer fishing for trout? Should we be catching a bunch of muskies?Is my Cell phone at 513-543-0019 and website information pictures all that bucktail flies, a couple Muskie Lures is ellisward flies.com and I am on Instagram at Ellis Ward Guides.

Marvin Cash00:16:31

Well, there you go. Well folks, as always, say yo to yourself to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines everybody. Tight lines.

Ellis Ward00:16:37

Ellis Appreciate it Marv.