S7, Ep 95: Navigating the Bite: Ellis Ward's Guide to Catching Big Browns

EPISODE SUMMARY

Guest: Ellis Ward - Full-time Fishing Guide at Ellis Ward Guides (East Tennessee)

In this episode: East Tennessee guide Ellis Ward shares streamer fishing strategies and troubleshooting techniques for South Holston River anglers. Topics include pre-spawn brown trout patterns, shad kill opportunities, line management techniques and post-spawn fishing tactics.

Key fishing techniques covered:

• Tight line contact for streamer presentations
• Pop-pop-kill retrieve patterns with strategic pauses
• Structure fishing under cover from aerial predators
• Two-handed streamer presentations
• Jigging and dead-stop retrieve variations

Location focus: East Tennessee tailwaters (South Holston River, Watauga River), Boone Lake

Target species: Brown trout (pre-spawn and post-spawn patterns)

Equipment discussed: Rio Outbound Short fly lines, streamers (various sizes from 3/4 inch to 10 inch), mouse patterns, bucktail materials, leader configurations

Key questions answered:

• Why are brown trout following but not eating streamers
• How to achieve proper line contact for streamer fishing
• When to fish South Holston for trophy browns
• What retrieve techniques trigger brown trout strikes
• How to troubleshoot streamer refusals

Best for: Intermediate to advanced anglers interested in tailwater streamer fishing techniques, brown trout behavior patterns and East Tennessee trophy trout strategies

Marvin Cash00:00:04

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. We're back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with the man himself, Ellis Ward. Ellis, how are you?

Ellis Ward00:00:12

I am doing well, Marv. How are you?

Marvin Cash00:00:15

Just trying to stay out of trouble. You've been telling me that fishing in your neck of the woods has been on fire, as they like to say in the business.

Ellis Ward00:00:23

Yeah, it was.For the last two or three weeks, we've had a nice little cocktail of things, including some really fishy conditions atmospherically, which I separate from fishy conditions. Otherwise, just, you know, the days with cloud cover and good barometer and all that. So those are always going to give us that extra little leg up.And then what's the water doing? Is it. Are we getting juice? Is it this? Is it that. Has everyone had coffee? All those things come into play. And so it's been.It's been a cool combination of some regular clients, some, I'll say semi regular, and then a couple new folks who've, you know, found me to. To do what we do out here.

Marvin Cash00:01:28

And.

Ellis Ward00:01:32

You know, be it learning how to stream or fish or. I do a lot of dry fly fishing too, you know, learning about these rivers, whatever, or just step on the boat and. And let's go. It's. We.We've had good opportunities and yeah, you know, what that looks like is a shad kill on the South Holston, which is indicative of dissolved oxygen. And we. We got way more than one episode of a podcast to talk about more details around that.But between that and pre spawn and the fishy conditions, and an interesting blow that has been consistent on the South Holston that is much higher than low, but not all the way high. We just. We've been able to move a bunch of big fish and get a bunch in the boat. So it's been. It's been fun because, you know, those.Those days or periods of time happen. But so did the other. The other side of that coin exists and can be loud sometimes. So it's been nice.

Marvin Cash00:02:47

Yeah, it's kind of sweet after you've been like, grinding it out in August and early September in the 90s and, you know, trying to buy fish. Right?

Ellis Ward00:02:55

Yeah. Yeah. There's. Between low water and Mason's been great this fall. And I've had a bunch of new.New mouse clients, but, you know, new clients that turn into people that want to come mouse just because I like to throw it on. Especially if we don't have great conditions or big flows for streamer fishing to constitute our eight hours.I'll just add on the option to, you know, sunset around 7 or 8, let's stay out till 9 or 10. And so all it, it can, those days can be hard. And then, you know, we Mouse for two or three hours.And even if you're getting 15 eats or one and you don't connect, that can be frustrating. But there, yeah, it's, it was, it was buying eats and then it was. And I felt like, all right, let's, let's have one of these connect.And then fast forward to last week. And yeah, there was on, there was a period, there was a little window where I was just kind of taking a moment to be like this.I had one of these a year ago. It was really cool to have my very regular client, super fishy dude, an incredibly hard worker hunter on my boat.And he, he went four for five in a 30 minute stretch with one being just over 26, another two over 20 and you know, a quote unquote smaller one, which is probably 18. And, and then the one he lost is, was gonna rival that 26 and change.And it's like he, he has gathered what that is, but you don't get those all the time. And, and it really is that.It's the flow, it's the conditions, it's the angling, it's where we are, it's, it's me, it, it's where I'm putting the boat and where we are at a specific time. Yeah, it's time of year. Like all that stuff does come together and you get these, you get these really special windows or days, sometimes weeks.But then, you know, by the time yesterday hit, it was like, all right, I'm glad that busy stretch is over because the shad were, the shad kill was over. That dissolved oxygen is, it's, it's kind of in, you know, lake turnover, doing not great things for, for bug life, for fish life, for everything.And that, that probably lasts for another week or so. So you, you really cherish those little moments.

Marvin Cash00:06:07

Yeah, it's always funny when you have days like that and it's like you don't even like take a picture or tape out an 18 inch fish. Right?

Ellis Ward00:06:15

That I was, yes, that's exactly right. I was joking that as we're releasing one that I forgot to measure, it's like that was the fish.I mean, I mean the day he was going, he went four for five in that window. It was, I don't know, we probably had a dozen or so. And you're not even counting. It's just like, oh, that wasn't a two footer.And, and so many days fishing these tail waters every day.I mean it's, it, you just, you start to lose sight of it when you, when you get these windows where the dogs are coming out and, and things, you know, the big fish are eating and you're, you're connecting and you're not just moving them and you're actually getting measurements. And when 18, it doesn't feel big.It's, that's really cool because most of the time like an 18 inch brown trout smashing a streamer is a very special thing that happens to very few people. So this is, you know, lightning does strike. It, it strikes pretty frequently actually.It's just being out there and working hard, receiving absolutely no feedback the whole time, but having faith in the process and, and knowing that it will happen. So it's, it's, it's also cool. Not gonna lie, seeing, seeing good people get rewarded for their hard work.Because Marv, you know just as well as anyone, it doesn't matter if I like you. It doesn't matter if you've been a good boy recently. Sometimes you just have bad days of fishing. So. Nice having good days.

Marvin Cash00:08:02

Yeah, There you go. And got a question from Carsten in Northern California. And Carson, I apologize for not getting this on earlier.It got kind of just lost in the shuffle. Some tech issues on my end. I apologize.The 30,000 foot view of the question is Carson's been putting his time in, you know, I mean when I say putting time in like hundreds of days, having a hard time getting fish to eat on the streamer, you know, he's getting refusals, you know, has been fishing with guides, fishing fishy water and he's just not, he's not connecting and he wanted us to really not us. He wanted you to share your thoughts on what he might tweak to, to have a better day out there in hook one.

Ellis Ward00:08:45

Yeah, you sent me the, the detail question, so I'll, I'll address a couple points here. So I, I think trying to, trying to summarize some of that detail and, and answer for, for others who might be having some similar struggles.Carson, it sounds like you've been changing up everything and flies retrieve two handing, regular stripping, jerk stripping, jigging, and you've been getting a lot of follows and fishing unpressured water. I, I had, I, I think Carson had sent me a message on Instagram maybe a year or so ago and, and I remember kind of scratching my head on this one.And I, I think the number one thing you can do is like I just talked about it, right?You get these windows, but if you're getting browns to follow and it just happened yesterday or two days ago, you know, on the, on the heels of trout, big trout mashing flies, one one cast good spots, you know, good angling, good casting, good stripping and retrieving and all that, we're, we're getting big fish just, just slowly, just musky following. They're just right behind the fly kind of sniffing it and then just not spooking, just kind of turning off. That to me is a, a bite specific thing.That's a bite window. That's a fish behavior pattern.In those scenarios where we are getting fish and this happened two days ago, where that same lazy following is happening, that, that's in a specific type of water, the nice fish that we pulled out. And so it wasn't just you were picking up a dink here or there and the big ones aren't eating, that doesn't happen.There is interest, there is activity. There's just. They don't have that. They're in a mood.And so that we, we ended up getting a couple nice ones and you know, one, one being over 20 out of the little pockets in fast water. And that's more of the. You're, you're giving them zero opportunity to think about it.So regardless of their mood, you just, you, you sort of change up your, your fishing style. And so that, that's just a, that's one example and there are so many examples.You know, Carson's talked about the leader changing and, and doing all this other stuff. One of the biggest things that allows you to catch fish is.This is going to sound like redundant as I'm saying it, but is allowing the brown trout to eat your fly. And it doesn't really matter what fly you're fishing.If you're casting with your line not tight when it lands, if you're jerk stripping trigger warning. If you're shooting line on your cast, your, your line when you strip is not going to be in direct contact with your fly.It might feel like it, it might sort of look like it. But for every inch of strip, direct contact mean means that your fly is moving one 1.0 inches. Not a perfect world. Maybe sometimes that's 0.8 or 0.9.If you cast a bow downstream, if you're not moving your rod tip and you're allowing your line to get swept while you're stripping, if you're Shooting. If you're jerk stripping, all of these things take away from that ratio.And what it does is it's, it stops the jerk stripping is a different issue, but it, it stops the ability for your fly to actually die. And it's, it's. It's 99.999% that the Browns eat on that kill. And if it's a kill on a drunk, that means it's kind of swimming left or right.If it's a kill on a peanut envy, it just, it's a little bit of a jig. If you're two handing it did. They'll track behind that thing and wait for it to just wobble off one time and eat it sideways.You have to give some sort of change up in that retrieve. And sometimes it's just a dead stop for a full second and let them eat the thing.If you're getting a lot of follows and not getting, you know, there's also go way up or go way down. So fish a little, you know, three quarter inch size six jig fly with just marabou on it. Fish, fish a 10 inch musky fly.Like if you're getting that activity 100%, they, they're activated. They're going to eat. You have to figure out what it is that they're going to eat. And there's only so many configurations that we have with flies.I, I can assure you that while I haven't tried all of them, I've tried enough to say that it's, it's within our grasp to get one to eat if you're seeing that many. And so I, I guess to reiterate the highlights here, man, making sure that thing is in really, really tight.They're going to eat more comfortably when they're in a place where ospreys cannot get, where herons cannot get. And you know, whether, whether or not the water's pressured has very little to do with whether or not the fish are spooky.Those browns, I mean you go over the South Holston right now and there might not be a boat on the water. It doesn't mean that the browns are happy today. It's sunny and high pressure. Birds are going to be flying around. They don't get breaks.They don't get breaks from things trying to kill them. And so us thinking that pressure does something to fish behavior. It might during the day seen 30 boats go by.But pretty entitled for us to say that we're putting fish down. When you just look on the banks and there's. There's all these predators out trying to kill them 100% of their life morning, noon and night.So getting things real tight under bushes, sidearming stuff and then just these little, I say pop, pop, kill, just these little strips, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. With pauses in between that allow the fly to either, you know, float sideways, come back up a little bit or, or die and drop down.If you're fishing something weighted and in changing up what that kill looks like and trying to keep things, keep all of that process happening near structure, near the bank as opposed to doing that when you're out close to the boat, I think that's going to have way more of an impact than, for example, lengthening your leader or, you know, trying, trying to downsize your leader or, or something like that or changing flies.It's just where you're putting it and how you're moving it is that I would, in my experience, which is a wild number of casts both personally and seen from others, I think that changing up, how long you're pausing it, where you're putting it's going to connect some dots for you.

Marvin Cash00:17:10

Well, there you go. Well, Carson, I hope that helps. And I apologize again for the delay getting an answer to you.If that doesn't help, reach back out and we'll keep tinkering. And you know folks, we love questions on the articulate fly. You can email me or DM me on social media, whatever is easiest for you.And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag and you're drawing for something cool from Ellis at the end of the season. And Ellis, before I let you go, you want to let folks know how to reach out to get on the boat.Maybe buy some bucktail because I'm sure, you know, gun season is in full swing now in your neck of the woods. All that kind of good stuff.

Ellis Ward00:17:45

Yeah, website is ellisward flies.com you can get bucktail, couple flies, some other fun stuff there. See some more information about trips.I'm on Instagram @LS Ward Guides and you can reach out directly, text call with questions, book a trip, whatever it may be really looking at post spawn right now.

Marvin Cash00:18:12

So.

Ellis Ward00:18:15

I already have some, some chunks of time filling up for January and February. Big, big screamer fishing for browns that are done not eating and moving back through the river system. One of my favorite times a year.Again, that's January, February. You can do all of that by reaching out directly to me at 513-543-0019.

Marvin Cash00:18:46

Well, there you go. Well, folks, as always. Say, you owe it yourself to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.

Ellis Ward00:18:53

Appreciate it, Marv.