S8, Ep 50: Navigating Summer Waters: Ellis Ward on Trout, Musky and the Art of the Evening Bite

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?

I am feeling good, Marv. How are you?

Just trying to stay out of trouble and stay cool. And I tell you, you know, if people are chasing trout, you have pretty much the only program probably in the mid Atlantic on the tailwaterfront.Right? Yeah.

That reminds me of the, the alerts that we would get when I was living in D.C. fishing up in the Shenandoah. You, you would get, you know, the, the no go zones for going out and chasing brookies. So we do not have to deal with that.And in fact, this week it was had a guy reaching out about maybe muskie, maybe trout, and he goes out with the heat. Muskie's probably the call.And I just thought, how interesting, because everyone else in this area in the south and definitely, you know, fly anglers, that the culture is relatively unaware of the fact that in the summer, it doesn't matter how hot it is here. Our tailwaters are cold enough to kill you if you fall in and stay in for long enough. And musky waters stay in the low 70s, even on the hottest days.So it's a fun problem to have when confronted with that knowledge set because I get to say, well, we can fish for muskie, we can fish for trout, we can do it with a dry fly rod, we can do it with streamers, we can throw a bait caster for muskie, we can fish for striper with a spin rod. Um, we can start at 7am or 7pm what do you want to do? So, yeah, it's.The tailwaters can be hard, and there's pros and cons to everything, of course, but their ceiling is very high and it affords the opportunity to, to go out and catch fish, period in the coldest and hottest days of the year. And certainly nice to beat the heat with some later fishing and night fishing this time of year.

Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute because it sounds like you've kind of got the whole dry fly streamer evening game kind of dialed in. But, you know, from what I've been watching, you know you're having an unusually good sulfur hatch this year. And the streamer bite.I mean, I've been watching your videos and others. I mean, people have been crushing fish on streamers. Right?

Yeah, I, I do know that just on a day to day basis, it's. We've had some pretty significant bite windows and some of it's section to section some of its time of day.If you're fishing one section of river, I always like to remind people that if we went back and fished that section of river again in four hours, their interpretation, their perspective, their understanding of whatever that section of river was, is going to be, it could be night and day, it could be the exact same.And so a lot of that is still, you know, the, the musky fishing and the mousing mentality of continue to do the right thing and the right things are going to happen. It's a little harder with streamers because we get the dry flies. We, you know, we, we can see trout, um, expectations play a role as well.You know, if we're not moving fish in the first hour and then if we're not boating fish and then maybe the first few we vote aren't big or, you know, all those start to play into it because people's experience and what their understanding of what a bite should be or what streamer fishing should look like is.I'm, I'm with them, I'm with everyone who thinks that 14 to 18 inch brown trout should be slamming into a streamer that's three inches under the surface of the water. All the time that's what it should be, but most of the time it's not.And just keeping your head in the right space the whole time continues to pay off, but it's, I've had some great anglers, one person and two person trips where we're going two, three hours, we're to going, going big stretches which this time of year, often times it's sort of depending on how we fish, but we're, we're seeing more action with smaller fish. I'm going to take what, what we've been seeing and I cater it a little more to targeting fewer and bigger fish.I'm going to take that over the numbers days. But it has, it has felt a little more post spawn in the sense that we're getting high degrees of commitment.And when I say that Those are some $5 words there, I'm talking about a trout that's like between 20 and 25 inches.So a big fish eating your streamer so hard that you can't screw it up, you can screw up landing it and there's a few different ways you can do that, but the hook set and you know what's, what's happening is that like that, that high degree of commitment is most of the time lower light, cloudier water and fishing a little Closer to the surface, giving big pill big kills. All that stuff that I talk about. But, but all that stuff has been great. And you know, the.The other side of it is the, the fours and the five weights. And yeah, dry fly activity has been pretty stellar. We've been getting the last week or two. It. It's a lit. It's better in low water.So we've been getting. It depends on what's happened with the tributaries at this point.They have gone up and come down and gone up so many times that things are kind of stabilizing. And it's high water or low water. We're. It's super buggy and fish are coming up and eating.And I, I talk about the tributaries with respect to dry flies because when we get runoff and when we get bigger flows from the tailwaters that sort of push up into those tributary mouths and bring in some of that runoff that's settled from recent flooding. The drop in clarity, or you could look at it as an increase in turbidity.The more stuff that's in the water, you tend to see that there's fewer bugs coming up. And so it's. Bugs are just like the, you know, they're just like fish. They don't want to come up when it's.You're not going to see as many when it's crystal clear and so just a little bit of color. That's why you see them in lower light. It's, you know, But. But they also want to come up and understand that they can get dried. And so there's.There's fun little dry fly windows where sometimes you get six or seven things. But it's windy, you get a little breeze, maybe there's a storm coming and you think that it should be good, but it's just not.And that's because I'm pretty sure they know that it's going to rain.So again, I'm just giving some of these examples because it's like you can see videos and say that dry fly fishing has been awesome and streamer fishing has been fantastic. And then at the same time, you come out here and it's like, here's what the set of conditions are today.And I love guiding the way I guide and I love fishing people the way that most people like to be fished and most people like to fish themselves because you really, until you're an hour in, you don't know what the day has. And then a few hours later, it's got something else for you. And it's just yeah, being.Being armed with things from a 4 to an 8 weight and, you know, your different lines and different fishing styles is just, it's very important.

Yeah, it's interesting, right. We've talked about the mental game before and kind of having that musky mindset. Right.In terms of being prepared for, you know, not 50 fish, because if you wanted 50 fish, you could go get the periwinkle oros and float the river. Right. But.But the other thing too, that's kind of interesting, you know, for people that like to dry fly fish and like to streamer fish, you've really kind of dialed in the evening game. And we were talking before we started recording.You know, the great thing is, you know, most kind of like lodge outfitter trips, and this isn't just in your part of the world, this is kind of universally, you know, people are off the water by 4 because they need to get back to wherever they're staying for cocktails and all that other stuff, which is great.But if you really want, you know, when you, you know, like, I can't even tell you the number of times I've been in Montana and you're coming off and like the heads are all over the place popping up and you really kind of are maximizing that window where that, that evening hatch activity is there and that transitions into the mousing in the night. And so you kind of get the best of all possible worlds. But also too, you don't have a lot of people on the water competing with you.

Yeah. And we're not in low water.And so I've been thinking about this a lot for the last six years, and there are, I, I've said there are pros and cons with everything so many times, but I think it's important for each one of these different dynamics to acknowledge that, you know, for example, the, the guys getting off the water, like the anglers, the clients getting off the water at 4 and going back to the lodge, it could very much be the case that they would not have any amount of fun in my boat. I strongly disagree with that idea. I think that you would have a great time, but it's just, it is different.And you know, starting at, starting at 4, 5, 6pm and, and getting off the water at somewhere between midnight and two or later. You know, I'm not going to say occasionally because it's a little more often than occasionally. Dude, it's hard. It's hard on your body. Like, I'm 38.I, I want to say that I'm young but I'm 38, I have three kids. It's being a good dad is really important to me. And I also have to tie flies and like I need a new seat for my boat so bad.So all of these other things, when you're like, yes, it's, you can say, well, you know, you know you're not starting until 4, 6pm that's not true. My day starts at 6:30. It doesn't matter when I get home.Um, I, I'm good at finding times to, to catch up on sleep if I need to, but it's, it's, it's hard.I mean that requires support from my girlfriend and you know, all of that stuff makes this, what I'm doing, a difficult copy and paste form of business.And so as an outfitter or as a lodge, when you are managing 10, 15, 20 guides, it's hard enough to do that and run an 8 to 4 and have everyone there on time and you know, make sure that everyone's this, that and the other. It's, I mean that's a business with a lot of employees.So to be able to, you know, offer the flexibility that I offer as the, the standalone business is just, that would be such a nightmare. And I'm trying to give credit where it's due because I know that grind is just different than my grind.But yeah, I think for the people who my stuff is for, it's like unmistakably and very much for them. And it's exactly for the reasons that you mentioned.We're putting on when we're seeing the heads come up and, and then we're, you know, we're catching big water and all summer, every day but Sunday we are fishing big water, going through shoots, hitting pockets in fast water, you know, fishing frog water, two handing changers, two handing Clousers and Kreelex if it's sunnier and clearer.And then seeing risers coming up and targeting those with 18s and 20s, throwing droppers off of those if they're coming up real subtly and then switching to the mousing game, it's just, it's so much fun and we have, you know, we have three or four months of it but like come September, come October, November, you know, we're not doing this.And so thankfully I have a number of clients who are, you know, they're coming to, to fish with me throughout the year and so they're getting a little taste of everything.But for folks really wanting to, to do this and maybe they're only doing it once a year, I I would so heavily encourage folks to be getting here sometime in the July, August timeframe. So we can, we can fish big water mouse a little bit, whatever. And we always make it happen throughout the year. But this is just it.It's pretty special to be able to fish streamers, fish dry flies, mouse, have shot striper, really show off everything the tailwaters have to offer.

Yeah, it's really a season within a season. So if folks want to get in touch and get on the boat, how should they do that?

Best way to do that is my Cell phone at 513-543-0019. You can get some more information.And I'd say Instagram, I'm on there as @EllisWardguides, is a little more up to date as I sit here looking at my computer screen, doing some site work. But website, you can get more information, rates, location, whatever that is. Elliswardflies dot com.

There you go. And I'd say a couple things, folks.You know, if you have a question for Ellis DM or email me and if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag and some butcher shop swag and you're drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season. And we love questions.And the other thing I would say too is if you like the podcast and if you like the fishing report, you know, please subscribe, tell a friend, leave us a rating and review because all that stuff, and particularly in the age of AI, is super important. And I would say too, you know, you gotta fish. So I would encourage you guys to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines.Ellis.

Appreciate it, Marv.