S8, Ep 64: Streamer Strategies: Ellis Ward's Late Day Fishing Tips for East Tennessee

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?

I'm good, Marv, how are you?

Yeah, just trying to stay out of trouble. It's been a little bit of water under the bridge since the last time we talked. What are you seeing on the water?

A lot of water under a number of different bridges. We've been getting really more. I should have, for the number of times I've said this, I should do a two minute search.We have been getting more rain in the last couple months than I think that I can recall in the last two years. And typically when this happens, we are seeing very consistent releases from the dams that expand beyond the.So on the watauga, they release 1 to 6pm five days a week. Saturday is 12 to 6, with some adjustments for some bigger water in between, and then no releases on Sunday.And so when we get this much rain, just using that as our baseline, that release oftentimes will look like 10am to 6pm or maybe noon to 9pm instead of just that one to six. That hasn't changed at all. And I mean, we've had like flash flooding.The main tributary of the Watauga has been so high that even when the Watauga, when the Wilbur Dam is not releasing, it feels like we're floating through generation because there's so much water coming in from the tributaries. But the lakes themselves aren't putting out more flow. Until maybe two weeks ago, the South Holston started releasing water pretty regularly.But this was really after I, I'm, I'm gonna say six to eight weeks of just really consistent, three, four, five days a week. We're getting, we're getting pretty good cells in the afternoon and evening. And then one or two of those are.You got streams running down parking lots type rain.So the reason behind this is that this, you know, a drought that really started not long after Helene came through, put so much pressure on the TVA system as a whole, the 32 dam reservoir, tailwater reservoir, dam system that everything upstream, both from a temporal sense of, you know, six, nine, 12 months ago, and then also the geological sense of all these little creeks and everything else. Anyone driving on the east coast will know this. Anyone fishing in the last two years knows this.It was just so dry and things were so low for so long that we're effectively just climbing out of that in the last week or two.And you know, they, they finally got the lakes up to their Summer pool levels, which the TVA had said they weren't going to do because you wouldn't think this much rain would come. So lakes all filled up and they started releasing more water on the South Holston, which has been great.Dry fly fishing has been, I would say inconsistent and a lot of that has to do with the South Holston releasing water somewhat inconsistently.And I, I like to fish a lot on the lower end of the Watauga and if we have the opportunity to fish muddy water, I'm going to take that over low clear water. And so we also tend to trade off good dry fly fishing. At that point you don't have as good of the, the rising pods and the muddier water.So it's, it's been, it has been an interesting and sometimes I just want some consistency.But then at the same time I'm talking through myself saying that's what makes, makes it hard, that's what makes it fun, that's what makes all of this worth doing.And you're just, I, I know the way that, the way that I fish, the way that I guide, I want to go out and try to make the best of whatever the best set of opportunity conditions might be as opposed to doing whatever's safest and, and, and inconsistent, which is a total gamble. But that, that's really been the, the amount of inconsistency and, and playing around with that and throwing night fishing in.And I've been doing a lot more mousing, really leveraging all of my knowledge sets and all of the experience for timing and flows and where to find water and what to do with this and that and how does this look compared to that? It's, it's been day to day, week to week doing a lot of different stuff and been having a blast and getting, getting a lot of good fish in the net.So I wish there were like an easy answer to, to that one. But, but you know there's size 18s coming off at 4pm but there's not. And that's the beauty of fish and tailwaters.

Yeah, it's interesting too.Cause you know folks, if you've listened like you've heard this from Matt Reilly as well, where he's basically said from Johnson City to Wytheville has been really getting hammered with pop up storms and it's, you know, he's been moving around trying to find clear water and it's the same game. And I guess, you know Ellis, the point you're trying to make is it's been kind of weirdly localized.And that's one of the reasons why you've got kind of these weird flow paradigms, right?

Yeah, you'll have the, the all. I'll use your, your flow paradigms, tho. Those are related partially to that and, and partially to the extent of the drought that we're coming out of.And so it's almost as though because we're not fishing freestones, we're somewhat insulated from the extent of these pop up storms.And you know, the, the way Matt's fish, the way Matt approaches fishing and the way I approach fishing, even though they might look different, you know, because we target different species and just have different programs on different rivers, they're as close to the same and in fact they might be the exact same.And so much of that has to do with just the thought process of, I don't know, the approach to fishing, the approach to guiding, the approach to tying and what we want to see out of the day, what we know the potential is.And when you're overlaying that on top of the all of all of those little opportunity bell curves that might exist here or there based on this and that, and you're getting these cells that will just ruin a river in an hour or two and then you want to talk about like, you know, are we hitting this prefrontal? Should we start earlier, should we start later? It might miss us. That's what happens. It misses us. And all that thought was for nothing.We might catch the front edge of it and get that super juicy prefrontal bite that lasts for 15 minutes. It might last two hours.And I mean the difference between all of that, it can feel pretty hyper localized because you better be in the right place at the right time.And so yeah, there's, there's really a lot to the decision making that goes on and, and where we're fishing, how we're fishing and it's all of, all of these little pop ups have made for an interesting thought process.

Very cool. And I've got a question for you. I won't even came in through Instagram.I won't even try to figure out, I couldn't figure out who the person's, what their real name was or anything close to it. So I'll just say listener question. And it's a, it's, it's a late in the day streamer question.And the person that dialed in wanted to know kind of your thoughts on streamer patterns, color and size late in the day.

Sure. I'm going to take this as I'm going to rephrase the question. What type of streamer should I be fishing in low light conditions?And I. I want to be very clear about what low light conditions are.This is both when the sun is covered by clouds and when the sun has a low angle in the sky or is hidden by something on the bank as it's setting or rising.So when you have a reduction of light entering the system, it is also something to consider that the same conditions exist to the fish when the water is off color.So regardless of whether the light is coming in, I want people to think about how is it interacting with stuff with our fly with the fish's eyes, how is it interacting with stuff in the water? And if you were fishing in oil, right. That would be the pressure test. It wouldn't matter because there's no visibility.Light can't penetrate through it. Maybe tar, whatever. Something completely opaque versus fishing in gin clear water with a high sun. Still sort of. It's different.What we see looking above on top of the fly that we're fishing is different than what a fish sees below looking up. And it's not just because we're looking at different parts of the fly.They're looking up into a backlit screen with something blocking light moving above them. We're looking down with whatever we're fishing, reflecting the light off of the sun back into our eyes. They are wildly different circumstances.And I'm baiting the audience here because I want to impress upon everyone that the color of a fly has absolutely nothing to do with its ability to block light or present a profile said a different way. Black versus white, they look the same when you're underneath, when you're looking up and there is a and. And the object is backlit.So if you hold up whatever in front of the sun and you look at it, you're not seeing color. You can't differentiate between anything, let alone between olive and purple or wet. Wet olive, that's pretty darn dark.You can't discern between that.If you, if you hold up a sparsely tied bucktail fly versus a craft fur changer, same size, you hold them up in front of the sun, you're going to damage your retinas.If you look at the sparsely tied bucktail fly and the craft fur will, I mean, especially if you get it wet and condense it, it's probably going to block 100% of the light and they're going to look the same color. They're going to look kind of dark. So that. That's a very. I have, I think about this all the time.I haven't been recording as many videos as I have in the past. I just want that as the. Probably most of the answer, but the pretext to the answer of what I'm going to do in that scenario is fish.Something that both I can see a little better and presents a profile. So that's going to be two things. One is opaque. That can be packed deer hair, that can be craft fur, that can be densely tied.Whatever it is, Feathers. Eh, you gotta, you gotta jam a lot on when you're, when you're trying to get something that fully blocks light with feathers.So the next one is gonna be water column. As it's, as it sits higher in the water column, the amount of light hitting it relative to the amount of light underneath it.I want that difference to be maxed out. And so this is something that, not going to say I stumbled into.But you try this, you try that, you see this, you see that fish and muddy water higher in the water column, bigger. I don't care about color. Kind of I do white, yellow, tan, something that we can see some with flash. It doesn't matter to the fish.The, the fish underneath just needs the profile they need to target. And so when you're fishing higher in the water column, it's easier for them to see. And for anyone listening to this that has had the.Oh my gosh, I was just pulling my fly out and there was a fish.Well yeah, you entice the fish and it didn't want to eat because it didn't have the shot that it wanted until you lifted your fly up out of the dredging that you were just doing and you got it right to the surface of the water and that's where they want it to be. They know they're their prey, can't fly and so they get up under it and that's the kill shot. It can't get. It can't escape.You know, fishing fish in salt water, you see snook popping minnows and it's not because there's a bait ball on the surface. They, they, they corral them. Stripers do it in reservoirs. Trout do the same thing. They're predators. So yeah, they eat different ways.But low light conditions, muddy, sun's dropping, cloudy as much as possible. I'm going high in the water column and it doesn't have to be big, but something that is, something that is opaque. So. We can just erase all of that and say a four inch drunk and disorderly. Is going to be my go to.

There you go. Well, folks, 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, we'll enter a drawing for something cool at the end of the season from Ellis and I'll shoot you some articulate flying butcher shop stickers.And Ellis, before I let you hop, as we kind of march into this transition season, you want to let folks know kind of the program availability and how to get in touch.

Yeah, we got mousing. We got, I mean, streamer fish and muskies just around the corner and bucktails just around the corner, too.So all this can be found on my website at elliswardflies.com I'm on Instagram @elliswardguides and my cell phone is probably the best place to reach me for booking a trip. And that is 513-543-0019.

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

Appreciate it, Marv.