Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 52: Tailwater Tactics: Ellis Ward on Navigating Sulphur Hatches and Stained Waters

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S6, Ep 52: Tailwater Tactics: Ellis Ward on Navigating Sulphur Hatches and Stained Waters · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
• 0:06
  Marvin: and we're back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward. How are you, Ellis?
• 0:12
  Ellis: I'm doing well, Marv. How are you?
• 0:13
  Marvin: As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble and been watching the Instagram
• 0:18
  Marvin: feed and East Tennessee looks like the sulfurs have arrived, brother.
• 0:22
  Ellis: Yeah, man. It feels nice. It feels nice to see the yellow bugs flying around.
• 0:30
  Ellis: And as a guide, as an angler, partially as a tire, it feels nice to see fish eating them.
• 0:39
  Marvin: Yeah, it's kind of cool, right? Because doesn't the South Holston have one of
• 0:42
  Marvin: the longest sulfur hatches in the country?
• 0:46
  Ellis: You're out of my depth very quickly there. And I don't know.
• 0:51
  Ellis: That feels like something you hear.
• 0:56
  Ellis: And then there's part of me that says who's measuring that but it really I mean
• 1:04
  Ellis: just objectively I've only been on a handful of streams that have sulfur hatches and,
• 1:10
  Ellis: both the South Holston and the Watauga are you know kind of mid to late May through late June,
• 1:23
  Ellis: so it is It can be day-to-day, as with all fishing and dry fly hatches,
• 1:30
  Ellis: but it is really a good chunk of the summer.
• 1:35
  Ellis: And you get them through July, it's just not as prolific.
• 1:39
  Ellis: And there's blue wings and midges, and the whole time, it's an all-you-can-eat buffet.
• 1:48
  Ellis: Fey but those big you know big
• 1:52
  Ellis: for tail waters 14 16 and what's
• 1:56
  Ellis: fun about that is you can fish 12s and they're eating 12s um i i wouldn't necessarily
• 2:02
  Ellis: do that but um that that larger size bug lasting for the better part of a really
• 2:10
  Ellis: solid month and then and really tailing out through july it's pretty cool yeah.
• 2:16
  Marvin: And of course it sets up your favorite program right and dry fly to the risers
• 2:19
  Marvin: and pull streamers the rest of the time?
• 2:23
  Ellis: Yeah, it's just too fun.
• 2:27
  Ellis: And with the Watauga generating from 1 to 6 every afternoon outside of Sundays
• 2:36
  Ellis: through the summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
• 2:42
  Ellis: That we have water for four to five hours
• 2:45
  Ellis: and that big water
• 2:48
  Ellis: i think there's some misconceptions around you know
• 2:52
  Ellis: dry fly fishing and it being hot in the
• 2:55
  Ellis: low water look if it's low water all
• 2:58
  Ellis: summer i'm going to tell you the dry fly fishing's hot because i'm going
• 3:00
  Ellis: to figure it out figure out what to do high water
• 3:04
  Ellis: dry fly fishing uh yes on
• 3:07
  Ellis: the south holson yes definitely on the watauga um the
• 3:12
  Ellis: otaga has flows that are
• 3:16
  Ellis: are scheduled for six days a week um
• 3:21
  Ellis: and the whitewater rafting companies that bring a lot of people to this area
• 3:27
  Ellis: will say that um they depend on that and so that's not going anywhere and in
• 3:35
  Ellis: high water dry fly fishing it can it can be like low water they're They're a little more localized,
• 3:39
  Ellis: but man, when they find a place that they're having high water,
• 3:43
  Ellis: they're not going all the way back down to the bottom. They're hanging right there.
• 3:47
  Ellis: So it's sort of the same as that low water, you know, finding the shelves and
• 3:51
  Ellis: all that. Just a different game.
• 3:53
  Marvin: Yeah. And then, of course, you know that we're also, as it starts to warm up,
• 3:56
  Marvin: we start to really get into the thick of mouse season too, right?
• 4:00
  Ellis: Just about to talk through it, man, on that timeline. line starting you know meeting,
• 4:06
  Ellis: early to mid afternoon i mean i i was just talking with a client earlier today and,
• 4:17
  Ellis: uh first time fishing with me and kind of saying i'll meet in the morning it's
• 4:21
  Ellis: like well it's gonna be kind of late summer i said it again it depends some
• 4:27
  Ellis: days i do want to meet in the morning it depends on the weather but that evening hatch is,
• 4:32
  Ellis: It can be really, really good, and then it gives us the option to hang out in the house.
• 4:40
  Marvin: Yeah, there you go, and I've got a streamer question for you, too.
• 4:43
  Marvin: So Brenner wanted to get your thoughts. I know we've had a ton of rain in our
• 4:47
  Marvin: part of the world recently,
• 4:48
  Marvin: and I know that you're a little bit protected but less protected on the Watauga
• 4:51
  Marvin: because of the Doe River and wanted to get your thoughts on color combos for
• 4:56
  Marvin: streamers when you're fishing in stained water.
• 5:00
  Ellis: Yeah. I think I'm just going to start officially beating this drum publicly.
• 5:07
  Ellis: I don't care about color.
• 5:10
  Ellis: That's incorrect. I want something that is white, maybe like some sort of off-olive
• 5:19
  Ellis: yellow, something that I can really, really see.
• 5:22
  Ellis: And when I say that, it's something you can see, something clients can see.
• 5:27
  Ellis: And I'm probably fishing it pretty high in the water column.
• 5:33
  Ellis: And if I can get it to be bigger, I would appreciate that as well.
• 5:41
  Ellis: I would say it depends on how you're fishing.
• 5:46
  Ellis: So for a lot of my fishing as a guide and even when I'm out on my own on either
• 5:54
  Ellis: of the rivers, I am, it's hard to say fishing to fish.
• 6:01
  Ellis: It's not like I know exactly that cast is perfect, but man, some of them, yeah, at this point I do.
• 6:08
  Ellis: And so it's finding those spots and I want something they can see.
• 6:12
  Ellis: And I've just amassed enough data at this point to say that.
• 6:20
  Ellis: Something with opacity, something that is opaque, light does not penetrate it.
• 6:25
  Ellis: I don't care if it's white.
• 6:27
  Ellis: When something's coming from below it, there's no light down there.
• 6:32
  Ellis: And then if it's closer to the surface, aka closer to sunlight,
• 6:37
  Ellis: it projects more of a difference in light.
• 6:44
  Ellis: So if it's down low there's not as much light hitting the top of it to create
• 6:50
  Ellis: a profile below so it's really just putting a spotlight shining shining something
• 6:56
  Ellis: to give the fish the silhouette,
• 6:58
  Ellis: to say i'm going to eat that thing and i've i've
• 7:04
  Ellis: seen it happen now i know i've said this before but i will
• 7:08
  Ellis: continue to say it i've seen
• 7:12
  Ellis: brown trout blow through the water erupting on
• 7:15
  Ellis: a streamer taking it through the surface in
• 7:18
  Ellis: all but chocolate i mean all but like debris filled chocolate milk really i
• 7:26
  Ellis: would say unfishable water um relative to my understanding before Before doing
• 7:34
  Ellis: what I've been doing for the last four years.
• 7:36
  Ellis: So hiring the water column and something that really does block light, that's not feathers.
• 7:43
  Ellis: It's, you know, craft fur changers are two of my favorites.
• 7:47
  Ellis: And then I have a streamer that I have sort of jokingly called the Luff,
• 7:53
  Ellis: which is more like an articulated, just a two-section craft fur streamer.
• 8:05
  Ellis: And yeah, the rate of success there, and I've had days where we switch to that
• 8:14
  Ellis: and it's immediate. So, yeah.
• 8:18
  Ellis: More than a few of those days. And I think that folks should be willing to try
• 8:24
  Ellis: it at this point because, gosh, it's too fun.
• 8:29
  Ellis: Was I on that one?
• 8:31
  Marvin: No, you did. You did great. I literally just put the safety back on the trigger.
• 8:38
  Marvin: So you're good. But to follow up. Yeah, but to follow up on that.
• 8:44
  Marvin: See, this is how I'm going to get you your extra couple minutes. minutes so you.
• 8:46
  Ellis: Like you.
• 8:47
  Marvin: Like a lighter colored fly because if you're fishing high you want the predator
• 8:51
  Marvin: to see the belly right and so that's the color jam.
• 8:54
  Ellis: I'll clarify there the color jam is for human eyes i want something that i can
• 9:04
  Ellis: see i want something that the angler can see,
• 9:08
  Ellis: and as you go away from white um i've tried to convince myself that black is
• 9:14
  Ellis: really visible but it's it's just not um so there's just.
• 9:21
  Ellis: There isn't much light below the
• 9:24
  Ellis: streamer the sun's coming from the top of it shining directly down and then
• 9:30
  Ellis: um the trout normally are are sharking it if you're fishing higher in the water
• 9:36
  Ellis: column they're they're coming from below so there's really no thought process around color
• 9:42
  Ellis: outside of I want to track what's happening and in muddy water that can be more
• 9:50
  Ellis: challenging so the whiter and
• 9:53
  Ellis: really I just I mean if you if you want to do a lot of flash go nuts but.
• 10:00
  Ellis: I had this this Rolodex this montage of video clips in my head of watching Watching
• 10:09
  Ellis: these events, striper, brown trout,
• 10:14
  Ellis: eat big craft fur changers, and the swim bug fishing higher in the water column
• 10:21
  Ellis: to a certain extent the drunk.
• 10:23
  Ellis: One of the great things, and in this very specific instance,
• 10:29
  Ellis: one of the drawbacks is that the drunk finds depth pretty quickly.
• 10:33
  Ellis: So keeping something that rides higher in the water column,
• 10:38
  Ellis: is kind of where the swim bug comes in in this instance and then craft for a
• 10:44
  Ellis: changer is just for your retrieve speed trying to make sure you're deepening up where it should be,
• 10:51
  Ellis: and yeah at that point.
• 10:55
  Ellis: You know all these cliffs have a fly with very little flash involved.
• 11:02
  Marvin: Got it how about rattles.
• 11:06
  Ellis: Big fan now kind of tough because some of these you know i'm thinking of fishing the drunk and
• 11:17
  Ellis: having fish track it up to the boat and eating on that kill eating on that pump
• 11:22
  Ellis: fake just before you take it out don't pretend like you're gonna take it out
• 11:26
  Ellis: and then don't so when it hangs on the surface there for a second so i don't
• 11:31
  Ellis: know are they tracking it in because of the rattle and then they're finally eating it,
• 11:36
  Ellis: because of that boat side let's hang out at the surface for a second so do we
• 11:41
  Ellis: bypass that and just fish higher in the water column and not worry about flash or rattles but,
• 11:48
  Ellis: as a rule I like to add them in where I can you know last thing on that is,
• 11:59
  Ellis: a lot of these high water muddy water,
• 12:04
  Ellis: 40-inch strike, I mean, giant fish inhaling a fly at the surface and about four gallons of water.
• 12:13
  Ellis: Browns doing the same thing, not 40 inches.
• 12:18
  Ellis: Those are without rattles and very little flash. I don't think those two things hurt, though.
• 12:25
  Marvin: Yeah, well, there you go. And, you know, folks, we love questions at The Articulate Fly.
• 12:29
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
• 12:33
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly schwag.
• 12:37
  Marvin: We're going to enter a drawing for something cool from Ellis at the end of the
• 12:39
  Marvin: season. And, you know, Ellis, I know you're stacking days on your calendar.
• 12:44
  Marvin: You want to let folks know, you know, where they can find you,
• 12:46
  Marvin: what you have available, how they can talk fishing and book you.
• 12:49
  Marvin: But also, I suspect you might be hanging on to a few Easter pastel bucktails
• 12:55
  Marvin: you might want to share with folks.
• 12:58
  Ellis: Yeah, so the best way to contact me for anything really is my cell phone at 513-543-0019.
• 13:10
  Ellis: Instagram is at Ellis Ward Guides.
• 13:13
  Ellis: And website is EllisWardFlies.com. As for bucktail,
• 13:19
  Ellis: I will be moving nearby, and the new spot has a 30x40 workshop,
• 13:29
  Ellis: so things are going to get sporty next deer season.
• 13:34
  Ellis: And currently, yeah, I have a good number of tails left, and I'm pretty sure some twos and threes.
• 13:43
  Ellis: But yeah definitely continuing to continuing to develop that part of the business
• 13:50
  Ellis: as well and as for me and I'll kind of jump it all over the place,
• 13:57
  Ellis: if you are interested in the dry flying mousing,
• 14:03
  Ellis: give me a shout and let's get some good dates on the calendar if we can get
• 14:08
  Ellis: dates with the right moons and things like that It's better to plan around that one.
• 14:13
  Ellis: Some of this stuff can be day-to-day, but if you're planning a night fish, let's talk about it now.
• 14:18
  Marvin: There you go. And remember, folks, we've got two great opportunities in our community.
• 14:23
  Marvin: One of them is 100 off-guide credit with Ellis, and another is a 10% discount on Bucktail.
• 14:28
  Marvin: So check that out. That's hosted over on our Patreon site, and there's a link in the show notes.
• 14:33
  Marvin: And as I always say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
• 14:37
  Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
• 14:39
  Ellis: Appreciate it Marv.