Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 77: Summer Strategies and Streamer Tactics: Ellis Ward's East Tennessee Report

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S6, Ep 77: Summer Strategies and Streamer Tactics: Ellis Ward's East Tennessee Report · 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. Ellis, how are you?
• 0:12
  Ellis: I'm a little hot right now, but I'm doing well. How are you?
• 0:15
  Marvin: I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. Yeah, it was funny. We were talking
• 0:18
  Marvin: before we started recording, and I was in your neck of the woods last week,
• 0:22
  Marvin: and you were telling me I'm kind of unlucky with the weather because I seem
• 0:25
  Marvin: to show up when it's boiling hot.
• 0:28
  Ellis: Yeah, I think you were here last year during, it didn't, you know,
• 0:34
  Ellis: we're sitting on top of a little bit of an air conditioner when we're on the river,
• 0:37
  Ellis: but when it's in the upper 90s, it really doesn't matter if,
• 0:45
  Ellis: the fortunate part for fishing is that we still have 60 degree water, but man,
• 0:51
  Ellis: being under that full sun and just out exposed when it's 90 something, He's up for nineties.
• 0:59
  Ellis: It taxes you a little bit.
• 1:01
  Marvin: Yeah. And I don't buy any of that malarkey that Matt Riley's peddling that,
• 1:05
  Marvin: you know, it's a little bit cooler and drier where he is. I think that's a lie.
• 1:10
  Ellis: Well, he's full of it and has been for years.
• 1:12
  Marvin: So the silver lining of all of this is ironically, while I get on a plane to
• 1:18
  Marvin: go to Orlando to see what it's like to visit the tropics for ICAST,
• 1:23
  Marvin: you're actually going to get a pretty decent break in the heat around Johnson city.
• 1:26
  Marvin: And you're going to get, you know, I was looking at your weather,
• 1:29
  Marvin: like after maybe tomorrow, you're going to get a spate of days in the eighties
• 1:32
  Marvin: with some rain and cloud cover. So you should be happy as a clam.
• 1:36
  Ellis: Yeah, it it's, it's a mix of happy and I'm sort of backloaded this month.
• 1:42
  Ellis: So, um, uh, early plug book your trips.
• 1:47
  Ellis: It's, it's nice to have these days for my own fishing when I don't have trips, but, um, yeah, last.
• 1:56
  Ellis: I had last week a good couple trips, and yeah, this week it just coincides with
• 2:05
  Ellis: a break in trips and also a break in weather.
• 2:12
  Ellis: I'm always pretty good at taking advantage of that, but the happy as a clam
• 2:19
  Ellis: part turns into, oh man, I need that.
• 2:24
  Ellis: I need the one who wants to be out here and when it's quote unquote bad weather out um,
• 2:31
  Ellis: but we end up getting plenty of those so definitely feeling
• 2:35
  Ellis: positive about the the rainfall because it's been you know on the retirement
• 2:41
  Ellis: we get those the five hour pushes every afternoon for six days a week so it's
• 2:46
  Ellis: not like we're hurting for good streamer conditions dry fly conditions conditions, um,
• 2:53
  Ellis: big water, cool temps, happy trout, all that stuff is here, but having the tributaries
• 3:00
  Ellis: full and having that water table bump up a little bit makes everything a little happier.
• 3:06
  Ellis: And, um, you know, for the small mouth and musky water around here, we need it.
• 3:12
  Ellis: Um, we're, we're certainly not as dry as some areas talking with Richie back
• 3:17
  Ellis: in DC. He was saying that the Potomac up by Harper's Ferry in Maryland was up to 91 degrees.
• 3:26
  Ellis: So I think this, the whole region, southeast, mid-Atlantic, needs a good shot of rain.
• 3:35
  Ellis: And at least for this little zone we have, I think we might get dumped on tomorrow, but we'll see.
• 3:41
  Marvin: Yeah, which is great, right? Because then you can pull streamers on the mud
• 3:44
  Marvin: line where the Doe River comes into the Watauga.
• 3:48
  Ellis: Yeah man you know it and that that whole lower section and i can reserve,
• 3:56
  Ellis: some of those thoughts for um a conversation around low water fishing but but
• 4:02
  Ellis: that was we've had a couple of those i think we were talking,
• 4:08
  Ellis: before recording that um yeah you did here and then you know we had a shot of rain or two and,
• 4:16
  Ellis: i had a guy a day after one of those and it was just these these bumps and everyone
• 4:23
  Ellis: who fishes freestones knows this the bumps that happen during the summer are and i've i've seen some,
• 4:30
  Ellis: memes that joke about this where it's it's lower here or blown out of money
• 4:36
  Ellis: and you get like one day or maybe a half a day where it's not that.
• 4:41
  Ellis: And the nice part about the Watauga, the South Holston to a certain extent,
• 4:48
  Ellis: it's not as influenced by tributaries, but.
• 4:53
  Ellis: When it's low and clear above the dough,
• 4:58
  Ellis: but below the dough, because that's a freestone coming in that's chocolate milk,
• 5:04
  Ellis: it can provide for are some pretty
• 5:08
  Ellis: cool opportunities if if you know where the fish are
• 5:10
  Ellis: and and you know where the rocks are
• 5:13
  Ellis: because you can't really see them on your own over them so we
• 5:17
  Ellis: had a couple couple big eats that eats to kick things off and um we we learned
• 5:26
  Ellis: quickly that rod setting with a one-odd hook is a good way to feel the inside
• 5:33
  Ellis: of a brown trout's mouth but but not see the fish.
• 5:38
  Marvin: Yeah well there you go so it's interesting right so you're going to cool off
• 5:41
  Marvin: you're going to have cloud cover which i would imagine for your streamer by
• 5:45
  Marvin: it's going to make the fish a little bit chasier right.
• 5:47
  Ellis: Yeah every i mean dry fly fishing everything the birds the bugs everything,
• 5:57
  Ellis: I won't get too spooky, but maybe even the plants. It just, you can feel it
• 6:03
  Ellis: when you're out there, the spook with everything drops.
• 6:08
  Marvin: Yeah. And then I would say too, right? I mean, you should see a little bit more
• 6:11
  Marvin: predictability around your hatches in that situation because you're going to
• 6:14
  Marvin: have a little bit better predictability on cloud cover and temperature.
• 6:20
  Ellis: Yeah. Yeah, the hatches and where we're fishing for risers and what that looks
• 6:27
  Ellis: like can change a little bit with the clear water and more stable flows or low flows.
• 6:39
  Ellis: The fishing can be tough, but it can be a little more predictable in the sense
• 6:44
  Ellis: that I know where the fish are going to be and at what times.
• 6:50
  Ellis: In which sections and to a certain extent
• 6:53
  Ellis: what they're going to be eating and when the
• 6:56
  Ellis: water is bigger those dry fly
• 6:59
  Ellis: places move around a little bit uh
• 7:03
  Ellis: but they're still very much there the the high water
• 7:06
  Ellis: does absolutely nothing to turn
• 7:09
  Ellis: them off it just sort of switches things a little bit and then
• 7:13
  Ellis: when you throw a cloud cover in you start to
• 7:16
  Ellis: get it's not just the last two hours of daylight um you
• 7:20
  Ellis: know it's not just the the 9 a.m to 11 a.m it's it can sort of fluctuate throughout
• 7:28
  Ellis: the day and where they're eating and what they're eating can change and and
• 7:34
  Ellis: it just it opens things up a little bit.
• 7:37
  Marvin: Yeah very very cool and we've got a question for you uh from brenner and you
• 7:42
  Marvin: know since we've been doing uh low clear uh shallow water in the summer he wanted
• 7:47
  Marvin: to get your thoughts on dry fly and leader setup?
• 7:53
  Ellis: Yeah.
• 7:55
  Ellis: So with the tailwaters.
• 8:00
  Ellis: I've been fishing, I've said this enough times to where I'm not sure if it's
• 8:06
  Ellis: redundant at this point, but I don't like to drink my own Kool-Aid.
• 8:09
  Ellis: I think I do a little bit with the dry fly setups.
• 8:12
  Ellis: I am, at this point, if it's a nine foot leader, that doesn't feel right to me. And...
• 8:22
  Ellis: It has less to do with spook from the leader.
• 8:27
  Ellis: Like a, and I think this is somewhat universal.
• 8:31
  Ellis: It's, we're not talking about just the tailwaters, but it is relative to fly size.
• 8:39
  Ellis: And so when you're fishing flies that are in the 20, 22,
• 8:45
  Ellis: 24, which is not uncommon at all,
• 8:49
  Ellis: you know even when you're seeing 16s
• 8:52
  Ellis: 18s if you look
• 8:55
  Ellis: into the water if you look with the fish reading um just kind of look around
• 9:00
  Ellis: at the i refer to it as the fuzz in the air and right above the water there's
• 9:05
  Ellis: a huge biomass that is made up of way smaller than the 18s and And, you know,
• 9:15
  Ellis: sometimes some of these 20s even look big.
• 9:17
  Ellis: So when you're getting down that small, it has to do more with,
• 9:22
  Ellis: I compare it to fishing a Clouser minnow on 50-pound full carbon with a clench knot.
• 9:31
  Ellis: It's going to look like it's being moved through the water by a stick.
• 9:37
  Ellis: And so fishing 15-pound fluoro loop knot, it's nice and wiggly.
• 9:41
  Ellis: Um you do that with dry fly fishing and
• 9:45
  Ellis: you know you everything starts to get all these little changes get magnified
• 9:51
  Ellis: so finishing a size 22 with a 5x tippet i mean you just look at the knot you're
• 9:59
  Ellis: tying it's a quarter size of the bug and so the way that is.
• 10:04
  Ellis: Not necessarily they're seeing the knot or seeing
• 10:06
  Ellis: the tippet it's it's that that there's not much
• 10:10
  Ellis: freedom of movement the biggest
• 10:15
  Ellis: piece of mass at that terminal end is
• 10:18
  Ellis: the tippet and maybe the knot
• 10:21
  Ellis: versus the fly being delivered
• 10:25
  Ellis: by that tippet so going down to six six point five which at this point i also
• 10:30
  Ellis: feel a little spoiled because the you know six x is 3.2 pounds i think if you
• 10:34
  Ellis: get at the fancy furrow it's it's up to three and a half it's a big trout and at the end of the day,
• 10:43
  Ellis: outside of too many horsepower on your first the initial hook set which is a
• 10:51
  Ellis: good way to to snap big fish off um fishing bugs that small you don't have to
• 10:57
  Ellis: put a lot of pressure onto it so So you can afford to do a,
• 11:01
  Ellis: you know, take that non-foot 5X leader and just add an extra foot and a half, I would say,
• 11:09
  Ellis: of 6X, maybe cut some 5X back and add 6X onto that.
• 11:15
  Ellis: And it's really hard to put.
• 11:19
  Ellis: Three plus pounds of pressure onto a fish with a bend in a four or five weight
• 11:27
  Ellis: so it becomes less about breaking them off um you know during the fight it's
• 11:34
  Ellis: really that last lifting into the net,
• 11:38
  Ellis: or getting them to your feet if you're waiting and um in the initial hook set the stuff in between
• 11:46
  Ellis: is is playing fish i think if the you know if you get good fish on on 6x and
• 11:52
  Ellis: it turns and runs on you and you hold on to it you're probably gonna break it off on 5x anyway so,
• 11:57
  Ellis: um yeah i'd certainly say going down to six six point five um that was kind
• 12:04
  Ellis: of limited to one or two of the manufacturers but most of the um companies that
• 12:10
  Ellis: are making tippet are making
• 12:12
  Ellis: them in 0.5s, and that 6.5 is kind of a good range to be in.
• 12:17
  Ellis: And unless you have, I am a bit of a diva when it comes to the dry fly presentations.
• 12:27
  Ellis: And there's different leader setups you can get.
• 12:30
  Ellis: When you are going down that small, there's different options you can get,
• 12:36
  Ellis: But Rio and Scientific Anglers both make some of these finesse presentations
• 12:42
  Ellis: that they don't start super fat.
• 12:45
  Ellis: And so you can afford to be fishing them and they unroll nicely on lighter weight line.
• 12:50
  Ellis: And just things that deliver flies that are a little smaller,
• 12:55
  Ellis: especially at both close and long ranges, it's important to consider all of that.
• 13:02
  Ellis: And once you get your system in place, it can be a little clunky to get there.
• 13:07
  Ellis: It becomes copy and paste to a certain extent because you know it works,
• 13:15
  Ellis: so you don't have to reinvent the wheel there a little bit to get to that happy
• 13:21
  Ellis: place, but once you're there,
• 13:23
  Ellis: it's certainly worth it.
• 13:25
  Marvin: Yeah, and I would imagine on the streamer front, You know, probably,
• 13:29
  Marvin: you know, you're probably pretty much running the same rig all the time anyway, right?
• 13:34
  Marvin: I mean, it's just a question of you maybe get to step up a little bit if the water's stained.
• 13:39
  Marvin: But, I mean, they're not liter shy, so it's not like you're fishing 6X with a D&D, right? Right.
• 13:47
  Ellis: Yeah, and also, no, to a degree,
• 13:55
  Ellis: the leader setup with streamers kind of varies the butt and the,
• 14:02
  Ellis: we'll say, the midsection of
• 14:04
  Ellis: the quote-unquote leaders, not necessarily taper, but I go from 25 to 20.
• 14:11
  Ellis: And, and, you know, in bigger water or fishing just big flies where we're,
• 14:16
  Ellis: you know, fishing a game changer and moving it fast and I'm, I'm worried less about.
• 14:22
  Ellis: Um, how things are turning over and moving in between strips and more about
• 14:27
  Ellis: getting this big fly there.
• 14:29
  Ellis: And, uh, there's so much mass relative to the leader and line system on bigger
• 14:36
  Ellis: flies that you can afford to, to stay at 20 pounds.
• 14:41
  Ellis: And when, when you're fishing long clear,
• 14:46
  Ellis: it's, it's the same principle with the dry fly where, you know, um,
• 14:51
  Ellis: fishing the drunk or even fishing the, the simpler strip flies with weight on
• 14:55
  Ellis: them, like the peanuts, you going down to 15,
• 15:00
  Ellis: I tend to revert 12 from in
• 15:02
  Ellis: the boat because we're fishing water and really
• 15:05
  Ellis: when it it compiles because
• 15:09
  Ellis: when we're when we are fishing 12 or when there is that need to drop down below
• 15:16
  Ellis: 15 or below 20 it's probably because we're getting really sneaky with our casting
• 15:22
  Ellis: and i like to do that all the time but but it becomes required when the fishing is harder.
• 15:28
  Ellis: And we're doing that in areas that have fast-moving water adjacent to them.
• 15:35
  Ellis: And normally, we're in the boat water, and so it's pretty easy to snap.
• 15:41
  Ellis: 12-pound mono or fluoro, and so I kind of like to stay in that 15 and do a loop
• 15:49
  Ellis: knot, and most of the flies,
• 15:51
  Ellis: most of the streamers outside of the real small ones or the real big ones,
• 15:55
  Ellis: they can be happily delivered with a 15-pound fluoro and a loop knot.
• 16:02
  Marvin: Oh, well, there you go, and you know we love questions at the Articulate Fly folks.
• 16:05
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you,
• 16:09
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag and we're
• 16:13
  Marvin: going to enter a drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.
• 16:16
  Marvin: And Ellis, before I let you go and, uh, plan what you're going to do with all
• 16:20
  Marvin: this awesome weather that you have, you want to let folks, uh,
• 16:22
  Marvin: know where they can find you so they can book in fish with you.
• 16:26
  Ellis: Yeah. Website is elliswardflies.com and you can follow me on Instagram at elliswardguides.
• 16:36
  Ellis: Best way to contact me about trips or asking any questions is to text or call at 513-543-0019.
• 16:45
  Marvin: There you go. And don't forget, folks, you know, we've got a great community
• 16:48
  Marvin: here at the Articulate Fly. We host it on Patreon.
• 16:51
  Marvin: And two of the benefits, you know, if you have a bucktail addiction,
• 16:55
  Marvin: there's a level of membership that will help you out with some of Ellis's roadkill.
• 17:00
  Marvin: And then also if you want to go out and fish with Ellis we've got another tier
• 17:03
  Marvin: where you actually get a guide credit every year so you might want to check
• 17:07
  Marvin: those out and you know weather's improving and as I always say you owe it to
• 17:11
  Marvin: yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines everybody,
• 17:14
  Marvin: tight lines Ellis appreciate it Mars.