Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 113: Fall Fishing and Musky Strategies: Ellis Ward's East TN Insights

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S6, Ep 113: Fall Fishing and Musky Strategies: Ellis Ward's East TN Insights · 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?
• 0:11
  Ellis: I'm doing well, Marv. How are you?
• 0:13
  Marvin: As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble, and you know,
• 0:16
  Marvin: it's kind of funny. I was joking with Matt last week that you screwed up the
• 0:19
  Marvin: weather again, and it's gotten hot again.
• 0:22
  Ellis: Yeah uh i i think that as much as i can curse the the forecast,
• 0:32
  Ellis: mother nature is doing us a favor this week and we're getting i actually had
• 0:37
  Ellis: a guy call me today and he's coming up here with some friends and just call
• 0:45
  Ellis: me to ask some questions and see if
• 0:48
  Ellis: the impending hurricane was going to make it not good for them driving up from Alabama.
• 0:56
  Ellis: And I've had my eye on, there was a tropical storm, quote-unquote, like a week-plus ago.
• 1:06
  Ellis: And it's, I mean, the tropical storm season is,
• 1:12
  Ellis: again, to preface, I don't want to be whatever,
• 1:18
  Ellis: insensitive piss someone off
• 1:20
  Ellis: or saying that I like it when we get them because
• 1:24
  Ellis: I know that I mean even
• 1:26
  Ellis: what last month or whatever Charlotte got it got your son's school was closed
• 1:33
  Ellis: like it it causes damage so but but by the time it's and this whole thing is
• 1:39
  Ellis: about me we know that so by the time it's here it's,
• 1:46
  Ellis: dissipated, it's spread over the mountains, it's filling up all the little creeks,
• 1:50
  Ellis: and it's just been, you know, the third year in a row of really, really low water, and.
• 2:01
  Ellis: That's really not changing outside of these depressions coming in.
• 2:06
  Ellis: So, we have gray skies and precipitation on and off over the next week,
• 2:13
  Ellis: including including, looks like a day or two of some more focused rain that
• 2:19
  Ellis: won't just be the drizzly stuff,
• 2:21
  Ellis: but we'll actually get some watering rivers and, you know, it'll kind of.
• 2:31
  Ellis: It'll, it'll make things probably unfishable in, on the upper French broad for a little bit.
• 2:38
  Ellis: Um, I was fishing Melbourne in middle Tennessee or near Knoxville a couple of days ago.
• 2:47
  Ellis: And that, that water's at 65 and there's, there's fish moving and,
• 2:56
  Ellis: uh, they managed to catch a 50 inch muskie.
• 3:00
  Ellis: A couple days prior on the French Broad and that water is kind of in the 68
• 3:06
  Ellis: zone and I've said it before you know it normally peaks around mid to lower 70s,
• 3:15
  Ellis: which is just about on the upper edge of that comfort zone where you don't want
• 3:22
  Ellis: to be fishing them anymore and,
• 3:26
  Ellis: yeah so it'll we'll get with Some cooler temps, which has not been the case,
• 3:33
  Ellis: and some rain, which has not been the case.
• 3:36
  Ellis: Things will be in pretty good shape and in the fall here.
• 3:41
  Marvin: Yeah, and I've noticed from your Instagram feed, looks like you've been fishing
• 3:46
  Marvin: pretty full water when you've been out pulling streamers.
• 3:49
  Ellis: Yeah, you know, I've been fortunate to have trips the last two Saturdays,
• 4:02
  Ellis: and prior to that,
• 4:06
  Ellis: basically I had the last three or four trips have coincided with some windows where we had water.
• 4:18
  Ellis: And prior to that, um, had a, had a couple of tough, tough days in low water.
• 4:28
  Ellis: Um, but, but push those boats towards the housing and, uh.
• 4:35
  Ellis: Yeah, it's been, you know, it's, it's always interesting trying,
• 4:38
  Ellis: trying to make anything and everything due to the needs of anglers. But, um, Um,
• 4:49
  Ellis: It's been good in the last couple of days and this last weekend.
• 4:54
  Ellis: I don't know if he'll be listening. I'll try to get him to, but shout out Bart
• 4:58
  Ellis: for the second time on my boat.
• 5:01
  Ellis: He just texted me on Friday. I was actually, I'm going to try to make this one
• 5:05
  Ellis: fast, but it's kind of a funny story. I'm out fishing.
• 5:09
  Ellis: Melvin, it's a couple hours away. I wanted to be there for a few days and ended
• 5:14
  Ellis: up staying at a hotel near Dandridge.
• 5:18
  Ellis: It's like an hour away, everything in Knoxville Crazy expensive And it's because
• 5:22
  Ellis: of the Bristol races So client,
• 5:27
  Ellis: Borrowed text me And says you want to fish tomorrow We worked that out and we're
• 5:31
  Ellis: going to meet So we end up meeting and not until the end of the night Do I discover that.
• 5:38
  Ellis: He's from Southwest Virginia He came down here and realized all the hotels Were
• 5:42
  Ellis: super expensive and told me he stayed
• 5:44
  Ellis: In some shitty Red roof inn near Dandridge and I was like, what now?
• 5:51
  Ellis: So when he was texting me and I was like, yeah, dude, I'm in Melton. I'll be back in the area.
• 5:58
  Ellis: We might be able to do a later trip, whatever.
• 6:01
  Ellis: He was a couple rooms down.
• 6:05
  Ellis: I don't know if that's small world or just two strange dudes doing the same
• 6:11
  Ellis: strange stuff, but we ended up getting, man, we moved so many big fish And that
• 6:16
  Ellis: was his, his second time streamer fishing.
• 6:20
  Ellis: He's a all around great angler, lots of saltwater experiments.
• 6:24
  Ellis: But the whole doing it from a boat thing, as you know, is a different animal.
• 6:28
  Ellis: And man, it's been, when that water's up, it's been cooking recently.
• 6:37
  Marvin: Yeah, that's neat. And we've got a question for you from Brenner.
• 6:41
  Marvin: Brenner wanted to get your thoughts on, he's kind of getting musky fever like
• 6:45
  Marvin: everybody else kind of in the southeast.
• 6:46
  Marvin: He wanted to get your thoughts on
• 6:47
  Marvin: how changes in moon phase and barometric pressure affect the musky bite.
• 6:55
  Ellis: Yeah, I start to get hesitant with this one because there's so much information
• 7:06
  Ellis: available and it does become overwhelming.
• 7:12
  Ellis: One of the things that I want to avoid is.
• 7:19
  Ellis: Stopping someone or instilling a low degree of confidence with moon phases that
• 7:28
  Ellis: aren't quote-unquote active and you know that said,
• 7:38
  Ellis: my booking like when i when someone calls me and say do you have a time in late november,
• 7:46
  Ellis: or how's your schedule looking in october and i'll kind of i'll look through
• 7:52
  Ellis: that two or three days in a row in October.
• 7:54
  Ellis: So I'll look through, see where some of those blocks exist.
• 8:00
  Ellis: And the first thing I do is, is go from my availability to the moon phase calendar,
• 8:09
  Ellis: just because we'd never know what conditions are going to look like.
• 8:14
  Ellis: That's kind of my tiebreaker because I've seen it with, I've seen it with trout too.
• 8:19
  Ellis: And you know, mousing 100%, I'm not fishing someone when it's moonrise at 7
• 8:26
  Ellis: p.m. and it's a full moon.
• 8:28
  Ellis: We're not mousing. We have to mouse the following week or the two weeks after that.
• 8:38
  Ellis: I will say that there is...
• 8:43
  Ellis: There's an unavoidable correlation. And I really approached,
• 8:53
  Ellis: this is my fifth year of fishing the French Broad, and the clinch system and Melvin Hill Reservoir.
• 9:07
  Ellis: And Matt's shown off to me a couple times on the new, but I don't guide there
• 9:14
  Ellis: and I'll just occasionally be taken to whale on fish with them so I don't pay attention up there but,
• 9:22
  Ellis: I try to not pay attention to it when I'm fishing and I try to not pay attention
• 9:27
  Ellis: to it when for the first couple years really I was thinking okay well you know I'm gonna go fish.
• 9:37
  Ellis: It's sort of the same with streamers where What color are you fishing?
• 9:43
  Ellis: I don't care. What color do you like to fish?
• 9:45
  Ellis: Why do you like to fish?
• 9:47
  Ellis: I mean, on Saturday, I love the swim bug. I love the drop.
• 9:56
  Ellis: If I can get someone going on a swim bug, man, and they're feeling it.
• 10:00
  Ellis: And how we just pound fish, it just happens.
• 10:04
  Ellis: And the eats are extraordinary. And so Barb's feeling it.
• 10:09
  Ellis: He's fishing it with confidence and we we
• 10:12
  Ellis: go through phases we go through periods of time even
• 10:15
  Ellis: good banks where it just not happened and you
• 10:20
  Ellis: know stayed the course and um i mean now we move some very serious fish missed
• 10:28
  Ellis: more than he wouldn't like to talk about ever again and um landed a couple nice
• 10:34
  Ellis: ones so kind of the same deal with musky where
• 10:38
  Ellis: if you go in there with this set expectation of they're only going to bite during
• 10:49
  Ellis: this period of time or this expectation of they're less likely to bite now.
• 10:56
  Ellis: You just start kind of T-Rexing stuff,
• 11:00
  Ellis: getting the short arms and not putting
• 11:02
  Ellis: it up under the junk or getting the
• 11:06
  Ellis: down you know looking you pass a down tree
• 11:09
  Ellis: and that v when you look back
• 11:12
  Ellis: upstream that v from two branches
• 11:15
  Ellis: meeting you gotta put it up right in the middle of that thing and maybe check
• 11:20
  Ellis: it two or three times if you're moving slowly enough and and so this this idea
• 11:26
  Ellis: of and marv i remember you telling me fishing with blaine where you're fishing
• 11:31
  Ellis: some deeper troughs and you're.
• 11:38
  Ellis: He was kind of coaching you to, you know, what the fly looks like,
• 11:42
  Ellis: you know, what it's doing and just know what it's doing down there.
• 11:47
  Ellis: And so after you have this, whatever you want to call it, this relationship
• 11:52
  Ellis: built with your fly rod, with the fly, and you can envision everything happening.
• 11:59
  Ellis: It sounds silly and it can feel silly until it very quickly doesn't.
• 12:06
  Ellis: But you have to fish like you're going to catch a muskie every single cast and,
• 12:14
  Ellis: I've been fortunate to fish with a wide variety of anglers from all different
• 12:20
  Ellis: backgrounds and one of my good buddies Matt from I've been,
• 12:28
  Ellis: I grew up in Wisconsin and we were fishing a little bit and just getting ripped
• 12:34
  Ellis: apart with the wind And we changed pretty quickly, went to a nearby river and,
• 12:39
  Ellis: and got a fish pretty quickly thereafter.
• 12:43
  Ellis: And I was kind of like, you know,
• 12:44
  Ellis: I just felt like we had wasted time just getting ripped around by wind.
• 12:49
  Ellis: But the whole time I was getting ripped around by wind rowing, he was, he was fishing.
• 12:53
  Ellis: He was trolling when we were getting pushed by wind on the way out.
• 12:57
  Ellis: And he was like, that's not, that's not a waste of time. i i got 200 casts out
• 13:03
  Ellis: it's just as good a chance as any other cast and i think that was just like
• 13:07
  Ellis: three years ago at that point so kind of putting all these things together it's,
• 13:12
  Ellis: yeah you know do your own research i would encourage you to do that i don't
• 13:18
  Ellis: want to either poison the well or or have you drink some kool-aid that that doesn't help you but um.
• 13:27
  Ellis: The deal with Muskie is that, and this is one of the only cliches that I like.
• 13:33
  Ellis: I dislike cliches most of the time, but you can't catch them from the couch
• 13:39
  Ellis: is such a good one because it isn't that you need to go out and be there with
• 13:50
  Ellis: the fly in the right place at the right time.
• 13:53
  Ellis: You know full stop period that's how
• 13:56
  Ellis: you catch musky it can be said for sure that that is a way to get a musky to
• 14:02
  Ellis: eat um but you have to check all the boxes and and another one i like is uh
• 14:11
  Ellis: fishing with chris will and i know you talked to him a few years ago,
• 14:15
  Ellis: He was talking about Larry Dahlberg Using
• 14:19
  Ellis: A lottery ticket Where You don't have to get You don't have to match up the
• 14:27
  Ellis: bars And the bells and the cherries It's a big scratch off ticket And all you
• 14:33
  Ellis: have to do Is get one It doesn't matter the order It doesn't matter Nothing.
• 14:40
  Ellis: One has to hit and so to just not scratch some like if you're going out fishing
• 14:48
  Ellis: you scratch every single one it's so stupid to just not scratch a couple because
• 14:53
  Ellis: those might be those have just as good odds as anything else um.
• 15:01
  Ellis: So, yeah, I would just say for assuming that you're not fishing seven days a
• 15:06
  Ellis: week or for every single day of the moon phase, go out and fish as hard as you
• 15:11
  Ellis: can for as long as you can when you're able to.
• 15:14
  Ellis: And, um, if you have the flexibility of schedule around moon phases,
• 15:19
  Ellis: then I would, I would encourage you to look up the Solon or calendar and,
• 15:25
  Ellis: and, and try to try to navigate some of those active periods,
• 15:30
  Ellis: which have some, some of the bigger and longer peaks around the ball in the new room.
• 15:38
  Marvin: Them yeah and i always say you're never going to be back at the office regretting
• 15:42
  Marvin: fishing for that extra half an hour yeah.
• 15:46
  Ellis: That's exactly right and i mean you.
• 15:51
  Marvin: Know wish i'd gone home sooner i.
• 15:53
  Ellis: I put a cast out at the boat ramp almost every trip um Um, and,
• 16:02
  Ellis: and for the, for the folks that have fished with me, it's, it's very rare that
• 16:09
  Ellis: I have the, you know, that the ramp gets in sight and, and we kind of, we start to pack up.
• 16:18
  Ellis: Like when you're out there, especially fishing for big, big rounds, fishing for muskie.
• 16:26
  Ellis: Um, yeah. Check, double check. exactly you're not going to regret that extra
• 16:32
  Ellis: half an hour for sure and musky in particular man,
• 16:36
  Ellis: i've heard some colorful stories from from matt riley i've had a few myself
• 16:42
  Ellis: he's he has way more musky guided trips under his belt than i do but um.
• 16:50
  Ellis: Some people want to bail. Some people call it with 45 minutes left,
• 16:56
  Ellis: lights kind of going down.
• 16:58
  Ellis: And we have this calendar as a guide who knows what they're doing or who has
• 17:06
  Ellis: a plan and who has fished this water on their own and who understands timing
• 17:10
  Ellis: and light and all that stuff.
• 17:12
  Ellis: Off man that last 45 minutes were
• 17:15
  Ellis: hitting the juice and it's it's
• 17:18
  Ellis: because we also want that low light and there's implications with sunset and
• 17:23
  Ellis: again not that you you don't fish any less hard during the in between times
• 17:29
  Ellis: but yeah that that last low light period of the day is certainly a time you
• 17:36
  Ellis: should be fishing hard yeah.
• 17:38
  Marvin: There you go and you know folks we love questions on the articulate fly,
• 17:41
  Marvin: you can email them to us or DM us on social media.
• 17:43
  Marvin: Or if you go to our Instagram profile, there's actually a button you can touch
• 17:48
  Marvin: and record the question.
• 17:50
  Marvin: And we may, you may actually hear your question on the fishing report.
• 17:53
  Marvin: And, you know, if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly
• 17:56
  Marvin: swag and you're into a drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis.
• 17:59
  Marvin: And Ellis, you want to like update folks on, you know, bucktail prep,
• 18:04
  Marvin: you know, how to reach out and get get on your God calendar and all that kind of good stuff.
• 18:09
  Ellis: Yeah. Um, I am, I don't know if I'm, I'm pretty sure I had gotten a couple more
• 18:19
  Ellis: boxes of Borax since the last time we spoke.
• 18:22
  Ellis: But whenever I'm at the home Depot or loves getting something mostly for,
• 18:28
  Ellis: you know, to fix something on a trailer, um, I'm grabbing a thing of Borax too.
• 18:34
  Ellis: So that's, That's going to be right around the corner.
• 18:40
  Ellis: I'm going to have a bunch available at Tailwater Fly Company,
• 18:43
  Ellis: which is a fly shop opened in Bluff City near the South Holston by my buddy John.
• 18:51
  Ellis: And it's the tying material and hook selection and all.
• 18:58
  Ellis: He's just, he's doing the whole fly shop thing.
• 19:03
  Ellis: Flies and stuff to get to tie very very well and he's going to have a section for,
• 19:11
  Ellis: bucktail which will be pretty cool and the the majority of it will be available
• 19:17
  Ellis: on my website where i'll bring this full circle you can ask me questions or
• 19:23
  Ellis: send me an email to get on the
• 19:25
  Ellis: calendar and that is elliswardwise.com and you can follow along with some of what I'm doing,
• 19:34
  Ellis: on Instagram at elliswarddietz.
• 19:37
  Marvin: Well, there you go. Well, folks, as always say, you owe it to yourself to get
• 19:40
  Marvin: out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
• 19:45
  Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.