Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 42: Ellis Ward's Tailwater Tactics and Temperature Tantrums

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S6, Ep 42: Ellis Ward's Tailwater Tactics and Temperature Tantrums · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Flower,
• 0:06
  Marvin: back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward. Ellis, how are you?
• 0:12
  Ellis: Hanging in there, Marv. How are you?
• 0:14
  Marvin: Yeah, I get the feeling maybe your cup has run a thing over.
• 0:21
  Ellis: Yes, but not all bad things.
• 0:26
  Marvin: Yeah.
• 0:27
  Ellis: Sometimes bedtime's just a little more challenging. Sometimes it's a little
• 0:31
  Ellis: windier, but that's what tomorrow's for. Yeah.
• 0:36
  Marvin: And so, you know, it's interesting. We were talking before we started recording
• 0:39
  Marvin: and, you know, it's kind of interesting.
• 0:40
  Marvin: I think in general in the Southeast, we've had what I would consider to be more
• 0:45
  Marvin: of a traditional spring where it didn't become 100 degrees and with a ton of
• 0:49
  Marvin: rain and then get cold again.
• 0:51
  Marvin: And so we've kind of had a kind of a damp, camp, relatively cool spring,
• 0:55
  Marvin: but the weather's kind of been all over the place.
• 0:57
  Marvin: So, you know, in Tennessee, just like here in the Carolinas,
• 0:59
  Marvin: you know, up in the 80s, now you got lows in the 30s.
• 1:03
  Marvin: And that generally kind of, you know, puts things in a funk, right?
• 1:10
  Ellis: Look at that. Generally speaking, I would say it puts things in a funk.
• 1:15
  Ellis: I really do like to find the exception to some of those rules.
• 1:19
  Ellis: And I think that the nature of a tailwater or of two tailwaters fed by 200 plus,
• 1:29
  Ellis: 300 foot deep lakes being insulated the way that they are,
• 1:36
  Ellis: having the population densities and certain sections of the river that really
• 1:42
  Ellis: don't have much traffic on certain flows and times of day.
• 1:46
  Ellis: I've been, I felt good about finding the exception to that generally.
• 1:55
  Ellis: You know, this variability and lack of any consistency creates tough fishing.
• 2:02
  Ellis: But, man, it's day to day. And we've had, I've had days that,
• 2:09
  Ellis: you know, our first three or four hours are top-notch fishing.
• 2:19
  Ellis: Had some new guys come.
• 2:23
  Ellis: In the boat and a
• 2:27
  Ellis: guy boated a high teens brown on uh
• 2:31
  Ellis: on a swim bug in his
• 2:34
  Ellis: first 10 15 minutes of streamer fishing both got
• 2:37
  Ellis: a number on yeah um picked
• 2:42
  Ellis: off a few on dry flies in the first couple hours and then the remainder of the
• 2:48
  Ellis: trip you know they they were really dead set on And we had talked about this
• 2:53
  Ellis: for quite some time on sort of tuning in their dry fly fishing and tying and
• 3:00
  Ellis: presentations and casting all this.
• 3:03
  Ellis: And we didn't see a rising fish for hours.
• 3:07
  Ellis: And that can happen if you're just floating.
• 3:12
  Ellis: But when I'm burning through sections and going to the spots,
• 3:17
  Ellis: And it's just been, it's been funky enough.
• 3:25
  Ellis: I think with those quote unquote bad times, there really have been,
• 3:30
  Ellis: you know, the spike in barometer up, blue skies, wind,
• 3:38
  Ellis: just the right mix of tough conditions to make things.
• 3:46
  Ellis: You should definitely be getting out in the first unless you're doing dawn to
• 3:53
  Ellis: dusk you should be picking one
• 3:56
  Ellis: of those low light times getting out on the water because that might be it.
• 4:02
  Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, just to kind of help folks understand, so when you get
• 4:06
  Marvin: a lot of temperature fluctuations, even if you're on a tailwater,
• 4:09
  Marvin: it generally makes the fish cranky, right?
• 4:12
  Marvin: Certainly in the shallow water has a negative impact on bait fish.
• 4:16
  Marvin: You know, what else can you kind of share with folks to kind of help them?
• 4:20
  Marvin: You know, they don't want to go to work and they want to fish,
• 4:22
  Marvin: so they got to make something happen.
• 4:26
  Ellis: Happen yeah so i would say
• 4:29
  Ellis: some rules of
• 4:32
  Ellis: thumb is as as
• 4:35
  Ellis: things get tougher for fishing in general just
• 4:39
  Ellis: tune down your presentations a little bit um there's a reason that my my go-to
• 4:45
  Ellis: fly for low and clear on some bad condition days it you know isn't fishing an
• 4:57
  Ellis: eight inch crafty changer,
• 5:00
  Ellis: and hoping that a two-foot brown erupts on it um i'm probably fishing for trout specifically some,
• 5:09
  Ellis: faster generally speaking faster water which is just to say there's there's
• 5:14
  Ellis: a little more copper for fish.
• 5:17
  Ellis: I'm still targeting the slower water, but it's adjacent to faster water.
• 5:20
  Ellis: I'm not necessarily going in that frog water as much.
• 5:25
  Ellis: And, you know, smallies.
• 5:31
  Ellis: They can be a little more temperamental.
• 5:35
  Ellis: And, you know, there could be some selection bias around here,
• 5:39
  Ellis: I think, because they tend to be more in and freestones.
• 5:43
  Ellis: And when they're not, when they're in some of the rivers that are more tailwater
• 5:50
  Ellis: in nature and less freestone in nature, they're still getting a lot of insulation.
• 5:55
  Ellis: There's still shad moving around. It's not as subject to all of the environmental
• 6:03
  Ellis: changes, But everything slows down,
• 6:06
  Ellis: and they don't need as many calories.
• 6:12
  Ellis: The entire food chain slows down.
• 6:16
  Ellis: And so, yeah, trying to get that pre-spawn smallie to swim all the way through
• 6:27
  Ellis: a big changer up to your rod tip,
• 6:31
  Ellis: when it's already sort of mass, is Cree Swan, are we towards the end of it?
• 6:39
  Ellis: And again, I would say it depends on which watershed you're fishing.
• 6:46
  Ellis: If that's not had, if it's not a fishy day, right?
• 6:49
  Ellis: If it's not a little overcast, if it's not a flat or fallen barometer and you have clear water.
• 6:58
  Ellis: I i would i would say it can be boring um you know maybe maybe throw in the
• 7:03
  Ellis: fun stuff every once in a while but i've slow rolled i mean real like slow tap
• 7:11
  Ellis: tap tap on an intermediate sink,
• 7:14
  Ellis: little um each and i clouser the day after in picking up fish on them when they're
• 7:23
  Ellis: not hitting anything with a, as I call it, a ladder presentation.
• 7:28
  Ellis: The day after, I was watching a nice smallmouth eat flies, appropriately sized
• 7:38
  Ellis: for pre-spawn smallie fishing.
• 7:40
  Ellis: And the next day, we got hit with one of these low 34, 35 frost warnings when
• 7:49
  Ellis: three or four days prior, it was...
• 7:53
  Ellis: You're basically feeling like a warm summer day.
• 7:58
  Ellis: So I'll pull back a little bit there. I know all over the place,
• 8:02
  Ellis: just like our fishing weather.
• 8:05
  Marvin: Yeah, but I guess, you know, using like a less heavily weighted clouser or,
• 8:10
  Marvin: you know, I'd imagine, right, like maybe fishing like something that hovers
• 8:13
  Marvin: a little bit more like a hover changer.
• 8:15
  Marvin: You're really just trying to kind of tone down the, you know,
• 8:18
  Marvin: it's not some, you know, you're not going to get fish ripping flies from the bank, right? Right.
• 8:22
  Ellis: Yes. And thank you for bringing you back to that one.
• 8:26
  Ellis: Doing stuff that can achieve more of the byte triggers in a smaller window of space.
• 8:39
  Ellis: So said another way, you're able to keep the presentation there longer as opposed
• 8:45
  Ellis: to relying on that chase.
• 8:48
  Ellis: Chase and you know so
• 8:52
  Ellis: a lot of this stuff is me about to
• 8:54
  Ellis: start telling stories that i've repeated to myself enough to believe but is
• 9:00
  Ellis: it curiosity is it because their uh metabolism slowed down is it is it small
• 9:05
  Ellis: enough to be less threatening uh you know the caloric expenditure of attacking and And, you know,
• 9:14
  Ellis: maybe having a little bit of a battle with something small isn't going to be
• 9:19
  Ellis: the same thing for attacking and having a problem with trying to eat an 8-inch
• 9:25
  Ellis: fish when you're a 14-inch fish.
• 9:28
  Ellis: Um but yeah you know toning down
• 9:31
  Ellis: to to some of those even the the micro changers you
• 9:34
  Ellis: know the two and a half three inch finesse changer type things yeah b-chain
• 9:41
  Ellis: or those I think there's some plastic um I forget who makes them wops wops you
• 9:49
  Ellis: might make them but some plastic dumbbell eyes and you.
• 9:55
  Ellis: Yeah, bucktail, box, craft furrows, but something to hang a little bit and stay
• 10:02
  Ellis: in the kill zone as opposed to falling down, getting into rocks or staying too close to the surface,
• 10:09
  Ellis: which is also where having intermediate line and just knowing what to do in
• 10:16
  Ellis: different situations as opposed to always throwing 300 grain,
• 10:20
  Ellis: you know, big flies and ripping it back.
• 10:23
  Ellis: Um it's just it's not always how they eat yeah.
• 10:27
  Marvin: It sounds too like you might need some stack men's in there right.
• 10:30
  Ellis: Um yeah you know i would say that depends on your philosophy of,
• 10:42
  Ellis: of fishing for a small mouth and for trout um i i think when you really start toning down,
• 10:49
  Ellis: your your presentations it can be pretty tough to get the the full pop out kill the full,
• 11:01
  Ellis: dead stop moving with the current and you know with some of those smaller flies.
• 11:12
  Ellis: I don't know this is really contradictory to a lot of the stuff that I normally
• 11:17
  Ellis: do and things I normally say, but some of those smaller flies just real slow
• 11:22
  Ellis: rolling, you know, crapper, sparsely tied bucktail, fox.
• 11:28
  Ellis: If the bite trigger is not the pop, pop, kill, hover above, you know,
• 11:34
  Ellis: shoot from the belly, and it's just more of a, huh, what's that?
• 11:40
  Ellis: I'm going to go see what that is. and you got something just consistently moving.
• 11:47
  Ellis: Seeing it with Striper and Trout a little more so,
• 11:52
  Ellis: you know, fishing with the idea in mind of trying to match that flow down shad,
• 12:00
  Ellis: but no reason not to employ it for smallmouth.
• 12:07
  Marvin: Yeah, got it. And I guess too, you know, I guess one of the other things to
• 12:10
  Marvin: remember is, you know, you're going to have to, you know, if you're on the sticks
• 12:14
  Marvin: and you've got any flow, you're going to have to, you know, one,
• 12:16
  Marvin: you're going to want to really think about where you put the fly, right?
• 12:19
  Marvin: Because you've got to manage that pretty well. But also, two,
• 12:21
  Marvin: whoever's on the sticks is going to probably be back rowing a fair amount.
• 12:26
  Ellis: Yeah, that's another...
• 12:32
  Ellis: I'm not going to say tough one, but I've come to appreciate my knowledge in
• 12:42
  Ellis: where to put people when and how quickly relative to current speed and bank position.
• 12:52
  Ellis: And, man, that's a big part of it.
• 12:55
  Ellis: And I think I overlooked that and I can be pretty tough,
• 13:02
  Ellis: to I can be tough on myself to the point of not self-promoting but it's this
• 13:12
  Ellis: last start to this season sort of in the last year it's,
• 13:18
  Ellis: putting your guy in the right place some of these casts that happen they don't
• 13:22
  Ellis: happen in the presentation that happens it's fly selection
• 13:25
  Ellis: it's what rod they're fishing it's some of these tweaks that we've gone through
• 13:29
  Ellis: that allow them to get some of these presentations and yeah it's it's where
• 13:32
  Ellis: the boat is and how fast i'm moving relative to the current and.
• 13:38
  Ellis: You have to change that it's constant dude i don't i am rowing,
• 13:46
  Ellis: my arms are moving they're on the oars 100 of the time when we're moving um
• 13:53
  Ellis: you know and we very rarely stop,
• 14:00
  Ellis: and and park for very long so it's having an understanding of of what to do
• 14:08
  Ellis: and when is also i think if you're out fun fishing man if you're the one fishing,
• 14:15
  Ellis: that that dude rowing might not be doing the right thing and,
• 14:21
  Ellis: And heck, I would hope that he or she, if you're fishing with him or her,
• 14:26
  Ellis: would be the type to take some constructive feedback.
• 14:32
  Ellis: And if you need to get closer to the bank to get the right presentation, then...
• 14:39
  Ellis: You know people people like to get better and stuff so um the
• 14:43
  Ellis: the angler really should be
• 14:46
  Ellis: the one to say hey yeah you know this is i'm not
• 14:50
  Ellis: able to do x y or z and then yeah
• 14:53
  Ellis: if you're fishing with the guide it's it's very much on them to be it for as
• 15:00
  Ellis: much as one can there's some times when you just have to be out of position
• 15:04
  Ellis: have you in the right spot at all times it's just otherwise Otherwise,
• 15:08
  Ellis: you may as well just be floating down the middle of the river.
• 15:12
  Marvin: Yeah, I guess my suggestion would be to save your friendship and call a guide like Ellis.
• 15:18
  Marvin: That would be.
• 15:20
  Ellis: You can both come and I can provide couples therapy.
• 15:27
  Marvin: Yeah, dude, I've had some experiences with that, you know, where one person
• 15:32
  Marvin: can row, one person can't.
• 15:34
  Marvin: And, you know, if you're fishing, you know, try one, trying to be serious about
• 15:38
  Marvin: it, but also to your point, I mean, it makes a huge difference,
• 15:40
  Marvin: you know, particularly if you've got adverse water conditions.
• 15:43
  Marvin: And, you know, that's why I generally, when I fish with people,
• 15:46
  Marvin: I was like, dude, let's just get a guide. Like, you know, we'll flip a coin.
• 15:48
  Ellis: Yeah.
• 15:49
  Marvin: We'll decide when we're going to switch, but it's going to be a much better
• 15:51
  Marvin: day. And we're gonna have a much better dinner conversation if we just,
• 15:54
  Marvin: uh, call somebody like Ellis. That's my thought.
• 15:58
  Ellis: Yeah. You'll actually have dinner together.
• 16:01
  Marvin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate
• 16:05
  Marvin: Fly. You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever's easiest for you.
• 16:09
  Marvin: If we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag,
• 16:12
  Marvin: and we're going to enter a drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.
• 16:14
  Marvin: And, you know, we know from last time that Ellis has got a few leftover bucktails.
• 16:19
  Marvin: And remember, we've got a great community that we host on Patreon, and we have two tiers.
• 16:24
  Marvin: You know, one is a $100 annual guide credit with Ellis, And the other is 10% off bucktails.
• 16:28
  Marvin: So if either of those work for you, you should check it out.
• 16:31
  Marvin: Links are in the show notes.
• 16:33
  Marvin: And Ellis, you want to let folks know where they can find you,
• 16:37
  Marvin: book you, and fish with you?
• 16:40
  Ellis: Yeah, website is elliswardflies.com. And Instagram is at elliswardguides.
• 16:49
  Ellis: Best way to reach out, ask about dates, just to call me and or text me at 513-543-0019.
• 17:03
  Marvin: Yeah, well, there you go. And folks, all that stuff's in the show notes too.
• 17:07
  Marvin: So, you know, I know it's kind of funky, but I think any day on the water is
• 17:10
  Marvin: better than any day in the office. So you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
• 17:14
  Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
• 17:18
  Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.