Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 86: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward

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S6, Ep 86: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward · 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 doing pretty good. I'm kind of crawling out as recovering from a 15-hour
• 0:20
  Ellis: day yesterday after mousing the night before.
• 0:23
  Ellis: So, um, it is made easier when the fishing is how it has been.
• 0:31
  Ellis: So, um, in general, pretty good, tired, but good.
• 0:35
  Marvin: So are you saying you're not as young as you used to be?
• 0:40
  Ellis: Uh, Marv, isn't that true right now? Just, you know, compared to five minutes.
• 0:45
  Marvin: It is, but I was not trying to be philosophical. I was trying to be a little
• 0:48
  Marvin: bit more practical, but that's just me.
• 0:51
  Ellis: Yeah um you know i didn't i wasn't doing this when i was 25 so i can't i can't
• 0:58
  Ellis: really compare to that but um you know it it's it's a good burn i'll say that.
• 1:06
  Marvin: Yeah nothing a little gatorade and monster can't take
• 1:09
  Marvin: care of right dang yeah
• 1:12
  Marvin: so the interesting thing is and i know you're excited because i've
• 1:15
  Marvin: been looking at your weather and you are i think you have almost what you would
• 1:18
  Marvin: consider to be perfect conditions so you're you know in the mid 80s um you've
• 1:24
  Marvin: got a bunch of cloudy days and you've got interspersed rainfall so i would imagine
• 1:28
  Marvin: you know subject to like squirrely generation on the south holston it's about
• 1:32
  Marvin: as good as it gets this time of year for you.
• 1:36
  Ellis: Yeah, what you just said, there's a couple different data points of temperature,
• 1:43
  Ellis: you know, ambient temperature related to fishing, I wouldn't say is terribly
• 1:47
  Ellis: important, but for our comfort is very important.
• 1:50
  Ellis: And if the goal for the day is to have fun and get fish in the bed and,
• 1:57
  Ellis: you know, if fish aren't getting into the boat or if we're not getting feedback,
• 2:03
  Ellis: you know, learn, try new things,
• 2:07
  Ellis: make something happen.
• 2:09
  Ellis: Whatever the task at hand is, that's hard to do when it's 98 degrees and full sun.
• 2:15
  Ellis: So everything becomes easier. year
• 2:17
  Ellis: instruction catching fish um switching
• 2:21
  Ellis: up between dry flies and you know the you know
• 2:24
  Ellis: little instruction on ssi 16
• 2:28
  Ellis: with the nine foot versus uh casting a dry dry with with an 11 foot leader and
• 2:34
  Ellis: um bouncing back to streamers like out of that the the tax on the individual
• 2:40
  Ellis: on the angler becomes so much less when you have the the intermittent,
• 2:47
  Ellis: I think that's what you described it as.
• 2:49
  Ellis: Intermittent clouds with scattered storms here and there.
• 2:52
  Ellis: Like, that's as much you can ask for. And then from the fishing perspective,
• 2:56
  Ellis: boy, oh, boy, we got Kyler and Beth Rivers.
• 3:02
  Ellis: The Rattagas continuing generation in the afternoon, which, you know,
• 3:06
  Ellis: I kind of default to that in designing my trips.
• 3:14
  Ellis: As daylight shortens and you know i tend to
• 3:17
  Ellis: push a little more towards mousing but don't really try to milk that afternoon
• 3:21
  Ellis: release and and the south holston's um a little more fluctuating in in their
• 3:28
  Ellis: releases but um looks like for at least the next few days and i'm guessing based on rainfall um,
• 3:36
  Ellis: a week or or more we're getting some six seven eight ten hour releases from the south holston and,
• 3:44
  Ellis: and again the the tributaries i was just looking at the
• 3:47
  Ellis: dough um the big tributary and
• 3:50
  Ellis: for context you know when the dough is high like really really pushy in the
• 3:56
  Ellis: summer let's let's call that like 200 cfs the watauga the the dam the river
• 4:03
  Ellis: itself the watauga tailwater is releasing 240 cfs so,
• 4:09
  Ellis: So one of the reasons I like the Watauga so much is it doesn't really feel like
• 4:15
  Ellis: it's not, you're on it, you're on the middle of the lower.
• 4:19
  Ellis: You wouldn't look around and say this is a tail race.
• 4:23
  Ellis: So all of these little things, the contributions from the Freestones,
• 4:30
  Ellis: from the little tributaries, these little ag creeks just getting hit with the
• 4:35
  Ellis: heavens opening up for 15 minutes here and there.
• 4:38
  Ellis: And pushing out some color, you see it in the fish.
• 4:44
  Ellis: And as much as I love rowing a boat and hanging out with people.
• 4:50
  Ellis: Educating, doing what I'm doing now, just vomiting the contents of my brain
• 4:55
  Ellis: out at others, I really like catching fish.
• 5:01
  Ellis: I really like watching people, helping people catch big brown trout.
• 5:04
  Ellis: And yeah, these are the conditions for that.
• 5:09
  Ellis: So it's been, and you know, I'm going to promote and encourage the streamer
• 5:18
  Ellis: angler as much as possible, but that was kind of the task at hand.
• 5:22
  Ellis: Yesterday, we had to leave.
• 5:24
  Ellis: We had stopped fishing risers and we fed a monster, a size 20,
• 5:34
  Ellis: just didn't hook set was a little i think we might have had the case of the yips um,
• 5:43
  Ellis: but you know then we had to probably like we could have focused on that for
• 5:46
  Ellis: a couple hours so it's it's been it's been a lot of fun and i'm i'm pumped to fish with you next week.
• 5:53
  Marvin: Yeah i'm excited too and i'm going to bring uh as i like
• 5:55
  Marvin: to say the first son thing number one um and
• 5:59
  Marvin: uh but the other thing too to remind people is the seasonal forage is getting
• 6:05
  Marvin: about as big as it's you know it's getting big now so like all the like annual
• 6:08
  Marvin: minnows and bait fish you know we're heading into august and you know that's
• 6:13
  Marvin: just ringing the dinner bell because there's a lot of that stuff in the water yeah.
• 6:18
  Ellis: You get you get different you get different um I guess I'll use the word forage,
• 6:28
  Ellis: but there's, you know, the sucker spawn, for example, in March.
• 6:32
  Ellis: Well, guess what's starting to, you know, there's a sucker minnow hatch in like
• 6:43
  Ellis: May where you start looking around.
• 6:46
  Ellis: I started looking around the boat ramp at this one ramp I put my headlamp on
• 6:52
  Ellis: and kind of weighed in and checked some zones, specifically some big crawfish
• 6:57
  Ellis: and some sculpin that make them say, that makes sense.
• 7:01
  Ellis: That night I started seeing these little I couldn't really figure out what they
• 7:08
  Ellis: were until I started seeing more and put together,
• 7:11
  Ellis: but oh yeah those are little suckers that were eggs you know six weeks ago so
• 7:18
  Ellis: out of that stuff is continuing to grow i mean well the brands are so,
• 7:24
  Ellis: they know that daylight's going down you know it's it's starting to get dark at at 8 30 and um.
• 7:35
  Ellis: They have an hour less than they did just a few weeks ago so So I can't really
• 7:43
  Ellis: say if it's one thing or another, you know, you, you, you start to get clarity,
• 7:46
  Ellis: um, you start to get more ladder.
• 7:50
  Ellis: When we landed the biggest client caught brown trout for me yesterday,
• 7:57
  Ellis: um, in low ladder off of a weed bed.
• 8:03
  Ellis: And it's certainly clarity on that one you know we're fishing we're fishing very very muddy water,
• 8:13
  Ellis: and i don't know whether or not the conditions override some of these external factors um.
• 8:24
  Ellis: It is tough to say it's i think it's
• 8:27
  Ellis: important to look at at what your creek's doing what your
• 8:30
  Ellis: river's doing what the tailwaters are doing and and um
• 8:33
  Ellis: and experiment but but something else that's happening here is marvel as well
• 8:39
  Ellis: you were saying with with the critters getting bigger um you also have the tiny
• 8:45
  Ellis: critters the bugs you start popping rocks over right now Now,
• 8:50
  Ellis: you're looking at deserts, and,
• 8:53
  Ellis: you know, a month and a half ago, relative deserts.
• 8:57
  Ellis: A month and a half ago, two months ago, you're popping the same rock over,
• 9:02
  Ellis: and it's packed. It's a full house.
• 9:05
  Ellis: And so the food source is consistent and as insulated as these tailwaters can feel.
• 9:15
  Ellis: The food sources, what's available, changes dramatically.
• 9:20
  Ellis: And, you know, taking yesterday as an example and for anyone saying,
• 9:24
  Ellis: oh, you know, fish don't eat streamers.
• 9:27
  Ellis: Yeah, there was a massive brown trout chilling, hanging on a weed bed and very
• 9:35
  Ellis: casually rising up and eating size 20s.
• 9:39
  Ellis: Um, they, they, they eat everything and, and figuring out what,
• 9:46
  Ellis: what looks like the food that they're eating.
• 9:49
  Ellis: That's, that's the task at hand most days.
• 9:52
  Marvin: Yeah. It's awesome stuff. Gets me excited, uh, for next week and got a question for you.
• 9:57
  Ellis: Yeah.
• 9:57
  Marvin: I got a question for you from, uh, Brenner. Uh, he wanted to get your thoughts
• 10:02
  Marvin: on what new anglers can do to be good clients when they get in the boat.
• 10:08
  Ellis: Yeah, so this one, this one's interesting.
• 10:17
  Ellis: I have not been a consumer of guiding outside of fishing with Tommy a couple times.
• 10:30
  Ellis: And some of the saltwater fishing that I've done and meeting some great guys
• 10:38
  Ellis: that I guide the way that I have been guided that I really enjoy,
• 10:43
  Ellis: which is direct communication and being very open.
• 10:50
  Ellis: So what do you want to do?
• 10:52
  Ellis: You know, my job most days, I would say, is to maximize the fun that we're going to have.
• 11:01
  Ellis: For some people, that's catching fish. For some people, it's going out and ripping streamers.
• 11:07
  Ellis: It doesn't matter. We're not going to stop and go over dry fly fishing.
• 11:10
  Ellis: And I think that person would love to understand how to cast a five-foot effectively
• 11:17
  Ellis: and land some nice fish on dry fly.
• 11:19
  Ellis: But right in that moment, there's some of it spoken, some of it's unspoken, where...
• 11:26
  Ellis: What's most fun right then for the person in the front seat if if i think that that's catching fish,
• 11:33
  Ellis: then we're going to stop and fish dry flies if if the most fun thing is to continue
• 11:39
  Ellis: casting streamers we're going to continue casting streamers um so i i think for for a new angler,
• 11:48
  Ellis: from that perspective and this is going to change dramatically i think depending on.
• 11:56
  Ellis: The guide you choose there's there's different flavors
• 11:59
  Ellis: of guides and and there are a lot of guides
• 12:02
  Ellis: who do the same thing every day um you
• 12:06
  Ellis: know i'm thinking of myself matt some
• 12:10
  Ellis: of these other guys that i've been out with where it's like
• 12:13
  Ellis: i have a conversation with every
• 12:16
  Ellis: angler before we go out every single person it
• 12:20
  Ellis: doesn't matter if i'm running 12 trips in
• 12:23
  Ellis: 12 days i know the
• 12:26
  Ellis: person that i'm fishing at least
• 12:29
  Ellis: a little bit on a personal level the
• 12:33
  Ellis: day before if not weeks or a month before so that
• 12:37
  Ellis: i understand what you know what that
• 12:40
  Ellis: dynamic looks like what that fun dynamic looks like for
• 12:43
  Ellis: them and so to to
• 12:46
  Ellis: be a good client in that sense is be honest if you want to learn because i've
• 12:53
  Ellis: had that i get this plenty and it's not going to surprise anyone i just want
• 12:58
  Ellis: to learn how to x i just want to learn
• 13:02
  Ellis: this and that i don't care you know catching fish is a bonus whatever.
• 13:08
  Ellis: If that's not the case, if you want to go, because that's very different.
• 13:13
  Ellis: I can teach and honestly, people can learn far more effectively when the opportunity
• 13:19
  Ellis: to catch fish is not there.
• 13:22
  Ellis: When the opportunity to catch fish is there, you don't listen to me. I don't care who you are.
• 13:27
  Ellis: It's been 100% of people with me.
• 13:30
  Ellis: When the opportunity to catch fish is there and you're getting the fly out there
• 13:33
  Ellis: and maybe everything's not going well and it's only happening 50% of the time,
• 13:37
  Ellis: I'm, you're going to keep doing some of these things and making mistakes and, and I pick up on that.
• 13:43
  Ellis: And so I'm going to kind of quiet down and let you do your thing.
• 13:46
  Ellis: And hopefully we catch some fish.
• 13:48
  Ellis: If you want to catch some fish, say that. And there's, you're going on a guided
• 13:53
  Ellis: trip and you're paying good money for it. So be honest.
• 13:58
  Ellis: And I would say the, the good guys, I've had people on my boat that I don't
• 14:04
  Ellis: want to say They're nervous, but they're, you know, they're very clear that
• 14:08
  Ellis: they're not good anglers, though I have these expectations of,
• 14:12
  Ellis: I'm not even sure what, of anything than zero.
• 14:16
  Ellis: My expectations for, I'm lucky to have people on my boat.
• 14:20
  Ellis: Every single person, a couple of weeks ago, I was telling one of my regulators
• 14:27
  Ellis: that it feels like, oh, these are my first trip, where I truly do feel fortunate
• 14:31
  Ellis: to have people on my boat.
• 14:33
  Ellis: And so I've spent so much time doing different things and fishing gear and fishing
• 14:42
  Ellis: four and five weights and fishing sevens and eights and fishing smallies and
• 14:46
  Ellis: muskie and, you know, low, high,
• 14:49
  Ellis: daytime, dark, so that we can have a conversation and say, hey, here's the menu.
• 14:53
  Ellis: You um and here's a
• 14:56
  Ellis: couple of these programs that we can choose in absence
• 14:59
  Ellis: of an opinion from you but the the client should should provide input and say
• 15:06
  Ellis: here's what i'm going to do and and let's be as clear as possible on expectations
• 15:13
  Ellis: um from both sides because i i think that there's a a,
• 15:18
  Ellis: you know, don't piss your guide off mentality.
• 15:21
  Ellis: Which is bizarre because it's like, at the end of the day, I'm a,
• 15:25
  Ellis: I'm a business and, and I am a, a customer focused business.
• 15:29
  Ellis: And so, um, yeah, certainly do things to, to make the trip go smoother.
• 15:35
  Ellis: And there are plenty of things that happen throughout the day, but, um,
• 15:39
  Ellis: open communication and, and, and being honest, if you want to catch fish,
• 15:45
  Ellis: tell your guide, you want to catch some fish if you want to if you want to avoid
• 15:50
  Ellis: boats if you want to do x y and z tell them and if you're not getting good feels
• 15:56
  Ellis: from whoever you're talking to call someone else.
• 16:00
  Marvin: It's good life advice, right?
• 16:02
  Ellis: Yeah, I think so.
• 16:04
  Marvin: And, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
• 16:07
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
• 16:11
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag,
• 16:14
  Marvin: and we will enter your drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.
• 16:18
  Marvin: And, you know, Ellis, like we always do, you want to let folks,
• 16:20
  Marvin: you know, know where they can find you and book you.
• 16:23
  Marvin: And I'll also remind people that we've got a great community that we host on
• 16:26
  Marvin: Patreon you're on with some opportunities to participate in the community and
• 16:30
  Marvin: get discounts on bucktails.
• 16:31
  Marvin: And there'll be more this year than last year or to get a a hundred dollar off
• 16:35
  Marvin: guide credit with Ellis.
• 16:36
  Marvin: So I'll stop talking now, Ellis and let you cue everybody up and tell them where
• 16:40
  Marvin: to find you and all that kind of good stuff.
• 16:42
  Ellis: Sure. So you can follow me on Instagram at Ellis Ward guides.
• 16:47
  Ellis: My website is Ellis Ward fries.com. on.
• 16:53
  Ellis: Text, call, ask questions, say what's up at my cell phone, 513-543-0019.
• 17:05
  Marvin: Well, there you go, folks. As I always say, you owe it to yourself to get out
• 17:08
  Marvin: there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
• 17:13
  Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.