Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 106: Mousing and Muskies: Ellis Ward's East Tennessee Tactics

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S6, Ep 106: Mousing and Muskies: Ellis Ward's East Tennessee Tactics · 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 am doing well, Marv. How are you?
• 0:13
  Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know,
• 0:16
  Marvin: I know from just watching, one, how you've been slightly incommunicado at odd
• 0:21
  Marvin: hours, and also watching your Instagram feed that you have been mousing 24-7, 365.
• 0:30
  Ellis: Yeah mousing and musky and i
• 0:35
  Ellis: it it's sort of my i know we were just talking about this and um i don't want
• 0:41
  Ellis: to come across as disingenuous when i say things like i'm pushing more stuff
• 0:48
  Ellis: towards mousing and musky and that all this stuff that i talk about with guiding i I,
• 0:54
  Ellis: I'm very proud of, of guiding this way because I, I do it and it's not just,
• 1:00
  Ellis: oh, let's go here because it has some potential.
• 1:05
  Ellis: And, um, you know, I, it's, as you called it, uh,
• 1:12
  Ellis: musky fishing for brown trout, like going after the big Browns and then also,
• 1:17
  Ellis: yes, musky fishing, be it fly or conventional, Like there's,
• 1:22
  Ellis: there's an element of gambling on,
• 1:26
  Ellis: on every single trip, just because I'm, I'm not going to do the thing that is
• 1:34
  Ellis: done by so many people, which is, you know, get a rod bent, boat,
• 1:38
  Ellis: some fish, keep people happy.
• 1:39
  Ellis: I want to see that moment for people, and sometimes it doesn't happen.
• 1:44
  Ellis: And for the folks that know what the score is, they understand that it can be
• 1:50
  Ellis: a tall order over the course of four, even eight hours.
• 1:53
  Ellis: And those are the ones that end up fishing with me more.
• 1:56
  Ellis: And those are the ones that end up mousing and fishing for musketeers.
• 1:59
  Ellis: So I really love it, and it is something that you and your son moused and had
• 2:08
  Ellis: a tough couple hours there.
• 2:11
  Ellis: And of course, the brown trout did their thing by eating when one was just hanging
• 2:17
  Ellis: off the boat, and then he ate another one right at the boat ramp.
• 2:24
  Ellis: But it's a...
• 2:28
  Ellis: Both of those things. Mousing is definitely different. You take away a lot of
• 2:33
  Ellis: that visual, you know, why people like streamer fishing, dry fly fishing,
• 2:37
  Ellis: but it checks a lot of the same boxes.
• 2:39
  Ellis: And it's pretty wild being out there when it's dark i really as much as i can
• 2:47
  Ellis: try to i schedule with people to ensure that we're fishing without a moon and
• 2:52
  Ellis: try to get us into the stretches with,
• 2:56
  Ellis: almost no light and not near streets so i continue to go a little further down every summer.
• 3:09
  Ellis: And it's been getting a little spicier and just looking back at pictures and
• 3:16
  Ellis: videos from the last couple years,
• 3:21
  Ellis: I'll go out in April, May, and you'll get activity.
• 3:27
  Ellis: We can leave the pre-spawn discussion for another one,
• 3:31
  Ellis: but there's a little bit of a
• 3:34
  Ellis: pickup up in the September October zone and
• 3:37
  Ellis: it also comes with 50 degree
• 3:41
  Ellis: nights and I-40s and you know
• 3:47
  Ellis: changing water we're off the summer schedule so there's there is a bunch to
• 3:52
  Ellis: it and I appreciate your noticing that I have been I've been going hard at it and have a pretty
• 4:04
  Ellis: booked calendar for the rest of the week and, um, here and there throughout October, but,
• 4:13
  Ellis: still enough days off to scratch the itches myself and continue to,
• 4:18
  Ellis: you know, find, find new fish and new zones and new flies and lures and all that.
• 4:25
  Marvin: Yeah. But I think the great thing, you know, right. Like we talk about,
• 4:28
  Marvin: you know, people should fish the way they want to fish. Right.
• 4:32
  Marvin: And, you know, this really, yeah, I mean, and, but I think the cool thing,
• 4:35
  Marvin: right, is, you know, I mean, when we started working together,
• 4:38
  Marvin: it's been, I guess, a little over two years now, you know, the,
• 4:41
  Marvin: like, you know, you're ecumenical, right? You'll fish with anybody and you'll help them get on fish.
• 4:46
  Marvin: But, you know, to be able to build your business, to be able to guide the clients
• 4:52
  Marvin: that like to fish the way you like to fish and guide in particular is super cool.
• 4:59
  Ellis: Really appreciate it. I just got goosebumps. bumps.
• 5:05
  Ellis: Yeah, it's something that,
• 5:11
  Ellis: It has been really hard. I worked in an office and I played sports.
• 5:19
  Ellis: I went to school. I studied physics.
• 5:21
  Ellis: I did things that I think were checked some boxes for people as rewarding or
• 5:31
  Ellis: difficult or something.
• 5:33
  Ellis: Of something like, I, I can't, none of those things touch the work that goes into this.
• 5:41
  Ellis: And, and so much of it at this point is, is just strictly related to how can
• 5:47
  Ellis: I teach better? How can I guide better?
• 5:51
  Ellis: And yeah, there, there is a whole lot that goes into it. So I, I really appreciate it.
• 5:55
  Marvin: Yeah. It's a, it's funny. Like you gave up consulting to basically have big
• 5:58
  Marvin: Brown trout and a musky put cigarettes out on your soul every day. Right.
• 6:03
  Ellis: Yeah. Which honestly, when you look at it that way, I'm doing the same thing.
• 6:08
  Ellis: It's just beating my head against a wall. And at least with the,
• 6:14
  Ellis: um, you know, with the Browns and the muskies, you can say, well,
• 6:18
  Ellis: fishing cloud cover, make up some other excuses.
• 6:22
  Ellis: And, um, you know, with consulting, it's, it'll end up being your head.
• 6:28
  Marvin: Yeah. So I got a question for you, uh, from Brenner.
• 6:32
  Marvin: He wanted to get your thoughts and And you touched on this a little bit a few
• 6:35
  Marvin: minutes ago, but he wanted to get your take on kind of what happens as we start
• 6:38
  Marvin: to kind of start to move into this like early autumn transition and the water
• 6:42
  Marvin: temperatures start to change.
• 6:43
  Marvin: And what does that do, you know, to fish behavior and does it make them more
• 6:47
  Marvin: aggressive, you know, kind of
• 6:48
  Marvin: what do you expect to see kind of as you get consistently cooler evenings?
• 6:54
  Ellis: Sure. so I will say,
• 6:57
  Ellis: something that I may have said on a YouTube time video which quite honestly
• 7:03
  Ellis: I don't listen to after I record them and so it could be out in the ether somewhere,
• 7:11
  Ellis: and I've been looking at this for the last this will be the fifth year of looking
• 7:15
  Ellis: at it and two years ago I felt like.
• 7:22
  Ellis: This theory became inarguable. So it's, as we get cooler nights,
• 7:31
  Ellis: the sun's shining less, the days are shorter.
• 7:36
  Ellis: It's also, you know, the angle of the sun is hitting the water with a less direct angle.
• 7:43
  Ellis: Um but the you know that that transition point as you call it there's something
• 7:53
  Ellis: that happens on tailwaters that
• 7:55
  Ellis: is roughly unpredictable but certainly a reason where i i start to say.
• 8:02
  Ellis: Early to mid-november i get i get real cautious with people wanting to come
• 8:07
  Ellis: Um, and, and fish and it's because the lakes turnover, the, the tailwater lakes,
• 8:16
  Ellis: it happens in the spring too.
• 8:17
  Ellis: And I'm, I'm not sure if it's that it isn't known or isn't talked about.
• 8:24
  Ellis: It certainly isn't talked about. I haven't talked with anyone who this sounds
• 8:29
  Ellis: where in the discussion, it seems like it's a familiar concept to them.
• 8:34
  Ellis: Um so maybe it's because i've
• 8:36
  Ellis: just been so 100 fishing streamers
• 8:41
  Ellis: for browns where it's i mean mark you've been on the boat when those bite windows
• 8:47
  Ellis: open up and you've been on the boat when they are closed you notice it it's
• 8:53
  Ellis: you can't not and then when you you when you layer in this.
• 9:01
  Ellis: This montage of, you know, my confidence banks and what I call barometer zones
• 9:05
  Ellis: of, all right, we should be getting some form of feedback from,
• 9:09
  Ellis: let's say, these different types of presentations and then sort of adjust.
• 9:14
  Ellis: It's zero. It's zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. Every single spot,
• 9:19
  Ellis: 0.0. We're not moving any fish.
• 9:22
  Ellis: And I'll see the water turn off and the fish immediately respond in a positive way.
• 9:31
  Ellis: And then when it's turning on, like Fishing the Rise, it's like that first half
• 9:38
  Ellis: of the rise, it's positive and somewhat frantic. It's as though someone's poisoning the water.
• 9:44
  Ellis: And they just, they know that nothing is going to be happening until it shuts off again.
• 9:48
  Ellis: So as soon as it's coming on, there's this, we need to, you know, it's the last call.
• 9:56
  Ellis: And then when it comes off, it's like, oh, thank God. and you see it there's
• 10:00
  Ellis: you don't you're not seeing herons you don't see bugs ospreys are gone,
• 10:07
  Ellis: and honestly like that that is such a it's such a binary,
• 10:15
  Ellis: event that i think can be figured out and expanded upon by brenner by other guides by whoever.
• 10:26
  Ellis: And it really, you know, relative to the more subtle changes in temperatures,
• 10:34
  Ellis: because when you think about the tailwaters, the temperatures,
• 10:37
  Ellis: those fluctuations are happening throughout a very large piece of water.
• 10:44
  Ellis: And then through convection are finding their way into the river via the bottom of the lake.
• 10:51
  Ellis: So when that bottom of the lake changes and the dissolved oxygen content changes,
• 11:00
  Ellis: it's not a freestone river where as you have falling temperatures,
• 11:08
  Ellis: you know, 53 to 55 degrees is an example.
• 11:13
  Ellis: For example, crawfish tend to go from more active to more dormant,
• 11:18
  Ellis: and maybe you fish jigs, and these are real things.
• 11:22
  Ellis: You start to experiment with whether or not they're picking them up on the fall,
• 11:27
  Ellis: on the rise. Trout are less sensitive.
• 11:30
  Ellis: Their happy zone with dissolved oxygen content is going to differ by species.
• 11:34
  Ellis: It's also going to differ by size and whether or not they're lake fish or river
• 11:37
  Ellis: fish. And so there's so many variables just within that that it honestly can
• 11:44
  Ellis: be hard to discern because there's also pre-spawn implications.
• 11:49
  Ellis: And then I basically stay off of the rivers.
• 11:54
  Ellis: They turn into a zoo, both with boats and a very strange form of fishing guide
• 12:01
  Ellis: egos during the spawn season.
• 12:04
  Ellis: And people fish reds here in east tennessee it's it's pretty alarming um so
• 12:10
  Ellis: i try to stay away as much as possible fishing risers fishing to the banks you're
• 12:15
  Ellis: not fishing reds like not everyone's spawning at once um so don't think you
• 12:19
  Ellis: can't fish during this spawn but there's all these different,
• 12:23
  Ellis: things that change and there certainly is a a period of transition here but i would say that uh.
• 12:32
  Ellis: There's some lore and some different strategies that you should explore as we
• 12:39
  Ellis: get deeper into fall and the temperatures start to drop a little bit.
• 12:42
  Ellis: But man, I'm two-handing craft fur changers in the second week of January and
• 12:49
  Ellis: watching two-foot trout scream through the water and waking on it when the water
• 12:56
  Ellis: temperature is 44 degrees.
• 12:58
  Ellis: And the same thing is happening at 55 degrees.
• 13:02
  Ellis: And so there's you know that's post-spawn versus a bunch of these other conditions
• 13:08
  Ellis: and I just I would say that this is another one of those things where yes there's
• 13:14
  Ellis: a bunch of stuff here that could be,
• 13:17
  Ellis: influential there's there is that big one of.
• 13:21
  Ellis: Let's try to find out more about that lake turnover thing and dissolved oxygen
• 13:25
  Ellis: content but then otherwise it's a lot of the stuff that we talk about,
• 13:32
  Ellis: almost every episode which is start changing up your cadences um get it in the right spot and,
• 13:39
  Ellis: and having that thing pause and drop and fishing
• 13:42
  Ellis: weighted flies and experimenting with more of the swimmy buoyant flies like
• 13:46
  Ellis: all that stuff's gonna play and you really pros and cons the good part is you
• 13:53
  Ellis: have to go out and fish hard and and try to not be restrained or limit yourself to,
• 14:01
  Ellis: any one thing um and that's
• 14:05
  Ellis: also the other side so it's
• 14:09
  Ellis: it's good if you like to do that it's bad if you just want to do one thing so
• 14:13
  Ellis: um keeping an open mind and continuing to work the water column and speeds and
• 14:20
  Ellis: and uh profile changes can do you well yeah.
• 14:25
  Marvin: There you go and you know folks Folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
• 14:28
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, or you can even go to the
• 14:32
  Marvin: website and send it to us as a voicemail, and you may hear it on the episode.
• 14:36
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag and a
• 14:40
  Marvin: drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.
• 14:44
  Marvin: Ellis, before I let you go, I know you touched on your calendar a little bit,
• 14:47
  Marvin: but you want to let folks know kind of what you have available,
• 14:51
  Marvin: how to reach out, and then maybe tell them how excited you are to play with
• 14:54
  Marvin: Rit, Dine, Borax during deer season.
• 14:57
  Ellis: Yeah the the best
• 15:00
  Ellis: way to get information on trips look at some
• 15:03
  Ellis: um some cool fish pictures
• 15:06
  Ellis: and some flies and all that find out more about mousing muskies
• 15:10
  Ellis: is at elliswardflies.com and i do a decent job of bragging and advertising and
• 15:18
  Ellis: trying to communicate to the world what i'm I'm doing on Instagram at Ellis
• 15:24
  Ellis: Ward guides and best way to reach me, talk about fishing trips,
• 15:29
  Ellis: et cetera, is my cell phone at 5 1 3 5 4 3 0 0 1 9.
• 15:37
  Ellis: And I think there is a, it's, it's micro economics, but there's a small pocket
• 15:46
  Ellis: of inflation that has influenced or X.
• 15:49
  Ellis: So it's like upwards of seven or eight bucks. If you see it in the store for
• 15:53
  Ellis: under $6, which it was, please let me know.
• 15:58
  Marvin: Well, there you go. Well, folks, as I always say, yo it to yourself to get out
• 16:02
  Marvin: there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
• 16:06
  Ellis: Appreciate it, Mark.