Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 28: East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward

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S6, Ep 28: 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: We're back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward.
• 0:09
  Marvin: Ellis, how are you doing?
• 0:12
  Ellis: I'm doing well, Marv. How are you?
• 0:13
  Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. Sounds like you've,
• 0:17
  Marvin: despite daylight savings time, you've got a little fishing withdrawal.
• 0:22
  Ellis: Yeah, a little bit. Tried to hit the methadone clinic. That's not appropriate. rip.
• 0:27
  Ellis: I scratched yesterday with my daughter who went to a little zone for some smallmouth,
• 0:34
  Ellis: fish and bait, but as I'm sure you can recall with five years old,
• 0:40
  Ellis: you know, those plants don't really mean much when you're out there, and it's kind of sunny.
• 0:44
  Ellis: Fish weren't biting, so I put a couple casts out there. It felt nice.
• 0:49
  Marvin: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, do you consider hot dogs live bait?
• 0:55
  Ellis: Uh depends on how long you let them sit outside that's.
• 1:00
  Marvin: Fair uh so you know we were talking before we started recording and you know
• 1:04
  Marvin: kind of kind of the end of musky season and really kind of looking forward to
• 1:09
  Marvin: uh some pretty nice hatches uh on your neck of the woods and i don't know know
• 1:13
  Marvin: probably next month or so.
• 1:14
  Ellis: Yeah it is
• 1:18
  Ellis: we're getting into
• 1:20
  Ellis: spawning season up on the
• 1:23
  Ellis: french broad not quite there yet um last scheduled
• 1:26
  Ellis: muskie trip was last
• 1:30
  Ellis: week and had to we had
• 1:33
  Ellis: to call that one on account of rain and you
• 1:38
  Ellis: know i'll probably sneak in another few days up there talking
• 1:41
  Ellis: with some guys that fished today and not a
• 1:44
  Ellis: whole lot's changed and we had a whole lot of water that
• 1:47
  Ellis: coincided with another little cold snap
• 1:50
  Ellis: so with nights being in the 30s
• 1:54
  Ellis: and days being in the you know 50 low 60s we're just it's not going to be there
• 1:59
  Ellis: quite yet and as far as the tailwaters it's everything's shaping up to be a
• 2:04
  Ellis: pretty good spring i i've gotten hopeful before that But so much rain and such
• 2:10
  Ellis: a consistent amount of rain.
• 2:12
  Ellis: And, you know, seeing some of these tributaries like the Doe River on the Watauga
• 2:15
  Ellis: and Freestone, the French Broad, the Nolichucky, everything just so happy and healthy.
• 2:21
  Ellis: And much more so than I've seen in the last two, maybe three years.
• 2:28
  Ellis: I still like rain whenever it's coming.
• 2:31
  Ellis: And it's nice to have this right now.
• 2:35
  Ellis: We'll have good water. I'm pretty light my books are pretty light for the next
• 2:40
  Ellis: couple weeks you know a few trips here and there but.
• 2:46
  Ellis: It can be a little tough to watch the really good conditions knowing that,
• 2:51
  Ellis: I think, or I should say hoping that folks are waiting for the quote-unquote
• 2:56
  Ellis: good weather. Obviously, some rain does a lot.
• 3:01
  Ellis: But yeah, everything's shaping up quite well right now.
• 3:07
  Ellis: Good releases on both rivers. As we get warmer and the daylight starts to go from under 12 to over 12,
• 3:20
  Ellis: we're going to start seeing a bunch of different stuff.
• 3:23
  Ellis: Off but the big one the first big one going to be cat is here in probably under a month,
• 3:30
  Ellis: on the watauga and then it's all
• 3:33
  Ellis: furs and pmds everywhere both and
• 3:36
  Ellis: tailwaters you know you can get good days of
• 3:39
  Ellis: dry fly fishing in middle of january but pretty special time of year coming
• 3:45
  Ellis: up it this time of year is also when i say cat is in sulfur it's like you had
• 3:51
  Ellis: school bus size as balls of shad moving up into the rivers and down your lake mouths.
• 3:58
  Ellis: The lake is filling back up and times are changing.
• 4:05
  Marvin: Yeah, so, you know, big brown trout probably makes the stripers happy too, right?
• 4:11
  Ellis: Yeah. I haven't had the opportunity to have a conversation with the striper,
• 4:18
  Ellis: But the ones that are here are stocked and don't naturally reproduce.
• 4:26
  Ellis: So whether or not they're following the cooler radars, the more oxygenated river
• 4:33
  Ellis: water, I mean, they're still down in the lake, but they're going to be lower.
• 4:37
  Ellis: Or if it's some sort of false spawn, which certainly does occur in other stretches
• 4:43
  Ellis: of the Holston proper. I'm just talking about from Boone into the South Olsen, Otago.
• 4:49
  Ellis: Remains to be seen, but it's kind of different means to the same end.
• 4:54
  Marvin: There you go. And got a question for you from Brenner, our probably most frequent
• 4:58
  Marvin: question asker on the Articulate Fly.
• 5:01
  Marvin: And he wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, how much does pushing water
• 5:08
  Marvin: with a big head fly matter?
• 5:13
  Ellis: Sure.
• 5:18
  Ellis: So, I'm going to make some assumptions about this. And I think in making these
• 5:24
  Ellis: assumptions, or at least in saying that I'm making these assumptions,
• 5:27
  Ellis: I would say it's important to think about the question that you're asking.
• 5:36
  Ellis: That might be too condescending to just say that plainly, but it's important
• 5:41
  Ellis: to ask yourself, why is this a thing?
• 5:46
  Ellis: Why is pushing water a thing?
• 5:50
  Ellis: And so I've approached this, and we talked about this.
• 5:53
  Ellis: I'm expecting to wake up in about eight and a half hours when you put me down
• 5:59
  Ellis: as I start going and going and going for 15 minutes straight.
• 6:02
  Ellis: But there's just a lot here and especially in the world of streamer fishing
• 6:07
  Ellis: which I think falls into the trap of what sounds good,
• 6:14
  Ellis: what works enough to gain some traction and once we're there it's fishing I
• 6:21
  Ellis: mean if you have something that works enough to gain traction,
• 6:25
  Ellis: it's going to work because they're fish they're going to eat something that's
• 6:29
  Ellis: moving so So as a rule, I would say that some friend of caper is important.
• 6:39
  Ellis: When you're talking about activating lateral lines and what that actually means
• 6:45
  Ellis: to a fish dispersing water.
• 6:48
  Ellis: I struggle to think that something that is not aero or hydrodynamic.
• 6:58
  Ellis: So when you look at pus, I would also maybe categorize that or rephrase that as drag.
• 7:06
  Ellis: When you're pulling something through the water and it feels draggy,
• 7:09
  Ellis: that's because it's not aero or hydrodynamic. It's kind of a nightmare to cast,
• 7:15
  Ellis: depending on how it's weighted.
• 7:19
  Ellis: And when you're dragging it through the water, yeah, it's creating a disturbance
• 7:23
  Ellis: disturbance because not necessarily displacing water because of the volume,
• 7:29
  Ellis: it displacing water because of the friction.
• 7:34
  Ellis: That i'm going to reference my swim
• 7:37
  Ellis: bug which is a pretty i
• 7:40
  Ellis: think a lot of people think that the fry is
• 7:43
  Ellis: bigger than it ends up being but the
• 7:46
  Ellis: head is really it's packed deer hair with some
• 7:50
  Ellis: epoxy and marv you've you've cast it and fished the thing you can't feel it
• 7:56
  Ellis: you it casts like a dream you can't feel it moving to the water and then when
• 8:00
  Ellis: you change to kind of a bigger one or or I'll put on one with just a couple
• 8:04
  Ellis: pieces of Keira on the hook bend, you can feel a difference.
• 8:08
  Ellis: Like, whoa, what am I fishing now? Then you put on a dungeon,
• 8:10
  Ellis: it's like, whew, cast way different.
• 8:14
  Ellis: You can feel it drag into the water. I love that fly for different reasons.
• 8:19
  Ellis: So the swim bag, quote-unquote, pushes better because it actually displaces
• 8:25
  Ellis: a solid piece of something that is moving through the water and it's buoyant.
• 8:29
  Ellis: So if you think about putting a a bouncy ball,
• 8:36
  Ellis: or an inflatable ball into a bathtub it's going to push all the water out if
• 8:42
  Ellis: you put something you know a bowling ball into the bathtub you know there's
• 8:47
  Ellis: some physics 101 in there but
• 8:50
  Ellis: there's more force on something that's buoyant so the swim fly thing is,
• 8:55
  Ellis: there's more rabbit holes down that direction too So, but the reason I kind
• 8:59
  Ellis: of kicked off with it's important to have some taper is that,
• 9:06
  Ellis: be it Blant or something weighted, as long as you do have taper,
• 9:11
  Ellis: you're going to get a swim out of it. Yeah.
• 9:16
  Ellis: I'm going to go ahead and say, just having watched these fish eat so much,
• 9:21
  Ellis: they're activated visually, and you can, you know, swim blindly with a fly,
• 9:29
  Ellis: unless that thing's got a rattle, or it's, you know, like one of Blaine's gummy
• 9:33
  Ellis: minnows, or you're fishing Rapalas.
• 9:37
  Ellis: You're not doing anything with a fly to create some sort of lateral line disturbance. disturbance.
• 9:43
  Ellis: So I would say going higher on the water column and creating more of an obstruction,
• 9:51
  Ellis: from above down below with light and just going after them visually is probably
• 9:58
  Ellis: a story for Beth in worrying about what's pushing.
• 10:01
  Ellis: And then as a tire, it's exploring what that what that push is and how you can
• 10:08
  Ellis: get it without with and without buoyancy and um,
• 10:13
  Ellis: yeah i think i'm going to stop there before we get into time uh.
• 10:17
  Marvin: Well i'm going to bait you and say you know the i guess you know the there's
• 10:21
  Marvin: the lateral uh line stimulation but then also you know with articulation the
• 10:25
  Marvin: big head then you get to start playing with jack knifing and kill you know killing
• 10:30
  Marvin: the flies right and get inside profile.
• 10:31
  Ellis: Yeah I mean my swim bug and I've had more than one person give me a hard time
• 10:39
  Ellis: because it's drunken disorderly with a different head which I think would be
• 10:44
  Ellis: a disservice to call it that a disservice to Tommy it's I created this fly,
• 10:53
  Ellis: Taking from primarily Tommy Lynch's Drunken Disorderity and Blaine Chocolate's T-Bone.
• 11:02
  Ellis: I was tying a lot of musky flies at the time.
• 11:05
  Ellis: I was just getting here and just able to fish as much as it takes to actually
• 11:11
  Ellis: see the feedback to say, okay, I want this or I want that.
• 11:14
  Ellis: And it really became attempting to get that jackknife, being a small package,
• 11:22
  Ellis: castable, all that stuff.
• 11:26
  Ellis: And Tommy's fly is just so great, and I wanted to keep a lot that was there.
• 11:32
  Ellis: And then, yeah, taking the T-bonder, just some of those three-shanker triples,
• 11:38
  Ellis: and trying to get that dog walk, basically, but have something where the back
• 11:45
  Ellis: end swinging out and the head stopping and going left or right.
• 11:50
  Marvin: Yeah, pretty good stuff. And you know, folks, we love questions at the Articulate Fly.
• 11:54
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
• 11:58
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag.
• 12:01
  Marvin: And we are drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.
• 12:04
  Marvin: And Ellis, before I let you go, a couple things. things.
• 12:06
  Marvin: You know, I imagine there are probably no more bucktail drops,
• 12:09
  Marvin: but you can certainly correct me.
• 12:11
  Marvin: And then also just kind of let folks know how to reach out and talk fishing
• 12:14
  Marvin: with you and get on your guidebook.
• 12:18
  Ellis: Yeah, so there is going to be, there's bucktail just stubbornly hanging around,
• 12:24
  Ellis: and that's mostly because the moment I get free time, I end up doing something else.
• 12:30
  Ellis: So I'm just, I'm going to stop promising a date on that, but there will be another
• 12:35
  Ellis: one, and I do have some good tails that will be in that.
• 12:39
  Ellis: And as far as contacting me, fishing with me, you can get on Instagram and sort
• 12:50
  Ellis: of follow along with some of the stuff I'm doing at Ellis Ward Guides.
• 12:54
  Ellis: Information on booking and sort of a refreshed website is at elliswardflies.com.
• 13:02
  Ellis: And the best way to talk about you know some of this stuff we talked about what's
• 13:06
  Ellis: going on what fishing looks like right now or in a couple weeks is my cell phone at 513-543-0019 there.
• 13:16
  Marvin: You go and so do you think if someone wanted like a bucktail in their easter
• 13:19
  Marvin: basket that would be a doable thing.
• 13:22
  Ellis: Yeah you're getting me now i'm thinking about like uh make like a giant easter
• 13:27
  Ellis: basket with with using the bucktail as bunny ears.
• 13:30
  Marvin: Yeah, you can do that or dye them pastel and have all kinds of pastel colors and yellows and greens.
• 13:35
  Ellis: Pastels are popular.
• 13:37
  Marvin: Yeah.
• 13:37
  Ellis: Yeah, I'd really like these things to be out in the next week or two.
• 13:41
  Marvin: Yeah, there you go. And, you know, so folks, remember, we have a Patreon community,
• 13:45
  Marvin: the Articulate Fly, and there are two great ways to support the show and support Ellis.
• 13:49
  Marvin: And one tier will get you 10% off the last bucktail shipment of the year,
• 13:54
  Marvin: and there's another that'll get you $100 guide credit per year.
• 13:56
  Marvin: So, you know, if you're in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia,
• 14:00
  Marvin: Western North Carolina, and you want to fish with Ellis or get some bucktails,
• 14:03
  Marvin: you should check that out.
• 14:04
  Marvin: And, you know, gosh, I'm looking at the weather. I mean, it's going to be awesome.
• 14:07
  Marvin: I think it may be rain, it's a little bit this weekend, but we're in the 70s.
• 14:10
  Marvin: So it's definitely time in our part of the world to get on the water and catch a few.
• 14:14
  Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
• 14:18
  Ellis: Appreciate it, Mark.