Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 60: Ellis Ward's Guide to East Tennessee: Streamers, Hatches and Big Fish

Transcript

S6, Ep 60: Ellis Ward's Guide to East Tennessee: Streamers, Hatches and Big Fish · 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 I kind of wonder,
• 0:16
  Marvin: you've been burning the miles up going down to the Florida Keys and back.
• 0:19
  Marvin: Do you need an oil change yet?
• 0:21
  Ellis: Yeah, I do. I needed one, I think, a thousand miles ago, but I'm going to be
• 0:27
  Ellis: okay with it. The Subaru has, I might be getting a truck sometime soon.
• 0:32
  Ellis: I'm already going on tangents. Yes, I need an oil change and I need a little
• 0:37
  Ellis: more sleep, but I got to witness some really cool stuff.
• 0:44
  Ellis: My buddy Dave White out of Anna Maria just dialed in and I fish with him every
• 0:54
  Ellis: year when my family's down there.
• 0:56
  Ellis: Kind of interesting story how
• 0:59
  Ellis: we met but that'll be for another day and
• 1:03
  Ellis: six years running this last year he was he was kind of like well i'm taking
• 1:11
  Ellis: pictures of my cousins holding sheep's head that were throwing back and he's
• 1:16
  Ellis: just kind of laughing like you want to come down here and take pictures with people therapy fishing,
• 1:23
  Ellis: and semi-ingest and said it once more as I'm baiting shrimp onto my family's
• 1:31
  Ellis: hooks and he was just chilling.
• 1:33
  Ellis: It's like, dude, you should come up here for a week. Made it happen and.
• 1:40
  Ellis: I watched seven fish i'm i'm gonna say six of them over a hundred pounds,
• 1:52
  Ellis: get to the boat and another two more or less get close enough to call it leadered um and those,
• 2:00
  Ellis: are just you know 150 plus pound fish
• 2:03
  Ellis: that are so big you're you're
• 2:06
  Ellis: winching the drag everyone's had enough if it's fun you
• 2:08
  Ellis: know we did fun fishing um for two
• 2:13
  Ellis: hours and hooked four leered three
• 2:16
  Ellis: and you know
• 2:19
  Ellis: when he's with clients it's the guys
• 2:23
  Ellis: are done fighting them we have an hour left and they're
• 2:26
  Ellis: he's saying let's we're gonna go back and they're legitimately looking to each
• 2:31
  Ellis: other like i'm not sure i want to and so when you you're not breaking them all
• 2:37
  Ellis: you just you cinch that that drag down and sort of a land or losing type d hell
• 2:42
  Ellis: and sometimes the hook pops and,
• 2:44
  Ellis: no one is upset so it's been between that and moving i'm standing on the back
• 2:51
  Ellis: porch of the a new place, looking at a,
• 2:54
  Ellis: very large workshop,
• 2:57
  Ellis: with two big garage doors.
• 3:03
  Ellis: So Bucktail and Tyne have a home that is not right next to my bedroom,
• 3:08
  Ellis: which will be kind of nice and a little weird.
• 3:12
  Ellis: But it's been a lot in the last week.
• 3:16
  Ellis: A couple trips this week with some folks out here to it's streamers and,
• 3:24
  Ellis: and mouse and flows on both rivers are looking great.
• 3:29
  Ellis: So I'm excited to get an oil change and, and get my, get my vice set up.
• 3:40
  Ellis: It's, it's been a little too long.
• 3:42
  Ellis: You know, I think I start twitching after a few days, it's probably been a week
• 3:45
  Ellis: and, and start hammering it this summer, starting tomorrow.
• 3:50
  Marvin: Yeah. It's funny, right? So I wonder if like maybe next year during deer season
• 3:53
  Marvin: you're going to tell me you can't sleep because you have to have the smell of
• 3:56
  Marvin: borax and death to be able to fall asleep at night.
• 4:00
  Ellis: Well, I've been working with a couple different folks,
• 4:04
  Ellis: Yankee, Candle, that's sort of a stretch, but some local Candle distributors
• 4:11
  Ellis: to get five-day-old and eight-day-old dead deer tail scent.
• 4:19
  Ellis: In the works. So sort of TBD on that, but just try to diversify, you know?
• 4:26
  Marvin: Yeah. And so, you know, it's interesting, you know, you've got re-entry,
• 4:29
  Marvin: which will be a little bumpy, but fun, right?
• 4:31
  Marvin: And, you know, when you're starting to kind of, I checked out your weather,
• 4:33
  Marvin: you're kind of sliding in to kind of a little bit more of a normal kind of early summer groove.
• 4:38
  Marvin: You got a little bit of rain next week, but it looks pretty good, right?
• 4:43
  Ellis: Yeah i would say i don't
• 4:47
  Ellis: know what re-entry is for for taking i mean five six days not fishing for for
• 4:55
  Ellis: me is certainly feels like i'm coming back to a different planet but um it's it's a good time to
• 5:04
  Ellis: be jumping in and I'm, I'm happy that I have a couple of guys coming here specifically to,
• 5:14
  Ellis: to do what I do this and next week.
• 5:19
  Ellis: You know, we're looking at the, the first year I moved here,
• 5:24
  Ellis: I asked Siri or Alexa, sorry to whoever is listening and that just pinged it.
• 5:33
  Ellis: If it was going to rain in Johnson City. And every single day has a 51% chance
• 5:38
  Ellis: of rain in the afternoon.
• 5:40
  Ellis: And so we're kind of starting that summertime, those clouds build up and you
• 5:47
  Ellis: can sort of get these heavens unleashing thing.
• 5:51
  Ellis: But in the meantime, this week, and looks like well into next week,
• 5:57
  Ellis: We have sort of hazy patches of sun and the thunderstorm here or there,
• 6:02
  Ellis: which highs mid to upper 80s, so we're not creeping into the 90s.
• 6:09
  Ellis: And with that cloud cover and a little evening rain, man, that's about all you can ask for.
• 6:16
  Marvin: Yeah, so how are your hatches hanging on?
• 6:19
  Marvin: Obviously, that kind of cloudy weather and the rain is going to help,
• 6:23
  Marvin: but what are you seeing out there? I know you've been on the road,
• 6:25
  Marvin: but at least what do you hear maybe from your people?
• 6:29
  Ellis: Yeah, I mean, I was out,
• 6:34
  Ellis: six days ago, so I'm guessing this isn't dated information.
• 6:42
  Ellis: I don't want to say the Caddis hatcheter. I think I talked about this last time.
• 6:46
  Ellis: There's the 12-14 Caddis on the Watauga. You start seeing...
• 6:53
  Ellis: There's a couple of very distinct dry fly eats.
• 6:57
  Ellis: And if you can hear it and you see water splashing to the left or the right,
• 7:04
  Ellis: more often than not, if you look around,
• 7:08
  Ellis: you're going to see caddis and you see it on the South Holston.
• 7:13
  Ellis: And this is Reed Gary LaFontaine's caddis fly.
• 7:20
  Ellis: Lie um look up if
• 7:22
  Ellis: no one's gonna do that so look up
• 7:25
  Ellis: skitter your caddis look at look at youtube
• 7:28
  Ellis: i have a time video about the the
• 7:31
  Ellis: two birds one caddis and it's
• 7:35
  Ellis: moving whatever it is that you're moving there's there's some different excerpts
• 7:40
  Ellis: that are talking about these these bugs you know diving in and coming back out
• 7:44
  Ellis: of the surface and when you're seeing that splashy eat and not getting They
• 7:49
  Ellis: eat such an aggressive eat, and then they won't eat a dead drift.
• 7:53
  Ellis: It can be a little perplexing, but that's happening.
• 7:57
  Ellis: It starts to dwindle to maybe 10%, 20% of the time.
• 8:04
  Ellis: And there are chalpers, PMDs, yellow bugs in the, let's say, 14 to 18.
• 8:11
  Ellis: You can fish up to a, I would say, 12.
• 8:16
  Ellis: I mean, beetles and hoppers. i saw
• 8:19
  Ellis: easily two inch grasshopper
• 8:22
  Ellis: just this is two weeks ago on the upper watauga sitting in the film flying over
• 8:29
  Ellis: from the field this was you know we're not even in june and i had some new anglers
• 8:35
  Ellis: on the boat and pointing that thing out saying yeah that that is why you have
• 8:38
  Ellis: grasshopper flies so So, um,
• 8:41
  Ellis: you know, may, may flies, the sulfurs, the PNBs, those are kind of the big deal.
• 8:47
  Ellis: But at the same time, I don't know if there's going to be any of my folk.
• 8:52
  Ellis: I had three different, um, pairs of brand new anglers and all of them caught fish on dry flies.
• 9:00
  Ellis: I may have, um, gassed up some of them last time, but we, we were fishing 16s, 18s as our sighters.
• 9:10
  Ellis: And they're catching fish on 20s, 22s.
• 9:14
  Ellis: And I'm still fishing 24s. I mean, there's such, you just think about the biomass
• 9:19
  Ellis: in that river or in these rivers.
• 9:24
  Ellis: Being tailwaters and uniform, consistently cold, et cetera, there's a lot of biology behind it.
• 9:31
  Ellis: But there's a lot of small bugs, and that's what the fish are used to seeing.
• 9:36
  Ellis: I mean, they're going to start more actively feeding on bigger bugs,
• 9:40
  Ellis: but I don't want to be too cliche about it.
• 9:45
  Ellis: But maybe it's what you can't see or what they're not eating on the end of your
• 9:51
  Ellis: leader that might be the most important thing.
• 9:55
  Ellis: And you'll see those big ones flying around, but that's because you can see
• 10:00
  Ellis: them pretty easily. They're bright yellow.
• 10:02
  Ellis: They're little highlighters, and they're 20 times the size of the bugs that
• 10:07
  Ellis: the fish might be eating in the film.
• 10:09
  Ellis: So I like double dry. eye i've
• 10:13
  Ellis: you kind of have to balance uh
• 10:18
  Ellis: tendency to foul up versus um you
• 10:22
  Ellis: know what you get out of fishing too but it can
• 10:25
  Ellis: be fun to throw two pretty different
• 10:28
  Ellis: patterns and and kind of get dialed in that way and yeah we did talk about this
• 10:36
  Ellis: last time that just you know we have have unlike the cat is where it's a little
• 10:41
  Ellis: bit of a flash in the pan two weeks maybe three.
• 10:46
  Ellis: Peak of five days peak of 10 days the mayfries and just this general.
• 10:54
  Ellis: Source of food low light mornings moving hatches are great that's that's through july into august,
• 11:04
  Ellis: with beetles and hoppers rounding things out.
• 11:09
  Ellis: I will throw a streamer every once in a while, too.
• 11:14
  Marvin: I've been told. I've heard that.
• 11:17
  Ellis: Yeah, once or twice.
• 11:20
  Marvin: Anything you want to point out for folks on the streamer bite right now?
• 11:25
  Ellis: Yeah. If you're in this area and you have been paying attention to flows a couple
• 11:37
  Ellis: different things come to mind not the least of which is right now,
• 11:42
  Ellis: yes I stop for risers we're not going to cast anyone throwing streamers into rising fish,
• 11:54
  Ellis: I don't know that's not what I do I like to cast your rising fish if I cast to them.
• 12:01
  Ellis: But when we're moving, when we're not stopping, we're not seeing noses.
• 12:06
  Ellis: Man, it's tough to beat. And one of the reasons it's tough to beat is that,
• 12:12
  Ellis: I don't know, I think there's a little bit of feast or famine for me because
• 12:16
  Ellis: outside of the first year I was here.
• 12:21
  Ellis: We don't really have consistent periods of time with big water.
• 12:25
  Ellis: Now, the Watauga will generate from one to five for six days a week,
• 12:30
  Ellis: but that's four hours, and you experienced it last year.
• 12:37
  Ellis: You run that four hours in the afternoon on a fourth Sunday in July, and it's 98 degrees.
• 12:44
  Ellis: Breeze congratulations on the full you know
• 12:47
  Ellis: generation schedule but probably better off to
• 12:49
  Ellis: wait and fish um low light when
• 12:53
  Ellis: it's low water if you're going after the big ground suits it's
• 12:56
  Ellis: not always great conditions if you're having precipitation you're getting some
• 13:01
  Ellis: color from the creeks from the doe on the watauga um some of those little ag
• 13:08
  Ellis: creeks on the south holston and you're getting more cloud cover and the rivers are pushing water.
• 13:14
  Ellis: It's just, I struggle with this because I've said all the time is now I shouldn't
• 13:21
  Ellis: be wasting days that are good conditions.
• 13:23
  Ellis: And you really should if you have the opportunity to do it because it's in a
• 13:28
  Ellis: month from now, we don't know what the water table is going to be doing.
• 13:32
  Ellis: And for the last four years, we haven't had current conditions.
• 13:37
  Ellis: So it is a good time to be going out and at least taking what we're offered
• 13:45
  Ellis: right now because you see weeks at a time of just no generation.
• 13:51
  Ellis: You see months at a time of no generation. Yeah.
• 13:55
  Ellis: It's better than that right now.
• 13:57
  Marvin: Yeah, there you go. Always fish tomorrow instead of the day after tomorrow, right?
• 14:02
  Ellis: Yeah, I think my pappy and his pappy and his pappy before that would say that.
• 14:09
  Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
• 14:12
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
• 14:16
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag.
• 14:20
  Marvin: We're going to be drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.
• 14:22
  Marvin: And Ellis, before I let you go and, you know, I don't know, read a book,
• 14:28
  Marvin: tie some flies, keep unpacking, get some sleep, change your oil, whatever.
• 14:33
  Marvin: Why don't you let folks kind of know how to reach out and get in touch with
• 14:36
  Marvin: you, book you and all that kind of good stuff?
• 14:39
  Ellis: Yeah, I'm just going to go into the workshop and probably stare at some bucktail
• 14:42
  Ellis: and not move it until two o'clock in the morning.
• 14:45
  Ellis: Best way to contact me for trips and just to ask questions, poke my brain.
• 14:53
  Ellis: 6 versus 7 versus 8, what line?
• 14:57
  Ellis: Cell phone at 513-543-0019. And information, pictures, et cetera, website and Instagram.
• 15:08
  Ellis: Website is erisworldschweiss.com.
• 15:12
  Ellis: And I'm on Instagram at erisworldguides.
• 15:17
  Marvin: Yeah, well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, you owe it to yourself to get
• 15:19
  Marvin: out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.
• 15:24
  Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.