Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,

Marvin: and we're back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward. Ellis, how are you?

Ellis: I am good, Marvin. How are you?

Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble, and you are not in East Tennessee.

Ellis: No, I'm not. I've been up in northern Michigan for a couple days now,

Ellis: and And the weather is, it was a low of 41 two nights ago.

Ellis: But pretty cool to be up here. I've been coming up here and this is where,

Ellis: you know, a big chunk of my early fishing and which really looked like trolling

Ellis: Rapalas in some of the shallows for smallmouth and rock bass.

Ellis: Um but it's it's fun being up

Ellis: here with my mom who taught me

Ellis: how to fish back in the day and going

Ellis: through some of my my grandpa's old tackle and um

Ellis: taking my daughter out she wants a tackle box

Ellis: and it's like well you got

Ellis: to go out and fish in order to get a tackle box so we're gonna go out here i

Ellis: think later this afternoon when it warms up a little bit but cool to see some

Ellis: hexes there's you know those tailwaters get me excited about a big bug being

Ellis: you know size 14 and there's.

Ellis: Size fours running around here and

Ellis: i'm on the lake it's not even necessarily a trout stream but every piece of

Ellis: water here is so fishy there's there's musky pike smallmouth um you know atlantic

Ellis: salmon trout of a different variety and um they're they're kind of all over the place but,

Ellis: good to be up here and not like i'm taking a break from fishing too much but um,

Ellis: always nice to get a change of pace yeah.

Marvin: I would expect nothing less you know and it's an amazing thing i mean particularly

Marvin: once you kind of get like north of ann arbor and grand rapids i mean I mean,

Marvin: you know, the lakes are fishy, but like all that fishy water up north,

Marvin: even before you get to the UP in Michigan is pretty amazing.

Ellis: When I got here, it's 80 degrees.

Ellis: It's, I guess, 85, sunny, late June.

Ellis: Jump in the lake and it takes your breath away. It is low 60 degrees.

Ellis: And it's just all fed from these glacial springs.

Ellis: Rings and everything is highly oxygenated

Ellis: and clean and right it's

Ellis: it's it's fishy um there's these little

Ellis: little blue line new name streams that are spitting out or i like to call the

Ellis: the hex floating hot dogs they're they just did relative to a fish that would

Ellis: eat them it's it's like they're looking at a foot-long sub floating on the water and,

Ellis: and that's just happening all around us um so it's

Ellis: it's amazing you look in the paper there's 50-inch musky caught um i got a couple

Ellis: spots in some connecting little lakes and in rivers that typically produce some

Ellis: decent, some fun-sized pike.

Ellis: But yeah, the whole place is fishy, and good to come up here with really anything.

Ellis: I didn't bring, I brought an 11-weight, but

Ellis: I've accumulated so much stuff out here that sort of the same deal in Tennessee

Ellis: where I go out and it's like i could be throwing stuff with uh you know throwing

Ellis: dry flies with a five weight or throwing musky flies with an 11 weight or or

Ellis: chucking gear or doing whatever.

Marvin: Very very neat and you were telling me you got to spend some time with your godfather tommy lynch.

Ellis: Yeah um he couldn't believe it had been four years since we fished together

Ellis: but it's You know, I try to bother him a little bit and chat on the phone every once in a while.

Ellis: He's been a really influential person in my tying and guiding career.

Ellis: Career and it hasn't all been direct but just seeing.

Ellis: Seeing his thought process on on how the drunken disorderly was tied which you

Ellis: know he's most famous for which today um i've i haven't thrown a streamer with

Ellis: him and it's it's that it's.

Ellis: This mentality of what does the angler sort of want to do, what are the options,

Ellis: and here's what we're going to do given the conditions and this constantly changing

Ellis: algorithm of flows and water temps and just what the river is giving us.

Ellis: That i i didn't necessarily see in an attempt to emulate but um it is so.

Ellis: True to how i fish and how i guide and just going into,

Ellis: to the tailwaters and starting my own business and and fishing without regard

Ellis: for what was quote-unquote the good runs or the right thing to do or the right

Ellis: flows or you know is this Is this section even rowable or fishable at night? Do people even do this?

Ellis: I didn't know anyone. I just figured everything out. And so that knowledge lent itself to how I guide,

Ellis: which is, you know, here's all of these options and let's whittle it down to

Ellis: what we want to do with any given set of experiences and time constraints and all that.

Ellis: So, um, you know, going, going out with Tommy, it was just another,

Ellis: another display of this.

Ellis: Um, he, he wants to go out and fish in a way that's, that's fun.

Ellis: And he's of course clarifying that with me and he knows me pretty well and has

Ellis: some confidence in my ability to do certain things.

Ellis: But he's also just, as soon as we're getting on the boat, it's,

Ellis: it's what's next. It's not, you know, good boy, you can cast.

Ellis: It's, all right, well, let's get to the next thing. And it's pretty technical fishing, and...

Ellis: I i ended up we got one

Ellis: one fish in the boat i was shaking off

Ellis: fish that were you know under under

Ellis: 10 inches but but plenty of

Ellis: nice wild brown trout eating a

Ellis: very big dry fly it's um a big golden

Ellis: stone that and and

Ellis: and he was happier for it because we didn't

Ellis: have to stop and use the net and we could keep fishing um but

Ellis: had another brown that was our low

Ellis: 20s um absolutely god

Ellis: they ate this thing the stonefly like they

Ellis: eat mice um had him on and he just he he took my lunch money man went down shook

Ellis: his head went the other way i was pulling the wrong way flies out and then had

Ellis: uh I had a special fish that had Tommy making noises for the rest of the evening.

Ellis: I didn't get steel in him, but we re-bypassed countless little risers that we

Ellis: could have had on iso-emergers or bluing-emergers.

Ellis: And um fishing that

Ellis: golden stone we you know i would i would see him

Ellis: it's very active it's very engaged it's um

Ellis: it's all the type

Ellis: of fishing that is exciting about

Ellis: streamer fishing and and mousing and um the the visual reward and challenges

Ellis: of you know there's logs coming in left and right it's it's almost entirely

Ellis: long roll casts and um he is.

Ellis: Where he is with casting and manipulation of line and rod is,

Ellis: I think, something that people, until you're on the boat with him,

Ellis: you just think of, you associate his name with a drunken disorderly.

Ellis: I can't express this enough. We've talked about it a handful of times,

Ellis: not while fishing together.

Ellis: It's almost all conversation that we

Ellis: have is you know him

Ellis: giving me some insight on guiding um you

Ellis: know joking about this and that and

Ellis: then a lot of it's casting and and a lot

Ellis: of that is is dry fly casting and um

Ellis: so it was it was great to spend time with them and

Ellis: and sort of get get the download from the

Ellis: last couple years from him and and give him a little bit from

Ellis: um from my life from the tailwater scene

Ellis: and um finished with a

Ellis: little darkness and got a couple mouse eats uh

Ellis: but then that that night was the the 41

Ellis: degree plunge and and things kind

Ellis: of shut off then we got to a section and a motion light

Ellis: went on and um i

Ellis: was in the front of the boat shaking i didn't come up here to um i didn't have

Ellis: gear for 41 degrees so uh we called it and i mean i couldn't have been happier

Ellis: to get out with and get some shots on on some really nice fish and just.

Ellis: Seeing and also listen to someone who, who, who has an understanding and a passion

Ellis: for, I have a hard time saying guiding.

Ellis: It's, if you say guiding to so many people, it means what a lot of people experience

Ellis: as, as guided fishing trips, um,

Ellis: which I could reasonably qualify as, as, as ecotourism or something like that.

Ellis: Like Tommy's a guide he's a casting coach um he loves fishing and you know I I get this with,

Ellis: hanging with um Matt Riley and and a couple of my buddies in in Johnson City

Ellis: it's just fun spending time with someone who who approaches this this industry

Ellis: their job um this sport in And in a similar way,

Ellis: and even cooler to see someone who's still just pushing it at 20-something years into the game.

Marvin: Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because, you know, you see those people and they

Marvin: have that kind of, you know, passion and drive to perform that you see in elite

Marvin: performers, you know, like whether it was like what I saw you saw in consulting

Marvin: or I saw in like the law and the finance world.

Marvin: And it's kind of mind boggling. and i think you know uh you

Marvin: know for folks that haven't been able to spend time with tommy if you go watch

Marvin: some of his tying videos that he's done there's a fly shop in

Marvin: michigan that he likes to tie at um and you listen to him talk it reminds me

Marvin: a lot of like listening to blaine talk like the thoughtfulness into presentation

Marvin: term related terminal tackle um it's a completely you know to your point it's

Marvin: a little bit different than like you know let me adjust your indicator right you.

Ellis: Yeah, and I think that, like you said,

Ellis: just watching someone who you don't get to with your own name and not working

Ellis: for an outfitter or partnering with these major companies.

Ellis: You don't get to cruising altitude and stay there for as long as he has without,

Ellis: on a day-to-day basis, working.

Ellis: I mean, I took pictures of the inside of his boat.

Ellis: Everything's tuned up. There's a process for everything.

Ellis: Thing um man when i get him

Ellis: going talking about one thing or another it's it's

Ellis: it's full tilt in whatever direction that we're going and um right you just

Ellis: it's it's a different approach that you don't see outside of you know the the

Ellis: the handful of people that are.

Ellis: Are at the top and and have been at the top and you know one of the one of the

Ellis: cool parts that i appreciate and definitely respect about tommy is he's,

Ellis: i don't think anyone would know any anything about some of this stuff there's

Ellis: yeah there's the time videos that um you can see some of the passion some of the knowledge,

Ellis: man you get in that boat for just just just

Ellis: the first hour and if you

Ellis: don't pause him every once in

Ellis: a while if you just take in all of it your head's gonna start to spin because

Ellis: he will keep going and and you're just gonna continue to absorb information

Ellis: that um that he's happy to provide but But it's almost like,

Ellis: well, I can use it very appropriately, a consulting phrase of drinking out of

Ellis: a fire hose where even if you're just talking about roll casting a non-tapered line,

Ellis: he's going to press that to a different level.

Ellis: Using the rod and line and just discussing all of it in such a different way

Ellis: that yields a presentation that also encourages a proper hook set with a specific

Ellis: leader that can fight big fish and some of these,

Ellis: you know, down seeders and, you know,

Ellis: avoids hang ups.

Ellis: And like all of it i do a little bit

Ellis: of it with streamer casting you know you want the tip in the water these

Ellis: strip strip kills and everything is

Ellis: to promote or encourage the next thing and all

Ellis: that is about getting a good hook set and boating a fish so

Ellis: to watch that happening with um i

Ellis: don't know all these different variables and in this this complex system

Ellis: that i know is only one of his things it is

Ellis: it's it's just fascinating and um yeah

Ellis: i don't know if there's i don't know if i've seen you hear

Ellis: a little bit of it with blaine i've seen it with

Ellis: larry um and these

Ellis: guys all know each other there's no surprise so um

Ellis: it it makes sense that that they do know each other and have have spent some

Ellis: time together um but yeah always it's fun talking with them i'll call them every

Ellis: once in a while but but to spend eight hours in the boat and really hang for

Ellis: a little bit was very cool yeah.

Marvin: Absolutely and you know folks we love questions at the

Marvin: articulate fly you can email them to us or dm us

Marvin: on social media and we've just added a little record button uh on the podcast

Marvin: page of the website if you actually go there you can record your question you

Marvin: may actually hear yourself on a on an episode and if we use your question i

Marvin: will send you some articulate fly swag and we're drawing for some cool stuff

Marvin: from ellis at the end of the season and uh you know i know you know after the

Marvin: fourth you're going to be heading back down to the,

Marvin: not lows in the 41 johnson city uh to uh to guide back on the south holston

Marvin: wataug you want to let folks know how they can reach out and get on your guidebooks ellis.

Ellis: Yeah, best way to contact me, ask about trips, anything like that is my cell phone at 513-543-0019.

Ellis: Nine instagram is at ellis ward guides

Ellis: and uh website which is

Ellis: somewhat updated on a rolling basis um kind of give you some information about

Ellis: what types of trips and and the things that i'm doing at at whatever time of

Ellis: year you're looking at is at elliswardflies.com and um just a little

Ellis: plug for for this summer we got um dry

Ellis: fly fishing and and mousing with streamer fishing mixed in condition dependent

Ellis: is is going to be rolling full steam here for the next month or two and uh hopefully

Ellis: transition a little bit into more mousing and um,

Ellis: and then all of a sudden we'll be looking at musky fishing so um,

Ellis: lots of stuff going on and excited to get folks on the boat.

Marvin: Yeah, well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, I want to wish everyone a safe

Marvin: and happy 4th of July and you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.

Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.

Ellis: Appreciate it, Marth.