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 doing well, Marv. How are you?

Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble, and I kind of wonder,

Marvin: you've been burning the miles up going down to the Florida Keys and back.

Marvin: Do you need an oil change yet?

Ellis: Yeah, I do. I needed one, I think, a thousand miles ago, but I'm going to be

Ellis: okay with it. The Subaru has, I might be getting a truck sometime soon.

Ellis: I'm already going on tangents. Yes, I need an oil change and I need a little

Ellis: more sleep, but I got to witness some really cool stuff.

Ellis: My buddy Dave White out of Anna Maria just dialed in and I fish with him every

Ellis: year when my family's down there.

Ellis: Kind of interesting story how

Ellis: we met but that'll be for another day and

Ellis: six years running this last year he was he was kind of like well i'm taking

Ellis: pictures of my cousins holding sheep's head that were throwing back and he's

Ellis: just kind of laughing like you want to come down here and take pictures with people therapy fishing,

Ellis: and semi-ingest and said it once more as I'm baiting shrimp onto my family's

Ellis: hooks and he was just chilling.

Ellis: It's like, dude, you should come up here for a week. Made it happen and.

Ellis: I watched seven fish i'm i'm gonna say six of them over a hundred pounds,

Ellis: get to the boat and another two more or less get close enough to call it leadered um and those,

Ellis: are just you know 150 plus pound fish

Ellis: that are so big you're you're

Ellis: winching the drag everyone's had enough if it's fun you

Ellis: know we did fun fishing um for two

Ellis: hours and hooked four leered three

Ellis: and you know

Ellis: when he's with clients it's the guys

Ellis: are done fighting them we have an hour left and they're

Ellis: he's saying let's we're gonna go back and they're legitimately looking to each

Ellis: other like i'm not sure i want to and so when you you're not breaking them all

Ellis: you just you cinch that that drag down and sort of a land or losing type d hell

Ellis: and sometimes the hook pops and,

Ellis: no one is upset so it's been between that and moving i'm standing on the back

Ellis: porch of the a new place, looking at a,

Ellis: very large workshop,

Ellis: with two big garage doors.

Ellis: So Bucktail and Tyne have a home that is not right next to my bedroom,

Ellis: which will be kind of nice and a little weird.

Ellis: But it's been a lot in the last week.

Ellis: A couple trips this week with some folks out here to it's streamers and,

Ellis: and mouse and flows on both rivers are looking great.

Ellis: So I'm excited to get an oil change and, and get my, get my vice set up.

Ellis: It's, it's been a little too long.

Ellis: You know, I think I start twitching after a few days, it's probably been a week

Ellis: and, and start hammering it this summer, starting tomorrow.

Marvin: Yeah. It's funny, right? So I wonder if like maybe next year during deer season

Marvin: you're going to tell me you can't sleep because you have to have the smell of

Marvin: borax and death to be able to fall asleep at night.

Ellis: Well, I've been working with a couple different folks,

Ellis: Yankee, Candle, that's sort of a stretch, but some local Candle distributors

Ellis: to get five-day-old and eight-day-old dead deer tail scent.

Ellis: In the works. So sort of TBD on that, but just try to diversify, you know?

Marvin: Yeah. And so, you know, it's interesting, you know, you've got re-entry,

Marvin: which will be a little bumpy, but fun, right?

Marvin: And, you know, when you're starting to kind of, I checked out your weather,

Marvin: you're kind of sliding in to kind of a little bit more of a normal kind of early summer groove.

Marvin: You got a little bit of rain next week, but it looks pretty good, right?

Ellis: Yeah i would say i don't

Ellis: know what re-entry is for for taking i mean five six days not fishing for for

Ellis: me is certainly feels like i'm coming back to a different planet but um it's it's a good time to

Ellis: be jumping in and I'm, I'm happy that I have a couple of guys coming here specifically to,

Ellis: to do what I do this and next week.

Ellis: You know, we're looking at the, the first year I moved here,

Ellis: I asked Siri or Alexa, sorry to whoever is listening and that just pinged it.

Ellis: If it was going to rain in Johnson City. And every single day has a 51% chance

Ellis: of rain in the afternoon.

Ellis: And so we're kind of starting that summertime, those clouds build up and you

Ellis: can sort of get these heavens unleashing thing.

Ellis: But in the meantime, this week, and looks like well into next week,

Ellis: We have sort of hazy patches of sun and the thunderstorm here or there,

Ellis: which highs mid to upper 80s, so we're not creeping into the 90s.

Ellis: And with that cloud cover and a little evening rain, man, that's about all you can ask for.

Marvin: Yeah, so how are your hatches hanging on?

Marvin: Obviously, that kind of cloudy weather and the rain is going to help,

Marvin: but what are you seeing out there? I know you've been on the road,

Marvin: but at least what do you hear maybe from your people?

Ellis: Yeah, I mean, I was out,

Ellis: six days ago, so I'm guessing this isn't dated information.

Ellis: I don't want to say the Caddis hatcheter. I think I talked about this last time.

Ellis: There's the 12-14 Caddis on the Watauga. You start seeing...

Ellis: There's a couple of very distinct dry fly eats.

Ellis: And if you can hear it and you see water splashing to the left or the right,

Ellis: more often than not, if you look around,

Ellis: you're going to see caddis and you see it on the South Holston.

Ellis: And this is Reed Gary LaFontaine's caddis fly.

Ellis: Lie um look up if

Ellis: no one's gonna do that so look up

Ellis: skitter your caddis look at look at youtube

Ellis: i have a time video about the the

Ellis: two birds one caddis and it's

Ellis: moving whatever it is that you're moving there's there's some different excerpts

Ellis: that are talking about these these bugs you know diving in and coming back out

Ellis: of the surface and when you're seeing that splashy eat and not getting They

Ellis: eat such an aggressive eat, and then they won't eat a dead drift.

Ellis: It can be a little perplexing, but that's happening.

Ellis: It starts to dwindle to maybe 10%, 20% of the time.

Ellis: And there are chalpers, PMDs, yellow bugs in the, let's say, 14 to 18.

Ellis: You can fish up to a, I would say, 12.

Ellis: I mean, beetles and hoppers. i saw

Ellis: easily two inch grasshopper

Ellis: just this is two weeks ago on the upper watauga sitting in the film flying over

Ellis: from the field this was you know we're not even in june and i had some new anglers

Ellis: on the boat and pointing that thing out saying yeah that that is why you have

Ellis: grasshopper flies so So, um,

Ellis: you know, may, may flies, the sulfurs, the PNBs, those are kind of the big deal.

Ellis: But at the same time, I don't know if there's going to be any of my folk.

Ellis: I had three different, um, pairs of brand new anglers and all of them caught fish on dry flies.

Ellis: I may have, um, gassed up some of them last time, but we, we were fishing 16s, 18s as our sighters.

Ellis: And they're catching fish on 20s, 22s.

Ellis: And I'm still fishing 24s. I mean, there's such, you just think about the biomass

Ellis: in that river or in these rivers.

Ellis: Being tailwaters and uniform, consistently cold, et cetera, there's a lot of biology behind it.

Ellis: But there's a lot of small bugs, and that's what the fish are used to seeing.

Ellis: I mean, they're going to start more actively feeding on bigger bugs,

Ellis: but I don't want to be too cliche about it.

Ellis: But maybe it's what you can't see or what they're not eating on the end of your

Ellis: leader that might be the most important thing.

Ellis: And you'll see those big ones flying around, but that's because you can see

Ellis: them pretty easily. They're bright yellow.

Ellis: They're little highlighters, and they're 20 times the size of the bugs that

Ellis: the fish might be eating in the film.

Ellis: So I like double dry. eye i've

Ellis: you kind of have to balance uh

Ellis: tendency to foul up versus um you

Ellis: know what you get out of fishing too but it can

Ellis: be fun to throw two pretty different

Ellis: patterns and and kind of get dialed in that way and yeah we did talk about this

Ellis: last time that just you know we have have unlike the cat is where it's a little

Ellis: bit of a flash in the pan two weeks maybe three.

Ellis: Peak of five days peak of 10 days the mayfries and just this general.

Ellis: Source of food low light mornings moving hatches are great that's that's through july into august,

Ellis: with beetles and hoppers rounding things out.

Ellis: I will throw a streamer every once in a while, too.

Marvin: I've been told. I've heard that.

Ellis: Yeah, once or twice.

Marvin: Anything you want to point out for folks on the streamer bite right now?

Ellis: Yeah. If you're in this area and you have been paying attention to flows a couple

Ellis: different things come to mind not the least of which is right now,

Ellis: yes I stop for risers we're not going to cast anyone throwing streamers into rising fish,

Ellis: I don't know that's not what I do I like to cast your rising fish if I cast to them.

Ellis: But when we're moving, when we're not stopping, we're not seeing noses.

Ellis: Man, it's tough to beat. And one of the reasons it's tough to beat is that,

Ellis: I don't know, I think there's a little bit of feast or famine for me because

Ellis: outside of the first year I was here.

Ellis: We don't really have consistent periods of time with big water.

Ellis: Now, the Watauga will generate from one to five for six days a week,

Ellis: but that's four hours, and you experienced it last year.

Ellis: You run that four hours in the afternoon on a fourth Sunday in July, and it's 98 degrees.

Ellis: Breeze congratulations on the full you know

Ellis: generation schedule but probably better off to

Ellis: wait and fish um low light when

Ellis: it's low water if you're going after the big ground suits it's

Ellis: not always great conditions if you're having precipitation you're getting some

Ellis: color from the creeks from the doe on the watauga um some of those little ag

Ellis: creeks on the south holston and you're getting more cloud cover and the rivers are pushing water.

Ellis: It's just, I struggle with this because I've said all the time is now I shouldn't

Ellis: be wasting days that are good conditions.

Ellis: And you really should if you have the opportunity to do it because it's in a

Ellis: month from now, we don't know what the water table is going to be doing.

Ellis: And for the last four years, we haven't had current conditions.

Ellis: So it is a good time to be going out and at least taking what we're offered

Ellis: right now because you see weeks at a time of just no generation.

Ellis: You see months at a time of no generation. Yeah.

Ellis: It's better than that right now.

Marvin: Yeah, there you go. Always fish tomorrow instead of the day after tomorrow, right?

Ellis: Yeah, I think my pappy and his pappy and his pappy before that would say that.

Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.

Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.

Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag.

Marvin: We're going to be drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.

Marvin: And Ellis, before I let you go and, you know, I don't know, read a book,

Marvin: tie some flies, keep unpacking, get some sleep, change your oil, whatever.

Marvin: Why don't you let folks kind of know how to reach out and get in touch with

Marvin: you, book you and all that kind of good stuff?

Ellis: Yeah, I'm just going to go into the workshop and probably stare at some bucktail

Ellis: and not move it until two o'clock in the morning.

Ellis: Best way to contact me for trips and just to ask questions, poke my brain.

Ellis: 6 versus 7 versus 8, what line?

Ellis: Cell phone at 513-543-0019. And information, pictures, et cetera, website and Instagram.

Ellis: Website is erisworldschweiss.com.

Ellis: And I'm on Instagram at erisworldguides.

Marvin: Yeah, well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, you owe it to yourself to get

Marvin: out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Ellis.

Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.