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

Marvin: We're back with another East Tennessee Fishing Report with Ellis Ward.

Marvin: Ellis, how are you doing?

Ellis: I'm doing well, Marv. How are you?

Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. Sounds like you've,

Marvin: despite daylight savings time, you've got a little fishing withdrawal.

Ellis: Yeah, a little bit. Tried to hit the methadone clinic. That's not appropriate. rip.

Ellis: I scratched yesterday with my daughter who went to a little zone for some smallmouth,

Ellis: fish and bait, but as I'm sure you can recall with five years old,

Ellis: you know, those plants don't really mean much when you're out there, and it's kind of sunny.

Ellis: Fish weren't biting, so I put a couple casts out there. It felt nice.

Marvin: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, do you consider hot dogs live bait?

Ellis: Uh depends on how long you let them sit outside that's.

Marvin: Fair uh so you know we were talking before we started recording and you know

Marvin: kind of kind of the end of musky season and really kind of looking forward to

Marvin: uh some pretty nice hatches uh on your neck of the woods and i don't know know

Marvin: probably next month or so.

Ellis: Yeah it is

Ellis: we're getting into

Ellis: spawning season up on the

Ellis: french broad not quite there yet um last scheduled

Ellis: muskie trip was last

Ellis: week and had to we had

Ellis: to call that one on account of rain and you

Ellis: know i'll probably sneak in another few days up there talking

Ellis: with some guys that fished today and not a

Ellis: whole lot's changed and we had a whole lot of water that

Ellis: coincided with another little cold snap

Ellis: so with nights being in the 30s

Ellis: and days being in the you know 50 low 60s we're just it's not going to be there

Ellis: quite yet and as far as the tailwaters it's everything's shaping up to be a

Ellis: pretty good spring i i've gotten hopeful before that But so much rain and such

Ellis: a consistent amount of rain.

Ellis: And, you know, seeing some of these tributaries like the Doe River on the Watauga

Ellis: and Freestone, the French Broad, the Nolichucky, everything just so happy and healthy.

Ellis: And much more so than I've seen in the last two, maybe three years.

Ellis: I still like rain whenever it's coming.

Ellis: And it's nice to have this right now.

Ellis: We'll have good water. I'm pretty light my books are pretty light for the next

Ellis: couple weeks you know a few trips here and there but.

Ellis: It can be a little tough to watch the really good conditions knowing that,

Ellis: I think, or I should say hoping that folks are waiting for the quote-unquote

Ellis: good weather. Obviously, some rain does a lot.

Ellis: But yeah, everything's shaping up quite well right now.

Ellis: Good releases on both rivers. As we get warmer and the daylight starts to go from under 12 to over 12,

Ellis: we're going to start seeing a bunch of different stuff.

Ellis: Off but the big one the first big one going to be cat is here in probably under a month,

Ellis: on the watauga and then it's all

Ellis: furs and pmds everywhere both and

Ellis: tailwaters you know you can get good days of

Ellis: dry fly fishing in middle of january but pretty special time of year coming

Ellis: up it this time of year is also when i say cat is in sulfur it's like you had

Ellis: school bus size as balls of shad moving up into the rivers and down your lake mouths.

Ellis: The lake is filling back up and times are changing.

Marvin: Yeah, so, you know, big brown trout probably makes the stripers happy too, right?

Ellis: Yeah. I haven't had the opportunity to have a conversation with the striper,

Ellis: But the ones that are here are stocked and don't naturally reproduce.

Ellis: So whether or not they're following the cooler radars, the more oxygenated river

Ellis: water, I mean, they're still down in the lake, but they're going to be lower.

Ellis: Or if it's some sort of false spawn, which certainly does occur in other stretches

Ellis: of the Holston proper. I'm just talking about from Boone into the South Olsen, Otago.

Ellis: Remains to be seen, but it's kind of different means to the same end.

Marvin: There you go. And got a question for you from Brenner, our probably most frequent

Marvin: question asker on the Articulate Fly.

Marvin: And he wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, how much does pushing water

Marvin: with a big head fly matter?

Ellis: Sure.

Ellis: So, I'm going to make some assumptions about this. And I think in making these

Ellis: assumptions, or at least in saying that I'm making these assumptions,

Ellis: I would say it's important to think about the question that you're asking.

Ellis: That might be too condescending to just say that plainly, but it's important

Ellis: to ask yourself, why is this a thing?

Ellis: Why is pushing water a thing?

Ellis: And so I've approached this, and we talked about this.

Ellis: I'm expecting to wake up in about eight and a half hours when you put me down

Ellis: as I start going and going and going for 15 minutes straight.

Ellis: But there's just a lot here and especially in the world of streamer fishing

Ellis: which I think falls into the trap of what sounds good,

Ellis: what works enough to gain some traction and once we're there it's fishing I

Ellis: mean if you have something that works enough to gain traction,

Ellis: it's going to work because they're fish they're going to eat something that's

Ellis: moving so So as a rule, I would say that some friend of caper is important.

Ellis: When you're talking about activating lateral lines and what that actually means

Ellis: to a fish dispersing water.

Ellis: I struggle to think that something that is not aero or hydrodynamic.

Ellis: So when you look at pus, I would also maybe categorize that or rephrase that as drag.

Ellis: When you're pulling something through the water and it feels draggy,

Ellis: that's because it's not aero or hydrodynamic. It's kind of a nightmare to cast,

Ellis: depending on how it's weighted.

Ellis: And when you're dragging it through the water, yeah, it's creating a disturbance

Ellis: disturbance because not necessarily displacing water because of the volume,

Ellis: it displacing water because of the friction.

Ellis: That i'm going to reference my swim

Ellis: bug which is a pretty i

Ellis: think a lot of people think that the fry is

Ellis: bigger than it ends up being but the

Ellis: head is really it's packed deer hair with some

Ellis: epoxy and marv you've you've cast it and fished the thing you can't feel it

Ellis: you it casts like a dream you can't feel it moving to the water and then when

Ellis: you change to kind of a bigger one or or I'll put on one with just a couple

Ellis: pieces of Keira on the hook bend, you can feel a difference.

Ellis: Like, whoa, what am I fishing now? Then you put on a dungeon,

Ellis: it's like, whew, cast way different.

Ellis: You can feel it drag into the water. I love that fly for different reasons.

Ellis: So the swim bag, quote-unquote, pushes better because it actually displaces

Ellis: a solid piece of something that is moving through the water and it's buoyant.

Ellis: So if you think about putting a a bouncy ball,

Ellis: or an inflatable ball into a bathtub it's going to push all the water out if

Ellis: you put something you know a bowling ball into the bathtub you know there's

Ellis: some physics 101 in there but

Ellis: there's more force on something that's buoyant so the swim fly thing is,

Ellis: there's more rabbit holes down that direction too So, but the reason I kind

Ellis: of kicked off with it's important to have some taper is that,

Ellis: be it Blant or something weighted, as long as you do have taper,

Ellis: you're going to get a swim out of it. Yeah.

Ellis: I'm going to go ahead and say, just having watched these fish eat so much,

Ellis: they're activated visually, and you can, you know, swim blindly with a fly,

Ellis: unless that thing's got a rattle, or it's, you know, like one of Blaine's gummy

Ellis: minnows, or you're fishing Rapalas.

Ellis: You're not doing anything with a fly to create some sort of lateral line disturbance. disturbance.

Ellis: So I would say going higher on the water column and creating more of an obstruction,

Ellis: from above down below with light and just going after them visually is probably

Ellis: a story for Beth in worrying about what's pushing.

Ellis: And then as a tire, it's exploring what that what that push is and how you can

Ellis: get it without with and without buoyancy and um,

Ellis: yeah i think i'm going to stop there before we get into time uh.

Marvin: Well i'm going to bait you and say you know the i guess you know the there's

Marvin: the lateral uh line stimulation but then also you know with articulation the

Marvin: big head then you get to start playing with jack knifing and kill you know killing

Marvin: the flies right and get inside profile.

Ellis: Yeah I mean my swim bug and I've had more than one person give me a hard time

Ellis: because it's drunken disorderly with a different head which I think would be

Ellis: a disservice to call it that a disservice to Tommy it's I created this fly,

Ellis: Taking from primarily Tommy Lynch's Drunken Disorderity and Blaine Chocolate's T-Bone.

Ellis: I was tying a lot of musky flies at the time.

Ellis: I was just getting here and just able to fish as much as it takes to actually

Ellis: see the feedback to say, okay, I want this or I want that.

Ellis: And it really became attempting to get that jackknife, being a small package,

Ellis: castable, all that stuff.

Ellis: And Tommy's fly is just so great, and I wanted to keep a lot that was there.

Ellis: And then, yeah, taking the T-bonder, just some of those three-shanker triples,

Ellis: and trying to get that dog walk, basically, but have something where the back

Ellis: end swinging out and the head stopping and going left or right.

Marvin: Yeah, pretty good stuff. And you know, folks, we love questions at 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: And we are drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.

Marvin: And Ellis, before I let you go, a couple things. things.

Marvin: You know, I imagine there are probably no more bucktail drops,

Marvin: but you can certainly correct me.

Marvin: And then also just kind of let folks know how to reach out and talk fishing

Marvin: with you and get on your guidebook.

Ellis: Yeah, so there is going to be, there's bucktail just stubbornly hanging around,

Ellis: and that's mostly because the moment I get free time, I end up doing something else.

Ellis: So I'm just, I'm going to stop promising a date on that, but there will be another

Ellis: one, and I do have some good tails that will be in that.

Ellis: And as far as contacting me, fishing with me, you can get on Instagram and sort

Ellis: of follow along with some of the stuff I'm doing at Ellis Ward Guides.

Ellis: Information on booking and sort of a refreshed website is at elliswardflies.com.

Ellis: And the best way to talk about you know some of this stuff we talked about what's

Ellis: going on what fishing looks like right now or in a couple weeks is my cell phone at 513-543-0019 there.

Marvin: You go and so do you think if someone wanted like a bucktail in their easter

Marvin: basket that would be a doable thing.

Ellis: Yeah you're getting me now i'm thinking about like uh make like a giant easter

Ellis: basket with with using the bucktail as bunny ears.

Marvin: Yeah, you can do that or dye them pastel and have all kinds of pastel colors and yellows and greens.

Ellis: Pastels are popular.

Marvin: Yeah.

Ellis: Yeah, I'd really like these things to be out in the next week or two.

Marvin: Yeah, there you go. And, you know, so folks, remember, we have a Patreon community,

Marvin: the Articulate Fly, and there are two great ways to support the show and support Ellis.

Marvin: And one tier will get you 10% off the last bucktail shipment of the year,

Marvin: and there's another that'll get you $100 guide credit per year.

Marvin: So, you know, if you're in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia,

Marvin: Western North Carolina, and you want to fish with Ellis or get some bucktails,

Marvin: you should check that out.

Marvin: And, you know, gosh, I'm looking at the weather. I mean, it's going to be awesome.

Marvin: I think it may be rain, it's a little bit this weekend, but we're in the 70s.

Marvin: So it's definitely time in our part of the world to get on the water and catch a few.

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

Ellis: Appreciate it, Mark.