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. How you doing, Ellis?

Ellis: Doing all right, Marv. How are you?

Marvin: I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know, kind of funny we had

Marvin: to move things around a little bit because you were out at a muskie tournament last weekend.

Ellis: Yeah, we fished the North Fork

Ellis: Kentucky River and this is

Ellis: the Kentucky River muskie classic

Ellis: and man the

Ellis: conditions were tough for I mean just honestly for the two days it had dumped

Ellis: Thursday night and so Friday things were still coming up and Saturday might

Ellis: have been alright there's some impoundments that were still kind of draining

Ellis: water out so it It was tough,

Ellis: but with a fishery like that, that is really so big,

Ellis: and not, I mean, the river itself is pretty big, but just the options.

Ellis: I was fishing with a couple guys that sort of knew the area,

Ellis: but hadn't fished the river. And so we actually fished just somewhere that was

Ellis: closest to me since I was just coming up that morning.

Ellis: Um, and it was, you know, it was tough sliding on the main river that day.

Ellis: Next day we, you know, we had a jet boat. We were going up.

Ellis: We checked below, uh, a spill dam.

Ellis: There's a smarter word for that. and um and then found some creeks and you know

Ellis: went up three four miles into one and um,

Ellis: we didn't get anything that day turns out someone the

Ellis: day before had gotten one twice the

Ellis: distance up and we saw

Ellis: a guy trapping beavers who informed us

Ellis: that that creek was was torn

Ellis: up with musky so you

Ellis: know even when you have a blown out river you're still

Ellis: fine and we were you can go up

Ellis: these this creek like 12 miles in a jet boat and that's just one of many different

Ellis: sections and um it's pretty cool to have halfway between me and where my family is in cincinnati and.

Ellis: You know, another big chunk of water that I think has a lot of potential.

Ellis: And then, you know, the guy who organized it, Dave Raff from the Wolf Rod Company,

Ellis: is just such a good dude. His rods are awesome.

Ellis: I've been fishing the 12-weight for a few years now.

Ellis: So just a lot of good stuff that came together.

Ellis: And I think I mentioned this to you before we kicked off, but Thursday when

Ellis: the water was in great shape, before the timely deluge,

Ellis: is that word right?

Ellis: But before the mini-flood, some team that was there scouting went 6-for-15.

Ellis: And, I mean, that's just, I'll quote Matt Riley calling those NCAA stats,

Ellis: but to give you an indication of sort of what the potential of that fissure is.

Ellis: So, yeah, I'm excited for next year and excited to poke around in between now and then.

Marvin: Yeah, and, you know, coming a little bit back closer to home,

Marvin: You know, you're west of me, so you're getting it now, but there's a pretty

Marvin: nasty front moving through and we're going to see about a 20 degree drop in

Marvin: temperatures here in about the next 24 hours and some rain.

Marvin: But, you know, I think that, you know, if any, if things in East Tennessee or

Marvin: anything like they are here in kind of the Carolinas, you know,

Marvin: it's pretty clear that spring is like pretty much here. Yeah.

Ellis: Yeah, I think last time we talked, the buds on the little magnolia out back were gone.

Ellis: We got, my tulips are like, this is how I know I'm old.

Ellis: I was actually really excited to see that the tulips were, you know,

Ellis: you can almost see flower coming out of them.

Ellis: So, but that, you know, relative to fishing, you start seeing,

Ellis: and we're seeing this now, the lake temperatures are warming up.

Ellis: The lake is that winter drop where they take it down 30 feet for flood control

Ellis: and a couple other things.

Ellis: That starts to go back up. And so the mouth of the river starts to get farther and farther up,

Ellis: and the lake itself is rising, and that just changes where the bait fish are,

Ellis: where the predators are.

Ellis: And then as it warms up and there's sort of an inflection point where shad are

Ellis: less comfortable in the warming lake and more comfortable near the mouth of

Ellis: the rivers with the cooler water,

Ellis: things start to get funky down there.

Ellis: And that dynamic can kind of be found throughout the lake all year.

Ellis: Um but but you know now and for the next month or two you have that coinciding with.

Ellis: We'll just say it's march now so in a month from now we're going to have um pending weather.

Ellis: Whether some of the caddis starting to go on the Watauga and the sulfurs will

Ellis: be quickly following on both rivers.

Ellis: And yeah, it's very much, it's cool to come out at 7 a.m. and have it be 60,

Ellis: even though it's going to be 25 tomorrow.

Marvin: Yeah, that'll be a little bit of a reset. and you know with the warmer temperatures

Marvin: you know how much longer you think you have before the musky in your neck of

Marvin: the woods start to spawn and you need to leave them alone.

Ellis: Yeah I was just out today and up in the headwaters and,

Ellis: It's the temperature variance isn't as great as some other free zones like low

Ellis: 40s, mid 40s is kind of a winter norm.

Ellis: It just doesn't get as frosty here as it does on the new or the James.

Ellis: So it's 49 now and i don't really anticipate that getting up to the low to mid

Ellis: 50s i gotta think daylight has a little bit to do with with their internal clock so,

Ellis: it's more or less i i class with a couple folks that live on the river and i'm

Ellis: up there fishing pushing on my own a good deal.

Ellis: And, you know, when it starts to get into the low 50s, it's time to pull the plug.

Ellis: But my last muskie trip booked is March 8th, and I anticipate that that'll be right.

Ellis: That's a good date for the last trip.

Marvin: Yeah, that sounds about right. And, you know, kind of shifting gears a little

Marvin: bit, that Brenner shot us a small mouth question and he wanted to get your thoughts

Marvin: on, you know, targeting early season smallies.

Marvin: And is it better to kind of start out with bait fish or start out fishing crayfish patterns?

Ellis: Sure. So you can cut this question apart in a thousand different ways.

Ellis: Oddly enough, my inclination in answering is going to be who's fishing?

Ellis: You know, what rod are you fishing?

Ellis: What line are you fishing? What type of water are you fishing?

Ellis: And you know some example of that would be you're fishing skinnier ratter,

Ellis: some kind of jiggy placer sure that's a bait fish you got crawfish imitations

Ellis: that are jiggy as well fishing that on the floating line working it through pockets,

Ellis: in a situation where you have have some more bouldery, cobbly,

Ellis: crawdaddy structure and, you know, go in there and pop some rocks over.

Ellis: And the temperature is above 50, 53, 54.

Ellis: That's kind of a crawdad active temperature.

Ellis: I'd honestly not wed yourself to a fly too much.

Ellis: I think that, you know, going into the TBA reservoir system,

Ellis: for example, when you have shad moving in, you start to look at like,

Ellis: you know, are you fishing a peanut envy and that looks kind of like a bait fish

Ellis: and smallmouth are crushing it, but it's also kind of jiggy and has rubber legs and it's a crawdad?

Ellis: Yeah, the answer is yes. So it's really trying whatever you have in your arsenal.

Ellis: And sure, if there's shad getting blown apart, throw some bayfish patterns.

Ellis: And I've actually seen smallmouth striper, brown trout eating shad and refusing anything.

Ellis: Even the clousers that are too big or too densely tied, they're not eating them

Ellis: because they're eating two-inch shad, inch-and-a-half shad. These things are tiny. tiny.

Ellis: So it's really, what is your river structure? What type of food is around?

Ellis: And that's what you're going for.

Ellis: If you're wade fishing a lot of these creeks and you want to go natural, go crawfish.

Ellis: My personal preference is if I can find out that they're actually going to swim

Ellis: through a seven-inch changer, I'd like to find that out at the beginning of the day.

Ellis: And if they're not, I can pretty quickly check it off and move on to some more

Ellis: reasonable presentations.

Ellis: But I do kind of like to approach it in that order.

Marvin: Says the streamer junkie, right?

Ellis: And yeah, it's just too fun.

Marvin: Uh, dude, I'm with you. And you know, folks, we, uh, we love questions at the articulate fly.

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

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

Marvin: And we're going to draw for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.

Marvin: And, you know, Ellis, before I let you go and drain all the rain out of your boat, um,

Marvin: and hunker down for the storm, you know, we will let folks know, you know,

Marvin: if you've got got any kind of you know uh bucktail releases coming up soon or

Marvin: if you got any you know just to let folks know kind of how to get on your guide

Marvin: calendar for you know smallmouth trout musky the whole nine yards yeah.

Ellis: So bucktail will be there there's some available now but i got some,

Ellis: some more colors um a wide array of naturals and some different just like four shades of gray,

Ellis: and all of that's on elliswardflies.com there's some information on on booking and that's,

Ellis: run your own website is uh it's a moving target so if you ever have questions

Ellis: um but you know about booking or just about what a trip looks like or fishing

Ellis: whatever you want to book a trip,

Ellis: best way to do that is my cell phone at 513-543-0019.

Marvin: There you go you know don't forget folks that uh

Marvin: you know in our patreon community the articulate fly you got a couple options

Marvin: to support the show and and to support ellis at one tier there's a 10 discount

Marvin: on bucktail but there's another tier which is particularly apropos for this

Marvin: time of year where you get a hundred dollar off guide credit every year so you

Marvin: might want to check that out it's in the show notes and And, you know,

Marvin: we're in this great time of year, you know, get your gear ready,

Marvin: get ready to get out there.

Marvin: And if it's warm enough, get out there and catch a few.

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

Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.