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

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

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Ellis:
Hanging in there, Marv. How are you?

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Marvin:
Yeah, I get the feeling maybe your cup has run a thing over.

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Ellis:
Yes, but not all bad things.

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Marvin:
Yeah.

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Ellis:
Sometimes bedtime's just a little more challenging. Sometimes it's a little

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Ellis:
windier, but that's what tomorrow's for. Yeah.

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Marvin:
And so, you know, it's interesting. We were talking before we started recording

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Marvin:
and, you know, it's kind of interesting.

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Marvin:
I think in general in the Southeast, we've had what I would consider to be more

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Marvin:
of a traditional spring where it didn't become 100 degrees and with a ton of

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Marvin:
rain and then get cold again.

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Marvin:
And so we've kind of had a kind of a damp, camp, relatively cool spring,

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Marvin:
but the weather's kind of been all over the place.

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Marvin:
So, you know, in Tennessee, just like here in the Carolinas,

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Marvin:
you know, up in the 80s, now you got lows in the 30s.

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Marvin:
And that generally kind of, you know, puts things in a funk, right?

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Ellis:
Look at that. Generally speaking, I would say it puts things in a funk.

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Ellis:
I really do like to find the exception to some of those rules.

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Ellis:
And I think that the nature of a tailwater or of two tailwaters fed by 200 plus,

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Ellis:
300 foot deep lakes being insulated the way that they are,

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Ellis:
having the population densities and certain sections of the river that really

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Ellis:
don't have much traffic on certain flows and times of day.

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Ellis:
I've been, I felt good about finding the exception to that generally.

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Ellis:
You know, this variability and lack of any consistency creates tough fishing.

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Ellis:
But, man, it's day to day. And we've had, I've had days that,

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Ellis:
you know, our first three or four hours are top-notch fishing.

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Ellis:
Had some new guys come.

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Ellis:
In the boat and a

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Ellis:
guy boated a high teens brown on uh

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Ellis:
on a swim bug in his

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Ellis:
first 10 15 minutes of streamer fishing both got

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Ellis:
a number on yeah um picked

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Ellis:
off a few on dry flies in the first couple hours and then the remainder of the

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Ellis:
trip you know they they were really dead set on And we had talked about this

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Ellis:
for quite some time on sort of tuning in their dry fly fishing and tying and

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Ellis:
presentations and casting all this.

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Ellis:
And we didn't see a rising fish for hours.

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Ellis:
And that can happen if you're just floating.

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Ellis:
But when I'm burning through sections and going to the spots,

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Ellis:
And it's just been, it's been funky enough.

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Ellis:
I think with those quote unquote bad times, there really have been,

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Ellis:
you know, the spike in barometer up, blue skies, wind,

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Ellis:
just the right mix of tough conditions to make things.

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Ellis:
You should definitely be getting out in the first unless you're doing dawn to

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Ellis:
dusk you should be picking one

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Ellis:
of those low light times getting out on the water because that might be it.

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Marvin:
Yeah. And, you know, just to kind of help folks understand, so when you get

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Marvin:
a lot of temperature fluctuations, even if you're on a tailwater,

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Marvin:
it generally makes the fish cranky, right?

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Marvin:
Certainly in the shallow water has a negative impact on bait fish.

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Marvin:
You know, what else can you kind of share with folks to kind of help them?

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Marvin:
You know, they don't want to go to work and they want to fish,

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Marvin:
so they got to make something happen.

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Ellis:
Happen yeah so i would say

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Ellis:
some rules of

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Ellis:
thumb is as as

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Ellis:
things get tougher for fishing in general just

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Ellis:
tune down your presentations a little bit um there's a reason that my my go-to

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Ellis:
fly for low and clear on some bad condition days it you know isn't fishing an

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Ellis:
eight inch crafty changer,

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Ellis:
and hoping that a two-foot brown erupts on it um i'm probably fishing for trout specifically some,

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Ellis:
faster generally speaking faster water which is just to say there's there's

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Ellis:
a little more copper for fish.

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Ellis:
I'm still targeting the slower water, but it's adjacent to faster water.

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Ellis:
I'm not necessarily going in that frog water as much.

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Ellis:
And, you know, smallies.

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Ellis:
They can be a little more temperamental.

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Ellis:
And, you know, there could be some selection bias around here,

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Ellis:
I think, because they tend to be more in and freestones.

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Ellis:
And when they're not, when they're in some of the rivers that are more tailwater

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Ellis:
in nature and less freestone in nature, they're still getting a lot of insulation.

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Ellis:
There's still shad moving around. It's not as subject to all of the environmental

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Ellis:
changes, But everything slows down,

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Ellis:
and they don't need as many calories.

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Ellis:
The entire food chain slows down.

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Ellis:
And so, yeah, trying to get that pre-spawn smallie to swim all the way through

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Ellis:
a big changer up to your rod tip,

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Ellis:
when it's already sort of mass, is Cree Swan, are we towards the end of it?

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Ellis:
And again, I would say it depends on which watershed you're fishing.

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Ellis:
If that's not had, if it's not a fishy day, right?

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Ellis:
If it's not a little overcast, if it's not a flat or fallen barometer and you have clear water.

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Ellis:
I i would i would say it can be boring um you know maybe maybe throw in the

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Ellis:
fun stuff every once in a while but i've slow rolled i mean real like slow tap

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Ellis:
tap tap on an intermediate sink,

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Ellis:
little um each and i clouser the day after in picking up fish on them when they're

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Ellis:
not hitting anything with a, as I call it, a ladder presentation.

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Ellis:
The day after, I was watching a nice smallmouth eat flies, appropriately sized

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Ellis:
for pre-spawn smallie fishing.

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Ellis:
And the next day, we got hit with one of these low 34, 35 frost warnings when

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Ellis:
three or four days prior, it was...

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Ellis:
You're basically feeling like a warm summer day.

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Ellis:
So I'll pull back a little bit there. I know all over the place,

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Ellis:
just like our fishing weather.

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Marvin:
Yeah, but I guess, you know, using like a less heavily weighted clouser or,

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Marvin:
you know, I'd imagine, right, like maybe fishing like something that hovers

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Marvin:
a little bit more like a hover changer.

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Marvin:
You're really just trying to kind of tone down the, you know,

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Marvin:
it's not some, you know, you're not going to get fish ripping flies from the bank, right? Right.

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Ellis:
Yes. And thank you for bringing you back to that one.

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Ellis:
Doing stuff that can achieve more of the byte triggers in a smaller window of space.

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Ellis:
So said another way, you're able to keep the presentation there longer as opposed

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Ellis:
to relying on that chase.

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Ellis:
Chase and you know so

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Ellis:
a lot of this stuff is me about to

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Ellis:
start telling stories that i've repeated to myself enough to believe but is

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Ellis:
it curiosity is it because their uh metabolism slowed down is it is it small

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Ellis:
enough to be less threatening uh you know the caloric expenditure of attacking and And, you know,

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Ellis:
maybe having a little bit of a battle with something small isn't going to be

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Ellis:
the same thing for attacking and having a problem with trying to eat an 8-inch

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Ellis:
fish when you're a 14-inch fish.

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Ellis:
Um but yeah you know toning down

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Ellis:
to to some of those even the the micro changers you

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Ellis:
know the two and a half three inch finesse changer type things yeah b-chain

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Ellis:
or those I think there's some plastic um I forget who makes them wops wops you

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Ellis:
might make them but some plastic dumbbell eyes and you.

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Ellis:
Yeah, bucktail, box, craft furrows, but something to hang a little bit and stay

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Ellis:
in the kill zone as opposed to falling down, getting into rocks or staying too close to the surface,

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Ellis:
which is also where having intermediate line and just knowing what to do in

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Ellis:
different situations as opposed to always throwing 300 grain,

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Ellis:
you know, big flies and ripping it back.

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Ellis:
Um it's just it's not always how they eat yeah.

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Marvin:
It sounds too like you might need some stack men's in there right.

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Ellis:
Um yeah you know i would say that depends on your philosophy of,

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Ellis:
of fishing for a small mouth and for trout um i i think when you really start toning down,

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Ellis:
your your presentations it can be pretty tough to get the the full pop out kill the full,

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Ellis:
dead stop moving with the current and you know with some of those smaller flies.

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Ellis:
I don't know this is really contradictory to a lot of the stuff that I normally

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Ellis:
do and things I normally say, but some of those smaller flies just real slow

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Ellis:
rolling, you know, crapper, sparsely tied bucktail, fox.

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Ellis:
If the bite trigger is not the pop, pop, kill, hover above, you know,

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Ellis:
shoot from the belly, and it's just more of a, huh, what's that?

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Ellis:
I'm going to go see what that is. and you got something just consistently moving.

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Ellis:
Seeing it with Striper and Trout a little more so,

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Ellis:
you know, fishing with the idea in mind of trying to match that flow down shad,

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Ellis:
but no reason not to employ it for smallmouth.

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Marvin:
Yeah, got it. And I guess too, you know, I guess one of the other things to

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Marvin:
remember is, you know, you're going to have to, you know, if you're on the sticks

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Marvin:
and you've got any flow, you're going to have to, you know, one,

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Marvin:
you're going to want to really think about where you put the fly, right?

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Marvin:
Because you've got to manage that pretty well. But also, two,

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Marvin:
whoever's on the sticks is going to probably be back rowing a fair amount.

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Ellis:
Yeah, that's another...

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Ellis:
I'm not going to say tough one, but I've come to appreciate my knowledge in

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Ellis:
where to put people when and how quickly relative to current speed and bank position.

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Ellis:
And, man, that's a big part of it.

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Ellis:
And I think I overlooked that and I can be pretty tough,

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Ellis:
to I can be tough on myself to the point of not self-promoting but it's this

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Ellis:
last start to this season sort of in the last year it's,

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Ellis:
putting your guy in the right place some of these casts that happen they don't

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Ellis:
happen in the presentation that happens it's fly selection

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Ellis:
it's what rod they're fishing it's some of these tweaks that we've gone through

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Ellis:
that allow them to get some of these presentations and yeah it's it's where

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Ellis:
the boat is and how fast i'm moving relative to the current and.

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Ellis:
You have to change that it's constant dude i don't i am rowing,

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Ellis:
my arms are moving they're on the oars 100 of the time when we're moving um

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Ellis:
you know and we very rarely stop,

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Ellis:
and and park for very long so it's having an understanding of of what to do

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Ellis:
and when is also i think if you're out fun fishing man if you're the one fishing,

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Ellis:
that that dude rowing might not be doing the right thing and,

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Ellis:
And heck, I would hope that he or she, if you're fishing with him or her,

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Ellis:
would be the type to take some constructive feedback.

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Ellis:
And if you need to get closer to the bank to get the right presentation, then...

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Ellis:
You know people people like to get better and stuff so um the

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Ellis:
the angler really should be

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Ellis:
the one to say hey yeah you know this is i'm not

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Ellis:
able to do x y or z and then yeah

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Ellis:
if you're fishing with the guide it's it's very much on them to be it for as

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Ellis:
much as one can there's some times when you just have to be out of position

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Ellis:
have you in the right spot at all times it's just otherwise Otherwise,

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Ellis:
you may as well just be floating down the middle of the river.

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Marvin:
Yeah, I guess my suggestion would be to save your friendship and call a guide like Ellis.

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Marvin:
That would be.

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Ellis:
You can both come and I can provide couples therapy.

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Marvin:
Yeah, dude, I've had some experiences with that, you know, where one person

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Marvin:
can row, one person can't.

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Marvin:
And, you know, if you're fishing, you know, try one, trying to be serious about

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Marvin:
it, but also to your point, I mean, it makes a huge difference,

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Marvin:
you know, particularly if you've got adverse water conditions.

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Marvin:
And, you know, that's why I generally, when I fish with people,

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Marvin:
I was like, dude, let's just get a guide. Like, you know, we'll flip a coin.

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Ellis:
Yeah.

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Marvin:
We'll decide when we're going to switch, but it's going to be a much better

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Marvin:
day. And we're gonna have a much better dinner conversation if we just,

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Marvin:
uh, call somebody like Ellis. That's my thought.

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Ellis:
Yeah. You'll actually have dinner together.

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Marvin:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate

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

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Marvin:
If we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag,

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Marvin:
and we're going to enter a drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.

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Marvin:
And, you know, we know from last time that Ellis has got a few leftover bucktails.

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Marvin:
And remember, we've got a great community that we host on Patreon, and we have two tiers.

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Marvin:
You know, one is a $100 annual guide credit with Ellis, And the other is 10% off bucktails.

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Marvin:
So if either of those work for you, you should check it out.

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Marvin:
Links are in the show notes.

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Marvin:
And Ellis, you want to let folks know where they can find you,

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Marvin:
book you, and fish with you?

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Ellis:
Yeah, website is elliswardflies.com. And Instagram is at elliswardguides.

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Ellis:
Best way to reach out, ask about dates, just to call me and or text me at 513-543-0019.

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Marvin:
Yeah, well, there you go. And folks, all that stuff's in the show notes too.

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Marvin:
So, you know, I know it's kind of funky, but I think any day on the water is

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Marvin:
better than any day in the office. So you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.

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

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Ellis:
Appreciate it, Marv.