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'm doing pretty good. I'm kind of crawling out as recovering from a 15-hour

Ellis: day yesterday after mousing the night before.

Ellis: So, um, it is made easier when the fishing is how it has been.

Ellis: So, um, in general, pretty good, tired, but good.

Marvin: So are you saying you're not as young as you used to be?

Ellis: Uh, Marv, isn't that true right now? Just, you know, compared to five minutes.

Marvin: It is, but I was not trying to be philosophical. I was trying to be a little

Marvin: bit more practical, but that's just me.

Ellis: Yeah um you know i didn't i wasn't doing this when i was 25 so i can't i can't

Ellis: really compare to that but um you know it it's it's a good burn i'll say that.

Marvin: Yeah nothing a little gatorade and monster can't take

Marvin: care of right dang yeah

Marvin: so the interesting thing is and i know you're excited because i've

Marvin: been looking at your weather and you are i think you have almost what you would

Marvin: consider to be perfect conditions so you're you know in the mid 80s um you've

Marvin: got a bunch of cloudy days and you've got interspersed rainfall so i would imagine

Marvin: you know subject to like squirrely generation on the south holston it's about

Marvin: as good as it gets this time of year for you.

Ellis: Yeah, what you just said, there's a couple different data points of temperature,

Ellis: you know, ambient temperature related to fishing, I wouldn't say is terribly

Ellis: important, but for our comfort is very important.

Ellis: And if the goal for the day is to have fun and get fish in the bed and,

Ellis: you know, if fish aren't getting into the boat or if we're not getting feedback,

Ellis: you know, learn, try new things,

Ellis: make something happen.

Ellis: Whatever the task at hand is, that's hard to do when it's 98 degrees and full sun.

Ellis: So everything becomes easier. year

Ellis: instruction catching fish um switching

Ellis: up between dry flies and you know the you know

Ellis: little instruction on ssi 16

Ellis: with the nine foot versus uh casting a dry dry with with an 11 foot leader and

Ellis: um bouncing back to streamers like out of that the the tax on the individual

Ellis: on the angler becomes so much less when you have the the intermittent,

Ellis: I think that's what you described it as.

Ellis: Intermittent clouds with scattered storms here and there.

Ellis: Like, that's as much you can ask for. And then from the fishing perspective,

Ellis: boy, oh, boy, we got Kyler and Beth Rivers.

Ellis: The Rattagas continuing generation in the afternoon, which, you know,

Ellis: I kind of default to that in designing my trips.

Ellis: As daylight shortens and you know i tend to

Ellis: push a little more towards mousing but don't really try to milk that afternoon

Ellis: release and and the south holston's um a little more fluctuating in in their

Ellis: releases but um looks like for at least the next few days and i'm guessing based on rainfall um,

Ellis: a week or or more we're getting some six seven eight ten hour releases from the south holston and,

Ellis: and again the the tributaries i was just looking at the

Ellis: dough um the big tributary and

Ellis: for context you know when the dough is high like really really pushy in the

Ellis: summer let's let's call that like 200 cfs the watauga the the dam the river

Ellis: itself the watauga tailwater is releasing 240 cfs so,

Ellis: So one of the reasons I like the Watauga so much is it doesn't really feel like

Ellis: it's not, you're on it, you're on the middle of the lower.

Ellis: You wouldn't look around and say this is a tail race.

Ellis: So all of these little things, the contributions from the Freestones,

Ellis: from the little tributaries, these little ag creeks just getting hit with the

Ellis: heavens opening up for 15 minutes here and there.

Ellis: And pushing out some color, you see it in the fish.

Ellis: And as much as I love rowing a boat and hanging out with people.

Ellis: Educating, doing what I'm doing now, just vomiting the contents of my brain

Ellis: out at others, I really like catching fish.

Ellis: I really like watching people, helping people catch big brown trout.

Ellis: And yeah, these are the conditions for that.

Ellis: So it's been, and you know, I'm going to promote and encourage the streamer

Ellis: angler as much as possible, but that was kind of the task at hand.

Ellis: Yesterday, we had to leave.

Ellis: We had stopped fishing risers and we fed a monster, a size 20,

Ellis: just didn't hook set was a little i think we might have had the case of the yips um,

Ellis: but you know then we had to probably like we could have focused on that for

Ellis: a couple hours so it's it's been it's been a lot of fun and i'm i'm pumped to fish with you next week.

Marvin: Yeah i'm excited too and i'm going to bring uh as i like

Marvin: to say the first son thing number one um and

Marvin: uh but the other thing too to remind people is the seasonal forage is getting

Marvin: about as big as it's you know it's getting big now so like all the like annual

Marvin: minnows and bait fish you know we're heading into august and you know that's

Marvin: just ringing the dinner bell because there's a lot of that stuff in the water yeah.

Ellis: You get you get different you get different um I guess I'll use the word forage,

Ellis: but there's, you know, the sucker spawn, for example, in March.

Ellis: Well, guess what's starting to, you know, there's a sucker minnow hatch in like

Ellis: May where you start looking around.

Ellis: I started looking around the boat ramp at this one ramp I put my headlamp on

Ellis: and kind of weighed in and checked some zones, specifically some big crawfish

Ellis: and some sculpin that make them say, that makes sense.

Ellis: That night I started seeing these little I couldn't really figure out what they

Ellis: were until I started seeing more and put together,

Ellis: but oh yeah those are little suckers that were eggs you know six weeks ago so

Ellis: out of that stuff is continuing to grow i mean well the brands are so,

Ellis: they know that daylight's going down you know it's it's starting to get dark at at 8 30 and um.

Ellis: They have an hour less than they did just a few weeks ago so So I can't really

Ellis: say if it's one thing or another, you know, you, you, you start to get clarity,

Ellis: um, you start to get more ladder.

Ellis: When we landed the biggest client caught brown trout for me yesterday,

Ellis: um, in low ladder off of a weed bed.

Ellis: And it's certainly clarity on that one you know we're fishing we're fishing very very muddy water,

Ellis: and i don't know whether or not the conditions override some of these external factors um.

Ellis: It is tough to say it's i think it's

Ellis: important to look at at what your creek's doing what your

Ellis: river's doing what the tailwaters are doing and and um

Ellis: and experiment but but something else that's happening here is marvel as well

Ellis: you were saying with with the critters getting bigger um you also have the tiny

Ellis: critters the bugs you start popping rocks over right now Now,

Ellis: you're looking at deserts, and,

Ellis: you know, a month and a half ago, relative deserts.

Ellis: A month and a half ago, two months ago, you're popping the same rock over,

Ellis: and it's packed. It's a full house.

Ellis: And so the food source is consistent and as insulated as these tailwaters can feel.

Ellis: The food sources, what's available, changes dramatically.

Ellis: And, you know, taking yesterday as an example and for anyone saying,

Ellis: oh, you know, fish don't eat streamers.

Ellis: Yeah, there was a massive brown trout chilling, hanging on a weed bed and very

Ellis: casually rising up and eating size 20s.

Ellis: Um, they, they, they eat everything and, and figuring out what,

Ellis: what looks like the food that they're eating.

Ellis: That's, that's the task at hand most days.

Marvin: Yeah. It's awesome stuff. Gets me excited, uh, for next week and got a question for you.

Ellis: Yeah.

Marvin: I got a question for you from, uh, Brenner. Uh, he wanted to get your thoughts

Marvin: on what new anglers can do to be good clients when they get in the boat.

Ellis: Yeah, so this one, this one's interesting.

Ellis: I have not been a consumer of guiding outside of fishing with Tommy a couple times.

Ellis: And some of the saltwater fishing that I've done and meeting some great guys

Ellis: that I guide the way that I have been guided that I really enjoy,

Ellis: which is direct communication and being very open.

Ellis: So what do you want to do?

Ellis: You know, my job most days, I would say, is to maximize the fun that we're going to have.

Ellis: For some people, that's catching fish. For some people, it's going out and ripping streamers.

Ellis: It doesn't matter. We're not going to stop and go over dry fly fishing.

Ellis: And I think that person would love to understand how to cast a five-foot effectively

Ellis: and land some nice fish on dry fly.

Ellis: But right in that moment, there's some of it spoken, some of it's unspoken, where...

Ellis: What's most fun right then for the person in the front seat if if i think that that's catching fish,

Ellis: then we're going to stop and fish dry flies if if the most fun thing is to continue

Ellis: casting streamers we're going to continue casting streamers um so i i think for for a new angler,

Ellis: from that perspective and this is going to change dramatically i think depending on.

Ellis: The guide you choose there's there's different flavors

Ellis: of guides and and there are a lot of guides

Ellis: who do the same thing every day um you

Ellis: know i'm thinking of myself matt some

Ellis: of these other guys that i've been out with where it's like

Ellis: i have a conversation with every

Ellis: angler before we go out every single person it

Ellis: doesn't matter if i'm running 12 trips in

Ellis: 12 days i know the

Ellis: person that i'm fishing at least

Ellis: a little bit on a personal level the

Ellis: day before if not weeks or a month before so that

Ellis: i understand what you know what that

Ellis: dynamic looks like what that fun dynamic looks like for

Ellis: them and so to to

Ellis: be a good client in that sense is be honest if you want to learn because i've

Ellis: had that i get this plenty and it's not going to surprise anyone i just want

Ellis: to learn how to x i just want to learn

Ellis: this and that i don't care you know catching fish is a bonus whatever.

Ellis: If that's not the case, if you want to go, because that's very different.

Ellis: I can teach and honestly, people can learn far more effectively when the opportunity

Ellis: to catch fish is not there.

Ellis: When the opportunity to catch fish is there, you don't listen to me. I don't care who you are.

Ellis: It's been 100% of people with me.

Ellis: When the opportunity to catch fish is there and you're getting the fly out there

Ellis: and maybe everything's not going well and it's only happening 50% of the time,

Ellis: I'm, you're going to keep doing some of these things and making mistakes and, and I pick up on that.

Ellis: And so I'm going to kind of quiet down and let you do your thing.

Ellis: And hopefully we catch some fish.

Ellis: If you want to catch some fish, say that. And there's, you're going on a guided

Ellis: trip and you're paying good money for it. So be honest.

Ellis: And I would say the, the good guys, I've had people on my boat that I don't

Ellis: want to say They're nervous, but they're, you know, they're very clear that

Ellis: they're not good anglers, though I have these expectations of,

Ellis: I'm not even sure what, of anything than zero.

Ellis: My expectations for, I'm lucky to have people on my boat.

Ellis: Every single person, a couple of weeks ago, I was telling one of my regulators

Ellis: that it feels like, oh, these are my first trip, where I truly do feel fortunate

Ellis: to have people on my boat.

Ellis: And so I've spent so much time doing different things and fishing gear and fishing

Ellis: four and five weights and fishing sevens and eights and fishing smallies and

Ellis: muskie and, you know, low, high,

Ellis: daytime, dark, so that we can have a conversation and say, hey, here's the menu.

Ellis: You um and here's a

Ellis: couple of these programs that we can choose in absence

Ellis: of an opinion from you but the the client should should provide input and say

Ellis: here's what i'm going to do and and let's be as clear as possible on expectations

Ellis: um from both sides because i i think that there's a a,

Ellis: you know, don't piss your guide off mentality.

Ellis: Which is bizarre because it's like, at the end of the day, I'm a,

Ellis: I'm a business and, and I am a, a customer focused business.

Ellis: And so, um, yeah, certainly do things to, to make the trip go smoother.

Ellis: And there are plenty of things that happen throughout the day, but, um,

Ellis: open communication and, and, and being honest, if you want to catch fish,

Ellis: tell your guide, you want to catch some fish if you want to if you want to avoid

Ellis: boats if you want to do x y and z tell them and if you're not getting good feels

Ellis: from whoever you're talking to call someone else.

Marvin: It's good life advice, right?

Ellis: Yeah, I think so.

Marvin: 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: and we will enter your drawing for some cool stuff from Ellis at the end of the season.

Marvin: And, you know, Ellis, like we always do, you want to let folks,

Marvin: you know, know where they can find you and book you.

Marvin: And I'll also remind people that we've got a great community that we host on

Marvin: Patreon you're on with some opportunities to participate in the community and

Marvin: get discounts on bucktails.

Marvin: And there'll be more this year than last year or to get a a hundred dollar off

Marvin: guide credit with Ellis.

Marvin: So I'll stop talking now, Ellis and let you cue everybody up and tell them where

Marvin: to find you and all that kind of good stuff.

Ellis: Sure. So you can follow me on Instagram at Ellis Ward guides.

Ellis: My website is Ellis Ward fries.com. on.

Ellis: Text, call, ask questions, say what's up at my cell phone, 513-543-0019.

Marvin: Well, there you go, folks. As I always say, you owe it to yourself to get out

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

Ellis: Appreciate it, Marv.