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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:33 am, the temperature is 27.2 degrees.
It is much warmer this morning than was predicted yesterday. Today will be sunny with a high temperature in the low 40’s and a low tonight around 20 degrees. Tomorrow will be sunny and warmer with a high in the middle to upper 40’s, falling to the middle 20’s tomorrow night.
When I wrote the fishing report yesterday morning, Little River Road was open but it closed about two hours later and it is still closed due to ice and snow. Laurel Creek Road, from the “Y” to Cades Cove is closed. Newfound Gap road is still reported to be closed and has been since January 15th.
Little River is flowing at 205 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.28 feet on the gauge. Median flow for this date is 289 cfs. The water temperature at the low elevation gauge near Townsend is 38.1 degrees.
Most streams in the mountains are flowing near median flow with some flowing higher and others flowing lower. The streams are cold, with water temperatures in the 30’s. Trout are sluggish. Fishing is slow. Access to streams on the west side of the Park is very limited.
Fishing will be slow in the lowland rivers for smallmouth bass. You might catch stocked trout using nymphs or other sub-surface flies. I would wait a while before going to give the streams time to warm later today.
There are breaks in the generation schedules at South Holston, Chatuge and Watauga dams today. TVA and the Corps will be generating all day at every other dam I checked this morning. I do not look at every schedule so you may find other tailwater fishing options by visiting the TVA website from the links below.
Though we have had very little snow in the valley and the roads have been clear, we have not seen many customers in the shop this week. Business has been slow at LRO. Fishing has been slow. That may change this weekend as more people may venture out.
Guide Mike Bone and his wife came in yesterday. That was a treat, as usual. Mike was buying fly tying materials to prepare for the Spring fishing season. Mike guides mostly on the Clinch and Holston tailwaters. I met Mike the first time, in a fly shop, over 30 years ago. That was before I moved from Nashville to Townsend. He has been a river guide longer than anyone I can think of in East Tennessee. There may be someone else who has guided longer but I don’t know who that would be.
Paula and I have floated with Mike and it is always a good day. Not only is he a fly fishing expert, his personality certainly attributes much to his success as a guide. He is a fun guy to spend the day with.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park released their visitation numbers for last year. As expected by all of us who live or visit here, the number was huge. Over 14 million people visited the Smokies. That beat the prior record by 1.5 million people.
Learn more about this story by CLICKING HERE to visit the WBIR website.
Have a great day and thank you for being here with us.
Byron Begley
January 22, 2022
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Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com
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