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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:15 am, the temperature outside is 47.1 degrees. Light rain is falling.

We are currently under a flood watch through tomorrow. We can expect showers today and heavy rain tonight and Thursday. Rainfall amounts of 2 to 2.5 inches are expected. “Amounts in excess or 3 inches are likely across the southern watch area with isolated amounts up to 4 inches”, according to the National Weather Service.

Temperatures will be warm, with highs in the 50’s today and 60’s Thursday. Lows will dip only to the low 50’s tonight. Tomorrow night, cold air will move into the area. Expect lows in the upper 20’s to the low 30’s through the weekend.

Little River is flowing at 311 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.26 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 348 cfs.

The USGS web page for Little River in Townsend is not currently displaying the water temperature. It has not reported since day before yesterday. I sent an e-mail to Terry, who manages our gauge site and told him about the problem. I have not heard back from him.

The ground is saturated and the streams are flowing fairly high right now. If we get two inches of rain or more, the rivers will be flowing high, maybe at flood stage, tomorrow. It will take several days for the high water to recede to a fishable level, if that happens.

If somehow, the rain is not as heavy as predicted, I think the streams will be cold this weekend, further limiting good fishing.

I don’t hold out much hope for the weekend right now.

The trout tailwaters will be flowing very high for who knows how long. Discharge at TVA dams in our area is high right now.  

If you are planning to travel here this weekend to fly fish in the Smokies, you should probably reconsider or at least postpone your decision until tomorrow or Friday. I don’t expect good fishing conditions this weekend. We’ll see what happens.

Check back here for updates. I will be keeping an eye on the conditions and updating this report as needed. I hope the USGS crew gets Little River’s water temperature reporting fixed soon. That info is critical for us.

Have a great day and thank you for being here with us.

Byron Begley
February 28, 2018