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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:42 am, the temperature is 34.9 degrees.

This will be a sunny beautiful day with a high temperature in the middle to upper 60’s, falling to the high 30’s tonight. Warm Spring-like weather returns again. It will be sunny and warmer tomorrow with a high in the upper 60’s and a low in the middle 40’s. Tuesday will be mostly cloudy and warm. Expect a high in the upper 60’s and a low in the low 50’s.

What is very important to us is, warm days and nights will bring the water temperatures back to the trout’s preferred range in the freestone mountain streams next week. And, the streams are receding back to normal, slowly.

Little River is flowing at 801 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 3.08 feet on the gauge. Median flow for this date is 396 cfs. The water temperature is 46.8 degrees this morning.

Streams in the Smokies are flowing higher than normal and some are still flowing quite a bit higher than normal. It appears, flows are lower on the North Carolina side of the Park.

Water temperatures are chilly, and not within the trout’s preferred range. We will see temperatures rising every day as the week progresses as temperatures become warmer at night.

Your best options today are, find streams that are flowing lower and safe to wade. Or, stand in safe water and high stick weighted nymph rigs. I think the trout will be sluggish today, unless water temps rise to 50 degrees. Fish the low elevations where the water is warmer.

Lowland rivers are still flowing high. And, the water is cool. You might try fishing where trout are stocked using nymphs, egg patterns and streamers. The streams are swift so be careful wading.

TVA and the Corps will be generating all day at many dams. I did find a few that have breaks in the schedules, including Douglas, Chatuge, Dale Hollow and South Holston dams. There may be others. You will have more options if you are boating. Check the TVA website from the links below before going.

We have almost 1,000 fly tying items on our online store, which is about a third of what we stock. Now we are adding more. We had not offered fly tying materials and tools for sale on the web until last year. I was worried about keeping up with our inventory. We have good systems in place now so you can be assured of at least a 99.7 % fulfillment rate. I have been tracking those numbers each day since last August.

If you order materials and tools, the only reasons you might not get what you order is, you order too many of one item or we have a mistake in our inventory.  

I pull all of the fly tying orders that came in the night before and that is done before the store opens each morning. We do not charge for shipping.

Get out and enjoy this beautiful Spring day. Fishing may not be great. The streams are flowing higher than most people prefer and the water temperatures are chilly. Fishing conditions in the Smokies are not ideal but fishing will improve each day.

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

Byron Begley
March 21, 2021  

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com