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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 7:07 am, the temperature outside is 31.3 degrees.

Today will be partly sunny, or partly cloudy, with a high temperature of about 70 degrees. Tonight will be warm, in the upper 40’s. We are going to get some rain tomorrow.
between a quarter and a half of an inch are possible. Rain should continue Monday night and into early Tuesday morning.

This will be a very warm week, which will improve the fishing significantly.

Little River is flowing at 215 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.03 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 381 cfs. The water temperature is 46.6 degrees this morning.

Fishing is good in the Smokies, depending on when you go. All of the anglers I talked to yesterday, had a slow morning. Fishing has been much better in the afternoons, after the water has warmed.

Today may be a very good day to go. It will be warm and hopefully overcast, two very important fishing conditions.

Fishermen are not seeing any significant hatches. There are bugs on the water but nothing to get excited about.

I would fish a low to mid elevation stream today and wait a while before going. Try to be on the stream by 2 pm. That is when most fishermen are doing best.

A Parachute Adams dry fly with a small Bead Head Pheasant Tail dropper is a good choice. A Hare’s Ear or Quill Gordon wet fly may produce, either used as a dropper or fished alone or in tandem.

I would plan on using nymphs if you go early. Get them down with split shot.

Water temperatures will be trending up this week. That always turns on the trout and the insects. If we get a half inch of rain, that could stir up some silt tomorrow, temporarily. We could actually use some rain in the Smokies.

All of the lake levels are falling, and that is what TVA is trying to do. They are still sluicing and generating, pushing huge amounts of water through the tributary dams that create our trout tailwaters below. When the lake levels reach a point where there is sufficient storage capacity, the dam release will return to normal. Norris and Douglas are getting close. TVA plans to cut back the flows some tomorrow and Tuesday at Norris Dam. That is the beginning of a good trend.

They are still spilling at Wolf Creek Dam in Kentucky. Lake Cumberland is still above Summer pool by about six feet. It needs to be much lower than Summer pool. Since March 1st, the lake level has dropped 24 feet.

I was there in early March. I have never seen the lake that high, nor have I seen that much water flowing below the dam.

I’ll be working today and looking forward to it. I will check off two big projects I’m working on this week and I love doing that.

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

Byron Begley
March 24, 2019

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com

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