If you do not see today’s Fishing Report, please refresh your browser to empty your cache.

Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:49 am, the temperature is 55.6 degrees.

This is going to be another nice fishing day. It will be sunny today with a high temperature in the middle 80’s. We have a low chance for thunderstorms overnight but the chance for showers and thunderstorms increases significantly tomorrow and through the night. Saturday will be warm with showers likely. The skies will be clear Sunday and it will be cooler.

Little River is flowing at 154 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 1.83 feet on the gauge. Median flow for this date is 277 cfs. The water temperature is 62.2 degrees this morning.

After a rise in the water levels yesterday, the streams have receded to a low level again. Water temperatures are good at all elevations. Trout are active. Fishing is good.

Stealth and presentation will be paramount to your fly fishing success in the mountains today. Dress to blend with the forest. Fish the choppy water. Don’t spook the trout and get a good drift. You will catch more.

Dry flies and nymphs are working. Two good dry fly patterns to use now are Light Cahill and Yellow Sally Stonefly imitations. Small bead head nymphs will produce strikes. Using a dry fly with a nymph dropper is a good strategy. Or dredge deeper with a weighted nymph rig.

Nymphs and streamers will work best for stocked trout in the lowland rivers flowing out of the mountains. Water temperatures are good so the trout will be active.

Further downstream, smallmouth bass, rock bass and panfish are active. Nymphs, streamers and crayfish patterns will produce for sure. Try foam floating flies or poppers. They may work.

I would hit the rocky banks with a large weighted black Wooly Bugger in the lakes. You might also do well with a swimming nymph that resembles a dragonfly nymph. Olive is a good color but others work well too, including chartreuse and rusty orange. You will catch almost any lake species on a swimming nymph. You would expect to catch bass, bluegill and shellcrackers. You may also catch carp, yellow perch and catfish on these flies.  

At some point in time, as the lakes warm, fish will be looking for food on the surface. I am fond of smallmouth bass fishing. Foam floating flies that land softly get their attention. A hard bodied bug that makes a lot of noise when it lands can spook smallmouth bass that are cruising along the banks in shallow water.

There are angler friendly flows scheduled today at several dams in the area. Tailwater anglers have many choices again today. TVA and the Corps of Engineers are filling the lakes to full Summer pool and generating less to achieve that goal.

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

Byron Begley
May 5, 2022

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com