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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:43 am, the temperature outside is 65.5 degrees.

It rained yesterday in some spots, including the Little River watershed. The Knoxville Airport reported .84”. Dry Valley, where we live got .35”. A Laurel Valley personal weather station reported .54” and one in Kinzel Springs chalked up .18”. These rain cells and thunderstorms are spotty.

There is a slight chance for rain today. Expect a high temperature in the low 80’s. This weather pattern will continue through the weekend into Monday. The chance for rain increases Friday through Monday.

Little River is flowing at 196 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 1.94 feet on the flow gauge. Yesterday at this time, the gauge was flowing at 1.68 feet. Median flow for this date is 193 cfs. The water temperature is 65.5 degrees.

Fishing conditions are normal in the Smoky Mountains. Normal in May is awesome. What we have now is about as good as it gets.

Fly fishing for trout has been very good and that will continue. Sure, we may have heavy rain at times, and that could put a damper on fishing somewhere in the Park. That will likely be temporary and not wide-spread. I hope I’m right.

Trout are taking dry flies and nymphs, mayflies, caddis, stoneflies and terrestrials. I don’t think it matters much right now, if you fish dry or below the surface. Most anglers are probably using dry flies. Others are using nymphs and Weenies, Green or Pink.

I would use my favorite late Spring dry flies, Yellow Neversink Caddis, Yellow Stimulator or a Light Cahill. If I were nymph fishing, I would use a Green Weenie and maybe a Bead Head Pheasant Tail.

Choose what you like and you will probably do very well right now. Stay hidden from the trout and get a good drift. You will catch fish.

Smallmouth bass fishing is good. They are active in the lowland rivers, tailwaters and lakes. We should have periods of overcast skies for several days. That makes for ideal smallmouth fishing with poppers and foam floating flies. When it is cloudy, you can catch smallmouth, largemouth and bluegill on the surface. I am not sure if smallies are taking top water flies on the tailwaters. I’ll have to ask Josh Pfeiffer or Gary Troutman about that. It won’t be long. I’m looking forward to it.

I am going to be off today, re-arranging and relocating our Florida Kayak fishing gear. Since we only use that stuff two or three weeks per year, we are moving it from the boat house to the basement. We just returned from a two-week fishing trip to Florida a few days ago. The kayaks are on hung on a wall down there right now. We’ll get the trailer in the basement next. I’ll have to take the load bars off to get it through the 6’ doors. We will hang the canoe from the 11’ tall ceiling we have down there.

After that, I am going to service our boat for lake fishing. I love changing the crankcase fluid, oil, oil filter, spark plugs and fuel filter. I have always done that more often than necessary. It makes me feel good. The motor feels better too.

We love fly fishing on the lakes. There are ten impoundments within a fairly short distance from Townsend. We’ve got a lot of water to choose from. We always go on weekdays, usually overcast weekdays. We don’t see the crowds others who fish on weekends do. I always work on weekends.

One of our boat batteries died last Winter. It was over 10-years old. That one is kind of a spare. That is why it lasted so long. I keep both on maintenance chargers 24/7. We buy good batteries, Optima. They cost about $250.

I thought about buying a lithium ion battery to replace this one. They weigh 80% less. They have a much longer charge/discharge lifespan. They cost about $700 for the one we need. I think we’ll go the cheap route this time. Maybe the prices will drop by the time we need another one.

Our boat has two trolling motors, one on the bow and one at the stern. The stern trolling motor gets the most use. It’s easy to drive the bow up to the bank, to retrieve a fly that is hung in a tree. That happens fairly often. We try to cast the flies as close to the bank as we can.

You don’t see many people fly fishing from boats on the lakes. Most anglers use spinning and bait casting outfits. When we see someone fly fishing on a lake, there is a very good chance we know them.  

We always use fly rods, in line weights 4 through 7. Now, we have a Tenkara rod in the boat, for bluegill fishing. That is a lot of fun. I know I have never seen anyone using a Tenkara rod on the lakes. I bet we start seeing more.

We keep everything we need in the boat, locked in the boat house. All we have to do is pull it out, hook it to my truck, and go.

This has been a wonderful Spring and I’m looking forward to the next few months of great fishing.

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

Byron Begley
May 23, 2018     

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com