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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:59 am, the temperature outside is 53.6 degrees.
Today will be sunny with a high temperature in the mid-80’s. No rain is predicted through Friday. The chance for rain increases slightly Saturday and higher on Sunday.
Little River is flowing at 260 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.13 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 158 cfs. The water temperature is 61.2 degrees.
Fishing will be best in the mid to higher elevations for the remainder of this week. The water temperature will rise to the upper 60’s in the low elevations. In the Little River drainage, I would fish higher on Middle Prong, Lynn Camp Prong, above Elkmont or above Metcalf Bottoms later in the day, when the water is warmer.
All streams in the Smokies are flowing at the perfect level, above normal, more like Spring flows. The streams are receding. We will need more rain soon to sustain these awesome flows.
Dry flies or nymphs will work for you. I would use Yellow Sally stonefly patterns or terrestrials as dry flies. Try Neversink Caddis, Rob’s Hellbender, Yellow Stimulator, Yellow Elk Hair Caddis, Yellow Parachute Adams or any foam beetle.
Subsurface, I would use a Green or Pink Weenie. All the above are good Summer fly patterns. Others will work and some could work better.
Smallmouth bass will be active in the lowland rivers, including Little River, Abrams Creek, Little Pigeon River and many others flowing out of the mountains. Poppers or foam topwater patterns will produce for you, especially early and late or on shaded areas on these rivers.
Try a Byron’s Knucklehead in black, chartreuse or yellow. That is what I would use. That is the fly I use almost exclusively for warmwater species, on the lakes or lowland rivers. I also use BoogleBug poppers and Puglisi Threadfin Shad patterns. The black version of the Knucklehead is also a great trout fly, when used on the larger rivers, during the warm months. CLICK HERE to see them on our online store.
Most TVA dams in our area are still sluicing or spilling, causing the tailwaters below to be flowing very high. There is a lot of water moving through the Little Tennessee River system too. In some cases, the flows have been reduced as the lake levels fall. I did see a reduction in the flows at many dams this morning. Maybe they will be back to normal flows soon.
Fly fishing on the lakes may have improved. They could be fishing well. I don’t know, yet.
The way it looks now, your best bet is fishing the free flowing rivers for trout or warmwater species.
Fly fishing on some lakes may be good. Our boat is ready to go. All I need right now is time which is forthcoming.
Today I will finish the new Fly Box Department on our online store. It includes over 50 different fly boxes. I still have to write the text for each category and design a mobile version of the category headers. But today, I will be done. This job has taken over two weeks. I did all the photography, photo cleanup and wrote the text. You can see that department by CLICKING HERE.
I will be photographing new flies and fly rods next. I came up with a rod holder idea, that I’ll build this week. It will hold rods in mid air to be photographed from different angles, piece by piece. The rods will be held by fluorocarbon tippet. I hope it works. That will save a lot of time, clipping the rods from the background. Fluorocarbon practically disappears in our photo studio. The flash blows it out.
I may also use this device when photographing other items in the future.
Enjoy this beautiful weather and in man cases, excellent fly fishing conditions.
Have a great day and thank you for being here with us.
Byron Begley
June 6, 2018
Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com |