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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:04 am, the temperature outside is 73.0 degrees. A small thunderstorm just blew over Townsend. We had some heavy rain but it was brief.

Today will be partly sunny with a high temperature in the mid to upper 80’s. We have a 40% chance for thunderstorms today.

Little River is flowing at 193 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 1.93 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 136 cfs. The water temperature is 67.6 degrees this morning.

All streams in the Smoky Mountains, that have USGS flow gauges, are flowing slightly above normal.

Fishing will be good today in the mid to upper elevations where the water is cooler. Fly fishing anglers are doing well using foam beetles, yellow sally stonefly imitations and Green Weenies.

There is a chance, a thunderstorm will drop rain in the drainage you are fishing. The streams could rise and become stained. If that happens, move to another stream. The storms should be scattered today.

Jim and I are supposed to go fishing on a lake tomorrow. I plan to pull out of here at 5:45 am with the boat in tow. There are conflicting weather predictions tomorrow. The chance for thunderstorms is low in the morning on one site, and another predicts thunderstorms in the morning too. We may change to another day or just go and see what happens. When the chance for storms is “Likely” I like to fish fairly close to the boat ramp.

It looks like we will be blessed with rain, with a decent chance most days through July 8th. The forecast changes so often, it is hard to make plans to fish in open water from a boat. I hate being caught in a storm on a lake.

Puglisi Threadfin Shad flies are what I’m tying right now. I’m tying them small, 1 ½” long on Tiemco #4 egg hooks, and larger, 2+ inches long on Gamakatsu B10S #6 bass hooks. The #6 bass hooks are larger than the #4 egg hooks.  

Those and Knuckleheads are two of my “go to” lake flies. The others are weighted Wooly Buggers and Rubber Legged Dragons. I also have a rod or two strung up in the boat with small BoogleBug poppers, for bluegill. Bluegill love those BoogleBug poppers. Largemouth bass love them too. We found blugill on the beds last week and they were willing for the fight.

The tailwaters are fishing well, for trout and smallmouth bass. Check the TVA website from the links below, to see what the generation schedules look like before you go.

I will be at the shop ordering fly tying materials today. I am re-ordering to stock every week so we won’t run out of items. I plan to do that from now on. A large fly tying department is a huge job.

When the shipments arrive, the guys at the shop have to receive them in the computer, package the spooled items and put them out to sell. There are so many things to stock, in different colors and sizes. Our suppliers have a hard time keeping what we need in their stock, which makes it tougher to have a good supply in our store. It has always been that way.

The Trout Unlimited Trout Adventure Camp for kids, at Tremont ended yesterday. Like every year, they all came to the shop before they go home. There were two kids here from other states. I think they had 10 students, here for 5 days. Someone told me the students caught 60 brook trout one day. That is a good number. If I’m correct, they each caught six, on average. They learned to fly fish, tie flies, studied biology and aquatic entomology. Trout Unlimited volunteers from several chapters served as instructors.

The Great Smoky Mountain Trout Adventure Camp has a great website. You can visit there by CLICKING HERE.

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

Byron Begley
June 24, 2018

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com