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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:47 am, the temperature is 58.8 degrees.

It will be sunny and warmer today with a high temperature in the middle 80’s, dipping to the low 60’s tonight. The forecast tomorrow and Tuesday is similar. We have a chance for showers and thunderstorms developing in the Tennessee River Valley beginning Wednesday and continuing each day through the end of the week. The chance for rain is not high at this point.

Little River is flowing at 159 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 1.84 feet at the Townsend gauge. Median flow for this date is 82 cfs. The water temperature is 62.6 degrees this morning.

Most streams in the mountains are flowing higher than normal and at good fishing levels for September. Normal flows in September are low. Water temperatures are cool at all elevations. We should see some warming of the streams as the week progresses.

Dry flies and nymphs will work for you. Try a terrestrial dry fly pattern with a bead head nymph or Green Weenie dropper.

Lowland rivers that flow from the mountains are at above normal levels. Fly fishing for smallmouth bass, rock bass and panfish is good. Fish the deeper pools and runs with poppers, foam floating flies, nymphs, streamers or crayfish patterns. I would go early or late or fish a shaded river.

I see some tailwater fishing options today. TVA and the Corps will be generating all day at a couple of dams in the area, but not so much at others, especially early. With careful planning, you should be able to fish on some of the tailwaters today, whether you are wading or boating.

Go early to the lakes when the sun is off the water and there is less recreation boating traffic. Cast to the shaded banks with poppers, foam floating flies, swimming nymph or streamers. Wind will not be an issue today. I would consider the bright sun to be an issue later.

You will notice changes in our website over the next few weeks. I am rebuilding the whole thing, except for the online store. I worked two days this week, designing and installing new menus on each page. I will finish one more this morning and be done with that phase. Then, I will begin re-designing the pages and writing new content.

I use Adobe Dreamweaver to design the pages, with the help from Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. My plan is to design the fishing report using WordPress in the future. The reason for that is, Daniel, Dave Anderson and Will can write the fishing report without the software I use. They can do it on any computer from anywhere. We’ll see how that goes. I know absolutely nothing about WordPress but I will soon.

I linked to an article in this report written by Henry Cowan for Fly Fisherman magazine a couple of days ago. Henry wrote about four men who would be on the Fly Fishing Mount Rushmore, if it existed. Those men were Joe Brooks, Lee Wulff, Lefty Kreh and Dave Whitlock.

The staff at Fly Fisherman followed up with an article titled “The 50 Most Influential Fly Fishers”. This is a good one. You can read it by CLICKING HERE. I know a few of these people but recognized the names of many others. I have also read several books written by some of these men and women.

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

Byron Begley
September 12, 2021

WALTER BABB MADE BAMBOO FLY RODS FOR SALE – CLICK HERE

Walter is selling a selection of over 50 bamboo fly rods. All but one was made by him. The other one was custom made for Walter by Walton Powell. Read the description of each rod on the list and contact him if you are interested in buying one or more than one. Even if you are not interested in a purchase, this web page is very interesting to read. Walter has made over 285 bamboo rods over the past 20-years. You will be working directly with Walter on a purchase and you can test cast the rods before you buy one at his home. Or, call him and he will ship a rod to you. His contact information is on the web page he and I created.

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com