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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:46 am, the temperature outside is 38.3 degrees.

Today will be cloudy and cool, with a slight chance for light rain or drizzle. It will be cold tonight. There is also a chance for freezing rain and freezing drizzle today and tonight in the high elevations.

Expect a gradual warming trend as the week progresses. We may see temperatures rise to near 60 degrees by Saturday.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PREDICTED HIGHS AND LOWS TODAY

Little River is flowing at 426 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.54 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 295 cfs. The water temperature is 46.4 degrees this morning.

Most of not all streams in the Park are flowing above median flow (for this date) this morning. You may find swift water is some, so be careful wading.

Water temperatures are fairly warm this morning with gauges recording temps at 44.8 degrees at Oconaluftee River, 43.2 degrees at Cataloochee Creek and 46.4 at Little River. The stream temperatures are falling. As long as the temps are above 40 degrees, fishing could be fair. My guess is they will continue to fall. Look at the high temperature predictions for today in and near the Smokies. The air will be colder than the streams, which should lower the temperatures in the water today.

If you go, plan on fishing with heavily weighted nymphs or streamers. Look for blue wing olive hatches. That could happen. Switch to a BWO dry fly or an emerger, if you see a hatch and trout feeding on or near the surface. I would fish in the low elevations.

I was at the shop yesterday ordering fly tying materials, and overheard a customer tell the guys he saw dump trucks entering Little River Road at the “Y”. The road has been closed from there to Metcalf Bottoms due to a rock slide and trees on the road for several weeks. The government shutdown, and the number of furloughed staff from the Park, did not allow crews to clear the road. So, what I heard seemed odd.

I read this morning, the Park has tapped funds to clear roads, open some rest rooms, open picnic areas and open the Cades Cove Campground. Evidently, this will happen soon.

You can read the story on the Daily Times website by CLICKING HERE.

The Park Service says social media will still be suspended. But, they have been updating their Roads Twitter page. I don’t know if the information there is correct now.

We had another earthquake this morning at 4 am. I was awake but didn’t notice anything unusual. The quake was a 3.0 magnitude recorded near Alcoa, not far away. You can read more on the WBIR website by CLICKING HERE.

This seems to be a trend. We have had several lately. A larger earthquake happened a couple of weeks ago, and it shook our house. Paula was awake and felt that one. I slept through the whole thing.

After the last earthquake, I checked our insurance policies. We had earthquake insurance on the house, but not on our commercial fly shop building. I took out earthquake insurance on the building and also added flood insurance. The cost for both was fairly low because the coverage I chose had a $25,000 deductible for either catastrophic event. The store building is located outside the 500-year floodplain.

Better safe than sorry!

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

Byron Begley
January 14, 2019

Fly Tying Classes January, February and March 2019 Taught by Walter Babb and Brian Courtney Beginner to Advanced CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com