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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:56 am, the temperature outside is 30.1 degrees.
Today will be partly sunny, with a high temperature in the low 60’s. The low tonight will be in the low to mid 40’s. Tomorrow will be warm again, with a chance for rain tomorrow, and a good chance for rain tomorrow night.
Little River is flowing at 164 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 1.91 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 293 cfs. The water temperature is 33.3 degrees this morning.
Fishing will be slow today, due to the cold water temperatures. We will see these numbers rise over the next few days. Fishing will improve, but for the short term, I think it will be slow. We need to see these temperatures rise to at least 44 degrees for fishing to be good. 50 degrees would be better.
The government shutdown, has affected services in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There are about 180 full time employees working there. Approximately 140 of those have been furloughed.
Visitors centers and bathrooms are closed. The two open front-country campgrounds are not being serviced. Trash will not be removed. Information services, including the Twitter Roads page, has not been updated.
Some roads in the Park are open, though you won’t know for sure which are, until you get there. Yesterday, Laurel Creek Road and the Cades Cove Loop Road opened. Other roads probably opened. Should conditions worsen on roads, such as re-freezing, they will be closed. My advice would be to visit the lower elevations and be careful or stay out of the Park altogether.
Visitors at the Park are advised to use extreme caution. Signs state, “Any entry onto NPS property during this period of federal government shutdown is at the visitor’s own risk”.
Emergency services, including search and rescue, will be limited. Be careful if you go.
There are two local articles on the subject, which may be updated at times. CLICK HERE to visit the WBIR website’s Smokies story. CLICK HERE to view the Knox News story.
So there we have it! The days are getting longer. The long term weather forecast does not indicate frigid conditions through early February. February is normally warmer than January. Spring fly fishing in the Smokies is in our near future. Today will be beautiful.
Have a great day and thank you for being here with us.
Byron Begley
January 21, 2018 Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com |