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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 6:30 am, the temperature outside 44.8 degrees. It is windy and raining.

Rain will continue through the day. Rainfall amounts of ¼” to ½” are predicted. Expect a high temp today in the mid-40’s. Rain may change to snow tonight, especially in the high elevations. The low tonight is expected to drop to the upper 20’s. Tomorrow will be partly cloudy with a high in the mid-40’s.

Highway 441 (Newfound Gap Road) is closed due to ice and snow. Paula and I have been out of town since Thursday. When we arrived home yesterday afternoon, I noticed the mountains we can see from our house had quite a bit of snow on them.

Little River is flowing at 167 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 1.92 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 367 cfs. The water temperature is 37.8 degrees this morning.

Fishing in the Smoky Mountains will likely be slow today and tomorrow. We may see the water temperatures rise some today, but I don’t think it will be enough, to improve the fishing much. It is hard to say for sure. Watch the water temperature in Little River from the USGS link below. If that number reaches 45 degrees, fishing will improve. I don’t think that will happen.

If you go, use nymphs, weighted and fished deep. Don’t forget your rain jacket.

Will Spring fishing begin in mid-February? Sometimes it does. I don’t think that will happen this year, if the long term weather forecast holds true. It is definitely going to be warmer beginning Friday and continuing through February 14th. We will see what happens.

Paula and I attended the Atlanta Fly Fishing Show this weekend. The show was held Friday and Saturday. It was great. I could not walk 20 feet in the show, without seeing someone I know. I didn’t get to see any new fly fishing gear. I was always talking to people. Most of our major manufacturers had booths. And, our sales representatives from those companies were there. Our friends in the region, who own fly shops had booths.

I saw and talked to I don’t know how many customers and friends. That number was somewhere in the hundreds. There were fly tyers demonstrating both days. I didn’t get to watch any of them. There was not enough time.

We stayed at the Hilton Embassy Suites, a wonderful hotel, with beautiful rooms and friendly staff. From there we could walk to the show. There was a free, huge party, every night at the hotel.

We plan to go back, next year and every year thereafter. I will tell you more about that event, in tomorrow’s Fishing Report.

You should plan to go next year.

While in Atlanta I read in this report written by Daniel, that Fly Tyers Weekend will be held again at the shop, the first weekend in November. That was good news. I didn’t know if he, Anthony Hipps and Dave Carson were going to do it this year. They were undecided the last time I talked to them about it. So, a lot of the people I talked to in Atlanta, will be back here later this year. I’m looking forward to that.

All you have to do is show up to this great free 2-day event.

That is all I have to do as well.

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

Byron Begley
February 4, 2018   

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com