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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. Even at 9:00am it is still a frosty 29F outside. We got snow flurries most of the day yesterday but nothing stuck to the roads. You could see a line on the mountains where the snow started. US 441/Newfound Gap Road is closed due to ice and snow. Wear Cove Gap Road/Lyons Spring Road (the back way into Metcalf Bottoms) is also closed. Upper Tremont Road remains closed from what we have heard is road damage from the high water.
The weather forecast for today and tomorrow is sunny. Overnight it will be below freezing again. That will cause water temperatures to drop making early fishing slow. Let the streams warm. Fishing will be best in the afternoon. This morning the water temperature on Little River is 41.3F.
Water levels on the Little River are improving everyday. The gauge is giving a reading of 2.51 feet or 401 c.f.s. This is just a little higher than the daily normal of 342 c.f.s. These are still fairly high flows so be cautious.
It looks like another blowout on the tailwaters. All the dams I looked at are sluicing and generating. Hopefully they will get lake levels under control so we can get out there and fish sometime before June.
Snow flurries fell across the mountains yesterday. Currently Newfound Gap Road is closed due to ice and snow. Snow didn't stick to any of the road surfaces in the low elevations. You can see a line of snow on the mountains around Townsend starting a few hundred feet up. I like looking at the snow....as long as I don't have to deal with it.
Not many anglers have been out fishing yet because of the high water and cold temperatures. A few brave soles have been out this week and actually done pretty well. David Knapp took a day off and fished Little River. I saw a photo he posted on Instagram of a beautiful brown he caught. He said he lost several others. A few people have even been catching fish on dry flies. The dry fly action suprised me as it is still a bit early. We have had some warm stretches though.
Dry fly fishing is coming really soon. During the next warm up we will probably start to see the Quill Gordons and Blue Quills start to hatch. These are the beginning of the spring hatches. Quill Gordons are fun because they are big and in the colder weather they can have a hard time getting off the water. This can cause a feeding frenzy with the trout. Wet fly patterns can also be very effective during Quill Gordon hatches.
Tomorrow is going to be a fun day here at the Shop. The tyers at our FREE Saturday Fly Tying Demo will be John Chambers and Mark Longmire. They are going to tying Euronymph flies and are willing to answer all of your Euro nymphing questions. Mark is one of the owners of Syndicate Fly Rods. Who better to ask about long rods and how to use them. Tying starts at 10am and goes till 2. Just stop by anytime.
Have a great day and thank you for being here with us.
Daniel Drake
February 21, 2020
Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com |