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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:43 am, the temperature is 56.1 degrees.

Yesterday at this time the temperature was 32 degrees. Today will be partly sunny with a high temperature in the low 70’s, falling to the low 50’s tonight. It will be very warm tomorrow, in the 70’s, with a chance for rain in the afternoon and evening. The low temperature tomorrow night will be in the low 50’s again.

Expect highs in the upper 60’s to lower 70’s this weekend, with lows in the 50’s. Showers are possible Saturday afternoon. Sunday will be mostly cloudy. We switch to Daylight Savings Time this weekend.

Little River is flowing at 267 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.14 feet on the gauge. Median flow for this date is 360 cfs. The water temperature is 47.5 degrees this morning and it topped out yesterday at about 48.5 degrees.

Streams in the Smokies are flowing lower than normal but at good fishing levels. Water temperatures are rising and that will continue through the weekend. We should see water temperatures rise to and above 50 degrees today. Fishing will get better every day.

There are sporadic hatches of Quill Gordons and other aquatic insects. Trout may or may not be feeding on the surface today, but I think they will be in a day or two. Be ready with nymphs, wet flies and dry flies.

Fishing for stocked trout in the lowland rivers that exit the mountains is probably good. Nymphs, egg patterns and streamers will likely work best for you. Trout are packed into many rivers and they are looking for food.

TVA and the Corps will be generating and in some cases sluicing at most dams today. I didn’t see any wade fishing opportunities on the area tailwaters today, but I did not check each one. Look yourself and you may find a tailwater to fish.

Hopefully we will get some breaks in the generation schedules this weekend. We could use some good news like that.

We are busy at the shop which is what we all expect in mid-March. Customers know fishing will be good over the next few days. Fishing may be good today.

I looked at my email just now and saw that two orders from Wapsi shipped yesterday. One is a normal fishing accessories order. The other, is the largest fly tying materials order I have received all year. I know what I will be doing tomorrow and Saturday, receiving that monster.

Ordering is easy and quick. Our inventory management system does that for us. That part of it is on autopilot. Receiving each item and packaging the spooled threads and tinsels is another matter. That takes a lot of time.

Also, in the fly tying business, you never know what you are going to get in an order from some companies. What we don’t get has to be deleted from the purchase orders. This fly tying order from Wapsi is eleven pages of several hundred items.

We have been waiting for fly fishing Spring and it looks like it is here. I think the “Fishing Gauge” needle will move to “Good” tomorrow. We’ll see what happens today.

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

Byron Begley
March 11, 2021

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com