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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:50 am, the temperature is 28.8 degrees.

Today will be sunny and cool with a high temperature in the low to middle 50’s, dropping to the low 30’s tonight. Tomorrow will be more of the same, though warmer tomorrow night.

Warm air will return the area beginning Tuesday. We will enjoy much warmer temperatures day and night through Thursday. The high predicted Wednesday will be near 80 degrees. The streams will warm and fishing will improve.

Little River is flowing at 328 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.25 feet at the Townsend USGS gauge. Median flow for this date is 338 cfs. The water temperature is 45.7 degrees and falling. The water temperature rose to about 50 degrees yesterday.

Stream flows in the Smokies are good. Water temperatures are chilly. Almost every angler I talked to during the past couple of days reported slow to fair fishing. Bill camped at Elkmont late last week. He said fishing was slow there. Bill is an excellent angler. When Bill is not catching trout, fishing is slow. One guide I talked to told me fishing was good a couple of days ago, with trout taking dry flies at a mid-elevation stream.  

If you go today, fish the low elevations where the water is warmer. Fishing will be best later when the water is warmer. Nymphs will probably work best. You may catch trout on dry flies and wet flies too.

There are fires in the Smokies, driven by windy conditions. Some trails and backcountry campsites are closed on the North Carolina side of the Park. You can see a complete list of closed areas on the WBIR website by CLICKING HERE.

Lowland river fishing for stocked trout may be fair today. Nymphs and other sub-surface flies are good choices. Fishing will be best later when the water is warmer.

There are breaks in the generation schedules at several dams today. There are some you may be able to work with. The turbines will be off at a handful of dams all day. Check the TVA website to see what is going on at your favorite tailwater. We are all hoping to see reduced flows on the tailwaters in the near future.  

We were busy at the shop yesterday. I talked to a couple of customers who were going fishing during the afternoon hours. Most customers were shopping and not fishing. I expect us to be busy again today. We will be open from 9 am until 5 pm.

I placed another fly tying material order with Semperfli yesterday following another I received and displayed last week. Bringing in new fly tying materials is time consuming, so I am ordering the Semperfli lineup in phases. The displayed materials have to be rearranged to make room for the new. Much of what we are buying comes on spools that have to be packaged. After the goods are displayed, I will photograph them to be added to our online store. We will slowly beef up the inventory of what is stocked after we determine what sells best. Then, we will probably be ordering weekly to replenish what sells, like we do with some of our other fly tying suppliers.

Semperfli is a company founded and headquartered in the UK. What we order comes from their distribution center in Idaho. According to their website, they make everything they sell in house, in England.    

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

Byron Begley
March 27, 2022

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com