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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:18 am, the temperature outside is 42.8 degrees.
It will be mostly cloudy and cool today with a high in the low too mid-50’s. The low temperature tonight may dip to the high 30’s in some areas with a chance for frost in higher elevations. Expect mostly sunny skies through the week with a low chance for showers Sunday.
Little River is flowing at 525 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.68 feet on the gauge. Median flow for this date is 393 cfs. The water temperature is 50.2 degrees this morning.
Most streams in the Smokies rose slightly yesterday. Rainfall at the Knoxville Airport was recorded at .55 inches yesterday, while in Townsend, .70 inches of rain fell. Most areas in the Smokies must not have received much rain. The streams will recede at least until Sunday and possibly longer.
The Park remains temporarily closed. I heard the southern region of the Cherokee National Forest was a very popular destination this weekend due to the National Park closure. If you want to fish in the mountains, the National Forest is about your only option nearby.
Travel restrictions in North Carolina may be keeping people out of the forests there. I don’t know for sure.
The lowland rivers are flowing fairly high and some may be flowing higher. They should recede this week and fishing will improve from a flow standpoint. Water temperatures will fall tonight, then warm later this week.
TVA and the Corps of Engineers are generating at most dams today. They are also sluicing and spilling at some.
Bill told me Monday, he took his boat to one of the lakes last weekend. He said the launch ramp parking lot was packed, with overflow trucks and trailers parking on the road. I have never seen anything like what he described there.
Daniel and I read Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s Executive Order 22 yesterday morning. We are in compliance by not letting customers enter our store, and there are only three or four of us working in the building. We are all “keeping our distance” in the shop. I continue to go to the shop early in the morning and sanitize our work areas and rest rooms. I am wiping down door knobs, light switches, computers, scanners and mice.
We are trying to continue operating the shop and not laying staff off. Our business is way down from last year, 60% down since mid-March. We continue to operate our curb service, but since the Park closed, there have not been many customers outside. Mail order is helping keep us fairly busy.
I am continuing to build our new fly tying department on the online store. I’m still working on hooks. You can see that category by CLICKING HERE. I started photographing and adding Hanak hooks yesterday.
It is a slow process. I didn’t get much done on that project yesterday. Orders from fly tying suppliers are arriving. I will receive those orders and package the thread, over the next few days. There are a lot of Americans, at home, tying flies. We are filling fly tying orders now as customers are calling us to order what they need.
I heard yesterday, some fly shops in our area have temporarily closed. I talked to a staff member at a friend’s shop in Nashville yesterday. They are doing what we are doing, curb service and mail order.
When things get back to normal again, I believe all fly shops are going to be very busy. I’m not sure when that will be but I’m looking forward to that day.
A bear pushed one of the 4 x 4 posts that hold two of our bird feeders over. Paula removed the feeders recently and cleaned them for storage. We’ll put them back out next Winter.
We saw a bear actually do that last year. We were watching through the back doors. He walked up to the posts, looked up, then stood and pushed one of them halfway over. There was no food for the bear. They are smart enough or conditioned enough to know, “a post in the back yard may equate to, FOOD”. We are going to remove the other post until next Winter.
Paula and I have been married 26 years and we have lived with bears since day one. We both enjoy having those big furry animals around. They are fun to watch. When we are outside and encounter a bear, we just keep our distance and the bear moves on. I have to admit, that is always an event, even after all of these years. I have never felt threatened by a bear. She only felt threatened once but that ended well.
Have a great day and thank you for being here with us.
Byron Begley
April 1, 2020
Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com |
