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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:40 am, the temperature is 47.1 degrees.

Today and tomorrow will be partly sunny to sunny with highs in the middle 70’s falling to the upper 40’s at night. Wednesday will be warm with a chance for showers. Thursday will be sunny with a high in the middle 60’s.

Little River is flowing at 249 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.16 feet on the gauge. Median flow for this date is 316 cfs. The water temperature is 55.2 degrees this morning.

Fishing in the mountains is good. Aquatic insect activity is high. Trout are actively feeding, and taking nymphs, wet flies and dry flies. We could not wish for better fishing conditions today and tomorrow except for the possibility of windy conditions today.

Lowland river fishing is good. Stream flows are near normal. The rivers are fairly warm. Fishing for trout where they are stocked is good. Use nymphs or streamers. Fishing for smallmouth bass is improving as the waters warm.

TVA and the Corps continue to lower the lakes to their desired level for this time of the year. Soon, they will begin raising the lakes for the Summer recreational boating season. For now, they are generating around the clock at most dams, while sluicing at many. They are spilling at Wolf Creek Dam. There is a break in the generation scheduled today at South Holston Dam.

Lake fishing continues to improve as the waters warm. I would concentrate on the rocky banks using large weighted Wooly Buggers. Go early or late when the sun is off the water. Tomorrow may be a good day to go as it should be partly cloudy. It will be windy at times today. I would wait until tomorrow to go.

We had a busy weekend at the shop. I saw a lot of anglers who have traveled here to fish this week. Some are coming from the north and others from the south.

I spent the day yesterday adding fly tying materials to our online store. That job will continue for probably two months until we are finished. We added about 70 new items this weekend including sizes and colors.

Many returning out of town customers are visiting the store for the first time since we remodeled and expanded the fly tying department last October. Their responses have been very positive.

We are selling flies like crazy. Our fly department is extremely well stocked. It was moved over the Winter, and it is much larger now. We eliminated the spinning and t-shirt departments, allocating the new space to flies. The shop has never looked better.

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

Byron Begley
April 12, 2021

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com