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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:19 am, the temperature outside is 40.5 degrees.

Heavy rain and hail fell in Townsend during a brief thunderstorm yesterday. We got .72” of rain in town, though the worst of the storm missed the upper Little River watershed and others in the Park.

Today will be sunny and cool with a high temperature in the mid-60’s, dipping to the mid 40’s tonight. Showers return tomorrow through the night. Saturday and Sunday will be sunny and cool. Lows Friday and Saturday night may fall to the low 30’s.

Little River is flowing at 411 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.47 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 237 cfs. The water temperature is 50 degrees this morning.

All streams in the mountains that have USGS gauge sites are flowing above normal. These streams were only slightly affected by thunderstorms yesterday. Water temperatures are falling in all streams.

Fishing should be at least fair in the mountains and the lowland rivers. You will find swift water is some areas of some streams. Nymphs will probably work best today though dry flies may produce too.

TVA and the Corps are generating at most dams today. I did see a break in the schedule at Douglas Dam. Check the TVA generation schedules from the links below to see what is going on at your favorite tailwater.

Water levels at many lakes in the region are near Summer pool. If that trend continues, we may be fishing on the tailwaters soon. That would be excellent news. I would love to see that happen this weekend.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park will re-open many of the roads Saturday, giving access to a lot of great water to fish. It will be sunny all weekend. I expect to see plenty of activity in town and in the Park, which temporarily closed March 24th.

We opened the store to customers yesterday. Seeing and talking to people in the shop was great for me all of us working there. There were four of us working at the store yesterday. We are limiting the number of customers in the store to five.

We all did well practicing social distancing. We have 12” x 12” squares or diamonds (depending on the angle you are looking from) on the floor, six feet apart, made with painters tape. Those serve as a reminder for all of us.

We are still offering curbside pickup. You can call ahead and we will pick your orders for you and deliver them outside. And, we are shipping orders every day.

I go to the shop about an hour and a half before we open to sanitize just about anything you can imagine that we touch. I clean the bathrooms and sanitize the computer equipment, door knobs, counter tops, light switch plates, handrails, all the stuff in the shipping department, and the list goes on and on, including pens and pencils. I am getting used to the smell of bleach.

I’ll do the same thing this morning but after that, I’m going to be off for the rest of the day. Paula and I are going to Rural King to buy some cow manure. It’s intended eventual destination and use is our vegetable garden. You probably knew that.

Paula watched a bear turn over our outdoor grill yesterday, before running the beast off. She got a photo of him next to the toppled grill. Our grill has been knocked over twice this Spring. After 27 years of living with bears, this is the first year it has happened. A bear did carefully remove the lid once last year.

I think I forgot to lock my truck last night. Uh Oh! They have been opening doors, getting inside and destroying the interior of vehicles lately. We never worried about that either in the past. They say the bear population has exploded in our county. We have not seen any more bears than usual.

I have been working 6 to 7 days a week for months. So, I’m not home much. And, the weather has been lousy this Spring. We have not been outside as often. That may explain the lack of bear sightings. Bears don’t make much noise. They show up suddenly and unexpectedly. They are here, probably a lot more often than we know.

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

Byron Begley
May 7, 2020          

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com