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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:43 am, the temperature is 56.3 degrees.

Today will be sunny and warm with a high temperature in the middle 80’s, dropping to the middle 60’s tonight. Tomorrow will be sunny and hot with a high around 90 degrees. It looks like more rain is headed our way this week. Showers and thunderstorms are likely, beginning Wednesday, and each day through at least Saturday.

Little River is flowing at 222 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.05 feet on the gauge. Median flow for this date is 119 cfs. The water temperature is 63.3 degrees this morning.

The mountain streams that have USGS gauge sites are flowing at normal, while Little River and Tellico River are flowing higher than normal. Water temperatures will be rising over the next few days. Plan on fishing in the middle to high elevations where the water is cooler.

Using a dry fly and nymph dropper rig is a good choice right now. Choose a terrestrial (beetle), Yellow Sally Stonefly or other searching dry fly patterns. Drop a Green Weenie or small bead head nymph off your dry. You might consider dragging a dry or sunken ant pattern off your beetle.

Most lowland rivers exiting the mountains are flowing near normal. Go early or late when the sun is off the water or fish shaded areas in the deeper pools and runs. Smallmouth bass, rock bass and panfish will be active. I would use a popper or foam floating fly.

You can refer to the TVA website from the links below to see what your tailwater fishing options are. Generation schedules vary greatly today. There are opportunities below some dams, especially early. I noticed they will be generating at Douglas Dam most of the day.

There is no way I would go fishing on a lake today. This will be a nice beautiful day for boating and many will be doing just that. After all, this is the 4th of July.

I spent much of yesterday with my long-time friend Walter Babb. We were writing content for a web page that will advertise the sale of 66 bamboo rods. All but one were made by him. That one was a custom rod made for Walter in 1970 by Walton Powell. Walter has made 285 bamboo rods over the past 20 years. This page will be available to you in a few days with a link from this page. You will be buying these rods directly from Walter by calling him.

Will spent yesterday setting up new fly tying items on the online store though they are not visible yet. I will be photographing materials and tools today and probably most of this week, then load them up on the store. I am hoping we will finish this year-long project this week. After that, we will just add new items we order to sell.

I will be placing my weekly Wapsi fly tying order today. I usually do that on Sundays and lately, they have been arriving by Thursday. I bet they will be closed tomorrow so this order may take longer to get here.

I hope you all have a great 4th of July holiday and thank you for being here with us.

Byron Begley
July 4, 2021   

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com