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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 4:59 am, the temperature outside is 68.0 degrees. It is raining.

Today will be wet and cool. During the past 24 hours, 1.40” of rain was recorded at a personal weather station near our home. The Knoxville Airport reported 2.26” of rain has fallen there during the past 24 hours.

Most of if not all locations near Great Smoky Mountains National Park are under a flash flood watch. Heavy rain is expected today and tonight. The National Weather Service is warning that Townsend may get another 1” to 2” today, and between a quarter to half of an inch of rain tonight.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PREDICTED HIGHS AND LOWS TODAY

Little River is flowing at 299 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 2.26 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 85 cfs. The water temperature is 66.9 degrees this morning.

Little Pigeon River is flowing at 1,160 cfs or 2.98 feet on the gauge. Median flow there is 124 cfs today. The maximum flow recorded for this date, over the past 66 years is 1,200 cfs. That record may be broken today.

Streams on the east side of the Smoky Mountains have not been affected much by the rain so far, as the frontal boundary of this weather event has been moving to the west of the North Carolina state line. That may change today, as those streams there are now under a flash flood watch.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is spilling through the flood gates at many major dams on the Tennessee River. TVA is not spilling at the secondary dams right now.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park has not closed roads due to flooding or downed trees.

Fly fishing in the Smokies today is probably not a good idea. Some streams could be waded this morning, but we don’t know how much rain will fall later. Other streams are already flowing too high to safely wade.

Flash floods are dangerous in the Park. They are often unexpected and arrive where you are fishing suddenly.

How about some good news? This weekend will be beautiful. It will be sunny with high temperatures in the upper 70’s to low 80’s. It will be cool at night both days, in the low 60’s. All of next week looks good too, with only a slight chance for rain.

Depending on what happens today, fishing may be very good this weekend. Right now, we don’t know. We will know tomorrow. I am hoping for good fishing for all of you, and me.

I am working on Fishpond, which is always a big event for me in the early Fall. We have two different websites that have to be updated. One is our online store. The other is a Fishpond specific website at fishpondflyfishing.com.

Discontinued items have to be deleted. There are color changes. There are improvements to current items that must be noted. And, there is the new gear.

I have to write a different story for each website. The photographs are different sizes for each. This usually takes about two weeks but this year I don’t think it will.

You can see two new Fishpond pieces of gear I added to our online store yesterday. There will be more added today and in the coming days. You can see these two new items by CLICKING HERE. Your can order now, but we can’t deliver until November.

It is raining very hard right now. It is 6:30 am and still very dark outside.

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

Byron Begley
September 27, 2018

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com