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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:14 am, the temperature outside is 43.2 degrees.

Expect rain, mainly after noon and tonight with a high temperature around 60 degrees today, dropping to the low 30’s tonight. We may get up to 1.25 inches of rain by tomorrow morning. Friday through Saturday will be sunny and cool. Sunday will be sunny and warmer.

Little River is flowing at 139 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 1.72 feet on the flow gauge. Median flow for this date is 128 cfs. The water temperature is 50.7 degrees.

All streams in the Smokies that have USGS gauge sites are reporting flows near normal.

This will be a good day to fish, as it will be overcast. Take a rain jacket. You will need it later. I would fish the lower elevations where the water is warmer.

By late today, some streams or maybe all of them will be rising. That may improve fishing temporarily. Depending on how much rain we get, there is a chance some streams may become stained later today.

I would plan of using nymphs, unless you see a hatch with trout rising to the surface. Those bugs could be blue wing olives or midges, so be prepared with at least some BWO dries and emergers.

My nymph choices would include Pheasant Tail, Hare’s Ear, Tellico, Prince or many other reasonable patterns. I would use a heavily weighted anchor fly at the bottom of my rig, and a non-weighted nymph further up my leader. I would not use a strike indicator, so I can easily vary the depth of the flies.

I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. The streams may be flowing high and stained temporarily. Or, maybe they won’t. You should plan on fishing the lower elevations tomorrow and this weekend, where the water is warmer.

You might consider fishing one of the trout tailwaters in the region. I saw a couple of good generation schedules on the TVA website this morning. Check yourself from the links below to plan your day. Some of the tailwaters have been fishing well.

Today is the day when the US Drought Monitor is updated. That will occur at 8:30 am. CLICK HERE to visit the site. We should see much improvement in the Southeast. I am betting on overwhelming improvement in East Tennessee, due to the heavy rain we had last week. I am hoping states to our north, east and south will show much improvement too.

Click on the region you are interested in and your state for a detailed view.

Finally, after decades, the Townsend/Sunshine Covered Bridge is finished and was formerly dedicated yesterday. Our community has been working on this for years. We are all proud to see this vision come to fruition.

The Sunshine Bridge was a single lane bridge, built long ago and used by cars, trucks, tractors, horses and mules. The bridge was replaced by a new two lane bridge. The Sunshine Bridge was left intact and used for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.

We also have two pedestrian swinging bridges in Townsend, that have recently been restored.

CLICK HERE to read the article and see the photos of yesterday’s event on the Daily Times website.

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

Byron Begley
November 7, 2019

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com