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Welcome to the Fishing Report from Townsend, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 5:40 am, the temperature outside is 32.5 degrees.

Snow is falling at our house. Though the ground is white, not much accumulation is expected. The snow will turn to rain in about 3 hours. It is going to be cold tonight, throughout the Smoky Mountains and the foothills. Tomorrow and Wednesday will be sunny and slightly warmer than today.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PREDICTED HIGHS AND LOWS TODAY

Some roads in Great Smoky Mountains National Park are closed due to snow and ice. They are: Cades Cove Loop Road, Laurel Creek Road, from the Tremont Road to Cades Cove, US Highway 441 (Newfound Gap Road), and the new stretch of Foothills Parkway West from Walland to Wears Valley Road.

Little River is flowing at 809 cubic feet per second (cfs) or 3.13 feet on the gauge. Median flow for this date is 226 cfs. The water temperature is 44.8 degrees this morning.

Little Pigeon River is flowing at 1,870 cfs, or 3.58 feet at the Sevierville gauge, compared to median flow of 348 cfs.

The Birdtown gauge at Oconaluftee River reports flow at 851 cfs or 2.36 feet, compared to median flow of 429 cfs. The water temperature is 42.4 degrees.

Tellico River is flowing at 1,120 cfs or 3.46 feet, compared to median flow of 192 cfs.

Cataloochee Creek is flowing at 146 cfs, 2.75 feet, compared to median flow of 84 cfs. The water temperature is 37.8 degrees.

Stream levels are high. If you plan to wade or fish, be careful. Water temperatures are chilly. Some roads are closed in the Park. This is not a great day to be fishing in the Smokies.

If you go, fish the low elevations where the water is warmer. Lower Little River, all three prongs, are good choices. I would plan on using heavily weighted nymphs or streamers. You might entice a post spawn brown. Stay near the bank to safely fish by “high sticking”. Be on the lookout for a blue wing olive hatch. That is possible today.

Water temperatures will fall further tonight. It looks like the low temperature will be about 22 degrees in the Park, at all elevations, which is rare. We normally see colder temperatures in the higher elevations, compared to the foothills. Not tonight.

The Park announced another road closing a few minutes ago. Wear Cove Gap and Metcalf Bottoms Picnic Area are closed. You can view the Park’s Road Twitter page by CLICKING HERE to find updates on road closings or openings.

Daniel told me yesterday, our new Point of Sale (POS) computer system is almost ready to launch. Our deadline has been January 2, 2019 for months. I helped enter data into the new system over the past two weeks.

A POS system tracks sales, merchandise inventory, customer activity and profit margins. Our POS ran on a network server located in our building since 1998. The new POS runs on a remote server, sometimes referred to as “the cloud”.

We will finish out 2018 on the old POS then switch to the new one for 2019.

For security reasons, we do not store credit card information on our computers or servers. We use a “payment gateway” which is secure and compliant with PCI, or the Payment Card Industry Security Standard. Our PCI consultant will be on hand this week to hook up our new credit card machines and perform a security audit. Then, we’ll be ready to go.

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

Byron Begley
December 10, 2018

Respond to: byron@littleriveroutfitters.com