Current streamflow- 676cfs
Water temp- upper 40s
Hatches:
Black or Tan midges
Blue-winged olives
Winter black stoneflies
Hot flies:
Griffith's gnat- 18-16
Parachute bwo- 18-16
Grey Elk hair caddis- 18-14
Rainbow warriors/lightning bugs- 18-14
Perdigons (various colors)- 18-16
Pat's rubber legs- 12-8
Walt's worms- 18-12
Jigged buggers- 12-8
Leeches- 10-6
Welcome to East Tennessee, where single digit temps and snow one week are followed by temps in the 60s and copious amounts of rain the next.
While the snow and icy roads are gone in the Tellico area in elevations below about 3,500ft, it's quickly being replaced with rain and soft, muddy forest roads. The Wildcat Rd/Bald River Rd detour to the upper Tellico River is clear as of yesterday but pretty soft and muddy due to freezing and thawing earlier this week, and we wouldn't recommend anyone drive it without 4wd as there is very little traction on some of the steeper muddy sections of road. Beyond that, it's entirely drivable at this time.
The North River Rd detour route should be free of ice this weekend due to he warmer temps and rain and shouldn't be as muddy as the Wildcat route, although we haven't been up there ourselves to check it out since last week.
The Hanging Dog route (detour from Murphy, NC) has taken some damage with the recent weather and the road appears to be unstable in some places according to some reports that we have received. We wouldn't recommend this route, but it is worth mentioning since some of our customers from the south prefer to take this detour.
Having said all that, we fished the Tellico River yesterday and the fishing was fantastic. With the warmer weather moving in and water temps ramping up, trout were feeding aggressively on just about anything we put in front of their noses, as long as it was heavy enough to get down to them. Nymphs are still the name of the game, but we would expect a pretty solid streamer bite with these warming temps.
This will also be a good weekend to fish the lower elevation wild trout streams such as North and Bald Rivers as wild trout, such as this healthy wild bow, usually respond well to warm winter fronts.