Transcript: Fly Line Essentials with Mac Brown
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly.
We're back with another Flyline Essentials with Mack Brown. How you doing Mack?
Mac:
[0:11] I'm doing great. How are you doing Marvin?
Marvin:
[0:13] As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble and you know, this time we're going to cover line care and maintenance, and then our next episode is going to be our great Q&A episode.
Mac:
[0:23] That sounds good Marvin. And on top of that, I hear you got some big offers that have come in this last weekend.
Marvin:
[0:29] What's that, Mack Brown?
Mac:
[0:31] Well, you had a birthday and I'm wondering how many double ARP offers with the Chinese briefcase, the leather briefcase you've taken up this weekend.
Marvin:
[0:39] You know, the amazing thing is they never found me when I turned 50.
Mac:
[0:43] Oh, that's good. That's good because that's a lot of junk mail.
Marvin:
[0:47] It's probably worse than Publisher's Clearinghouse. But, you know, we wanted to kind of, I guess, we're probably going to break this line care and maintenance thing down into probably three or four pieces.
Or four pieces. And I think, you know, we were talking about this, Mac, before we started recording about, you know, stretching your lines.
If you've had them, you know, cranked down in a reel spool somewhere in the car, in your gear bag, and you basically want to go fish, you probably want to pull out maybe the first 15 to 20 feet of that line and stretch it out a little bit.
Mac:
[1:17] Yeah, a lot of times, if I'm in a boat, I'll stretch it out six foot at a time, and if you have the access, like on land, you know, casting or practicing on the field or something, just have somebody pull the other end and stand back.
Just give it a good tug and hold on to it for a second and help straighten it out.
Marvin:
[1:36] Yeah, pulling it on a, taking a big long piece of line and putting it on a trailer hitch works pretty well too.
Mac:
[1:41] Oh yeah, yeah, that's a good thing to do just to have it stretched out and that's a good time too once it's stretched out you know I think that's an important thing and equally as important is you know cleaning it like every time I'd pull it out like we had our casting school this weekend the two-day school and you know I had everybody clean it because I'm like when was the last time you cleaned it and everybody looks dazed and confused and it's really an important step to clean it you know if you're You're going to try to talk about shooting line and do all these things. There's just so much dirt.
And even if it's from the water, even if you hadn't touched the grass or, much worse, a parking lot or a gravel driveway is pretty hard on fly lines.
But you're going to get dirt a lot even on the water. That's where all the film, like in the meniscus, is where it carries most of the trash in the river, especially when there's pollen and that kind of stuff.
So you'll see a lot of filth come off of it and using it on the water.
So it's a good idea just take ivory soap, put it on a rag, that's what I use the most is just soap, have them lie on there and just pull it through a cloth and pull it through a cloth with a, get rid of that off of it with a little bit of water and just pull it through again.
You know, just a piece of paper towel or cotton cloth, whatever you got available.
A lot of times I use my shirt tail, that's why you see these big black lines when you're teaching.
You'll see two big black lines where you pinched and pulled it through a shirt tail.
[3:08] But it's it's a good idea to clean it's hard to shoot line if there's a bunch of grit, you know sitting on the Sitting on the line.
Marvin:
[3:15] Yeah, and when you say ivory you're talking about ivory bar soap, right?
Mac:
[3:19] Yeah, just just like ivory type bar soap.
Marvin:
[3:22] Yeah, because you know the harsh stuff So and sa makes a a line clean and liquid you can use too, but you know, you know using something like dawn uh, or something even more kind of um Caustic than that's really not great for your line because what it generally tends to do is pull the oils out of line You want to use a really, really gentle soap, right?
Mac:
[3:42] Yeah, that's why I like the ivory. That's what I've used for years, you know, before they came out with all these new impregnating lubricants in there that help bleach out over time.
I mean, that's a really good way to clean it. It helps stuff get removed, you know, with the soap.
Marvin:
[3:59] Yeah, and if we back up a little bit, you know, too, we kind of talk about like that's kind of like, you know, when you kind of come home, right?
A couple of times a season, beginning of the season, end of the season.
But you know, when you're on the water, at least for me, I usually carry one of those SA abrasive pads with me and a little line dressing, and if I need a little bit of a tune up, you know, I can pull the line through the cleaning pads.
Got a little bit of a abrasion on it. And then, you know, you can take a, you know, your shirt tail and a little bit of line dressing and pull it through there and you're, you're back in business.
Mac:
[4:28] Oh yeah. No, that's a good idea to do too. Especially like you can tell it.
I mean, you can tell always when it's not going to shoot, you can tell when it's dirty is what I'm saying.
If you, if you're throwing a line enough, even on a, like the South Holston or over here on the Nana Haley, you can tell instantly once it's dirty, cause you go to shoot and it shoots, but it's just not shooting like up to par.
And it's just like, yep, time for a cleaning. And that just comes from, I guess, you know, the act of doing it a lot that the way you can tell instantly when it's dirty because it should it should go through the eyelets and take off and shoot like butter you know going out so soon as it feels gritty or like yeah that's feeling like the brakes are put on chances are the lines dirty.
Marvin:
[5:11] Yeah you can also watch it'll usually start to sink a little bit in the water.
Mac:
[5:17] Mm-hmm yeah sometimes that'll be the case too it starts to like sink real slowly especially toward the end and when it starts doing that business it's time to give a little cleaning.
Marvin:
[5:28] Yeah and we were talking too about kind of storing and you know you know sometimes people have extra spools and that's great but you know one thing I do you know particularly when I don't have extra spools is I basically pull the entire fly line off and then basically put it in a really loose like probably I don't know two foot plus loops and just hanging around the neck of a coat hanger in my closet.
Mac:
[5:52] Yeah, they'd hang it up on like pegs or that kind of reminds me of the old stories from River Tron when they'd have to take all those silk lines and hang them up on the peg boards in the barn and that's where the, you know, where Gergo Strother came up with the Belgian cast.
That's how they did that back then. I mean, they'd hang all those lines up every day when people were done so then they'd redress them and then put them back on the reels for the next day. But every day that That was, that was the method for line maintenance back at that time period.
And, um, I think that's a good idea, you know, to keep it from being tightly coiled up on a, on a reel. That's a real good thing.
Good habit to do for sure. Yeah.
Marvin:
[6:34] And then we were also saying to, you know, really not a great idea to leave fly lines and hot cars, uh, in places like that, cause you know, waiters and, um, and fly lines are two things that the heat will absolutely rag.
Mac:
[6:50] Oh, yeah. And especially these days with all the, you know, we had vault rod, vault type apparatuses here back in the mid eighties.
That's what really kind of started it. We'd have them on the boats, we had them on the cars, and then you started to see everybody making all these vaults for vehicles.
And that was like 30 years later, but I mean, there's a lot of different companies that are doing it, but that's probably one of of the best ways to ruin a line.
I mean, if you really wanna think about, yeah, just drive around, look cool with it on your car, and let your lines cook for a week, and then go to the river on the weekend.
Because I see those in the cities everywhere. Like Asheville, you see it on all kinds of cars.
And it's just, I think it's one of the best ways to not have longevity in your line, is let it cook up there in that rod vault. Because most people leave them in there. They don't take them in and out. They don't go to the river and then pull them out. They just leave them there all the time.
And definitely, that's a great way destroy your line, you know?
Marvin:
[7:43] Yeah, for sure. And you know, you were talking about this too.
I mean, the amazing thing is, you know, if you really take care of your lines, which means, you know, don't cast them on asphalt. Like if you're doing casting demos in a parking lot, have demo lines, right?
But if you take care of them and clean them, don't leave them in cars.
I mean, you can get a lot of days of use out of a fly line.
Mac:
[8:06] Oh yeah, yeah, that's a good point. The Mastery Series, what I used this weekend, was a 7-weight Mastery Series Expert Distance, and that line has been on there since 2007.
And it's no cracks, it works just as good as the day it was new.
2007, the Trout Amplitude rod, they wanted to see, I use a Whitlock connection a lot with these different fly lines where you basically cut the mono and insert it into the fly lines.
The people wanted to see that, I brought out some two and three weight lines and those go back into the, like 2005, so they're, they're 20 years old and they're still just as good as the day I put them on.
So if you're buying quality lines, which, you know, there is a lot of science to be honest with the UV inhibitors and all this, I mean, a lot of people think that's a gimmick, that's definitely not a gimmick when you have the knowledge of all those chemical engineers from 3M and they want to make a UV inhibitor to make something last.
I think they did their homework really well because I mean, you get what you pay for. It's like a lot of those lines cost similar, but a lot of other brands don't have the UV inhibitors.
And you'll see them last for three or four seasons and they're ready to be replaced.
Well, you paid the same money, so why don't you get one that lasts 20, 30 years for the same money.
It's just good science, you know?
Marvin:
[9:24] Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's a great place for us to give a shout out to our friends at SA for sponsoring the series and you know folks we are in the home stretch the next episode in two weeks is going to be our Q&A episode so if you've got any questions for Mac on Flylines you need to get them in and remember this is how it works.
Send them in, you can email them to us, you can DM us on social media, whatever's easiest for you and if you send in a question we're going to enter in our drawing for a signed copy of Mac's book Casting Angles and then Mac and I are going to pick the questions we want to talk about in the Q&A episode and if we select one of those questions out of of that pool, we're going to draw and you're going to get your choice of some SA lines.
So great opportunity to pick up some great lines that if you take care of them will last a really long time. Right, Mack Brown?
Mac:
[10:08] That's right. And I appreciate you having us on again, Marvin, to talk fly lines and want to wish you a happy birthday too before we run.
Marvin:
[10:16] Oh, well, I appreciate that. And you know, folks, I think we may have turned the corner on the hot weather here in the Southeast.
And, you know, if we can get a little bit of rain, I'm seeing the stream temperatures come down where they need to be. if we get a little bit more water, I think we're gonna be in great shape for fall trout season.
Yell it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Matt. Tight lines, Marvin.