Transcript: Casting Angles with Mac Brown
S5, Ep 127: Casting Angles with Mac Brown
2023, Marvin S. Cash
The Articulate Fly
http://www.thearticulatefly.com
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly.
We're back with another Casting Angles with Mack Brown. How you doing Mack?
Mac:
[0:12] I'm doing great. How are you doing Marvin?
Marvin:
[0:14] As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble.
Mac:
[0:17] That's always a good thing, especially going into the fall low water season.
Marvin:
[0:21] Yeah, we were talking before we started recording and I mean, it's pretty dry and low and that makes things complicated on the fishing front, doesn't it?
Mac:
[0:29] Oh yeah, they talked for a week about the big rain coming Saturday and it was barely enough to put a few raindrops on the windshield, not enough to really water the grass or bring the rivers up at all.
So it's still really low and I think it's going to be that way all for a while, you know, till we get into the middle of winter.
Marvin:
[0:50] Yeah, I mean, I looked at the weather forecast and I don't see any meaningful precipitation in our neck of the woods in the next two weeks.
Mac:
[0:58] Yeah, I think it's just going to stay the far and fine, you know, game. This is among the lowest, I think I've seen the park streams since 85, since I've lived here.
But then, you know, I've talked to a lot of friends that grew up here in their 80s that fly fish a lot, and they say it's the lowest I ever remember.
So, I think this is among a record right now for here, as far as low water.
Marvin:
[1:19] Yeah, absolutely. And we can break it down to kind of talk about, you know, if you're going to fish DH, you what you ought to think about and if you're going to fish for the wild fish up in the park what you should do.
Mac:
[1:30] Yeah that'd be good. We'll break down each and it's like because they're really different the way they both fish this time of year.
So you want me to start off with the wild stuff first?
Marvin:
[1:41] It's your show buddy you can do whatever you want to do.
Mac:
[1:43] All right let's do that let's talk about far and fine and basically uh when we talk about making the leader you know quite a bit longer what's been best is like the last few weeks with all this low water is basically fish and dry fly.
And sometimes I fish two or three dry flies, but I don't mean just to store about seven or nine foot, you know, the common leader people buy and add, you know, a bunch of tippet.
That's not going to really work so well because then it's, you know, not very accurate to throw six, eight feet of tippet from there because it's all over the place.
You know, getting the proper leader I think is important this time of year.
During the school, we just wrapped up a guide school on Sunday and I had all those people minimum at 18 and I usually like closer to 30 this time of year but I wanted them to start and I know 18 will do plenty for them.
That's a lot further than they'd all ever thrown but it just keeps your fly line and makes it easy to you know be much further away with the fly line because it makes a shadow.
You know, as it's drifting down. So I think that'll help a lot for the wild streams is just making it far and fine and put a single dry.
[2:52] And a big part of that in the wild streams is because a lot of people these days will tie boxes and boxes of tungsten and there's just not a lot of dry fly selection. And of course that's just catastrophic.
This time of year even better to put a bobber on it so it really makes a splash.
You know we're talking like ankle deep water right now.
So if If you had a big, heavy bead and a bobber that goes splash, you can imagine what the wild fish do when that hits the water.
[3:19] So I think that's why I prefer dry fly when it's technical like this.
And for the DH, I think a really good plan on the delayed harvest water is mainly find the fish, because it's very specific.
Like I could tell here in Bryson, they must have had somebody new.
We were teaching casting the day that they stocked the river, and normally the places that they'd stop and put fish in were void of fish, so they obviously put them really different places, and it's not hard to figure out where they are.
Just walking, we floated the river on Friday, and you could find all these little pockets, but they're really potted up.
So if you're out there practicing a bunch of techniques, whether it's nymphing or wet fly or whatever, move, move a lot until you find a pod and once you find a pod, stay put.
Because that's really what they're doing, they're still potted up really big since last Wednesday, so I think that'll help people a lot, first find them.
Of course if you're on the upper, you know, the nanny or snowbird or places like that, it's pretty obvious where you think they're going to put fish.
Just imagine driving a concrete truck full of fish, where is it going to be easiest for you to put them in the water?
And that'll help people to just kind of think where they wouldn't have to carry a lot of netfuls, you know?
Marvin:
[4:39] Yeah, probably six feet from the road at the most and any bridge, right?
Mac:
[4:44] The bridges are huge. Yeah, the bridges are always part of it.
And yeah, and they also have a, you know, a little, little, uh, kind of like a concrete truck where they put a little gate upon a gate and they can open up the valve and it's, you know, they don't have to carry them at all.
They put like 10, 12 feet of a chute.
And so anywhere that it looks like that, that's what happened.
And there was also a regional this weekend, um, the upper and up in Cherokee, uh, the, the general water in Cherokee.
And of course that was, that was a big player for that comp.
You know, some people had a bridge hole, which is a gift course.
And other people had, you know, spots way in between a bridge.
And of course they didn't stop at those spots. So it makes it tough when you, when you don't have a honey hole and you're catching, you know, little wilds, five, six inches, and then somebody else has 500 freshies that just got shot off a bridge, you know, so it makes it a little tough.
Marvin:
[5:40] Yeah, and they'll eat cheeseburgers too, so. That's right.
So, you know, back to the leader thing, you know, I think the important thing is for people not to feel intimidated by that long leader because if you do what you're saying to do, which is to tie your own, you get a really nice tapered progression and it's not like taking a 9 or 12 foot, you know, leader off the wall and putting like 8 feet of tipping on it because because that ain't gonna cost worth anything, right?
Mac:
[6:06] That's right. I mean, those are all really beginner setups, to be honest with you.
When you talk about dry fly or wet fly, nobody that I know, meaning in my lifetime as an angler, nobody I know that was really a diehard wet fly or dry fly angler, which is a short leader.
Yet that dominates the industry. Probably 95% of shops sell a seven and a half to a nine foot leader for new people.
That's kind of the norm, so I just think that's one of the biggest handicaps of not just because it's low water, even if it was normal flow, I'd still be on a much longer leader.
It just gives you nothing but advantages. To the fish, it's all disadvantages.
And I think that's what most people want. I don't think a lot of people realize how much it handicaps them when it's short, but it really handicaps them, especially when we start talking about the words like presentation and drift and all those things.
It's very hard to drift and have drag-free drifts when the whole setup's too short.
Takes a whole lot more skill to pull off nice floats with 7 1⁄2 foot than it does lengthening it out, you see?
So that's the problem. You got beginners with very little skill and they're fishing a leader that's very finesseful to be able to pull off that drift being that short.
So it's nothing but a handicap, and I don't think beginners want a handicap.
And I think even they would benefit greatly by lengthening it out, not just for TIPIT either.
[7:33] Does that kind of help answer it? And I would say, just like the school we just did, I would say 18 feet. I would start at 18.
That's pretty easy. Pretty easy setup. If you're fishing, say, a three-weight, let's just give them a formula real fast, just so this is really common.
Say 10, 12 feet of 20-pound, and six feet of 15-pound, and then add your tippet.
And the tippet doesn't have to be a long way. It's just a couple of feet of tippet.
That'll work fine. It'll turn over fine. It'll be super accurate.
Marvin:
[8:06] Yeah, particularly that Maxima Chameleon because it's got some really nice stiffness to it.
Mac:
[8:12] That's right. That's what I use always is Chameleon. And of course, that's another thing that happens a lot this time of year. Most of the times people want to fish, you know, a lot of times they want to fish their own rod, their own setup.
And Supple Mono just reacts very differently than using Chameleon.
And so, you know, it's breezy the whole time we had the school last week, we had winds every day, anywhere from 10 knots to 20 knots, so it makes it hard to be precise, much less than the wind when it's a supple monofilament.
That's why I really don't like supple mono because the wind kind of has its way, you know, with it a lot more than if you're fishing something that's stiff and turns over.
Marvin:
[8:53] Yeah, got it. And you know, folks, we love questions on the articulate fly.
You can email them to us. You can DM us on social media, whatever's easiest for you. And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag and we love questions. So send them in if you want more leader formulas, whatever you want to talk about.
We'd love to answer your question. And Mac, before I let you go, you have any schools or any kind of cool stuff you want to announce and let people know about?
Mac:
[9:18] No, not really. I just finished the school for October and the other school's full in November. So there's no point of advertising it because I mean, it's been filled for a while. So, well, I guess we could talk about schools in 24, we'll start back up in March.
And so we're looking forward to those so they can find out the dates on the website at flyfishingguideschool.com. Yeah.
Marvin:
[9:38] And also too, you're, uh, you're hitting what four of the Frumsky shows this year?
Mac:
[9:43] Yeah, we're just, we're going to do, uh, Denver, Edison, Atlanta, and Pleasanton, California.
And those will be the four that I'm going to do. Yeah.
Marvin:
[9:51] And you're gonna do those with Gary, right?
Mac:
[9:53] Yeah. We're going to have the all day class.
The first day before the dates, and they can find all that information on the flyfishingshow.com website. It'll have all the info for classes and the all day class that we teach the day before.
Marvin:
[10:11] Well, there you go. Well, listen folks, you know, as I always say, even if the water is low, we do have good temps. Fall is my favorite time of the year to get out on the water.
Yell at yourself to give it a shot and get out there and catch a few.
Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac.
Mac:
[10:26] Tight lines Marvin. Hope everybody gets out and enjoys the color. Absolutely.