Transcript: Casting Angles with Mac Brown
S5, Ep 132: 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, and we're back with another casting angles with Mack Brown. How are you doing Mack?
Mac:
[0:12] I'm doing great. How are you Marvin?
Marvin:
[0:14] As always, just trying to stay out of trouble and, uh, you know, we were kind of joking before we started recording that, uh, we don't really need to update the fishing conditions because it's, you haven't had any rain. It's still low and technical, right?
Mac:
[0:25] Oh, it's still low. We had a little rain tonight for the first time in months, and it's just enough to put some dots on the windshield, but nothing to write home about. I don't think you're gonna have to worry about the water levels coming up any.
Marvin:
[0:40] Yeah, and you're gonna get a little bit of a cold snap here in the next day or two.
Mac:
[0:44] Yeah, we're gonna get cold. We're supposed to get down in the, they said the NOAA weather a little bit ago, said single digit winds, I think starting tomorrow night through November 2nd.
So it's gonna get cold. We're getting all the weather that hit Montana out in Livingston. I talked to some friends the other day and they had snow and single digit temps and this is the front that hit them.
So it'll be kind of good to cool things down but it's gonna warm up nice by the weekend.
Marvin:
[1:15] Yeah. And so, you know, the good thing is even though we maybe don't have a whole lot to add to what we said last time about fishing conditions in Western North Carolina, we did get a fair number of questions on leaders, right?
And we talked a little bit about that in the last episode. And, you know, I think the great thing is you kind of have a simplified structure where you can kind of get away, let's just say for like dry fly or nymph fishing, really with kind of three sections of tippet where I think you have a rig where you basically are doing 10 to 12 feet of 20 pound maximum chameleon, with five or six feet of 15, and then you're gonna fish two or three feet of Tippett, and you were telling me you generally are gonna fish four or five X off of that, right?
Mac:
[1:59] Yeah, especially in the spring, in like the low water.
Same kind of idea that you just said, and I'll step that down, you know, because I'm throwing a lot of, this time of year especially, I'm fishing mostly two-weight.
And if I'm throwing, like I say, a two-weight, I like to come off there with, say, 15 pounds for the butt section, and then I'll drop to like 0x for the, you know, for the half the distance.
So if I run 12 feet of 15 pound, I might run five or six feet of 0x.
And then off that 0x, I might go straight to what we fished for midges the last few days has been on like 6x mostly if we're fishing dry.
So I'll go straight to the 6x off of that and then call it good. Yeah.
Marvin:
[2:45] The great thing is that, one, it's a simple formula to remember, because if you go 2-to-1 and then you're going to fish 2 or 3 feet of tippet, you don't have to remember any kind of complicated step-down formula.
Mac:
[2:58] Yeah, that's what I like about it. It's just I looked at all that for years and built a lot of various leaders over the years and it's like I think a lot of it goes back to you know everybody had their formulas back in the 40s and 30s and books and even modern books still recommend this one over that one and I still think it I think all of them in general miss the point because I think it's all about either energy transfer or dissipation and if people don't understand that, then there's no one label on a leader that's going to be a save-all, be-all leader for everything, you know?
Marvin:
[3:32] Yeah. But you know, those two leader formulas will get you probably through most of the fishing situations on the dry fly and the nymph, you know, throughout the year.
And, you know, people also were asking us about knots and you and I were talking before we started recording.
And I mean, I think there are lots of different ways to skin that cat.
I guess the real trick is you want something that's, um, you know, that's kind of skinny and kind of smooth in case you have to bring that knot through your guides. I don't know, like, you know, some people like blood knots.
Um, I personally like double uni knots cause I think I can time faster, but you had some, uh, even kind of sexier knots from the comp fish and stuff you might want to share with folks. Yeah.
Mac:
[4:10] Well, further say that, say we're going 15 to zero, say we got 12 feet of 15 pound.
I'll just take it. The end, this is really simple.
Just tie an overhand knot but don't tighten it up and just take your zero X and run it through the circle that the overhand knot formed and then just tie a Davy knot and be done with it.
Tighten up the overhand, you know, tie a Davy knot, pull it tight.
That'll never slip. I've never had one of those slip and I use it for salmon and all kinds of fish.
It's not just for trout but you pull it tight and once it seats it jams down against the, you know, the overhand knot that's there and it can't come apart.
The more you pull, the tighter it gets. So that's really simple.
And what I like about it, it makes a tiny knot the size of a, you know, of a push pin.
It's really, really small. It's not like an obnoxious, you know, blood knot that's a quarter inch long.
Because when you're dealing with those heavier sections like a blood knot, it's pretty ugly when you think about it.
I mean, it's pretty big and you know, obtrusive. It gets up there in the, if you ever land in a fish and you get that up in the tip top, that's kind of a nightmare to deal with. So I like the really small one because it comes in and out seamlessly and it doesn't get caught up.
Marvin:
[5:20] Yeah. And we were talking, I think this has been a few episodes ago.
You know, one thing you can absolutely do too, if you know, take those knots, if, and, you know, hit them with a little UV resin, and sometimes that'll kind of help you on the, uh, the bumpiness front too.
Mac:
[5:35] Yeah, you can smooth it out to kind of shape it like a football shape, you know, that works really well.
I have a lot of different uv resins and sometimes I'll do that if I want to be fancier, but a lot of times I'm rigging them on Other people's equipment because a lot of times they want to use, you know, their rod And they're set up.
So if i'm doing it on the fly like on a trip, usually i'm not doing the resin But yeah, I have uv resin on mine Just because it's quick to do at home, you know, but I don't want to take out my UV light on the string.
Marvin:
[6:07] Yeah. And then the other thing, too, we were talking before we started recording, you know, those leader formulas you had, you really don't need an indicator because as we were talking, you can basically use, like I know, Scafars are the chapstick size wax pencils, and then there's some that are larger.
I think you said that were French. I know Devin Olson sells them on his website, and they're really great for marking leaders so you can see what's going on and easy to take that stuff off when you don't need it.
Mac:
[6:35] Oh yeah, I like using those quite a bit. What I'll do is if I'm going to fish a really light setup like what we're using right now, I think on the upper the other day I rigged one up on the two-weight that was literally 0x for the butt section and it came down I was fishing 8x up there and I just went straight with that and I was fishing really small midges But at the end of the bigger section, I just took those pins and colored it and then put snow seal over it.
And the snow seal, of course, floats it all up really big and high where you can see it all over. Because the water's so low, there's not a whole lot of super fast water that we're fishing right now.
Fish are really starting to sit in their winter holding water more right now.
You're going to find them in the slower, big, deep pools, and that kind of water is real easy to see a leader floating through it.
Marvin:
[7:28] Yeah. And then of course, you know, you know, if you're going to fish streamers, it's really pretty simple because you can probably get away with probably two to three feet of level at whatever weight you feel like you need.
So you can get your stuff back if you get hung up.
Mac:
[7:42] That's right. Yeah. For a lot of the average size fish, like on the DH right now, you know, for four to three X is really all you'd need.
That would be plenty because, because we're talking like 10 to 14 inch fish for, for a of the DH, I mean, there's an occasional 18, 20 inch one, but you could still do fine with 4X for those.
But, um, it's not like the spring where we're throwing more like 0X, like on the 90 for six to eight pound fish. I mean, it's, it's really, you're targeting smaller fish right now in the streamer game. Yeah.
Marvin:
[8:16] And so, you know, folks, we really loved all the questions and we just tried to kind of, uh, mash them all together and kind of touch all the bases.
If we miss something, let us know. Um, but, you know, keep them coming because that, you know, we're here to answer questions and to help you guys have a better day on the water. And, you know, as I always say, you can DM us on social media, email us, you know, whatever's easiest for you. We love your questions.
And, Mac, before I let you hop, I know you've got some guide trips coming up and you're gonna probably book a few more. You wanna let folks know where they can find you to book you to fish with you or to learn more about your schools?
Mac:
[8:50] Yeah, I appreciate that. The flyfishingguideschool.com for the schools coming up in the spring, and that'll have all the information about those week-long schools.
And then as far as trips, just Mack Brown Fly Fish, and that's the same on Instagram, Facebook, and the website MackBrownFlyFish.com, and that's how you can get a hold of me.
Marvin:
[9:11] Yeah, and so if folks want to kind of do that intensive casting class, one of the fly-fishing shows, where can they find you and Gary this 2024.
Mac:
[9:20] Uh, we're going to be Denver, Edison, Atlanta, and Pleasanton, and that'll be on the flyfishingshow.com, website for that all day class that'll be on Thursday before all those events.
The show starts on Friday, but we'll teach that all day class Thursday before for all of those. And so the signups on the, on their website.
Marvin:
[9:40] Yeah, well, there you go. And as I always say, folks, even though it's low and it's getting ready to get fall is still my favorite time of the year to get out on the water and you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
Tight lines everybody. Tight lines Mac.
Mac:
[9:52] Tight lines Marvin.