Transcript: Casting Angles with Mac Brown
S5, Ep 143: Casting Angles with Mac Brown
2023, Marvin S. Cash
The Articulate Fly
http://www.thearticulatefly.com
Transcript
Mac:
[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 you doing, Mack?
Marvin:
[0:12] We're doing great. How are you doing, Marvin?
Mac:
[0:14] As always, just trying to stay out of trouble, and I guess tomorrow you will be a year older and a little bit wiser, right?
Marvin:
[0:22] Well we hope the wiser part. That would be good, wouldn't it?
Mac:
[0:26] It would be good. So folks, if you see Mac this week, you need to wish him a happy birthday. It's a big one.
Marvin:
[0:32] Oh, it is a big one, Marvin. Another year around the sun.
Mac:
[0:36] Yeah, there you go. And so, uh, I know you were out, uh, the Thanksgiving weekend on the water. What were you, what did you see?
Marvin:
[0:43] We're still seeing a lot of blue wings and a lot of midge hatches, pretty regular.
Um, after that rainfall we had last week, a Tuesday, we got about a half inch of rain, and the wild streams didn't really come up at all.
I mean there wasn't much increase in water flow, but they stayed clear, and that's where we saw most of the midge activity in blue wings.
Out on the tuck, it turned muddy for, oh, two or three days, but only a half inch of rain, and it got it muddied up pretty good.
And so, out there, I didn't really see a lot of hatches, you know, after it turned muddy, but it's back where you'll see blue wings and midges out there as well.
But those are still really good, really good things to throw, like downsides go really small.
You know, fish small things, because I think the biggest mistake we see out there is a lot of people trying to throw, you know, big patterns.
They throw in the springtime this time of year and that's catastrophic on the activity, you know. They're not looking for big things this time of year.
Mac:
[1:45] Yeah, because I guess in general, right, you know, as there are progressive hatches throughout the spring and the summer into the fall, the bugs keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller, right?
So, you know, if you're, yeah, so if you're going to do big stuff, I mean, when I think the only kind of big nymphs I generally fish in the wintertime are stoneflies because they basically take more than a year to mature to be ready to hatch.
Marvin:
[2:10] Yeah, that would be a good choice. That and then there's some good larvae stages for like Brachycentrus caddis or, you know, that's good all winter long because they're available.
They go through the series of instars and get a little bigger.
Right now they're about a half inch on the wild streams, what we're seeing in size.
Anywhere from a half inch to five eighths, I'd say. That's a really good cold weather pattern as well.
Like on 14, you know, hook fishing, we call it the chimney caddis or broccocentris caddis is what it is.
But yeah, that's a good pattern too, along with your stones.
Mac:
[2:45] Yeah. And is that what they call stick bait in East Tennessee, in the park?
Marvin:
[2:50] No, that would be your Limnophilidae caddis, where it actually builds its home and it has a series of sticks that are about two inches to two and a half inches long.
And inside there's a worm that's pretty long. It's like three quarters of an inch, kind of clear, clear translucent body with a black head.
That's what they mean by stick bait. It's about the size of a tequila worm.
When you think about it, it's kind of like what you'd see in a bottle of mezcal.
Mac:
[3:16] Yeah, it's kind of weird though because you're fishing and you're seeing this cluster of sticks move and you're like, what's that? And then you realize that it's a caddis.
Marvin:
[3:25] That's right. And those will also be trade on when it gets hard in the winter, like you can watch larger brown trout go over there and actually go after them.
What they'll do is they'll rub against those sticks until it exposes, then they'll break it up, then they see the worm, and redhorse will do that as well. There's a lot of redhorse in the rivers here.
And you'll see the redhorse go over there when times are slim and that's what they know it's there.
And that's kind of neat. You can see tailing red horse doing that in the winter time.
Mac:
[3:57] Yeah. And I know too, we were talking before we started recording that you've got kind of a favorite type of water to fish this time of year.
You want to share that with folks?
Marvin:
[4:06] Well, yeah, one of my favorite things is when I have a day off is to go to the impoundments, and a lot of them I can get to by road or hike in, and a lot of them I use a boat, like a drift boat or a motorboat, either one.
But the bottom quarter to half mile section of all these creeks and rivers that feed into the lakes are excellent this time of year, and they'll stay that way up until February.
So that's kind of like one of the hidden gems, I think, in this part of the country to really focus on, which means get off the beaten path, not a DH, not a favorite popularized stream that you hear about either.
Just look at a topo and find the watersheds that are big enough to justify going and exploring it, because those are rarely disappointing this time of year.
The size, the quality of the fish, that's kind of why we like doing it, the quality of the fish that are in there are coming up out of the lake, they're a lot better size, average size, than what you'll see on that stream typically, because the fish that are coming up out of Fontana or Chihuahua or Calderwood or Tennessee Reservoir, Nantahala Lake, Wolf Lake, those are all, I mean, they're going to be quality fish.
They're not going to be like your average Appalachian fish size in a little small stream. I mean, these lake fish are quite a bit bigger.
Mac:
[5:31] Yeah, because they basically get to eat all those forage fish.
It's kind of like, you know, fishing on the Watauga or the South Holston and getting down close to the lake, right?
Marvin:
[5:39] Mm-hmm. Similar, similar there. I'm sure that's good right now, too, fishing down towards Boone Lake, you know, because you get a lot of stuff that comes out of Boone Lake going up, and that's not a lot of places capitalized on that.
Even over there, they're still fishing, you know, up by the weir, big spring, fishing way up on the upper section.
But yeah, I'm going to go over there and fish that with a friend next week that lives there on Boone Lake.
And we went to high school together and he lives right there on the lake, so we can run up the lower end of it a pretty good ways.
And there's some nice trout that come up out of Boone Lake to that same, you know, end of the Holston.
And a lot of them will go up a mile or two, some of them much further.
But that's a really good place to target.
Mac:
[6:25] Yeah, good for striped bass too.
Marvin:
[6:27] Mm-hmm. There'll be a lot of those. Yeah, for sure, but the sizes of things that like what we're seeing as far as just like on a wild strand that we've been going to, that's what I've been on more than anything, is there's some good pattern ideas for folks.
It's like bring back like the old school brassy, like in 24s, 22s, the blood midge, the stripper midge, like Blake Boyd developed there on the Holston.
That's a great pattern. Those are probably my three favorite for emerges and things.
Barra Emerge is another one that I'll use some in really small sizes.
The same is like John Barra out in Colorado.
Developed, that's a great pattern.
[7:13] Then the other one would be like CDC representations for like the dry ice.
Like the blue wings are incredibly small.
I know people are thinking, well I'll get away and throw an 18 parachute.
I'll give you an example, the blue wings, if you look at them in size, they're about a size 26 right now, so an 18 is like a titanic on the water, so it's a lot easier to tie these dry flies just using a thread body, cocked daily on tail, split it and just put a puff of CDC in the front and be done with it.
That's the way you tie like really small dry flies a whole lot simpler.
It's fast and efficient and frogs fanny it up and you can see it a time and you don't have to redo it until you catch something on it.
So that's my favorite small, like, dry-to-throw this time of year.
Mac:
[7:59] Yeah, got it, and you know, we mentioned, folks, last time that we were going to let you guys know about some classes we were doing, and I'm working with Mac, and we're going to put out a three-part online casting series with one class in January, one in February, one in March, and the goal of that is to basically kind of cut through a lot of the myths that people have about casting, they kind of give you a new foundation and a way to basically systematically get better and kind of check yourself.
But then also the last session, we'll actually talk about, you know, situations you find yourself on the water and how to cast in those situations most effectively.
So the goal really is, you know, Mac, you and I talked about it, we wanted to do something to help people get better faster and be less frustrated on the water, All right.
Marvin:
[8:47] Yeah, that's a big part of what we're going to try to shoot for and just when I got into this game out of college in my early 20s, it became evident real quick, like big, even big casting clubs that have been in existence for 100, 150 years.
[9:05] That what people practice is what they will become.
So if they go to the park for 30 years, and they're still working on just throwing loops and hitting a target straight away.
That's one way of looking at it, but that's not going to help immensely in fishing on current.
And so what we're going to address is, you know, the different planes that we cast in plus the different advanced control that we can do to develop, which means there has to be a practice regimen.
And so the situation I described at first, the practice regimen was incorrect, in my opinion, because they get good at that one thing, but it brings no game to the table.
And you know, that wouldn't be fun sitting in a boat, having to watch somebody and that's all they could do, because there's going to be a lot of fish we can't catch until they learn those things.
And that's why I think it's easier to just spread the gospel and talk about practice structured regimen of where are we trying to get to.
And if we don't know where we're trying to get to, then the people are still, you know, that's what happens.
They still spin their wheels decades later thinking that they're doing what they should be doing but they're still missing out and so I think that's the exciting thing about being able to have that have those three classes in the winter.
Mac:
[10:21] Yeah and so folks you know they're online and the great thing is they're they'll be live and if you're available for the live session you'll have the ability to ask Matt questions but you know if you can't make one don't worry about it because they're gonna be recorded and we're gonna make them available for folks for at least a year after the class date.
And if you go to the Articulate Flies Instagram profile, you can find the link in my link tree, you know, and I'll drop it in the show notes.
I think Max probably got it in his Instagram profile as well.
But the great thing is for a few more days, there's a lingering Black Friday special.
And if you use the coupon code CASTING10, and that's all capitalized, whether you buy one, two or preferably all three of the classes, you'll get 10% off.
So you should check that out. We're really looking forward to doing that.
I've done some online stream classes before and it's been a lot of fun, a lot of success, particularly for people that don't live close to a show or it's hard to get to Bryson City to personally spend time with Mac.
This is about the next best thing.
So be on the lookout for that. If you have any questions, email me or DM me on social media.
Happy to answer them. And, uh, Mac, what else have you got going on heading into the holiday season?
If to one, I guess, let folks know what you got going on. I know you've got a bunch of new show stuff, but, uh, I imagine you might have a school or a talk or, you know, you might take some people down the river as well. Right.
Marvin:
[11:45] Yeah, we're still doing some trips around town, like in Bryson and some of the wild streams near Bryson, and the big thing really is, well yesterday it was kind of, it rained all day here and it was a good day to get tickets for all the winter shows coming up, so I bought plane tickets yesterday for about four hours, and so that was exciting.
Shopping all the different airports, I'm kind of like stuck in, you know, I can go out of one of four airports and they're all about the same distance so that's always exciting to look at all four for figuring out where we're going to go to but the latest one I guess I don't can't remember if we said it maybe we did but going to Michigan which I'm excited about getting up there to Detroit and, Phil Rowley and Michael Murray and Alice Owsley will be there so when he told me that I'm like yeah I got to do that because I've been wanting to get up to Michigan for a while that's gonna be a fun fun event and that'll be March, 9th and 10th I believe the weekend on top of the other ones for the fly fishing show.
Edison, let's see Denver, Colorado, Edison, New Jersey, Atlanta, Georgia, and Pleasanton, California.
So we're looking forward to those as well.
Mac:
[12:58] Yeah and if you go to the events page on the Articulate Fly website you'll find links for all of those events there and you know folks even though it's getting a little chillier it's a great time to get out on the water and if you see Mac Brown, you have to wish him happy birthday. Happy early birthday, Mac.
Marvin:
[13:14] Thanks, Marvin. I hope everybody has a good holiday season.
Mac:
[13:17] Yeah, tight lines, everybody.
Marvin:
[13:20] Tight lines, Marvin.