Transcript: Casting Angles with Mac Brown
S6, Ep 13: Casting Angles with Mac Brown
2024, 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 you doing, Mack?
Mac:
[0:12] I'm doing great, Marvin. How are you doing?
Marvin:
[0:14] As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. I guess we were both on the road last weekend. How was Atlanta?
Mac:
[0:21] The buzz in Atlanta was fantastic. There was a lot of people there, They're enthusiastic, and it was a really good crowd.
Marvin:
[0:29] Well, good. Yeah, and Michigan was really great. It was an absolute who's who of streamer fishing at Bobbin and the Hood put on by the guys at Schultz Outfitters.
Mac:
[0:41] Yeah, that sounded fun. That sounded like a great event up there, too.
And, yeah, I wish we could be like, beam me up, Scotty, and go to a bunch of those at the same time, Marvin. yeah.
Marvin:
[0:52] I was just happy because i was able to travel on friday and not on thursday so i got an extra day at home which is we were talking about as we start marching through show season um that can kind of be a game changer.
Mac:
[1:03] Oh yeah yeah i'm i'm i'm really glad that we have a have a week a whole week rather than a day or two turn around because i i'm really i'm really tired i mean it's i think i'm getting older and that i used to do these when i was younger and now it's It's like, it definitely is harder on me.
Like I'm more fatigued, not having as much rest, you know, I guess old age.
Marvin:
[1:30] That doesn't sound good, Mack Brown, but we were talking before we started recording and we thought something interesting to talk about today would be kind of the power of a constraint and learning to kind of be nimble and improvising.
And I know that happened to you.
You know, I guess the example that kind of brought it to mind for you is you had an opportunity to kind of fill in a tying class down in Atlanta.
But it's true for every aspect of your fishing and actually for your life, too.
Mac:
[1:58] Oh, yeah. No, it was really fun. I was going down the tire row in Atlanta, which is over when you walk in all the way on the right.
[2:07] And Ben came up and said, yeah, take these tying blocks on Friday, Saturday.
And so I got there, and I didn't have anything. I had my Spyderco knife.
You know, that's all I had. So I don't need scissors. I got a knife.
I went down there. I got a vice. I got a hook, one piece of partridge.
And I go up to the tying thing and think, what am I going to talk about?
I've got some partridge hackle.
And I thought, well, I'll sit and look at the table and see if anybody left me anything.
So praise to Landon, he left a little piece of pine squirrel, really small little strip of pine squirrel, and somebody left a little olive piece of ostrich oil.
So then I got up back up, hmm, I got this, and I got a piece of partridge.
So that's why I did the whole demo for 45 minutes and talked them through it.
And it was really, really great because, I mean, I like kind of working in chaos theory like that, going, hey, what are we going to make?
We got a couple of materials and we got this. What are we going to do?
So it worked out fine. I talked to him first about Dave Whitlock, the aquatic food organism book that he did years ago, just about the burrowers, the swimmers, the clingers.
And I said, hey, we got these three materials. What can we make?
And everybody kind of looked around like, what's he going to make?
What's he talking about?
And before, we talked about the burrowers and that's what I ended up doing.
And it was really fun. Like, I like getting up there and just kind of being surprised myself. Like, what do we have?
So, kind of that way when we fish, Marvin, too.
Marvin:
[3:36] Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's the whole kind of impetus.
I mean, a simple example is the roll cast when you can't back cast, but there are going to be plenty of examples where, you know, you can't do things the way you want to either because you left some gear in the car and you don't want to go back or you're in a casting situation where you can't cast the way you normally do.
And, you know, if you just kind of embrace the constraint, it'll make you creative and you'll find a solution.
And then you can kind of add that to your quiver of fly fishing skills.
Mac:
[4:03] Oh, yeah. I'm excited. I still have the fly. It's in the little name badge that says, you know, Atlanta Fly Fishing Show.
And I put it in there. You know, that's where I put people's business cards and anything important. So that little wet fly is still sitting in there.
And I'll tell you where I'm going to go use it. There's a lot of lakes up here that are high up.
And, of course, the lakes have a lot of sand deposits where the creeks flow in.
And those exist. There's a lot of those burrowers that are on the lake that are great swimming mayflies.
So I'm going to put it on the point fly, and I'm going up there before I head out to Pleasanton next week.
I'm going up there for a couple of days, and I'm sure I'll throw that on the point.
Just because here's a constraint fly, let's go fish it, because we know it's going to work.
Because I've seen that in stomachs so many years up there that I'm sure it'll be good.
But thank you to whoever left the Oswege hurl. I know Landon's the one that left the pine squirrel.
Just a little tiny strip, and that's all it took. So basically, we killed 45 minutes tying one fly and then telling stories about how to fish it and where to fish it.
Marvin:
[5:07] Yeah, and Landon is the reason that pine squirrels are an endangered species now.
Mac:
[5:12] Well, they kind of are. And if he's listening, that is true.
I've talked to several suppliers the last couple of months.
I'd like to get some pine squirrel. Like, oh, it's endangered and I can't already get it.
So it is a big shortage on it. So luckily, I called Davey, and Davey had plenty of them.
Davey hooked me up with it. But most of the suppliers don't even have it in stock.
So it's kind of hard for all the tires out there that want to use.
I had some, but it was too long.
And I wanted some shorter ones, you know, for like micro sizes.
And so it looks like it's time to start going after some chipmunks around here.
So that works pretty good.
Marvin:
[5:53] Well, there you go. And I know, so you've got a week off.
I'm done. I'm not traveling anymore for show season, so I'm excited just to basically try to do as little as possible Super Bowl weekend.
But I know you mentioned that you're going to be heading out to Pleasanton, but I also know you're doing some shows other than the fly fishing shows.
Mac:
[6:12] Yeah, I'm just doing the other one that will be up in Midwest Fly Fishing Expo.
And I'm excited about that one with Alice and Phil Rowley and Michael Murray.
And that'll be a good, good fun going up to, I guess, Detroit.
And that'll be, I don't know the dates, to be honest. It's sometime there early March, maybe the first week of March, I think.
But that'll be fun. That'll close out the winter season of shows for me then till next year.
And so, yeah, it's been a fun run. But I'll be honest, the last three weeks have been – it's tiring.
I mean, doing Thursday through Sunday. And I think Atlanta on Friday and Saturday, I had less than five minutes turnaround the whole day.
So even though you see all these people you want to go talk to and boost, there's just – there's no time.
And I think that makes it tough to see people you don't get to see but once a year.
So then at the end of the day, you can catch up with some of them if they're still in there. there, but it's like, it was busy.
It was a real busy, like turnaround the whole time, but it was great to see folks.
I was really glad in Atlanta, my buddy, Rick Hartman flew up from, from Texas.
He red fish, great, great caster. He's one of my heroes casting in the world, you know, and he came up, we got to hang out the last two days and cast a bunch and talk about philosophy of casting and all these things that exist.
And he's one of the geniuses in the sport. And so I was really tickled to spend time with him.
Marvin:
[7:41] Yeah. And, you know, folks, if you want more information on that Midwest Fly Fishing Expo, if you go to the events link on the Articulate Fly website, you can get some details and we'll take you to the event and give you the dates and all that kind of good stuff.
And also, too, want to remind everybody that Mac and I are working together on a Fundamentals of Casting series and we've had to push it out just because show season has been a little bit more taxing than either of us expected.
I think one of the big reasons for it is there's been so many travel hassles this year.
So we're going to have a session next month in March, another one in April, another one in May, and there's a link in the show notes to that.
And you should check it out. They'll be live, but if you can't make it, we're going to record them so you'll be able to watch them at your leisure.
You know, Mac and I have been thinking about this a lot, about how to really kind of boil things down and to give people kind of, you know, the best, briefest, most concise and powerful foundation to kind of work on their casting game.
Mac:
[8:42] Oh, yeah. I'm really excited about it, Marvin, as well, from the last few weeks, just realizing that there's so many sermons out there that I really do think that hearing the right sermon makes all the difference.
And then I can tell you a story of what happened in New Jersey.
A young lady had been working on this for a couple of years, and she's heard all these different sermons.
And she was almost in tears saying that in Honduras, that Rokai still wasn't there after working with all these instructors for two whole years.
And I told her, I said, look, let's meet in the morning.
I promise you in under three minutes, you're going to throw 60 feet.
And I know that sounds like a big task to ask.
And you know what? She threw 60 feet in under three minutes.
And had a big smile on her face.
But I promise you, everything in casting is about hearing the right sermon.
There's a lot of garbage out there on YouTube, people that don't understand it, people that say put the thumb on top and all kinds of ridiculous things.
And hopefully in Pleasanton, in Michigan, we're going to get plenty of folks there that want to tune in because I don't think they're going to hear this sermon that many places.
Marvin:
[9:50] Yeah, absolutely. And as it's getting warmer, Mac, I know that means that you might have some schools coming up, right?
Mac:
[9:57] Yeah, we got our first one coming up. I think it's the day after I get back from Michigan show.
And that's in March. And then they go March, April, May, June, and October, November.
And we're waiting to see. I know March is about full right now.
We're working on May schools.
And that's all listed on the flyfishingguideschool.com website for the schools.
Then there's casting schools as well on my website, macbrownflyfish.com.
But I think we got a lot in Atlanta, to be honest. There was a lot of people that sent messages.
I looked. I didn't respond to them today because I was still really tired from the last four days.
But, yeah, I think that that's going to be a lot of fun in the spring.
Marvin:
[10:41] Yeah. And, you know, it's a great time of year, folks. It's kind of odd, right, because, you know, some of us, at least in the southeast, I actually saw my first robin today, which I always make a mental note of that.
So I'm hopeful that we're out of the deep freeze down here. but you know if there's a show near you go to a show if it's too cold to get out and fish, spend some time at the vice uh watch a little uh some sports maybe drink a little brown liquor tie a few flies um or if you're lucky and it's warm get out there and catch a few, tight lines everybody tight lines matt tight lines barbara.