S1, Ep 78: Mac Brown - Fly Fishing Guide, Instructor and Casting Guru

EPISODE SUMMARY

Guest: Mac Brown - Owner of Mac Brown Fly Fish and Fly Fishing Guide School (Bryson City, North Carolina)

In this episode: Casting instructor and guide Mac Brown shares his foundational casting philosophy based on Newton's Three Laws of Motion and decades of experience as a guide, instructor and author. Topics include three-dimensional casting mechanics, breaking free from traditional casting constraints, his approach to guide schools and intensive casting workshops, his background as a whitewater rafting guide and adventure racer and the evolution of fly fishing instruction.

Key fishing techniques covered: • Three-dimensional casting and loop plane manipulation • Overpowered and underpowered curve casts • Roll casting with proper acceleration • Moving the rod through waves and circles to avoid obstacles • Controlling tension after the cast is made

Location focus: Western North Carolina (Bryson City area), Tuckasegee River Delayed Harvest, Deep Creek, Nantahala River and Gorge, Great Smoky Mountains National Park streams, also extensive experience in New Zealand

Target species: Trout (rainbows, browns)

Equipment discussed: Casting Angles book, rod mechanics and acceleration principles, metronome for timing practice

Key questions answered: • How can I improve my casting without following traditional "flat earth" models? • What's the best way to practice casting effectively? • How do Newton's Three Laws apply to fly casting? • What makes Mac Brown's guide school and casting workshops different? • How should beginners approach learning to cast?

Best for: All levels of anglers seeking to understand the fundamental mechanics of casting, particularly those frustrated with traditional instruction methods or wanting to develop problem-solving skills on the water

**Marvin Cash (00:04):**
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly, and on this episode I'm joined by Mac Brown. I was lucky enough to sit down with Mac in September in Bryson City and we kind of covered everything, but surprisingly we didn't spend the entire interview talking about casting. I think you'll learn a lot of neat things about Mac, like his career as a rafting guide and an adventure racer, among other things. Before we move on to the interview, just a couple housekeeping items. We recently launched our mobile apps and they're available both for iOS and Android devices. And if you check the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, or the Amazon Android App Store, you can download the apps. And they are going to be the best way to stay in touch with the podcast because we're going to start serving bonus content just to the apps. And that's going to be the only way that you're going to be able to get all that good stuff. Also, if you like the podcast, it'd be great if you could give us a review in iTunes and subscribe in the podcatcher of your choice. Before we move on, I just want to give a shout out to tonight's sponsor. This episode is sponsored by the 20th Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival. The event will be held on January 11th and 12th in Doswell, Virginia. And if you visit www.vaflyfishingfestival.org or our events page, you can get all the latest information on speakers, vendors, and classes. On to our interview. Well, Mac, welcome to The Articulate Fly. I'm glad to have you on.

**Mac Brown (01:37):**
Thanks, Marvin. It's good to be here.

**Marvin Cash:**
Yeah, it's great. It's been great to catch up too. And it's an Articulate Fly tradition. I always start and ask my guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

**Mac Brown:**
I think that would probably be the first trip I went out with my granddad in about 1964. And he got a rod for me, and I ended up losing the rod within about the first 15 minutes. And that's the first memory that comes to me. So hold on to your rod.

**Marvin Cash (01:57):**
Yeah, we've had quite a few people on the podcast that have shared first fishing memories involved breaking or losing rods.

**Mac Brown (02:02):**
Yeah, so I lost mine the very first trip. And so that was a good lesson, though, for me. And where was that? That was on his farm down in the Ozarks below Salem, Missouri. And did you grow up there? I spent the summers there when I was little. I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but I spent the summers a lot down in Salem, which is down below Rolla.

**Marvin Cash (02:26):**
Yeah, and you grew up in East Tennessee, right?

**Mac Brown (02:28):**
69 to 82, East Tennessee. Yep.

**Marvin Cash (02:32):**
Got it. So you started, that was your earliest fishing memory. When did you start fly fishing?

**Mac Brown (02:38):**
We did that in the Ozarks as well. My granddad, he started me off doing that when I was small. And I remember standing out in the yard a lot like in the movie and he'd have a metronome for the timing. Yeah. He's like, we're not going until you form some decent loops. Of course, I had a lot of windshield wiper loops, I think, when I was starting off. And but I remember listening to the metronome, waiting, waiting, waiting. So that's kind of my earliest memory of the fly rod.

**Marvin Cash (03:05):**
And, you know, obviously you've been eating up with it ever since. Who are some of the folks that mentored you on your lifelong journey into fly fishing?

**Mac Brown (03:11):**
Oh, I would say a lot of it. At first for me, East Tennessee had a lot of, I just didn't know any. When I grew up in Greenville, I had a lot of buggy whip casters, you know, like you see in Appalachia. At that time, I mean, on Camp Creek, Paint Creek, I didn't see anybody really extend a line and make a big, long cast like you see, you know, at shows and things. So a lot of it was from literature. My granddad had a lot of books from Ritz. And from reading that in the early stage, I learned about Marvin Hedge, Hans Gebetsroither, and in Austria, Albert Goddard, Hugh Falkus. I read his literature when I was really small. More modern folks, I think, in my teenage years would have been Jimmy Green. He helped me quite a bit in my teenage years, and he didn't know me from Adam, and he'd send a lot of letters and correspondence back and forth. He really helped shape and make, you know, he caused me to jump quite a bit in understanding. And there's just a lot, so many of them. Al Buhr, Yoren Anderson, Andrew Toff, Lee Cummings, Tim Rajeff, all those people have influenced me.

**Marvin Cash (04:23):**
And when did you get infected with the casting bug?

**Mac Brown (04:28):**
I would say 12 to 13 on a little stream called Camp Creek in Greenville, Tennessee, where I grew up. And basically what really, I think, motivated me was solving problems by messing up. I mean, you had to first embrace the failure of all the mistakes that was going on. And I just saw real early on that casting, for me, casting was a problem-solving technique. That the better I got at that, then the better my results, you know, would get. So I think that's what kind of formulated an early casting geek is the better that became, the more I felt, you know, driven.

**Marvin Cash (05:08):**
Yeah. It kind of good positive feedback loop, right? The better caster you were, the more fish you caught. So the more you wanted to improve on your casting to catch more fish.

**Mac Brown (05:17):**
Kind of worked that way, really from fishing too close as a kid. I mean, a lot of it was too close and you'd, you'd see things spook off and then you start realizing, I need to be able to do the same thing far away. I mean, not far but medium distance first and then extend it to further away to where it started clicking. So I think that helped quite a bit.

**Marvin Cash (05:37):**
And I think there's a very unique angling community kind of in the southern Appalachians. What impact did that have on you in your fishing development as a caster?

**Mac Brown (05:43):**
The impact of the...

**Marvin Cash (05:52):**
Like we think about small, tight streams, usually lots of rhododendron. It's a very different style. And I mean, you and I have talked in the past about what that environment did to develop the quality of like the nymphing fishermen that we've generated out of this part of the country.

**Mac Brown (06:05):**
Right. I think a lot of the complexity from as a kid is what probably one of the biggest, biggest things for me that led to a lot of that confusion is you pick up a lot of books from the 50s and 60s. And then you look at the more recent ones in the early 70s that use clock faces and have people tending to. Where I grew up in East Tennessee, I think that's where really at a young age then I was already a huge fan of three-dimensional casting, like just putting a wave in it or a circle and being able to miss your obstacles. And I think that came from myself. I didn't see any hillbilly fishing that way in East Tennessee, I can tell you. And so all I knew is the more I read books is the more it was kind of confusing to me better than helping me because then I was doing my own thing. Then later on when with a little bit more age and I started realizing, well, maybe this isn't the right model to be following because I don't see how they're going to do a lot of the textbook, you know, to and from type casting in that part of the country. So I think that's what started to help formulate a lot of my ideas.

**Marvin Cash (07:11):**
Got it. And so as you started kind of progressing in your casting journey, who were some of the folks that had an impact on your development as a caster?

**Mac Brown (07:20):**
Probably one of my biggest influences would be the ability to do the things kinesthetically on the water. I'd already had a big appreciation of that on my own time. But there was a lot of the hows that I didn't understand how it really worked. And I think Glenn Liming would probably be that person at Sylva. I taught at Western Carolina. And when I taught the program at Western, it actually blew me away. He'd show him something, and he already understood exactly how it worked, and he never held a rod or made a cast, and he had no interest in casting. He just thought it was intriguing how it all worked. The complexity, I think the appreciation of complexity, for sure, he's the one that brought that to the table.

**Marvin Cash (08:04):**
Really interesting. Tell us a little bit about how it came about that you taught fly fishing at Western Carolina.

**Mac Brown (08:13):**
Probably Bobby Setzer from starting the—he helped me get the Delayed Harvest sold to the commissioners in Raleigh on the upper Nantahala. And I think Bobby Setzer's recommended, he says, well, you need to come talk to David, head of the physical education department there at Western. And, um, they wanted to have this fly fishing program. And so I was like, sure, I'd love to go up there and teach it. And that's why I've met a lot of the young kids around my area is really when they were college students at Western, a lot of them were from right around Bryson City, Robbinsville, Andrews, and that's that's kind of what started that whole thing. And how long did you teach at Western?

I think five years. I think it was about five years. And it just got really busy with other other commitments where it started to be hard to go up there. You know, it's an hour up there and you teach an hour and a half class. So and it was I enjoyed the class a great deal but it was hard to fit in between work and other commitments.

**Marvin Cash (09:13):**
Yeah, no it's kind of like the fishing rule you try to fish at least as long as the time you spent in the car to get there.

**Mac Brown (09:17):**
Yeah, I think that's a lot of it. And I mean, I really did enjoy though the people, the biggest thing I liked is just the influence of the kids you got to influence. I would think that I mean when I think about I had Chris Lee from Bryson and Josh Stevens. I had all these kids that ended up being really passionate about the sport and made a lot of big contributions on their own, you know, afterwards. So I guess you could say I corrupted a lot of them.

**Marvin Cash (09:43):**
And speaking of corruption, while you were teaching at Western, your book, Casting Angles, came out. So tell us a little bit about, you know, developing that manuscript and kind of how that came into the world.

**Mac Brown (09:53):**
Okay. I think the biggest part is I had, I had the manuscript pretty much in my teenage, like 18, 19 year old kid, I had most of that already compiled as far as like, these are the things I think, you know, it'd be fun to talk about the problem solving things on the water. The problem was at that age, I didn't have, I really didn't have the, um, ability to articulate the whys and how it was working. And that's what Glenn, when I taught up there at the college, once I understood the whys, which took a couple of years of really digging deeper. I mean, Glenn was really, really a great mentor for me because every time something would start to see the light, like you'd see a light bulb go on, you think you had a broader appreciation of it. Then it flipped my world upside down again. It goes, well, no, it's really not that simple. Here's another thing. So the more you look at that and you start to read a lot of technical journals, the bibliography in that book, I would have probably never gone there if it hadn't been him motivating me. You know, like the Spolek papers, Lingard, Robson, Gatti papers, Perkins Gatti. I mean, all of those technical papers was really in the last 40 years explaining how this worked. The difference is people don't really want to read a technical paper. They just want to go get entertained. But after I read those, it really solidified a lot of these concepts, how it really worked.

**Marvin Cash (11:16):**
Yeah. And how has your thinking around casting changed since Casting Angles has been out because it's been out since what, like the mid to late 90s?

**Mac Brown (11:27):**
Yeah, mid 90s and as far as the the concepts I think it's just made me think a lot more as a teacher. I mean, I don't really teach, I don't think there's anything I teach different from back then. It's just that the appreciation of understanding the necessity of formulating a good model that's going to hold up and not fail you down the road. I think that's the biggest thing that's changed for me is just realizing the necessity of that basic early foundation needs to be not so much, say, Marvin, read this and go read this and think you're going to get it from a bunch of people trying to interpret. Because really, if you go back to the basic mechanics of it all, that'll help answer everything down the road and create your ability to reason and use logic to come up with an answer rather than because somebody said it that was popular.

**Marvin Cash (12:23):**
Yeah. And it kind of pulled back to kind of help the listeners understand that what we're really talking about is really just basic Newtonian mechanics.

**Mac Brown (12:30):**
Right. Oh, yeah. The three laws of motion. It'll be able to understand those backwards and forwards. And then there's a few other ones about lines unrolling. That's what those papers, the ones I was quoting, which is similar to the dynamics of a whip. I mean, to understand truly what's going on as that unrolls. And if you use that, then with the kinetic, then basically you're going to be able to solve whatever, you know.

**Marvin Cash (12:54):**
Yeah. And just to kind of lay it out there because they're short. I mean, let's just lay out Newton's three laws really quickly here. So people can kind of see how different that is from, I guess, what I would say, traditional casting literature.

**Mac Brown (13:06):**
Right. Probably the biggest one waving a string. I mean, the first one with force equals mass times acceleration. I mean, we'll take that one and just use it as an example, how it helps you reason. Because there's a lot of coaching of like nymphing techniques where people are, you know, 20, 30-foot leader, for instance, what has to change if force equals and the mass has gone down, what has to change? Yeah. You have to accelerate more. It's going to go up. See how simple that is. People get intimidated. They hear a formula, but I mean, you could apply all those and answer everything. And it's just common, really common logic. Once you appreciate how powerful those really are. And I think that's back to where I'm at at this age of using a lot of parsimonious approaches to where you take the simplest model to answer the most complex topics is the right way to go. And the problem that confuses it every time I get at a big event or show, then there's always 40 people. What about so-and-so said? And to be honest with you, it just tells you the stages of where people are, that if they're grasping at straws, thinking that somebody else is going to come up with a better theory or model than the technical papers I was talking about are Newton. Newton is the study of kinetics. Newton is the study of motion. So if you really want to do it, become a geek and learn that first and apply it, because it's not going to come from you and me interpreting that and saying it a different way.

**Marvin Cash (14:33):**
Yeah, and to that point, I think that really the great thing is it's that elegance of simplicity. So, you know, everything falls away, right? And you're down to, you know, probably the number of principles you can count on one hand. Oh, yeah. And if you really understand those principles, then you can really go out in the world and start solving your own fishing and casting problems.

**Mac Brown (14:51):**
That's right. It's like a recipe, I mean, to bake something in the kitchen. I mean, once you understand that, you can come up with any of your own problems. When we start to talk about the wave theory and transverse waves, moving the rod in and out of straight. See, the problem really is why it's so stagnant, I think, in the country. I mean, not to go off on the casting, but it's because the fundamental rules that so many people want to think there's rules are killing the creativity of the other 90% that's out there. In other words, because it defies their rules. Does that make sense? So you stay stuck in the 10% and then you try to solve things that are complex with 10% of what's out there. You're going to have big problems. I mean that's a polite way to say it.

**Marvin Cash (15:32):**
Yeah. And so saying all that, do you feel the need to write another casting book or do you think that Casting Angles is really you know all that you really need to write on the book front to kind of explain kind of your thoughts on casting?

**Mac Brown (15:45):**
Yeah, pretty much that would probably be it on casting. Yeah, I'm not going to do 42 books on casting I can tell you that because I mean I think once you have that model you've already on the right track. Yeah, does that kind of make sense? Yeah. And how could I re-say all those things? I mean, I talked about the three laws you mentioned. I mean, I don't know anywhere else to say there's going to be a better foundation. I mean, I could do another one maybe on teaching and coaching down the road, but there won't be another casting book for sure.

**Marvin Cash (16:13):**
Yeah, yeah. And so I mean and we could talk about casting forever, right? But and I know this is a horribly simple question, but you know, people listening to this and they're like, gosh, how do I start to get better? What, you know, if you could only give, you know, one or two suggestions to the average caster about how to get on the road to becoming a better, a more effective caster and a more effective fisherman, what would it be?

**Mac Brown (16:41):**
Practice. I mean, that'd be the one where, if you wanted more on it, I'd say to get that basic understanding of line speed, loop plane, and loop shape. And that's what I see pretty well lacking. Like to just talk about loop plane, I mean, people think it's always destined to be outside the tip. Well, it's not. I mean, that goes back. Just use that as an example, which I wasn't really planning on going off on this. But we'll just say this. When you go forward, 99% of the stuff on the Internet will say always go in a straight line, straight line, straight line. So if you imagine a ball, an imaginary ball, the hand path can go up over the ball, under the ball, and outside the ball. So just think of it as cardinal points on a compass. You will solve so many more things with that outlook that your hand's free to travel from point A to B, however you want it to travel. Not be limited to the constraints of what I call the flat earth thinkers. Okay? Because the flat earth thinkers are never the problem solvers on the water. And that's the truth. When you look at really good casters in the Spey community, they're solving problems. The ones that have been taught with the wrong model, they still look like a beginner 40 years later. Right. And that's the truth. So it's like, that's as polite as I can say.

**Marvin Cash (17:52):**
Yeah. And so in terms of, you know, telling people to practice more is one thing. Let's talk a little bit about how people should practice. Right. So, you know, I would imagine you would say probably better to practice multiple times a week for short periods of time than it is to say, like, go out on a Sunday afternoon and crush it for two hours.

**Mac Brown (18:12):**
That's right. I would say have multiple things each time you go out rather than have a regimen of pick up and lay down cast until you're 70 years old. That's not really going to take you that far if you're doing the same practice. So to gain an appreciation of how your efforts, which would be really acceleration, how does that affect your rod load and how does that affect tension of the loop unrolling? And then to really gain an appreciation of tension means you can still alter tension after the cast is made by either raising the rod up or lowering the rod tip towards the water. And once you get that, then boom, you have a set of skill set to control what's happening rather than hope it's going to happen.

**Marvin Cash (18:49):**
Yeah. So you break it up into smaller parts. And in terms of do you like having a particular intention for like that 15 or 20-minute segment where you're like, I'm going to go out and I want to play with X for 15 or 20 minutes. Is that how you like to do it or do you like to be more open-ended for practice and say, I just want to go and basically learn, you know, more about how to explode those three Newtonian principles and see how they behave?

**Mac Brown (19:17):**
Well, loop plane, look back to the three L's we talked about just now. I mean, you could sit and do, just pick a particular loop plane, whether you want to cast straight or around a circle and just vary the amount of acceleration you're going to use. And so I would say do that. I mean, that's the first day. I mean, thinking back to the college class you mentioned, the very first day of that semester, I'll never forget it. Have 30 kids. There's always 30 kids. There's always the class that's sold out fastest at the college. And you'd have 30 kids, and on the very first day, you take them out, and you have them all throw a curve to the right, a curve to the left, and they throw it straight, all from the exact same rod plane and loop plane that they're using. Then right away, they know as ranked beginners, they have the ability to control curves left, right, and straight. And a lot of folks would say, well, that's the wrong approach. You didn't teach them the vertical pick up and lay down first. I'm like, well, we got done. We're all 30 kids through right, left, and straight. They already have tools ready to go fish because that's what we're really looking at this for is how do we get them on the water to help them solve problems? And I think that does it quicker than teaching chimps how to cast straight.

**Marvin Cash (20:24):**
I got it. And it reminds me, I remember that demo that you did where we were doing overpowered and underpowered curve casts. I'm sure that's probably what you were doing the first day of class, right?

**Mac Brown (20:32):**
Right.

**Marvin Cash (20:33):**
Yeah, that's it.

**Mac Brown (20:34):**
Yeah. Yeah.

**Marvin Cash (20:34):**
So, and I, you know, certainly people around Western North Carolina know that you were a rafting guide, but I think you really kind of came to this part of the world to be a rafting guide at Nantahala Outdoor Center. Isn't that right?

**Mac Brown (20:46):**
That's right. Yeah. I moved here after college and, um, yeah, I love the NOC, you know, family that we worked down there in the gorge. I used to live in Nantahala Gorge for 27 years and it was just a great group of folks of outdoor outdoor enthusiasts and a lot of high expectations. I mean, being out there's a lot of really class people that when I think about it when I first moved there there was around 55 like Olympic, World, National Champions that live there. And if you think about that, Bryson City is only 1,500 people. That's way more than a lot of these huge metropolitan cities around the country, you know. I mean, so when you get a group like that, I think that Daniel Cole book The Talent Code kind of says you know there's a good example that would be in that text, you know.

**Marvin Cash (21:37):**
That when you have that many good people that rubs off into other areas. Yeah, and and so how long did you guide for them?

**Mac Brown (21:47):**
Oh, not really only a few years because that was at the time I was getting my fly fishing started. I mean, with the doing the guiding and and that was funny because there really wasn't any of that going on. I mean, up here, there wasn't any guiding, I mean, per se, like I didn't know of anybody doing it at that time. And I remember telling some friends that, oh yeah, I'm going to do that. It's just take people fishing and use the rafting and rowing ability, you know, to put them on the water. And people would just laugh, think nobody's going to pay to fish. I'm like, well, sure they will. And of course it took a while to get going, you know, but people did. People did. It got hugely, especially the first year that Delayed Harvest was just zero to hero overnight. Once they realized there's these waters that have 20,000, 30,000 fish and everybody's going to be a winner. I mean, people started coming out of the woodwork.

**Marvin Cash (22:31):**
Yeah. And how does rafting culture compare to fly fishing culture?

**Mac Brown (22:37):**
It's very different, I think. I mean, I think the river people like being on a river for a different set of reasons than kind of like, you know, you hear it a lot in fly fishing. If you get the call of Marvin and they say, we just want to be in a pretty place. And we're just doing the waving the string around on a bendy stick because we're in a pretty place. Well, rafting, you can do that as well without waving a string on a bendy stick. So they're two different things. When you try to do the other plus be on the water, I just think it's probably making them have to work more and think more about what they're trying to do. But they're similar. They're similar yet different in a lot of ways too.

**Marvin Cash (23:15):**
Yeah, something I know probably not a lot of people know, but before reality TV, you were an adventure racer.

**Mac Brown (23:20):**
Yeah, yeah, we did that in the mid-90s, and that was a big part of the fun that came out of the gorge. So it was a pretty natural progression for me because I went through college running on scholarships, and I've run since I was a little kid. I mean, so then we got into mountain biking when we first came to the center. Ran Perkins, built, I think, my first bike. And there wasn't really a lot of mountain bikes. People don't realize, you know, see, mountain biking, there was a lot of people that were taking frames and making their mountain bikes long before there was a commercially made bike available. So there was already mountain bikes here when I came here. And that was, I think, the efforts of Rand. And so then when that sport came about, we had already been paddling. We've already been mountain biking. It was just like, wow, this is right up our alley. So we're going to try this a while. So that was fun. That was fun.

**Marvin Cash (24:08):**
Yeah. So how long did you race that way? And tell us some of the places you raced.

**Mac Brown (24:12):**
I think I did around 10 years. And we went a lot to the World National Championship in adventure racing. I think the neatest places were probably like Yunnan Province in China. I went there four times in Dali and Lijiang, China, which is up on the backside, big mountains, the headwaters of the Yangtze River. That's probably some of the prettiest, I think, scenery. And then New Zealand, we raced Southern Traverse several times in the Alps, the Southern Alps. So that was really pretty. And then there's a lot of really nice races here. I mean, we used to have around 30 races in Western Carolina between here and Virginia a year. That's when the sport was booming. So, I mean, it was popular there for a while, and then it just kind of dried up. 2005, it's just dried up to where there's other things that have replaced it in this country. So, I mean, the long four- to six-day kind of stuff just disappeared pretty much.

**Marvin Cash (25:10):**
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, and to help people understand, I mean, it's almost like a triathlon type event, right? It's basically, it's a rowing, hiking, biking. Right. And is it one day, multi-days? What's the general format?

**Mac Brown (25:22):**
Usually, usually the long AR World Championships is you get a map and you have transition UTM coordinates, which is military, like a thousand-meter grids on the map and you have to plot out. So you'll say go. I mean, you're going to sit there and plot out because you got to know where you're going. You can't take off running and not know where you're going first, right? So you plot out. Some people are picky and want to plot it all out while they're thinking well. Other people just plot out the first one and do it while they're on the move. So there's a lot of strategy. I mean, involved. Like, I like to do it on the move. So I get the first place we're going and I'll do the rest while we're, you know, if we're on foot. You can still do the work while you're moving. You wouldn't have to, like, sit and have a nice table and lighting. So there's a lot of strategies that way, I think about it. And so it's, it's pretty fun.

**Marvin Cash (26:14):**
Yeah. Really cool. And so to kind of get to the meat of the matter, when did you decide you wanted to be a fishing guide?

**Mac Brown (26:20):**
Oh, fishing guide. Let's see. That's back when I told the folks around the center in the eighties, like I started doing the first year, I guess who really helped me get launched at that time period. Cause how do you get the word out? And I'm sure a lot of people wonder that even today, they're going to be independent fishing guides, like how they get the word out. And like a little town, like 1,500 people here, it's kind of hard to be like, hey, I'm going to be a fishing guide. But you'd starve to death unless you had a way to get the word out. So I would say Jim Casada, he helped me a great deal in those early years. Like he kept, he'd come meet with me and I'd take him out on the water and then he'd go back and write a big article in like the Gray's Journal or the Angling Report. So I got a ton of press the first five years just because he was fostering that press. I mean, at that time for me. And then you'd stay busy because of his efforts. And if it wasn't for him doing that, I probably wouldn't have been a fishing guide long in the early years. Yeah. Because it would have been tough to get started.

**Marvin Cash (27:14):**
Yeah. And so for people that don't know, he grew up in the Bryson City area. And I guess his family lived in the park before it was the park, right?

**Mac Brown (27:20):**
That's right. Yeah. And he loves to fly fish. Jim does. So it was kind of a great, great relationship, you know, having him come up. And when I met him for the first time, he really helped me get started. I'm still really indebted to Jim from that time period.

**Marvin Cash (27:37):**
Yeah. And did you, you know, obviously since there weren't any guides here, but you know, there were guides out West, did you figure it out on your own or were you like reaching out to people that were guiding in other places in the country and other places in the world and being like, how do you do this? How does it work? Or were you just kind of building it yourself?

**Mac Brown (27:51):**
I kind of did it the way I thought it should be done. I think more so, um, like we have a DH program, like most of the guiding in those early years was on the Delayed Harvest on the upper. And you're going to have like March brown hatches and Baetis hatches and all kinds of things. And so you're kind of just showing people, look, this is going on. This is what we need to do and showing them how you fish specifically that particular hatch. And then always what would happen back then, like I say, casting defines a sport. So even from the very get go, I always spent time on the field first. And then you read a lot about people, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, let's just to the river and you get to the river and you realize, man, you really should have taken the casting lesson. Cause I wasn't kidding. It's like, now you need it. Now you don't know how to do it. So you deal with a lot of personalities, you know, they, they wanted to get right to the entertainment thing quick, you know? So it's just funny when I look back, cause some of them became really serious students and went a long way. The ones that started to realize the appreciation of what you're trying to give them, but it's, it's, it's a, I guess a personal decision for everybody. You know, there's, there's going to be people that are intrigued to reason stuff out and there's people that are just fools. And I'm in the sport's littered with both. Yeah, I'd be on, I mean to be honest, I mean I can't say that it's all just smart people because I don't believe it is.

**Marvin Cash (29:08):**
Yeah, no, it's it's an interesting place for sure. And just to let folks know, obviously you know you guide around here but you've guided other places. Can you kind of give us a survey of all the places that you've guided and kind of maybe end up with kind of where you guide now that you're...

**Mac Brown (29:22):**
Yeah, I'm here mostly. I mean, because I have a 13 year old and 10 year old. And before I had, before we had Connor I mean I'd spend a lot of time out of the country and out west and I lived in, in the winter times I used to go to New Zealand a lot. I stayed down there for like 12 years and I enjoyed being there probably better than anywhere that I've ever worked. And most of the people that I guided when I was down there were all from Europe. I think I only had maybe three Americans ever. But it's so easy to get the Europeans you know down there. A lot of Austrian, a lot of people from Belgium, Germany, Switzerland. And I really enjoyed doing that just because it was different but so similar to here as well. I mean the difference was you had a lot of sea run brown trout which we don't have any sea run brown trout living in Bryson City. But where I felt really at home working down in New Zealand was the most similar to here with foliage, lots and lots of trees, lots of diverse currents. And it was just it was like I was in Appalachia but the fish were way bigger.

**Marvin Cash (30:22):**
Yeah, that's why I liked it. So it was kind of like technical fishing with bigger fish.

**Mac Brown (30:27):**
That's right. Technical with bigger. And that's always a good thing. So I think out of all the places that was still my favorite, because that's the one thing about out West. I love going out West, you know, short term would go out every year and it's like, I do miss the trees though. You get out there and it's like not a tree in sight for hundreds of miles. I mean, I love to visit. Like I say, I'd have a hard time living though where there's no trees.

**Marvin Cash (30:47):**
Yeah. And so you know where do you guide around Bryson City? I assume you probably got in the park, you probably got on the Tuck, right?

**Mac Brown (30:57):**
Yeah, a lot on the Tuckasegee, Delayed Harvest, a lot of it on Deep Creek. I like to go in the park streams quite a bit. I don't really think it matters. I mean, I know to this consumer it matters because you know they're always looking for like oh look at this and it's like some private water with like you said earlier with a big marble. But to me, as far as what we're really trying to do is teach techniques and get people to an appreciation of what they're going to do when they go out and solve a problem on their own. And to do that, I don't care if it's Scotts Creek in the middle of downtown Sylva, I could do the lesson the same way there as I could on Deep Creek or the Nantahala or New Zealand. So people always look for the, you know, gear is the same way. People like to look for the holy grail of gear, the holy grail of water, the holy grail of one to have the most perfect experience. Yet we still have a lack of practice. So really it doesn't matter what they look for until they wake up and smell the roses and realize they need that. That's what they need. They just don't know it yet.

**Marvin Cash (31:50):**
A lot of them. Yeah, no, absolutely. And so, you know, how many days, you know, I know it varies year to year, but how many days do you usually spend on the water a year?

**Mac Brown (31:57):**
Oh, that varies too. Before kids, it was like, I'm sure way higher. But I spend a lot of time coaching my boys in different sports and cross country. Right now the oldest one's in cross country. I've coached them both in basketball every winter since they were three years old. It's just like all that stuff pulls against the other time constraint. But I'm not sure. Just guiding. Like now I'd say it's easily two-thirds of the year I'm on the water with either the guide schools or trips or something. I mean, I don't go as, I know I don't go as much today as I did when I was young. Cause I'm, when I do it, I'm always pretty much working more than I am. Right. You know what I mean? Getting to go out and here's Marvin fishing on a day off. Like I don't get a lot of day offs.

**Marvin Cash (32:45):**
Yeah. No, you're, you're a busy guy for sure. And you know, to kind of talking about what people would expect when they fish with you and you have a, you know, it's a different day on the water with Mac Brown, right? Cause it's much, you're trying to have much more of a teaching focus than a, let's just go bang a ton of fish and you know everybody goes home and you may or may not learn right to be a better fisherman.

**Mac Brown (33:03):**
So talk a little bit about how that changes the guide day. Well, I do like the teaching aspect of I mean I feel like I can save somebody quite a bit of time by laying down at least what their what their goal is by talking about it with what they're trying to accomplish. And I think that that really helps the day go along, you know, a little bit better. And you want them to have fun, but you want to lay down something that there's a lot of things that are complex in our sport. And I think the complexity of a lot of these things can be said in a simplistic manner to get people motivated. Because you don't want to overwhelm them. I could go in like way deep, how a line and rolls and start talking about skin drag and stuff that's just going to make their eyes roll back. And they're going to be like, wow, this is going to make them quit. You know what I'm saying? But you can say these things in a way about why is it important? Why you need to at least get a little bit proficient at this skill. And it's going to pay off huge dividends for them, you know? So I think to bring that to the table, if they're ready for it, not everybody's ready for it. So it just depends. Every day is a little bit different.

**Marvin Cash (34:12):**
Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's interesting too, because I can remember when I used to coordinate the Project Healing Waters program, I had a really hard time having those guys tell guides what they wanted from the day. Right. Right. Because, you know, to your point, like you can go and say, well, I want to catch 40 fish. Well, that's a different thing versus I want to go catch three really nice fish.

**Mac Brown (34:33):**
Oh, yeah. Because everybody has a different.

**Marvin Cash (34:34):**
Yeah. Or I want to work on a technique. And I can't let you go. I always ask all of my guiding guests to share what they think the biggest misconception people have about the life of a fishing guide.

**Mac Brown (34:47):**
Right. Yeah, I think that's living the dream. I mean, everybody's, oh, you're living the dream. But I don't know. You get a lot of personalities just like in every other life job, you know, that people might have and commitments. And some days are phenomenal. You know, you come home, you've been, man, I really got, you know, a lot done. That person really, you got a lot of things across because they were receptive and really wanting to do it. And other days you ask them if you want to fix your tailing loop that's getting you knotted every 50 percent. And they're like, no. So you're going to tie knots all day. So it depends on the person, you know. Those days you don't come in feeling like King Kong as much because all you did is tie knots. And they don't want to get rid of it. So it's kind of funny when you get somebody like, it's done as long as I've done. And then they tell you no. And I've had people tell me no. No, this is the way I've done it 40 years and I'm happy with it. Yeah. I'm like, okay. So what you do with those people, I'll take it one step further though, just so those people know if they're listening, those kind of people, that what we do as a guide is we do what the client wants to do. Does that make sense? And if your goal is to catch fish and you're casting so pathetic that you can't get it out, but 50% of the time without being knotted, I'll say, Marvin, just bring out 60 feet of line from your rod. Put the anchor down. I'll take the boat and ferry at a different angle of slow, medium, and fast. And I'll watch the line rise when your strike happens. And I'll pull on the oars and catch the fish for you. And five seconds later, you'll say, I've got one. And that's the kind of thing we have to do with those kind of people. But it's not because we want to do it. But you have an expectation and we still got to meet it. And if you're not willing to meet it yourself, then the guide will try to do it for you.

**Marvin Cash (36:19):**
Yeah, it's interesting, too, because, you know, I always think you you epitomize a lifelong learner and educator. And so, you know, it's you know, and it's interesting, too, as you've talked about trying to, you know, you have your family and your boys. And so you have different commitments and you have to change the way you relate to the sport. And one of the ways you've done that is, you know, you've created your guide school. And, you know, you know, I think anyone that's listening understands that you have a different way of thinking about how the world works and peeling the onion. How is your guide school different from other guide schools? And what is it that you try to do differently in your approach?

**Mac Brown (36:59):**
Right. I think, well, the guide school really is. I mean, it's a hard dilemma even to call it guide school because 50 percent of the people just want to improve. And that's the people that have worked all their life in a certain field and they're getting ready to retire. And they just want to make up for the 30 years they've been working at something else. So that's probably half the class. And the other half of the class says, yeah, I want to be a fishing guide because it's cool and I'd be living the dream. So it's like you're still knocking out the same two things, even though their goals are different and where they are in life. But I would say self-improvement for those that want to get on the journey to put time on the water and at least have an idea what they're trying to do. And there's an itinerary on the Fly Fishing Guide School website that talks about what all that entails. But, I mean, it's pretty vast. I had a bunch of bullet points here, but there's like 40, 50 bullet points. Yeah. I don't think the listeners want to hear.

**Marvin Cash (37:53):**
Probably not. Probably not.

**Mac Brown (37:54):**
Bullet point after bullet point.

**Marvin Cash (37:55):**
Probably not bullet point after bullet point. But I guess, you know, the class is what? It's a week long.

**Mac Brown (38:00):**
Right.

**Marvin Cash (38:01):**
And it covers, you know, it's kind of like a broader version, I think, of your casting schools, right? So you're talking about bug behavior. You spend some time on how to row a boat. You talk about, you know, how to deal with clients and that's stuff like, you know, how to deal with the client who doesn't want to learn or the client who won't listen or, you know, how to take pictures. Right. And then you spend some time on casting. But that's kind of the the gist of it is to kind of do that kind of broad based to your point kind of catch up or foundation to bring people like if you've been on a desk for 30 years and you just want to get them caught up.

**Mac Brown (38:35):**
And so we always do the first day. I mean, everyone we've done has always done casting the full first day. That's how strongly, you know, say there's six days, I believe that strongly in casting. Because you've got to realize if they've done something like a computer programmer for 30, 40 years, their casting is not going to be what it needs to be, much less to be helping others and diagnose and fix faults. So we really hammer casting on that first day. And a lot of them are like, when are we going to go to the water? I mean, they're just like a client on that first day I got in 87 of when we go into the water, like they're so impatient, they don't want to spend 20 minutes casting. So, you know, if that's, I just tell them, look, you'll see it. Just stick with the program. You'll see why. And then once you get them doing it, then all of a sudden you'll see a change in that behavior. Once they start to appreciate like why they're doing it the full day, you know what I mean? Cause they realize, Hey, I got all these things and I don't know why they're occurring. So hopefully you've made them curious enough to where they'll pursue it.

**Marvin Cash (39:29):**
Yeah. And then they appreciate why they need it. They start their own lifelong journey. Right. And, you know, you've done the same thing in the casting world because I know you also have these very intensive casting weekends. And, you know, I think people can't listen to this interview and not understand that you have a different way of thinking about casting. And I know that it's not geared, for example, towards passing the Federation test. But, you know, how, how taking kind of those Newtonian principles and the technical articles you mentioned about, I guess, you know, the whip behavior. How does that create a different casting curriculum and what would people expect if they came to that class?

**Mac Brown (40:10):**
Well, the the big part of it, I think, is having other innovators that teach the class, you know, most of them we've always had like Eric Cook out of Atlanta, Tom Rueping. There's a lot of different master instructors from the Federation that I like to teach it with. And I think the big thing that separates it, other than just saying that the model or the foundation of the underlying theory behind it, is we're trying to teach intent to fish. I'm not trying to teach a rubric to just pass a CI or an MCI or a two-handed test. So we're trying to teach things that will make you better at solving problems for yourself. The only way to do that is first to give you an appreciation of why do we have intent? I mean, well, you might want to miss an underlying branch, but you might need a curve cast or you might need a pile cast. You might need a tuck cast. I mean, people show up and they don't have the ability to do any of these things. So if we know there's an appreciation of intent, yet we don't have any skill sets to meet those consistently, then it makes it pretty easy to say, well, here's what we're going to do is we got our own set of rubric that we're going to teach that gives you control to do these things. Not only to do them because we're not just training a chimp but we want you to understand how it works and that's the big difference I think about the casting class because it just look at go to YouTube go to any Vimeo wherever you want to look and just watch casting and you'll see the what where and when all the time. A good example we talked earlier when when you got here like today, Marvin, we're going to learn to roll cast because we use a roll cast on the water when there's a tree in back. How many thousands of times have you heard that same rubric for a roll cast? Is it working? No. Why do we have a country with pathetic roll casters still? If that was working with the hundreds of videos on the roll cast, we'd see a nation that's great at roll casting. The reason we don't have that is we don't have people talking about the how it works and the why. And that's what I love about the classes. We're bringing the how it works and why. I'm just using the roll cast as an example. But I think it's one of the better casts to talk about and address because it is a better indicator of one's ability to accelerate and move the rod. So if you've got a really bad acceleration, your roll cast is probably going to look a little funky getting out. Does that make sense? So then it makes you realize right away why you need to listen to what we're getting ready to go into. And that's easy to do. Just let them all get up and make a roll cast to start with and be like, man, it looks like the day you started. It's not any better.

**Marvin Cash (42:35):**
Yeah.

**Mac Brown (42:35):**
Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. That's the way to bring this rubric then about intent of why do we need to learn how to do these things a little better? Whether that's you want to take the journey of getting certified or whatever, that's up to you. But I like to teach the intent really more behind why do we do these things when we fish?

**Marvin Cash (42:54):**
And so I think given your approach, it's really, you know, equally applicable for the beginning angler as it is for the more experienced angler. Do you find that it's easier with the beginners because you get the early buy-in on the foundation? You don't have to break the bad habits. Is that probably?

**Mac Brown (43:08):**
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Kids and women, too. Yeah, kids and women all day long. Yeah. No, I mean, that happens. I mean, you get somebody that if they've got 20 years of malignation, of wrong malignation of a fault, that's going to be really hard to change. So, I mean, the quickest thing you'll do with a grown man that's done it with his default, everybody has a default. Just some have it more correct than others. Right? I mean, so there's good, bad, and ugly default. But if we got a little bit more of the other, the last one I said, then what we're going to do is probably have you cast with the other hand. Because we're going to have to get your other hand involved because your other one's so programmed. And you can do it. I mean, it's easy to just have them switch. But I think that's a big part of it. Really, that's the sad thing when I think about the casting stuff. It's just so many people had the wrong, they drank the wrong Kool-Aid at the origination. And if it's not working still, then hopefully they get smart enough to realize that they've been following their own Kool-Aid all this time.

**Marvin Cash (44:06):**
Yeah.

**Mac Brown (44:07):**
That kind of makes sense to you?

**Marvin Cash (44:09):**
No, it absolutely makes sense. And, you know, you've had a long career in the sport, you know, and I think I sort of I think I know how you're going to answer this. But what do you think are some of the some of the biggest changes that you've seen from, you know, the early 80s to today in fly fishing?

**Mac Brown (44:30):**
I think what we've been talking about personally. Yeah. I think the regression, to be honest, when I got into doing casting demos at shows and like a lot of the public appearance things where we have big crowds, you'd see people step on the pond. I'm not saying like the instructors, they had to be instructors, but you'd see people get up there that had a pretty good, like really nice, smooth, beautiful cast already. And now it's stuff, when I'm going around and doing shows, I'll do a lot of shows this winter again. It's just like people get up there and just flail. So I think there's been a big regression, to be honest, in the casting from when I was getting involved in the 80s, early 90s to now. And here it is 30 years later. We're not better as a country. We're seeing more and more pathetic casters. So why do we see that?

**Marvin Cash (45:18):**
Yeah.

**Mac Brown (45:18):**
Where is it coming from?

**Marvin Cash (45:19):**
And do you think that that's a, the way the community has changed in the sense of, you know, people trying to learn stuff on YouTube and YouTube's not inherently bad, but you know, it's not the same as like me coming to a park and hanging out with you and a couple other guys and working on casting. Do you think that's what's making it?

**Mac Brown (45:39):**
I don't know. I really don't know why. I mean, it's the same dilemma having kids. So I know that to talk about how to social media and different things influence it. I think there's just, it's really hard to watch video if you don't know what to look for. Like if you're new to it, I mean, you might watch a hundred videos and you get a little bit of a hundred different questions in your head and you're like, well, that guy was, you know, you might see somebody that kinesthetically can do it. This is the problem really about teaching kinesthetic sport is like, Because somebody does something well doesn't mean that what they're saying has anything to do with what they're really doing. I know it sounds silly, but I could do things when I was 15 years old that I didn't even begin to understand. But because I could do it, I could have said, Marvin, the sky is blue and it might fall later. And that's why this works. But that wouldn't have been the right.

**Marvin Cash (46:25):**
Yeah. And then you have plenty of people that say the right thing, but they do something completely different.

**Mac Brown (46:29):**
Exactly. That do understand it, but then they can't demo it. So really, I think it's harder than people think to talk about both and they're both in line and congruent.

**Marvin Cash (46:37):**
Yeah. And, you know, kind of a follow up on that, you know, you've been around the sport long enough to think about legacy. Right. So I know you've been inducted into the Southern Appalachian Fly Fishing Hall of Fame and other accolades you have. But, you know, you're in your mid 50s. How do you want to be remembered in the sport in 40 or 50 years?

**Mac Brown (46:57):**
I guess as long as we got 50 years still, Marvin, I'll take it. All right. To have fun with it. I mean, most of the best memories in my lifetime still, well, some of them were from the racing years in new spots, but a lot of them are from fly fishing memories etched, and I'm just thankful my boys will carry it on because I started both of them with a lot of this casting madness when they were just two and three years old in the winter. Before they were in pre-K would sit in the living room on snow days and things and you've got them all day. I'd be working on articles or something and have them just do drills and games and have fun. So I'm sure there'll be able to talk about a lot of the things that can carry that on. You know what I mean? I'm sure they won't be Kool-Aid drinkers. I can, I'm positive of that.

**Marvin Cash (47:43):**
Yeah. I think that's probably a pretty safe assumption. Yeah. So you want to share some projects you're working on, let our listeners know about those.

**Mac Brown (47:53):**
Sure. But probably the biggest one, well, it's still kind of the back burner, but I've been working on it for a little over 10 years as The Triad. And it's a book that, that I've been excited to put together. It talks a lot about techniques and tactics and strategies and how we use those. You were asking, well, what about casting? Well, really, I think once you got casting and it's all about tactics and techniques you choose to use for the water type you're given, then the strategies of how you're going to work that most efficiently. So I'm excited putting that together. It's just that the constraints of timing and shows and family and this one's taking a lot longer than when I put the first one, you know, together for me. But it'll be pretty vast, I think, when I get it done. And I'm also working on an app for the guide school itinerary and I'm looking forward to getting that done. We're starting a northwest two-day advanced casting school as well in 2020 that's going to be the same itinerary that we teach here in Bryson. So I want to get one in the West Coast, have a West Coast, East Coast school.

**Marvin Cash (48:57):**
And that's the one you were talking about doing with Gary Borger?

**Mac Brown (49:00):**
Right.

**Marvin Cash (49:00):**
Yeah. And, you know, obviously we're on the cusp of trout fishing season in the Southern Appalachians, and we'll be doing that, but show season will be here right before you know it. Right. So I'm sure you've been making plane ticket plans. You already know what your dance card looks like for the first quarter of 2020. You want to let folks know where they can find you on the road?

**Mac Brown (49:21):**
Well, I'm off to Denver this next week to do an FFI event, and we have a women's advanced workshop here in Bryson on November 16th, and they can find information on that at the museum or email myself for information. And after that, it starts off in January in Denver, then the Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival, Marlboro, Edison, Atlanta, Pleasanton, the Texas Fly Fishing and Brew Festival, and we'll have an advanced class the day before all of those shows. Those will be an advanced, and it's limited to like six people, I believe, all those shows. And so it'll be a full like eight-hour, same thing we do during the two-day school, but condensed into eight hours on the day before all of those events.

**Marvin Cash (50:05):**
Yeah, and I'll drop links to all of those in the show notes so people will be able to find them and sign up.

**Mac Brown (50:10):**
Okay, that'd be great.

**Marvin Cash (50:11):**
Yeah, and before I let you hop, I know you're not a big social media guy, but why don't you let folks know where they can find you on the Internet so they can learn more about your guide school, your casting school. But also, I mean, I know you, obviously you guide, but you also do private casting lessons. So where can they find all that info?

**Mac Brown (50:27):**
They can find the information on trips and lessons and schools all on. The guide school is on flyfishingguideschool.com. And then Mac Brown Fly Fish is the website I use for all of my articles. There's a lot of articles on teaching and casting and strategies and things like that. There's like 150 articles. I kept those from back when we did the college class at Western and just revamped them. And so you got to use that. It's complicated. You got to go to the side where it says categories and it'll bring up a bunch of topics and people can click on and read, you know, whatever article they're looking at.

**Marvin Cash (51:03):**
Super cool. Well, I'll drop all those in the show notes. And Mac, I really appreciate you carving some time out for me.

**Mac Brown (51:08):**
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Marvin.

**Marvin Cash (51:10):**
Yeah, it's gonna be fun. And, you know, we're gonna have you back. I just wanted to have a good kind of the life of Mac Brown interview. And we can come back and we can talk about all sorts of casting and fishing stuff later. Because as I've told many people, you've forgotten more about fly fishing than I'll ever know in my entire life.

**Mac Brown (51:27):**
I don't know about that, Marvin, but I appreciate you having me today. And I look forward to doing some more with you.

**Marvin Cash (51:33):**
Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks so much. Tight lines, everybody. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, a shout out to tonight's sponsor, the Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival. Go to www.vaflyfishingfestival.org to get all the details, or you can check it out on our events page as well. If you liked this episode, I'd really appreciate it if you could give us a review in iTunes and either subscribe in the podcatcher of your choice or give our mobile apps a try. Tight lines, everybody. Thank you, everybody.