S6, Ep 130: Casting in Color: Mac Brown's Fall Fly Fishing Strategies

Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Flower, back with another casting angles with Mac Brown.

Mac, how are you?

I'm doing great.

How you doing, Marvin?

As always.

Just trying to stay out of trouble.

And we were talking before we started recording, you were telling me that you've already got.

You're on the other side of peak fall foliage in the Bryson City area.

Yeah, I think it is.

I think the peak was probably late in the week, know, Thursday, Friday last week.

And it's still really colorful and lots of good colors to be seen.

But I think we've seen the best of it thus far.

So I think it's about to get windy and maybe have some of them come down soon.

Yeah.

Which kind of gets us on our fall topic, which is, you know, some people, it bugs them so much they don't even fish this time of year.

It's kind of like having moss and grass on the Big Horn out west, but dealing with leaf litter on the bottom and on top of the water and kind of how to get out there and catch a few without going nuts.

That's right.

Yeah.

I mean a big, a big part of it is too just the tactics of what people choose, you know, like when, once the leaf litter starts, probably the easiest thing to stay with is to stay up top, you know, stay on.

There's a lot of good orange, orange color with dry flies this time of year like an orange palmer or a orange stimulator and avoid trying to pull things against leaves, you know, like wet fly.

Not a good idea.

Streamers even the worst idea because you got a bigger hook, you pulling it in, you're going to get leaves every, every cast.

So you can actually fish with a lot of leaf litter with single dry when you're doing it correctly without hanging a lot of leaves.

And one of the, one of the tricks there is we'll use a circle pick up a lot and that'll make the leaf fall off as soon as you go to pick the fly out of the water.

But the other thing is going for those drag free long floats with leaf litter, you're not going to pick up leaves if you're flowing the same speed as the leaves are.

So, you know, if people are complaining about getting lots of leaves fishing a dry fly, chances are the drift is not Drake free, you know, so that's a good thing to think about.

So it's probably a good educational teaching tool having leaves this time of year.

Yeah.

So talk about the circle pickup.

Is that different than the roll cast Pickup.

Yeah, we just take the rod tip, and so you're following your drift rods, following along where the drift is.

And when we get ready to pick it up, we just act like your fingers inside it or the tip, we just draw a little small circle, like inside of a mason jar with your finger from the.

From the butt end of the rod, and it just sends a spiral going down the line.

Like that little circle will transmit all the way down through the leader to where the fly is.

And when it gets near between the nail knot and depending on how long your leader is.

So that's not really a good thing to say, the nail knot, but when it gets down near the fly end, then we go into our back cast.

And what it does, does a couple things.

One, if it's leaf time, it's going to make the leaf fall off right on the pickup.

And the other thing it does, it drives the fly, because the fly is going to come through that same circle that you initiated when you go into tension up for the back cast.

So it comes through that little circle at a really high rate of speed, and all the water's flung out of it.

On the pickup, this is pretty simple.

Just sit and draw little circles with your finger, left or right.

Doesn't matter which way.

As far as in general open water, if you're fishing a fly downstream, you'd always do the circle towards the end, towards the middle of the river.

But if you're doing it on something big, like the tuck of cg, it's not going to matter.

Pick it up whatever way knocks you out, you know?

Yeah.

And I would say, you know, one thing in the fall, and I learned this lesson the hard way, is, you know, even if you are a comfortable wader and you don't need it for the waiting conditions, it's kind of nice to have a waiting staff this time of year because I've stepped in places that I thought, you know, might have been a foot, maybe 18 inches deep, and it ended up going on up to my chest and getting wet.

And that's no fun either.

Oh, especially on the cold mornings.

Coming up in November, that can put a damper on the day for sure.

But yeah, that's good advice.

You know, either knowing really well where you are, I mean, if you go to the same, like where I live, real close to the creek.

I mean, I fish that so much.

I know kind of where deep or not deep, but it's like on bigger waters or unfamiliar waters.

Yeah, I think that's a good tip, you know, to Have a, have a staff to have something that can kind of fill along the bottom with.

To see where it's going to drop off.

Yeah.

And I think it's also too, you know, as we get into.

Gets chillier in the fall and into the wintertime, I think it's not a horrible idea to, you know, at a minimum keep a, a change of clothes or at least another pair of socks in the car because if you get wet, you know, you can get really chilled and, you know, that's something.

And I would say, you know, I always have a survival kit in my sling pack with a space blanket and stuff like that in case I'm, you know, way away from the car and, you know, something bad happens or I become inadvertently stupid.

You know, I can get the space blanket out and you know, have some matches and stuff if I actually need to have a fire.

Oh, yeah, no, it's a good idea because.

Yeah, it gets cold.

We're going, we're going in after I go to Arkansas next week and we're taking the kids in there because Connor's out still from school for a while with the, with, with Asheville.

You know, because Asheville got hit so hard with the hurricane, they're out until the first of the year.

It's online classes only for college.

And so, so both of them are like, great to get to go back country, you know, camping.

So we're looking at the week of like 15th, 16th, going back in there on that, that weekend.

And that'll be a lot of fun.

But I like going in there, like when it gets cooler like that.

It's, it's a lot of fun camping in that kind of weather.

Yeah.

And you were, we were talking too and it kind of, you know, you were talking about a tip for, you know, where sometimes the big fish like to hang out when there's a lot of leaf litter in the water.

Yeah.

That mainly looked for the swirls like in the high, low pressure indifference where you have these big seams.

And you'll see lots of times when the leaves get heavy on the water.

It actually helps people's water reading ability.

Huge.

Because when the leaves are in the water, you'll see these revolving depending on which side of the river we're talking.

But the back swirl will either be counterclockwise or clockwise of the leaf litter and in the middle of that, of that circle, it's like the eye of the storm.

It's always clear so that there won't be any leaves in about a 2 to 3 foot area just smack smack dab in the middle of all that leafs going around and around.

And those fish will sit underneath that.

Cause that's the only window of the surface when the leaves get big.

And that should happen in the next eight, 10 days.

Those are really ideal times.

It makes it super easy to figure out where you're going to fish.

And actually the dry fly is underrated a lot in the fall.

I mean a lot of the people that influenced me as a young, you know, a young kid in East Tennessee and over here, like with Jimmy Estus and a lot of good mentors that I got, you know, to fish with a lot when I was 20 years old.

Now I'll be 61 in November.

So that was 41 years ago.

But that's what they look forward to all, all season is that time of year with the.

Just what we're talking about with the leaf litter and fishing only a dry fly.

And that can be one of the funner times of the year for sure.

Up top.

Yeah.

It's also a good trick like you know, on bigger water like out west, not in the fall, but like in the summertime when you get that, you know, kind of that foam or scum in the back eddies.

Right.

You know, it's a lot of sun protection.

Right.

And so a lot of times big fish will sit under that and you can either, you know, fish a dry in it or you can pull a streamer under it and you can sometimes get a really nice surprise.

Oh, that's what I like.

I've got a lot of good memories, you know, up in the park over the years.

During that time of year, just fishing the swirls and I mean I'll go up, I might skip hundreds of yards of water just to find that kind of a condition, you know, with the big swirl and that's usually where that's usually pretty much high probability location for that to happen.

You know, that's what makes it fun.

It makes it really easy to find them too.

So yeah, it's one of my favorite times of the year for sure.

Marvin.

It's just the coloration.

I mean it's just so, so gorgeous the colors overall.

And then to be on the water too.

Like we did a couple hour hike with Jennifer today and we didn't, we didn't fish at all.

But we just walked up, up Forney Creek up high and it was just gorgeous.

Up along the creek.

The colors are just, they're still really good.

Yeah.

And it's interesting too.

Right.

So we're at the end of October, what, in two weeks you're going to be heading to.

Heading to Arkansas, right?

Yeah, I think I'm going to go actually this.

Probably go down there Sunday.

I talked to, I talked to another buddy that's working down there that he's been out here several times.

He comp fished a lot, named Mike Sexton.

And so I'm gonna go early because Mike's got to work.

Well, I can't play anyway on the weekend when I talk to the club, I think it's the 8th and 9th, or maybe it's the 9th and 10th.

I'd have to look at the calendar.

But the two days that I'm talking to the club, of course I can't fish and do that too.

And I think he's working that weekend.

So I'm going down early to go have some, some days on the white.

I'm sure that'll be gorgeous down there right now, too.

So I'm going to go a little bit early because I'm driving down and if I'm going to drive 12 hours to and from, I like to have four or five days to kind of, you know, that's where I started as a kid.

I don't remember if we've ever said that on the podcast, but that's.

My granddad had a place there in Mountain Home when I was little and that's where I first started really fly fishing was the Ram Mountain Home.

Yeah.

And you're gonna get to spend some time with, with Davey Watton, you know, and it's kind of interesting because, you know, Davey, when he winds down his fishing season, then he's an upland, you know, bird guide.

So you'll get a few days on the water with him.

Oh, yeah, that's going to be fun.

We might even go do some of that and might do a little bit of bird.

There's a lot of that going on right now already, so I don't know, we'll just have to play that by ear.

But that's, I'm looking forward to getting down there.

That's going to be a fun, fun trip.

Yeah.

And then to refresh folks on your show schedule, you're doing all the forensic shows except for Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and what else have you got on the calendar.

In the Great Water fly Fishing Expo, St.

Paul, Twin Cities, and that'll be in March, and I'm sure there'll be some more too.

But that's right now it's pretty full through March, so I don't, I don't know When I say get full, it'll be after that.

The many other ones that come in after, after March, I'm sure.

But I don't have many weekends that first couple months, so I'm sure I'm not going to add many on the weekends because they're already pretty well, you know, committed to that.

And I'm looking forward to starting the one out up in Marlboro and then Edison.

That'll be a fun week up, you know, Marlboro and then go to Edison for that.

And then I have to look at the schedule even.

I think Atlanta's after that.

Think Atlanta's the what, the 1st of February, around the 1st.

Let me look here.

Yeah.

And then Denver and, and then, you know, the other thing, too is because I've been watching this on social media.

All of your classes at the fly fishing shows with Gary, the link for the signups are already up.

Okay, great.

Yeah, that's.

That's good.

That's.

I hadn't even looked.

You're ahead of me, Martin.

But that's good.

That's.

That's a good thing.

I think the one will be fun in Marlboro.

Gary.

Gary's not doing the Marlboro one, but Christopher rounds from Switzerland, he's coming over to teach that one with me.

And so I'm really looking forward to spending the day, you know, with Chris.

And he's been.

He's been doing that for a really long time throughout Europe.

And he's one of the few people that I know that do a pretty similar occupation to myself, you know, so it's going to be fun learning tricks off one another.

Yeah.

And, you know, so I'll try to remember to drop a link to the class signups in the show notes.

And you know, folks, as I always say, yo, it to yourself to get out and catch a few because when it's cold in February and you're not fishing, you're going to wish you got out, you know, here in the next two or three weeks.

Tight lines, everybody.

Tight lines, Mac.

Tight lines.

Marvin.