S6, Ep 141: Mastering Cold Weather Fly Fishing with Mac Brown

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly. And we're back with another casting angles with Mac Brown. Mac, how are you?

I'm doing great. How you doing, Marvin?

As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. And you know, we were talking before we started recording, you know, we had a.

We've had a pretty good cold snap in the southeast and it's warmed up a little bit, but we're going to get another cold snap around Thanksgiving. And we thought it'd be good to talk to people about, you know, kind of that shift from late fall into early winter fishing and what that means.

Yeah, I mean, the collision of fall into early winter always is a. Is a fun time. I mean, we still got some few trees left with some leaves. Most of them have fallen off. But a lot of things will start changing when it.

With these cold snaps that are coming up. I mean, we had a little snow here last week, which was nice. Yeah. Turned all the mountains, you know, everything laid big up over 3,000ft.

We had maybe an inch or so here at the house. But yeah, I kind of, I'm kind of ready to see some cold changes and what that brings with the different hatches and strategies when people go out.

You know, it makes it kind of fun once it turns colder like that.

Yeah. And so you know what we'll start to see. Right. As it gets colder, you know, trout are going to move into slower water as it gets really cold.

They're going to move into deeper pools. And then if it's, you know, super cold, you know, the springs that they were in in the summertime is going to be the warmest water in the wintertime.

And they're going to be there too, right?

Mm, yeah. And the fun part is just all the little tiny. I like to midge fish a lot.

I mean, it's really one of my favorite methods of winter fishing is to dry fly midges in the winter. You know, a lot of good places to do that in this part of the country.

I remember a lot of good times up on the Davidson this time of year when it was really cold. And it's just a lot of fun to sit there and sight fish.

You know, you got 10 or 15 fish that are working up on the top and you can sit and pick out and mark which one you want. And it's just a different kind of thing, doing the little midge game in the winter and picking on those slower moving pulls.

And it can be, it can be a lot of a Lot of challenges, you know, flowing something that tiny. It's just being able to see it at 40, 50ft.

I mean, there's a lot of tricks to do with that and sometimes putting a little, a little bit bigger flying and having your couple of midges off the back of that or sometimes I run them up on the, on the droppers. So, you know, usually people think always of having an indicator fly and then putting everything off on the point of the smaller stuff.

But there's a lot of ways to switch that around and put your indicator fly at the end and have, have your droppers, you know, carry your measures. And a lot of times we run three or four majors to blanket more water as we're gridding off.

So there's a lot of fun tactics to do like that with midge hatches.

And got to be ready for blue winged olives too, right?

Yeah, we should get some good olive hatches. Yeah. The big thing, just keep paying attention to the weather. Like a lot of times people can't choose.

I mean, I can choose because I live right on the creek. But if they can't choose, it's easy to predict.

But if you want to have the best activity of the, of the week, you know, for the week's offering is if you have cold, cold, cold, and all of a sudden there's a bump up in temperature, it only takes a couple of degrees of temperature change. You know, that's going to make it active.

And it's like the fish will get active and respond because you just figure if it's been really cold, the water temp when it gets really low, they're going to be fairly lethargic. They're not going to eat a lot during that kind of time period.

But that first warmer, little warmer day, you'll feel it in the air temperature way more than they feel it in the water. But all it takes in the water is a couple of degrees to bump up warmer.

And that might be the thing that activates it to where you get an actually really good blue wing hatch.

Yeah, and that's another good trick too, you know, in the wintertime is to go find those sunny spots and those rocks where the sun, you know, hits them for a prolonged period of time because the water is going to be just a little bit warmer around those.

Mm. Yeah.

And that's, that's what you'll find a lot is they'll favor that in rivers that have gorges where it's mostly, you know, hid like the land of the noonday sun. For nantahala and there's a lot of different places up here where I don't think a lot of people realize that that live in the Midwest.

But in the mountain regions there really is a lot of places that they call hollows in this part of the country or little valleys along the river that the sun might only hit in there an hour and a whole day, a whole day of sunlight. You only get one hour of sunlight. Then there's other spots on the river where you might get four hours of sunlight.

So what tends to happen is fish will migrate to those spots that continually stay warmer when it's really cold. And in Nantahala that always happens.

There are certain sections where you get a lot greater sunlight and you'll have just lots and lots of numbers in that one area, you know what I mean? Then you go up to the spots where they migrated from and they're almost barren ash, you know. So that's always kind of interesting how they move.

They're going to move and find where it's most conducive to eat and have metabolic rate to digest that, you know, that meal. And that's kind of the fun part about the puzzle.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting too.

You know, folks, you gotta remember that, you know, you know, it's a little bit different on a tailwater, but if you're on the freestones kind of in our part of the world, you know, this is, this will be the time of the year where there's the least amount of food in the water. Right. So you're not going to see, you know, big sculpin and things like that.

And so, you know, if you're nymphing, you know, one of my tricks in this part of the world is to fish stone flies just because that's a multi year nymph and it's relatively big and it's, you know, makes it worthwhile for some of these guys to kind of move and, and grab one of those.

Lots of calories.

Yeah. And you know, also to know that, you know, the fish are cold blooded and they're not going to move a lot. So you need to be a lot more patient.

You know, you may have to fish over them multiple times. You're really almost going to have to bonk them on the nose most of the time with your flies to get them to eat.

Mm, well, that's really good. Yeah, just to slow down, move at a slower, you know, slower pace. Be thorough, but be slow and.

Yeah, because you can stay a lot of times in the Winter, we'll go down on the creek below the house and we might fish just the same pool for a couple hours and leave, you know, I mean, for like a few hours to cover just that pool. So that makes it, makes it fun because there's. They're still in there. The numbers are there. It's just about repetition that's going to take them.

Yeah.

And if you're not a morning person, this is your time of year because there's no reason to be on the water at 6 o'clock in the morning because you're, you know, your bite window is going to probably be from, I don't know, best bite windows, probably from about 11 to 3. Right.

So you can, you can sleep in, you know, go to the Cracker Barrel, eat a big breakfast and then get on the water and, you know, be home to, to watch a little. Watch a Super bowl or a little college basketball or something like that.

That's right. No, that's, that's good advice, Ed. The most comfortable time of the day, you know, for you to be out.

It's usually the best time of day activity in the winter months. So, yeah, that, that transition's a lot of fun.

Just seeing the seasons change and go through the, go through the winter months and of course, springtime. And just watching all the seasons is actually pretty rewarding just to see how much different it fishes each season, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, it's interesting too because, you know, I think one of the things that I kind of really had this reinforced during COVID is, you know, if you'll fish the same water throughout all the seasons, it'll really help you up your game on the water.

That's right. I agree with that. A lot of people say fish lots of water. I mean, I don't think that's till way later when people get really pretty advanced.

But since most people don't get pretty advanced, I mean, from your studies, you know, that you talk about with the. What was the study the fishing came to say two times a year.

That's not very advanced, you know, so that's kind of like fishing blind if they're only going two days a year. So hopefully this, this talk, Marvin, gets people fired up to maybe go four or six times in a year. You know what I mean?

Yeah, but it's an interesting thing. I mean, we were talking before we started recording. I mean, this is really. A lot of.

This is the foundation of the talk that I do at the fly fishing shows where I talk about, you know, you know, what's the food doing, what's the trout doing and what should you do? And the easiest way to learn that is to, you know, it's one thing to read it in a book, it's another thing to go to a talk.

But the really the way to learn it is to, you know, make a New year's resolution for 2025, to fish the same pieces of water during different seasons throughout the year.

And you'll see, you know, how the flows are different, how the bugs are different, where the fish are, because they're not in the same place in July that there are in January.

That's right. The good thing, let's take it, let's get greedy here and jump to eight days a year and that way we get two days of each season.

And that would be a good goal, you know, for people to really start to see how these seasons and transitions, what it means for them. And I think that would be a great learning, learning.

It helped the learning curve a great deal, you know, just to see that through the year, you know, because of course they all have, they all have their special attributes for those seasons, you know. Yeah, I like that concept. Yeah.

And I would say too, you know, the only other thing I would say in the wintertime is, you know, probably worth taking, you know, an extra set of clothes and at least socks and leave them in the car because, you know, at some point if you do this enough, you're going to get wet and it's pretty miserable to be cold and wet. So, you know, be in a position to be able to get back to the car and change your clothes.

You know, it's interesting too, because Thanksgiving is as late as it'll ever be this year, which means we are, we have a really compressed holiday season, which explains why last weekend everybody was out Christmas shopping and putting up Christmas trees before Thanksgiving.

But what that also means is, you know, we're going to come out the other side January 1, 2025, and you know, you, me and a lot of other folks going to be burning up the, the road and the, the airways going to fly fishing shows.

Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the first one up in Marlboro, Massachusetts and the class.

Christopher Rounds is good friend of mine and lives in Switzerland and he's going to teach the all day class with me in Marlborough and that's going to be fun.

And we have a bunch of other classes and things to do there, but it'll be a lot of fun just to Teach something all day long, like eight hours with him. Because I've never really taught eight hours with them.

I mean, we've talked and taught little stuff here and there, but it's like to teach something that long, I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun for the group and I'm looking forward to all the shows.

Yeah. And so you're going to do all of the fly fishing shows with the Feremskis other than Lancaster, right?

That's correct. And then the Midwest Fly Fishing Expo, Great Waters, what is it? Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo is what they call it up in Twin Cities.

So that, that's going to be towards the third week of March, I think. And that'll be, that'll be a fun show. Cause I like that part of the world a lot.

Yeah.

And you know, also too, the great thing is, and we've mentioned this before, but you know, Ben has had the signups for those day long classes up on the fly fishing show website for probably four to six weeks at this point.

And you know, so, you know, so you know, it's great if you want to buy yourself a Christmas present or if you've got someone who fly fishes and you want to buy that class for them as a Christmas present, you know, you owe it to yourself to get out there and jump on those because you know, Mack, I know I'll say this because you won't say it. You know, those classes fill up, you know, whether it's you and Chris or whether it's you and Gary.

And you know, to me it's one of those great opportunities to really, you know, invest in yourself, get high quality instruction that's, you know, kind of at a, you know, it's kind of like a high potency vitamin. Right. And then to go apply that to your fishing and the following season.

No, I appreciate it. Yeah.

I mean, I, I think it's the best thing people could do is invest in themselves for, for like, if it's something that means something to them, if they want to get better at it. It's tough to get better at it on your own. You know what I mean? It really is from cast into all the stuff we talk about all the time.

I mean, I've had so many good mentors in my life that there's no way I could be where we are today, talking without all the influence and things that I've been taught because people shared with me, you know.

Yeah. And so, you know, I know if folks go to your website, you'll have all that class information.

And then, of course, you know, when you come out of the class season, you know, spring means, you know, classes in Bryson City with Mac, whether it's casting schools or guide schools. Right?

Yeah, Those will start back up, I think, March, when we get back from Pleasanton, that next weekend after Pleasanton is the first school for 25 here. And there's only a couple of spots, I think, left in that one right now. So. So it's, it's. It's been. It's been good. This fall's been good.

People are signing up, looking at doing that again. So I hope they all get filled up before Christmas time. Marvin. And we go into the winter knowing everything's ready.

Yeah. And so, you know, folks, I would say a couple of things.

You know, first of all, western North Carolina and east Tennessee for, you know, the most part, open for business. So the best thing you can do to help these communities, you know, post Helene, is to visit and spend money.

And if you can't visit and spend money, buy gift certificates and gift cards.

And then, you know, the next thing I would say is, you know, in February, when it's cold and miserable, if you're not out fishing for muskie, you're going to wish you were on the water here in late November, early December. So you ought to get out there and catch a few.

And then, of course, later this week is Thanksgiving, and I want to wish everybody tight lines and a happy Thanksgiving. Tight lines and Happy Thanksgiving, Matt.

Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving to you and everybody listening. Marvin.

Take care, everybody.