S6, Ep 44: Perfecting the Cast with Mac Brown's Masterclass Insights
Join host Marvin Cash as he explores the intricate world of advanced fly casting with the expertise of Mac Brown on The Articulate Fly. In this episode, Mac unpacks the mechanics of loops, the importance of movement coordination and the efficiency of full arm casting. As they dissect the subtleties of casting strokes and the role of the wrist, arm and shoulder at varying distances, listeners are treated to a masterclass in technique.
Delving into the history of casting styles, Mac reflects on how the pioneers of fly fishing established methods that remain the benchmark for top casters today. He emphasizes the advantages of a relaxed tempo, the power of a simple squeeze and the surprising outcomes of slowing down one's casting rhythm.
Whether you're honing your short-range accuracy or extending your reach, this conversation is a goldmine of insights. Tune in for a dose of casting wisdom and inspiration, and remember, as Mac and Marvin agree, sometimes slowing down is the key to casting success.
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Marvin: Hey folks it's marvin cash the host of the articulate fly we're back with another
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Marvin: casting angles with mac brown mac how are you i'm.
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Mac: Doing great how are you doing marvin.
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Marvin: As always i'm just trying to stay out of trouble mac brown well.
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Mac: That's a good thing.
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Marvin: Yeah i think so you know and it's interesting you know you just finished up
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Marvin: a uh an advanced casting school you want to
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Marvin: kind of tell folks a little bit about how that went and then we've got a topic
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Marvin: that i kind of came up with while i was doing some casting practice this weekend yeah.
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Mac: It went really good the first day goes over a lot of just how how loops work
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Mac: and what kind of like what the goals,
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Mac: so they can go away you know to look at what they're trying to basically learning
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Mac: to diagnose and learn how to tweak and change what they're trying to do as far
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Mac: as the loop shapes that they're throwing.
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Mac: And we talked a lot about that and go over the fundamentals of basic movement.
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Mac: And a lot of that, that first half of the first day was basically covering that.
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Mac: And that's, that's similar to what, you know, you and I were talking earlier
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Mac: about from what you did practicing the other day.
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Mac: So it might be a good, a good topic just addressing movement.
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Marvin: Yeah. And so, you know, just, you know, for, for folks, you know,
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Marvin: the idea that came to me, I was doing some casting practice this weekend and
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Marvin: had the cones out and, you know, had cones at, you know, 30, 45, 60, 90 feet.
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Marvin: And, you know, I was playing around really, you know, working on kind of the
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Marvin: full arm casting style that we did our class on earlier.
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Marvin: You know, gosh, it was probably, gosh, maybe March. And trying to kind of think
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Marvin: through, you know, obviously at short distances, you need a shorter stroke.
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Marvin: You don't need as much power and kind of trying to work through kind of the
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Marvin: mechanics of you know how far can you go with the wrist how far can you go with
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Marvin: the arm and how far can you go kind of with the shoulder right yeah.
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Mac: Yeah i mean it's like then the the use of how do we coordinate all three of
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Mac: those to complement one another's most i guess the most efficiency would be the best word to say.
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Mac: And that way, when they all fire at the right time period,
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Mac: you know, and using the whole arm, of course, and it's a whole lot easier to
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Mac: just pick it up and being in a very relaxed fashion, just pick it up,
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Mac: stop it at the right place, have the right rate of movement, and then let it go.
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Mac: That right there alone is so efficient that it goes further than most people
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Mac: ever cast, just doing it like super slow motion.
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Mac: And then just imagine if you start to put a little bit of effort with it then
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Mac: it just gets better so yeah I mean it's a lot of this when you first said that,
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Mac: earlier today you know I thought about it when I was,
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Mac: on a hike Marvin and like when it all started like in.
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Mac: But 1858, they figured all this out in the first year. So this isn't like some
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Mac: new rocket science in 2024.
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Mac: You know what I mean? You're not talking. I mean, in England,
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Mac: a lot of the chalkstone strings were so small that a lot of them did cast with just all wrists.
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Mac: And then they started to use tricep and bicep and just pivoting from the elbow,
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Mac: like keep the good book under your elbow at your side.
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Mac: And then they learned real quick that about 1860,
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Mac: with George Selvin Marriott, he basically trained
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Mac: the world and all the tournament scenes for even america
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Mac: i mean about the full-on casting style so i would
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Mac: i would say all this has been around since 1860 but the
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Mac: top casters out there have all done it since 1860 the same way so they figured
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Mac: out full-on was a lot more efficient so so the elbow could move up and down
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Mac: with the full arm and still yield what you you want without the con of saying,
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Mac: now you want to go 40 feet or 60 feet,
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Mac: that it can keep on going in range and go further and further, plus it can go short.
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Mac: And I guess the nemesis to that would be, say, look at somebody that casts a
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Mac: lot with a lot of wrist and keeps the arm very stationary,
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Mac: and they'll find out real quick that they can go 20, 30 feet,
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Mac: pivoting up of a single joint in their body, and then it seems a struggle to go 40.
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Mac: And so the cons become much greater.
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Mac: At a quicker rate once they isolate a small range of motion from the wrist.
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Marvin: Yeah. And so it's almost kind of, it's almost like it's backwards from the way
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Marvin: most of us kind of learned to cast. Right.
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Marvin: And so, you know, I think we were talking before we started recording,
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Marvin: you're really talking about full arm that, you know, it's going to,
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Marvin: what it's going to do is you're going to actually, at close distances,
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Marvin: you can really just use the arm and regulate, you know, how,
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Marvin: how much the elbow moves.
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Marvin: And you don't even really need kind of the, you know, call it whatever you want
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Marvin: to, the squeeze of the rod at the end or pulling with your pinky because you
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Marvin: don't need that power until you need to cast at a greater distance.
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Mac: That's right. Right. And so, yeah, so if the elbow rises and falls,
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Mac: you know, with the full-on casting, say with the casting accuracy,
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Mac: say 20, 30 feet, or a fish rises and you just want to pick it up and reposition
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Mac: it and throw it right in the ring where that fish rose,
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Mac: the elbow might just rise and fall for that range.
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Mac: Of course, a shorter stroke, going to have a shorter pause, going to have a
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Mac: shorter arc. All those things are going to take life.
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Mac: Shorter with everything because we're going short, right? The pause is going to be less time.
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Mac: So the elbow might rise and fall two inches, but the elbow still moved up and down two inches.
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Mac: Then you take that same example and say it goes from 30 to 50.
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Mac: Pause is going to be a little longer. The elbow is going to move four to five inches now up and down.
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Mac: The arc is going to be a little bit bigger because the elbow is moving more up and down.
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Mac: So, I mean, that's kind of how it works. It's just like, let's say now you want to go to seven.
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Mac: Same thing. Now the elbow might come all the way up to the Statue of Liberty,
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Mac: pose, like holding the torch in the harbor.
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Mac: Then when you come all the way back down, the elbow comes all the way back to
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Mac: the side before you pull the pinky.
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Mac: That's the most efficient way to launch something then at a bigger distance.
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Mac: Does that kind of make sense? So the elbow is a variable.
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Mac: The elbow moving up and down with this full arm casting is all variable.
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Mac: I mean, it's still going up. It's just a whole lot easier to...
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Mac: I mean, I've seen a lot of this out here the last couple of weeks.
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Mac: I mean, you'll see people, the elbows kind of sitting in against the side,
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Mac: and it's just all bicep, tricep. And if you think about it, just do it slow
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Mac: motion for those listening.
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Mac: Just grab a rod, move it with your elbow pinned against your side,
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Mac: and you'll see that the whole tip is just drawing this big circular radius.
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Mac: And then just imagine what kind of loops that's going to look like.
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Mac: It's going to be a big circular fly leg.
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Mac: You know, and that's exactly the non-efficiency that we don't want to have in our casting.
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Mac: So I think people, it's kind of self-intuitive once you see that it's coming
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Mac: around a big arc, and you're probably going to, chances are you're going to
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Mac: have a big radius, a rainbow kind of loop going back and forth.
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Mac: And of course, over here in Bryson for the last few weeks, most of what I've
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Mac: seen is that, but then again, does it get the job done?
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Mac: Because a lot of it's, you know, short repositioning of an indicator,
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Mac: a bobber being thrown over the side of the boat 10 feet. So does it matter?
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Mac: Probably not. so i guess we also got to clarify
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Mac: that with what we're talking about is is more about
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Mac: saying what if we want to come down through here like what we did last night
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Mac: and fish dries and wets at 50 60 foot of range then that's where it's going
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Mac: to matter so if we're talking about just bobber something then really all this
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Mac: stuff is a mute point i guess is what i'm saying if you're throwing 10 feet
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Mac: with an indicator and a big bobber then really doesn't matter how you do it
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Mac: because it's not that far right yeah.
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Marvin: But it'll also matter right if you're throwing you you know,
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Marvin: streamers at distance, right, and trying to cover water.
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Marvin: But, you know, one of the interesting things, you know, before we started recording,
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Marvin: Mac, was we were also talking about the importance of tempo.
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Mac: Oh, yeah. Everybody's got too fast a tempo. Why is that, Marvin?
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Mac: Why does everybody want to be in such a hurry?
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Mac: I mean, about every lesson I've ever given, everybody's in a hurry. It's kind of like golf.
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Mac: If you see a golfer and when they're taking a new lesson, brand new golfer,
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Mac: they want to take the club back real fast.
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Mac: What are we going to gain by moving the club and the tempo really fast-paced?
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Mac: That's the biggest mistake in golf as well.
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Mac: It's the biggest mistake in casting. Everybody's off to a race.
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Mac: And one thing that's a very good drill, if people get out and practice in the
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Mac: yard at all with their casting is to really be cautious of trying to learn to be slow,
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Mac: like to try to really slow it down where the tempo can be relaxed.
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Mac: And I think it would shock a lot of the listeners to see how slow they can go
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Mac: and achieve really a pretty good distance, you know, with moving really slow.
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Marvin: Yeah, I think it's interesting. It reminds me of a casting kind of tip I got from Mark Huber.
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Marvin: I think it was actually at the Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival and we
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Marvin: just had maybe 15 or 20 minutes at the hotel,
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Marvin: one day kind of before or after the show and you know his suggestion to deal
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Marvin: with the power issue was to keep casting and keep get a fixed length of line
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Marvin: right so you're not adjusting for that and then to just basically keep casting,
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Marvin: until your loop collapses right and then you know you back up just a little bit,
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Marvin: that that's all the energy you need, right?
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Marvin: Because to your point, a lot of people cast too fast and it sounds like you're
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Marvin: listening to Zorro, right, with a sword.
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Marvin: And that's all wasted energy.
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Mac: Yeah.
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Marvin: Right? Oh, yeah.
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Mac: That's what people don't realize. They think going fast means going far.
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Mac: And I think a lot of that's also some...
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Mac: We'll just have to say that even though this is on full arm casting is that,
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Mac: when you have a loop of line that's unrolling it's one
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Mac: of the few things in life that people will ever do that actually accelerate so
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Mac: if they like you know baseball and guns and golf and all these things those
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Mac: are all projectile motion things to where they actually decelerate so to hit
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Mac: a golf ball further what do you got to do you got to swing faster but in a cast
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Mac: it's not it it's It's not really that way as much because of the way the loop works.
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Mac: There's a lot of mechanics and physics to how a loop unrolls.
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Mac: In other words, a way to say it, though, to make it really easily understood,
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Mac: is the fly is always going faster.
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Mac: As soon as you start the cast, the fly accelerates. It's going faster all throughout
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Mac: the cast until the line straightens in the front.
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Mac: And because of that fact, you
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Mac: can go way, way slower than what most people think when they take this up.
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Mac: And once they get to that point where they understand that it can go that slow
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Mac: they're probably well on their way at becoming fairly elite caster at that point
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Mac: but why not start there at the beginning instead of going too fast the tempo
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Mac: would make it a lot make life a lot easier people yeah.
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Marvin: And i think you know another kind of aha moment right it's when you realize
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Marvin: that you know closing that three or four inch gap between the you know the bottom
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Marvin: of your wrist and in the butt of your fly rod, and you do that.
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Marvin: And, you know, just look at it sideways and see how much tip movement you get
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Marvin: from that. And that just happens in an instant of a second.
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Marvin: And you don't need to power it. You just literally just need to squeeze it.
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Marvin: And, you know, if you do the math, that's a phenomenal amount of tip travel,
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Marvin: but it also equates to a tremendous amount of acceleration.
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Mac: That's right. Yeah, that's what launches the, I mean, gets the fly leg and everything,
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Mac: all the system moving to form, you know, to form the loop.
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Mac: And yeah, but we had some really good folks like this weekend that were just
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Mac: really, really smooth and didn't really rush.
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Mac: I mean, they were already well on their way, you know, being really good at advance control.
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Mac: And it was actually really refreshing to see the amount of smoothness that the folks had.
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Mac: And I didn't really have to go around until people slowed down at all this weekend. can.
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Mac: So that was kind of a nice, nice thing.
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Mac: For sure because the tempo was already there and part of it was from golf the
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Mac: like one of the ladies that was here was lpga golfer for 27 years and of course
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Mac: smooth abilities and tempo and all that was already very well mastered in the
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Mac: game of golf for her so she kind of already had that which was which was nice yeah.
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Marvin: And so you're all done with schools right until the fall.
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Mac: Yeah the next cast in school will do is um in september
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Mac: then we'll just get a lot bunch of little mini weekend type
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Mac: of things for the next couple months still with uh there's
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Mac: a wet fly school streamer school we have little
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Mac: little weekend courses that specify and they kind of go in
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Mac: in depth to just those those topics you know it's not like 50 ways to mend a
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Mac: line or anything like that it's just all about wet fly game and the streamer
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Mac: weekend's all about rates of retrieval and how we how do we fish streamers productively
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Mac: with the different line choices and they cover all of kind of those kinds of topics.
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Mac: And so, yeah, pretty much, pretty much done until fill the one in the, in September.
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Marvin: Yeah. But obviously, you know, great opportunity. If you can come up to Bryson
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Marvin: city with your family, check out one of those classes.
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Marvin: And then of course, you know, I know, cause I talked to you earlier this week,
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Marvin: you're on the sticks guiding folks too.
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Mac: Oh yeah. It's been, yeah, it's starting to be that time of year where people
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Mac: are thinking about being on the water.
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Mac: It's finally greened up. And I think Wednesday, I think tomorrow they're talking
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Mac: about hitting mid-80s, which will be the first warm day we've had like that
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Mac: kind of one, you know, for this year. We've been in the low 70s quite a bit.
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Mac: So that'll be a nice step. And I think it's supposed to be a really nice outlet
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Mac: the next couple of weeks.
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Marvin: Yeah. And so if folks wanted to get more information on any of those offerings,
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Marvin: where should they go, Mack Brown?
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Mac: Oh, mackbrownflyfish.com. That's the easiest. It has all those classes and the
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Mac: menu item up at the top, and it will say specialty classes, and it'll describe
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Mac: the dates for all the different things.
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Mac: That's probably the best place to find it.
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Marvin: Yeah, well, there you go. Well, I'll let you get back to seeing if any bugs
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Marvin: are gonna come off on Deep Creek tonight.
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Marvin: And you know, folks, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
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Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac.
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Mac: Tight lines, Marvin.
Mac Brown
Guide | Casting Instructor | Author
Mac Brown is the owner of Mac Brown Fly Fish and Fly Fishing Guide School in Western NC. Mac created the first full-time fly fishing guide service in Western North Carolina. The first Delayed Harvest on the Upper Nantahala River in early 1993 was also a result of his efforts.
Mac Brown is the author of “Casting Angles” which is a fly casting handbook for those on the journey of understanding the mechanics of the cast. The ACA, FFI, and others have endorsed this text as a reference for instructors as well. Mac is a Master Casting Instructor through the Fly Fishers International.
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