S6, Ep 50: Beyond the Forecast: Mac Brown's Guide to Fishing in Fickle Conditions
Join Marvin Cash and Mac Brown on The Articulate Fly for a new installment of Casting Angles, where they tackle the unpredictable nature of fly fishing. In this episode, they discuss the recent oddities in weather patterns and hatches, and how these changes affect fishing strategies.
Mac shares his firsthand experience of a day on the water when the forecast failed to hold true, and rain persisted despite a 0% prediction. He dives into the adjustments he made on the fly, emphasizing the importance of adapting to overcast conditions and the challenges of enticing fish to the surface when nothing seems to be working.
The conversation takes a deeper turn as they explore the concerning disappearance of the Mother's Day Caddis hatch, a significant event for park streams, and what this could mean for the ecosystem. Mac provides insights into the behavior of these caddis and the impact their absence has on the fishing landscape.
Marvin and Mac also offer valuable advice on how to approach fishing when your usual tactics aren't producing results, including how to read the water, observe other anglers and quickly pivot techniques. They highlight the nuances of fishing wet flies and dries in low light and the importance of using the line hand over the rod when setting the hook.
Whether you're a seasoned angler or new to the sport, this episode of The Articulate Fly is packed with wisdom and tips to help you succeed, even when the fish and the weather aren't cooperating. Tight lines!
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Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
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Marvin: and we're back with another Casting Angles with Mack Brown. How are you, Mack?
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Mac: I'm doing great. How are you, Marvin?
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Marvin: As always, I'm just living the dream. And you know, it's kind of funny,
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Marvin: you know, we had the Northern Lights pretty far south, and I know a lot of people
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Marvin: got excited about that, but we were trying to kind of talk through,
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Marvin: you know, why fishing has been a little bit funky, Right.
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Marvin: Because we kind of got out of that cold weather we had.
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Marvin: But as you noted a couple of weeks ago on your Instagram feed,
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Marvin: this is something we're seeing kind of everywhere that hatches are a little
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Marvin: bit off schedule or not happening.
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Marvin: And, you know, so we thought it would be a good idea to talk to folks about,
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Marvin: you know, what do you do when you go to the water and you think,
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Marvin: you know, what it's going to be like and nothing is the way that you expect it to be.
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Marvin: And, you know, what's the strategy for putting some fish in the boat?
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Mac: Yeah i think that's a good that's pretty much a
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Mac: real a real scenario you know
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Mac: these days and it's like today was zero percent
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Mac: chance of rain and it's like then you add that in there
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Mac: and of course it rained all day and as soon
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Mac: as we put in it rained till we took out at five o'clock and i'm
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Mac: like what happened to that zero percent that was the
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Mac: latest doppler forecast from the ashville radar
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Mac: are so um yeah it's kind of
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Mac: funny so that right there alone i was kind of like
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Mac: a little bit shocked had car hearts on
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Mac: and a sims jacket and i thought well if i'd have known it was going to rain
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Mac: all day we probably would have put waders on but i
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Mac: don't really like wearing waders this time of
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Mac: year marvin so it is what it is but
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Mac: it did it didn't really uh we had
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Mac: really overcast skies and rain falling all day
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Mac: so you know i knew it'd probably be better
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Mac: up top but we never saw any thing rise or break water the whole
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Mac: whole day down down the river so we
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Mac: tried a lot of different things and i kept going back to the dry swath
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Mac: and enticing stuff to come up by using the
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Mac: skating techniques and you can of course dance it from far away by shaking the
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Mac: line and making it look erratic rather than just dead drift everywhere and pretty
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Mac: much that's what everybody caught and had a couple of boats out there for the
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Mac: trip and the guys are all buddies from 30 years ago up up in Wisconsin, in St.
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Mac: Paul area. And that's what everybody basically ended up doing.
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Mac: So even though we tried all the other techniques, tried a little bit of nymphing,
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Mac: nyphing, water's a little off color, to make it all fair for the nymphing game.
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Mac: But yeah, so I figured nymphing wasn't really gonna be it either.
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Mac: So there's a lot of boats around us that were all nymphing.
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Mac: Never saw them hook up anything. So I pretty much abandoned that within about 30 minutes.
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Mac: But, yeah, it's funny how when you think something's going to go a certain way,
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Mac: then you kind of change and change.
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Mac: But I'll say this, usually in low light conditions like this with the,
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Mac: you know, lead-colored skies, whether it's a wet fly game up high near the surface,
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Mac: or a dry fly game, it's usually I'll bet up on the very top.
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Mac: I would put my best guess coming up to the top. So I don't have as much confidence.
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Mac: In low light like that saying let's nymph deep or throw streamers deep you know
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Mac: because that's usually not where it's at.
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Marvin: Yeah it's interesting too like i imagine probably the
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Marvin: approach might be a little bit different you know if you're waiting versus in
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Marvin: a boat because i would think you know most people that
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Marvin: fish nymphs out of a boat probably aren't as
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Marvin: skilled at you know animating the way that you
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Marvin: talk about you know fishing with like davy or somebody like that and so it's
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Marvin: a little bit harder you know to maybe you know if you're in a run to stand there
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Marvin: and kind of work you know jig and different retrieves you're like well that
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Marvin: doesn't work and you keep progressing but you know it might be a little bit
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Marvin: harder to do with the average angler on a guy trip in a boat yeah.
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Mac: Yeah i think it is and it's like yeah it's it's it's still tricky even to animate
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Mac: you know wets and wets and dries up in the upper layer you know i mean because
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Mac: if it's something they haven't done a lot um i think that makes it.
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Mac: Kind of a learning curve on the fly but then having you know having something uh blow up and,
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Mac: hit when it starts to skate and then blam they get a strike and it misses and that's always the,
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Mac: you know that's a pretty good clue but the big part of it is too even with those
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Mac: whether it's on the wet game or the or the dries to not not react with the rod
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Mac: like you know a lot of people but when they're not doing it enough,
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Mac: they want to do 100% rod movement when that happens.
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Mac: And I'm like, well, now we're not even in the game because, you know,
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Mac: the fry just got yanked away from the fish and you don't have any chance of catching it.
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Mac: So learning to do that with the line hand rather than the rod is a hard thing to break people up.
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Mac: You'll get people that fish 40 years that still rely on the rod,
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Mac: which means somebody never taught them to, you know, use the line hand is what that really means.
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Mac: But it's hard to break. It's hard for people to break.
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Mac: Then you're telling them over and over quit using the
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Mac: rod to set everything because the rods you
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Mac: know what i mean so if they get excited and it's not there then it's basically
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Mac: a back cast isn't it there's no chance of catching it that's the reason and
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Mac: the other reason of course if it if it did did connect it's also a lot higher
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Mac: likelihood of breaking off on five or four x isn't it you know i mean because
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Mac: if it's a little bit too aggressive then blam you just broke the tippet it so
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Mac: but if you use your line hand then you get a nice constant bend in the rod you got the fish on,
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Mac: win-win so that's that's kind of the fun part about the upper layer yeah.
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Marvin: It's interesting too though right because i mean we were talking and it's not
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Marvin: just that hatches this year are late it's just like some hatches that we would
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Marvin: expect to see aren't happening.
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Mac: Yeah some of them i think are gone i think a lot of the a lot of the stuff that
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Mac: we used to see i mean i really think are gone like that post that I put up on
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Mac: Instagram a few weeks ago.
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Mac: I heard from friends over in the Blue Mountains in Australia.
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Mac: I heard from friends below Queenstown, all kinds of places across North America.
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Mac: But yeah, the sad thing about it really, the one I posted about is the Mother's
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Mac: Day Caddis because it was just Mother's Day yesterday, you know.
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Mac: And that's always been a really predominant hatch here in the park for the park
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Mac: streams, like all of them, like Hazel Creek, Nolan Creek, Forney Creek.
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Mac: We have that on every park stream since I've lived here.
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Mac: And the more Jimmy Estes brought it to my attention, you know,
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Mac: a couple of years ago, he goes, Mac, I'm not seeing the larva.
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Mac: Have you seen them? And I'm like, well, Jim, I hadn't really looked at them.
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Mac: Because when I'm running trips, I'm not sitting there rock scouring,
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Mac: looking at, you know, I'm not teaching entomology or anything like,
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Mac: like at Western years ago anymore.
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Mac: So I just, I just assumed they're always going to be there.
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Mac: And then sure enough, when he
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Mac: brought that up, I started kind of paying attention and looking up on the,
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Mac: the watersheds that are around me, and I can't find the larvae.
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Mac: I haven't found a single larvae yet. We used to have millions of them.
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Mac: So I think the bad news is I think that Mother's Day caddis hatch is gone from here permanently.
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Mac: Because if we can't find a single larvae, that tells you something.
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Marvin: Yeah, and is the Mother's Day caddis, is that a case larvae?
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Marvin: So is that when you flip the rocks over and you see those little cases, or is it a stick builder?
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Mac: Builder it's no it's a little trapezoid shape
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Mac: it's a little brown it's a little green worm in a trapezoid
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Mac: shape they go through like 11 11 to 12
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Mac: instars and it's about the size this time of year before they hatch should be
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Mac: about the width of your little finger you know where your fingernail is on your
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Mac: little finger that's about the size and those are the filters so what they do
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Mac: is they attach a little silk thread on the rock they come up and suspend we
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Mac: used to get hundreds of them Like when you dry dropper years ago,
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Mac: your nymph would catch on that silk line, so then you'd catch it on your hook.
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Mac: I mean, you'd catch the little larva on your hook.
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Mac: So about every fifth cast years ago, when they were filtering in the water,
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Mac: you'd have to take that back off, and you'd throw it back out,
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Mac: and you'd catch another one because of silk line.
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Mac: But yeah, that's how they would feed. They filter by using that little silk
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Mac: line, and they suspend in the water column, and they keep the silk line attached
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Mac: to the rock, kind of like a spider web.
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Mac: And that's the ones that I'm talking about are disappeared from here.
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Mac: So that's a bad sign, though, because they're real tolerant of pollution. That's the kicker.
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Mac: So the mayflies, not as tolerant for pollutants, but when you start to lose
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Mac: cata species, then it starts to mean there's a bigger problem.
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Marvin: Yeah, and so to kind of back up, to give people kind of a process,
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Marvin: I know you ended up basically fishing, you know, wets in the film and dries today.
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Marvin: But, you know, if you walk out and, you know, your current plan isn't working,
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Marvin: kind of what's the progression and how rapidly should you work through technique
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Marvin: and fly changes to try to dial something in?
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Mac: I think the progression starts first with the conditions that you see,
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Mac: like if it's bright blue sky versus overcast sky.
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Mac: I think that right there is the same on the lake too for trout.
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Mac: But on a river, if you know it's overcast, if you're going to nymph,
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Mac: then you're going to nymph high.
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Mac: You're going to try to keep the tabletop layer we talk about just from the surface down, say, a foot.
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Mac: We're going to try to fish nymphs up high in the column.
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Mac: That wouldn't be a good idea to say, let's fish nymphs rowing the bottom on
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Mac: an overcast day like what we had today.
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Mac: So I didn't even go there because that's what all the boats around me are doing.
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Mac: You can also learn a lot, pay attention to the people around you.
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Mac: I mean, I do that a lot. And if I look out and there's four boats and they're
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Mac: all nymphing a bobber with 12 feet of tippet, they're already fishing the bottom.
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Mac: And if you're sitting there doing your game and you notice, hey,
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Mac: they hadn't hooked a fish yet, it's been an hour, and there's no point of copying that, is there?
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Mac: So I'm saying I think there's a little bit of cat and mouse like paying attention
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Mac: to the people around you too because if the game was on down there,
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Mac: then they'd all have bent rods.
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Mac: So, I mean, I have a lot more faith on overcast day, like I say, staying up in the top.
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Mac: So the changes I was doing was mostly based on that assumption,
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Mac: which is kind of like going back a long time ago, like the Gillies that are in Ireland.
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Mac: And those places in the world, they've had that in their literature and in their
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Mac: repertoire for a very long time.
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Mac: And I think there's a reason that those, what do you call it,
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Mac: gut instincts is a good thing to pay attention to.
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Mac: You know, first, it wouldn't be a good idea to go out there and change nets
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Mac: 20 times deep when you still haven't got a strike.
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Mac: And it's not a fly pattern problem then because we're talking about a DH program
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Mac: where a majority of them are hatchery fish.
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Mac: And so I think that that's a big part of it too.
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Mac: You know, you have, I don't remember, I didn't look at the schedule,
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Mac: but I know sometime in the past week they put 7,000 or 8,000 more on the section here through town.
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Mac: So that's a pretty high population density per mile of river.
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Mac: So basically the way out here, unlike a DH would work, is once you're dialed
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Mac: in and doing the right thing, saying,
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Mac: which is kind of just experimentation, like I said, from being cloudy.
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Mac: That's what happened toward the end. Once we were dialed in,
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Mac: they were getting strikes like every cast in the spot we were in before we got done today.
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Mac: And, I mean, we had some moments like that where you know you're doing the right thing.
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Mac: How do you know? Because you're getting success every time you throw out.
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Mac: You're getting a strike. Whether you caught it or missed, it doesn't matter. You got a strike.
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Mac: That's kind of how I count it. I don't really care. They're,
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Mac: you know, I shouldn't say I don't care, but whether they got it in or not is
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Mac: beyond my pay grade at that point.
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Mac: If they got a strike and missed it, I could care less that we got it in the net or not.
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Mac: Does that make sense? It's giving me the feedback that I want is what I'm trying to say.
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Marvin: Yeah. And then, you know, to kind of turn it around, if you had a bright,
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Marvin: sunshiny day, you would want to fish deep and on structure because the fish
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Marvin: don't have eyelids and they're not going to be up at the surface because it's
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Marvin: a little too bright, right? Plus predators.
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Mac: Yeah. And then we'd go back and play the other game. you know
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Mac: about dead drift licensing lift
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Mac: um jig jig jig
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Mac: jig swing swing swing and you know hand crawl back up there's five techniques
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Mac: to run your nips down deep and it's like we'd sit there and play that game on
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Mac: a deeper level which is a whole different kind of game than what i'm describing
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Mac: what we did today but it's just a whole different process that's why i guess
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Mac: the willingness to to change,
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Mac: to kind of sort through that.
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Mac: But sorting through that, a lot of people would say, start out,
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Mac: fish deep, go through all that process first, then kind of play around with
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Mac: the streamer for a little while, then play around with this a little while.
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Mac: No, what I'm saying is when it's these kind of conditions, I think you can filter
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Mac: to the answer a lot quicker than saying, do everything that you know how to do.
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Mac: We're not there to do everything we know how to do. We're there to do what we
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Mac: know we need to do for the condition that we have.
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Mac: Does that kind of help?
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Marvin: No, it does. I just wanted to kind of boil it down so people can write that
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Marvin: on a three-by-five card and stick it in their fly box, and they'll have that
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Marvin: in their shirt pocket the next time they go out.
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Marvin: I know you wrapped up your last casting school until the fall a few weeks ago,
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Marvin: but you probably have some kind of topical schools coming up throughout the summer, right?
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Mac: Yeah we have some uh there's still some wet fly schools and some there's some
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Mac: dry fly schools coming up um next few months there's a lot of specialty weekend
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Mac: type schools those are on the the website and uh yeah those are a lot of fun
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Mac: because they just focus specifically,
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Mac: into that you know into that realm of tactics to to you know to perfect because
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Mac: a lot of people are like well isn't the wet fly you just throw it and swing
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Mac: it's like no if that's what you think
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Mac: of wet sloven because something that's for the class but that's what a lot of
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Mac: people think of wet fly they think well marvin isn't that that boring technique
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Mac: we just throw it out hope something jumps on but that's wet fly has as many
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Mac: techniques as dry fly or nymphing or anything else,
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Mac: it's just there's a whole array of things to put in the um the wet fly quiver
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Mac: that make it highly productive got.
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Marvin: It and you know also too i imagine you probably you know you're booking trips
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Marvin: with you and then also you run a handful of guides if folks wanted to uh to
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Marvin: reach out and book a day with you on the water what's the best way for them to get in touch.
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Mac: Probably the website at mack brown fly fish or yeah i'd prefer that because
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Mac: sometimes people will put something to,
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Mac: instagram or something i don't really look at that as much i'll answer an email
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Mac: a lot quicker than i will social media thing because i don't really look at
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Mac: the social media thing that often and Marvin.
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Mac: So I think the email's the best way off the website.
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Marvin: Yeah. Well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, you owe it to yourself to get
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Marvin: out there and catch a few. 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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