S6, Ep 54: Casting Angles: Mac Brown on Goals, Drifts and Memorial Day
Welcome back to another episode of The Articulate Fly with your host, Marvin Cash, featuring the insightful Mac Brown in our latest "Casting Angles" segment. This Memorial Day special kicks off with heartfelt gratitude to our veterans and active military members, honoring their sacrifices and highlighting the upcoming 80th anniversary celebration of the D-Day invasion in Bedford, Virginia.
As Marvin and Mac dive into the essence of fly fishing, they tackle the unpredictable weather in the Mid-Atlantic and its impact on fishing conditions. Mac shares his recent experiences, emphasizing the importance of adapting to high water and muddy conditions by seeking out higher, clearer streams for a successful fishing day.
Celebrating personal milestones, Mac proudly announces the Swain County High School boys' and girls' track teams' state championship victories, marking a significant achievement for his sons and the school. This leads into a thoughtful discussion on setting achievable goals in fly fishing, drawing parallels to the dedication and training in track and field.
Mac offers practical advice for anglers of all levels, focusing on mastering the drift with big dry flies, and the importance of line control to enhance your fishing technique. He delves into the nuances of dead drift and animated fly presentations, encouraging listeners to practice and perfect these skills to increase their catch rates.
The conversation underscores the value of continuous improvement and the methodical approach to fly fishing. Marvin and Mac remind us that success comes from setting small, attainable goals and building upon them, much like training for a sport.
For those looking to refine their skills, Mac highlights his upcoming specialty schools on wet and dry fly techniques, offering intensive two-day sessions packed with knowledge and hands-on practice. Interested anglers can find more information on Mac's website or reach out via email, phone or text.
So, whether you're navigating muddy waters or aiming for that perfect drift, remember to take it one step at a time and enjoy the journey. Tight lines, everyone!
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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 doing, Marvin?
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Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know,
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Marvin: we were talking before we started recording.
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Marvin: We're recording this on the evening on Memorial Day. We want to wish all of
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Marvin: our veterans in active duty, military, a happy Memorial Day and thank them for
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Marvin: everything they do for us.
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Mac: That's right a lot of them gave it all and it's a great day to remember and
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Mac: honor those vets that served.
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Marvin: And I'll also just put out a public service announcement close to where I grew
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Marvin: up in Lynchburg but in Bedford Virginia on June 6th there's the National D-Day
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Marvin: Memorial and they're going to have a very very special,
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Marvin: multi-day ceremony to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion,
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Marvin: Oh.
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Mac: That'd be good. Are you going to go up?
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Marvin: I very well may. I'm still trying to kind of work things out,
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Marvin: but it's an amazing thing.
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Marvin: And one of the reasons why they put the National D-Day Memorial there was because,
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Marvin: you know, back in the Second World War, you know, a lot of times you served
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Marvin: kind of with everybody from your hometown. town.
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Marvin: And apparently Bedford had the highest casualty rate of kind of any town in
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Marvin: the United States on D-Day.
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Marvin: So it's there. It's a phenomenal memorial.
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Marvin: And I think, you know, if folks make the effort to get up there,
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Marvin: they won't be disappointed.
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Mac: Well, that sounds like a good time. Maybe we'll go up there and stay at your
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Mac: mom's and eat lasagna and go to bed.
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Marvin: That yeah there you go and maybe get a little uh smallmouth bass fishing in
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Marvin: but uh speaking of uh smallmouth bass i know it's been uh you know in our neck
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Marvin: of the woods down here in the mid-atlantic we've been getting ripped with rain
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Marvin: um and uh you and i were talking before we started recording that uh unless
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Marvin: you like chocolate milk you probably need to stay off the dh and head up high right.
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Mac: Pretty much we've been getting hammered with thunderstorms like for weeks like
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Mac: every just just about every day and it's run chocolate out there.
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Mac: There's not a lot of floats and things going on. It's been pretty dirty for
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Mac: about two and a half weeks.
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Mac: So we've been going up on the wild streams more up high and that those are fishing really well.
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Marvin: Yeah. And I know you also had some good news because, uh, I saw your Instagram
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Marvin: feed that both the, uh, most important to you, right?
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Marvin: Cause your son's run on the boys team, but the boys and the girls track team
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Marvin: at Swain County high school won the state championship.
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Mac: That's right. Yeah, that was really neat. We've been going down there since
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Mac: Connor was in high school, and he graduates next week.
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Mac: And it's been a long learning process for all of them,
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Mac: and it was nice for those seniors that are going out to go out that way because
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Mac: that's the first time in Swain County history that the boys pulled that off.
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Mac: And the girls, I think that was the girls' 10th state title in a row.
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Mac: The girls really have a dynasty going here. right now, but I thought that it
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Mac: would lead us in maybe to just talking about goals because, you know,
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Mac: I was thinking about my son graduating.
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Mac: He started doing all this in third grade and he was serious about it.
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Mac: You know, real serious like through middle school and high school.
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Mac: Just talk about some basic kind of goals if people go up high to try out the,
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Mac: you know, the wild streams to have a purpose what they're doing there.
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Mac: You know, there's so much on social media showing these, you know,
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Mac: nice fish and And this and that all over the country, but it's like,
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Mac: I think the big process is to have a specific goal.
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Mac: Just from doing this for 40 years, I'd say a great goal for the listeners would
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Mac: be to go out and just pick a big dry soil you can see.
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Mac: You know, something like a golden stone. There's still a lot of golden stones
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Mac: out there. So a size 12 golden stone that you can see in fast water.
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Mac: And just work on drift for the whole day. and when we say we've got to make
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Mac: a goal with that I would say work on drift a lot of people go well that's a
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Mac: good drift and it's two or three feet and other people say well six feet,
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Mac: well if somebody really plays that game.
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Mac: Then it really shouldn't be a limit. You know, even with the multiple complex
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Mac: currents, they ought to be able to pull out 20, 30 feet and make it go from
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Mac: 30 feet above to 30 feet below. Now we're talking 60 feet.
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Mac: So that's all line control, what we do after it's on the water.
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Mac: As much as we teach and talk about casting, Marvin, I think that the drift exercise
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Mac: is just a wonderful drill for line control of what we do to enhance it.
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Marvin: Yeah, and it's interesting, right, Because you kind of start with where you
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Marvin: put your body to get the best cast possible.
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Marvin: But what we're really talking about, depending on conditions,
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Marvin: is probably some type of a reach cast.
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Marvin: And then you're managing your line until it comes to you and gets below you.
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Marvin: And then you're going to probably start stack mending below you to keep the drift.
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Mac: And there's going to be stack mends. Like if we do the example I just said and
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Mac: go 60, that's one of the main drills.
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Mac: I can remember years ago with the youth kids when they were winning all the gold in Europe.
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Mac: Every one of those kids that was on that would work with them individually up
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Mac: in the park and that was the goal i mean i just tell them look we're going to
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Mac: go from here to there let them try it first let them fail show them how to do
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Mac: it then they'd copy it and that was so,
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Mac: important for pulling off those kind of drifts and so a lot of hump men's um you know a hump man,
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Mac: is different it's like going up up up so when we're paying line
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Mac: out below us but yeah there'll be stacks it's just
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Mac: here's the thing to go like on a gradient
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Mac: rich stream like the smoky size you're going to be doing something with the
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Mac: rod the entire time it's never sitting out it's either being humped in or getting
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Mac: ready to stack it out or something and that's that's what i've you know that
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Mac: i've seen a lot over the years guiding that um.
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Mac: Makes you want to go fish more than God, you know? Yeah. People don't see that
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Mac: naturally. And so I'm saying it's a drill for people to improve.
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Mac: Yeah, make the goal big, not just five, six feet. Make it big goal.
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Mac: And you'll find that the more they exercise that drift game and,
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Mac: you know, put the fish second, put drift as their priority, the fish will start following.
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Mac: They're going to catch way more numbers of fish than they've ever dreamed of
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Mac: just by making drift their exercise.
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Marvin: Yeah. And then I guess we should also add that, you know, that's really talking
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Marvin: about dead drift, but we also want to talk about learning to animate the fly
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Marvin: and manage your line, right?
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Mac: Oh, yeah. That's another one of the tricks. Like, is it going down?
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Mac: You get it like in a little pocket or something to animate it and make it,
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Mac: you can make it hop and skitter and dance.
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Mac: That's what Mark Cathy was famous for here, is the animation of the fly,
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Mac: you know, to make it look like it's alive.
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Mac: And the best way to do that is in the evening, watch a don that's going down
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Mac: the river late in the day, and it gets to a rapid at the tail end of a pool, and watch what it does.
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Mac: When it sees the fast water coming up, it's got great eyesight,
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Mac: and you'll watch it start jumping and skittering, trying to get flight,
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Mac: trying to get flight while its wings are getting hardened. and it'll do everything
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Mac: in its power to not go down in the riffle.
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Mac: You know what I mean? To get flight. It'll do those little exercises.
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Mac: So when it gets to the tail, it'll try to get flight.
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Mac: It might come off the water six, eight inches and land four feet back up from
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Mac: the tail of the pool and it drifts and it comes back up.
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Mac: You can learn to animate that and mimic that with the line control that we're talking about.
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Mac: You can do that with a dancing line mend than to make it come back up.
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Mac: And I mean, so it's the combination. But I think deadrifts, I think it's easier to animate.
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Mac: I don't know, I shouldn't say that. I guess everybody's different.
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Mac: I mean, it might be easier.
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Mac: I think deadrifts, though, you can mix them up, like practice deadrifts exercises,
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Mac: then practice animating exercises, then practice the combination together, you know, to do both.
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Marvin: Yeah, and then really to kind of step back out of it, what we're really talking
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Marvin: about is the stuff that we've talked about over and over and over again about,
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Marvin: you know, you know, striving for continuous improvement, being curious.
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Marvin: And, you know, the great thing is you don't have to eat the elephant all at
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Marvin: one time. You pick kind of one thing you want to work on on the water and go work on that.
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Marvin: And, you know, you just, you know, you get it sort of figured out and then you
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Marvin: kind of put that in your quiver and, you know, you pick another thing to work on.
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Marvin: You don't have to like, you know, become the greatest fly fisherman ever on
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Marvin: one outing. You know, you just kind of have to have a methodical approach.
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Marvin: I imagine it's a lot like the way your boys train for track.
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Mac: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they got specific goals. And, yeah, I mean,
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Mac: looking at the schedule of what they did two months leading up to state,
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Mac: I mean, it's pretty intense.
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Mac: I went up there a lot to watch them. And what they do is they start resting
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Mac: you less and less. So you're doing like 400 repeats, 200 repeats.
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Mac: You know, normally early in the season, you might have a minute rest.
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Mac: They keep cutting that time down and cutting it down to where you got 15-second
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Mac: rest and you're still doing the same number. So it ends up being a lot higher
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Mac: intensity because there's not as much rest in between.
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Mac: But same thing in angling. I like that idea, what you said about don't try to
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Mac: eat the elephant all at once because that's really true. I mean,
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Mac: to be honest, it's impossible.
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Mac: Nobody could eat the elephant all at once in a day, not with the amount of things that are out there.
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Mac: There's just too many things to say. Somebody could do that in a day.
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Mac: So, so having, having small goals that are attainable and to keep working on
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Mac: those and keep building on those as far as like building blocks is really the best way to get it.
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Marvin: Yeah. And I would say, you know, you know, thinking about that,
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Marvin: I mean, there's so many things that actually have nothing to do with being on
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Marvin: the water, right? Like your knots, right?
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Marvin: Having your, you know, your gear arranged, right? And that's like,
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Marvin: I'm a huge proponent of, you know, you can change your gear configuration,
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Marvin: but don't change it every time you go out.
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Marvin: Because if you reach in a pocket, you want the same thing that was there last
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Marvin: time, unless you've made a conscious decision to move it somewhere else for a reason.
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Marvin: And those are the things, you know, over time that, you know,
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Marvin: you'll be able to get ready faster, you'll be able to re-rig faster,
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Marvin: and you'll just become more confident on the water.
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Mac: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they can do, I mean, knots are a great thing to do at home.
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Mac: That's the best place to get fast at those, get fast at those at home.
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Mac: And the key is, is just have a couple of knots. You don't need,
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Mac: I mean, my gosh, fly fishing has so many different specialty knots,
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Mac: but the way to do it, like what we use in the school, is really just two knots.
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Mac: I mean, pretty much everything you ever want to do is two knots.
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Mac: And you don't need, I mean, that's a big part of what intimidates people about
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Mac: this sport is thinking about all the different knots and there's really not that many.
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Mac: You can make it really simplified as far as once you have your butt section,
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Mac: the leader on there, everything is two knots.
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Mac: Then get fast at them, get them down three seconds, three, four seconds or less.
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Mac: Yes, because I mean, I see far too many people in God and they get proud and
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Mac: want to tie their own rig.
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Mac: And I'm just like, let me tie it for you. No, I want to tie it.
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Mac: And you look at them tie it and it's like six, eight minutes later,
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Mac: you know, that's time wasted.
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Mac: Get them fast. Six, eight minutes is unacceptable. I'll just go ahead and say it.
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Marvin: But, you know, it's funny too, right? Because we've got, I don't know what we've
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Marvin: got, maybe, I don't know, two weeks of DH left in North Carolina.
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Marvin: So, you know, things are going to change. And so, you know, kind of building
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Marvin: on this education theme, Mac, I know you've got some topical schools throughout the summer.
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Marvin: You want to tell folks a little bit about those, kind of where they can get more information.
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Marvin: And also, I know you're taking people down the river. And if you're not,
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Marvin: you've got people that work with you that are.
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Mac: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we've still got like a wet fly.
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Mac: There's a dry fly school this weekend, a wet fly school coming up.
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Mac: We run those specialty schools like two days long ton of a short like the week
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Mac: long school we do compressed into two days just dedicated to the one,
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Mac: topic and that way you know people can look at those and if they want to work
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Mac: on you know their wet fly game and then we cover pretty much everything,
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Mac: that we do in the week long school on wet fly during that and that just gives
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Mac: them an opportunity and they can find that info on,
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Mac: either on social media stuff Go to the website, mackbrownflyfish.com.
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Mac: That's the easiest place to find it.
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Marvin: Yeah, but you're an email or a phone guy, right?
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Mac: Yeah, pretty much, or text. I like text. Texts work good, too,
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Mac: because I'm in and out of service a lot this time of year.
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Mac: When I go up high in the park, as soon as I go a mile from the house,
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Mac: there's no service up there,
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Mac: so I don't get the message until later on and leave a message,
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Mac: too, because these days I'm getting so many telemarketers too a day that it
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Mac: might be somebody looking for one of those schools,
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Mac: but if I don't leave a message, then I assume it's a telemarketer.
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Marvin: Yeah, there you go. And folks, I would say just remember, eat the elephant one
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Marvin: bite at a time and just pick one thing to work on and work on it until you get
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Marvin: it right and then add another thing.
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Marvin: And as I always say, 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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