S6, Ep 62: Casting Angles with Mac Brown: Warm Water Options and Cicadas
Join host Marvin Cash on The Articulate Fly for another engaging episode of Casting Angles with Mac Brown. Mac shares the excitement of his son's high school graduation and the family celebrations in Bryson City. Transitioning into summer, they discuss the end of the delayed harvest season in North Carolina and explore alternative fishing options. Mac offers valuable tips on targeting bream, smallmouth and catfish in farm ponds and rivers, highlighting the fun of catching catfish on dry flies.
Mac also delves into the potential of cicada hatches and their impact on fishing, sharing anecdotes from his experiences and insights on using cicada patterns. The conversation shifts to practical advice on fishing poppers and streamers, emphasizing the effectiveness of smaller poppers and simple streamer patterns like woolly buggers and finesse changers.
Whether you're planning your next fishing adventure or looking for expert advice, this episode is packed with valuable information and a few laughs. 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 doing, Marvin?
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Marvin: As always, trying to stay out of trouble. You know, it's interesting.
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Marvin: You had a great weekend. Your oldest son graduated from high school this past weekend.
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Mac: Yeah, that was a big, that was a fun time. I think that's the first time probably
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Mac: since Jennifer and I've been married with all the
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Mac: family on her side and my side was all up here in the great town of Bryson City
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Mac: and we had a big cookout on the deck and celebrating that so that was a lot of fun.
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Marvin: Yeah it's interesting you know so that's a you know transition to summer I know
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Marvin: you were telling me Duncan is working on Deep Creek with the tubers and Connor's
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Marvin: down in Alabama at a camp but you know the other thing that's happened is you
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Marvin: know kind of that traditional kind of fall winter spring delayed harvest is over in North Carolina.
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Marvin: And so it's maybe a time to think about maybe some other options.
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Mac: Oh yeah, there's a lot of other good options. You know, this time of year,
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Mac: I like going like the Little Tennessee or the Pigeon. There's a lot of other
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Mac: great places with like Brim and Smallmouth and farm ponds.
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Mac: We don't have that many ponds here, but like where I grew up in East Tennessee,
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Mac: there was literally probably a hundred in Greene County.
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Mac: I mean, great farm ponds, some of them two and three acres big.
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Mac: And of course, that was a big part of fly fishing growing up and would get into
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Mac: summer, would be going to the farm ponds a lot and chasing bass and brim and
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Mac: catfish and all kinds of stuff on the farm ponds.
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Mac: And, you know, catfish are a lot of fun this time of year too,
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Mac: because a lot of people think catfish, you know, throwing bait and fishing down deep.
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Mac: But catfish until they're about 17, 18 inches are insectivores,
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Mac: just like a trout. So they're beautiful, smooth, same size as a trout.
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Mac: And they eat in, you know, you go down to Little Tennessee and throw a single
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Mac: dry fly and catch all kinds of catfish that come up and eat it just like a trout.
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Mac: So there's a lot of other things to go after for sure now that the D.H. is gone.
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Mac: Kind of opened up and then of course we still got a lot of high elevation streams
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Mac: if they want to chase blue line and deep trout but i think i don't know it's
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Mac: a lot of fun still the water the water temp still in great condition here but
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Mac: i've been on deep creek a lot this last week and,
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Mac: and we're over at nolan creek and those creeks are still plenty cold.
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Marvin: Yeah it's interesting i mean i guess i would say you know if you were kind of
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Marvin: trying to figure it out i would say try to you know fish up on the blue lines
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Marvin: until maybe there's a water problem later in the summer.
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Marvin: And then the great thing about fishing farm ponds and lakes for bass and brim
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Marvin: and catfish is you can kind of beat the heat because you either get up really
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Marvin: early in the morning and you're done about 11 o'clock or you go fish that last like hour and a half,
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Marvin: two hours of sunlight at the day.
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Marvin: And, you know, it makes it a little bit easier to kind of fit in with all the
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Marvin: other stuff we do in the summertime.
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Mac: That's right. Now I'm hoping we're going to get, I've been crossing my fingers,
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Mac: we're going to get these epic cicada hatches that they're
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Mac: having all over the country but we still have yet
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Mac: to see a one like on where i live in
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Mac: the valley at deep creek i haven't heard one or seen
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Mac: a shock or anything but they're definitely happening in a lot of places and
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Mac: uh my aunt sent a photo from where i grew up in the ozarks and they're literally
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Mac: the husker like hundreds of thousands sitting around the bases of trees so i
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Mac: mean certain places are getting them and if you happen to have that you know
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Mac: if you're having a big cicada activity,
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Mac: there's some really good stuff you can do with that i mean we're just not getting
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Mac: it here but throwing cicada patterns on those same warm water cold water rivers
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Mac: whatever you got whatever kind of water you got that's going to be definitely
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Mac: preyed upon from a lot of different species yeah.
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Marvin: It's interesting because you know down here the periodics uh have pretty much
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Marvin: run their course and we're probably i would guess about a month away probably
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Marvin: from getting our you know normal annuals which is you know kind of what will
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Marvin: be the game kind of where i grew up in central virginia too but uh but yeah
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Marvin: it's interesting to see fish move to uh to crush those cicadas if they have a chance.
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Mac: Oh, yeah. I keep thinking maybe we're going to get them. I keep waiting at night.
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Mac: We sit on the patio every night on the back deck and sit around the caveman
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Mac: television with the big bonfire pit.
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Mac: I mean, if they're here, you'd hear them, but we're just not hearing them.
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Mac: I don't think we have them here where I live, but maybe they're where some of the listeners live.
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Mac: That'd be a fun thing to have. I've got boxes and boxes of cicadas just stuck
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Mac: in here. I'm going to have to go somewhere where they're happening because I
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Mac: don't think they're going to happen here.
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Mac: I might go up to, I think they're probably happening up there in southern Virginia.
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Mac: I've heard reports of some friends
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Mac: up there that talked about having some pretty good cicada activity.
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Mac: And I know up by Lake, by Hickory.
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Mac: What's the name of the lake that's on 40 as you're driving to Hickory? Is that Lake James?
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Mac: I don't know if they're having them.
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Marvin: Yeah, it might be.
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Marvin: Yeah, I'd have to think about that because it's not far enough east to be in the Pee Dee River chain.
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Marvin: But, yeah, I mean, they pretty much run their course here and around Greensboro
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Marvin: and kind of up into southwest Virginia because they've been out for,
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Marvin: you know, four to six weeks. And I think they only live about a month.
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Marvin: So, you know, if you figure they come out kind of over two weeks,
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Marvin: they pretty much kind of run their course. One thing I thought might be helpful
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Marvin: on the warm water front for folks, a lot of those bugs are pretty wind-resistant poppers.
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Marvin: Maybe talk to people a little bit about terminal tackle and technique.
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Marvin: I know one thing I do when I'm fishing poppers is I generally fish a pretty
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Marvin: short leader because it doesn't matter.
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Marvin: It helps those big bugs turn over a whole lot better. Sure.
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Mac: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then the small poppers too, like you don't have to go to
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Mac: these massive big poppers.
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Mac: Like on the little Tennessee, we throw poppers a lot of the time that are half
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Mac: the length of your thumb, you know, just little small poppers with some rubber,
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Mac: like Matamex rubber on the sides, you know, make an X pattern and then have
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Mac: a little bit of marabou on the tail.
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Mac: And those are quick to tie and they're real durable. we throw a lot of those for,
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Mac: red eye bass and there's a lot of brim and there's a lot of catfish and smallmouth
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Mac: that'll eat those small poppers and that's really the better pattern size to
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Mac: throw as far as to see a lot of variety and different numbers of what's in there
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Mac: and when you start going to the really big stuff,
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Mac: in hopes of you know kind of like a lot of the big flies in the,
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Mac: streamer game then you're going to be a little more lonely throwing a lot more
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Mac: cast and if you catch one yeah it'll probably be a good fish but
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Mac: But as far as on trips and things, if you're taking people down,
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Mac: we try to stay on the smaller size stuff because they can see a lot more numbers
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Mac: of a wider variety of fish, carp included, like glass carp.
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Mac: And of course, those are a lot of fun on a popper.
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Marvin: Yeah. And I would say on the streamer front, I would keep it simple,
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Marvin: folks. I would say woolly boogers. I would say small finesse changers.
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Marvin: I'm a big fan of fish and CK bait fish. I think they're easy to tie and they're absolutely killer.
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Mac: Yeah that'd be that'd be a good choice up here that'd be
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Mac: a good choice all over and uh it's a lot
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Mac: of fun i mean it's just kind of a different season a different time to time
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Mac: to chase different you know i remember uh one of the trips marvin since we're
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Mac: talking about going after different you know seasonal time change i remember
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Mac: several years ago it's probably five or six years ago the kids we went out did
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Mac: two and a half weeks on the buffalo river in Arkansas.
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Mac: It's a wild, it's like a national wild scenic river.
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Mac: And it was, it was amazing. I mean, we had the kids and the cousins there from
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Mac: Colorado and it was just so, so much diversity.
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Mac: I mean, Whitlock, you know, when he lived up there in Mountain Home,
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Mac: that was, that was where he'd go the most to try a lot of his different patterns and things.
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Mac: But it's an amazing fishing on the Buffalo. I'd like to go back out and do that.
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Mac: I'd do that again in a second if I had the time to do it right now.
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Marvin: It's definitely your busy time of year, and I know you know that you're guiding,
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Marvin: and although there's a little bit of a transition there, but you also have the schools.
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Marvin: You want to let folks know about kind of the upcoming schools and kind of how
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Marvin: to get on your guide calendar?
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Mac: Yeah, the best way is probably on the URL at backgroundflyfish.com.
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Mac: And the next big thing probably is September.
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Mac: As far as the casting school, there's a couple of spots left open for that,
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Mac: and then it will be full, and we'll cap it off.
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Mac: And there's a couple of specialized things still going on right now with –,
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Mac: And different specialized type schools of, you know, dry fly,
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Mac: wet fly type schools that are weekend courses. And those have been a lot of fun.
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Mac: It's kind of fun to have, you know, eight, ten people a weekend to teach that
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Mac: too instead of just like one person at a time.
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Mac: It's just a little bit easier efficiency use of time, you know,
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Mac: because you're going to cover all the same thing, whether it's one or ten.
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Mac: So it might as well be ten.
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Marvin: Yeah. And so just to help folks, you know, if they want to do one of those,
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Marvin: I know, have you had your wet fly one yet? I know that was one that we've been
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Marvin: talking about the last couple of times we've been together.
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Mac: Yeah, yeah, we did that. And that went over real good. And it was a good time
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Mac: of year, still really cold, cold water.
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Mac: And yeah, I have to look, actually. I don't even, I've been so busy with like
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Mac: casting clinics and trips this last week before the graduation that it's bad
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Mac: when you have to look at your calendar yourself to find out when stuff is.
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Mac: But that's kind of where I'm at right now, Marvin. and I'm a little bit,
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Mac: just from the last week of all the festivities, I'm a little bit behind.
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Marvin: Yeah, it's all good. You either need to hire somebody to keep you straight or
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Marvin: maybe just have a monkey paw and get reset.
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Mac: Yeah, that'd probably be a good thing.
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Marvin: Well, listen, you know, folks, we have lots of opportunities kind of in the
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Marvin: southeast mid-Atlantic, you know, still time to chase trout,
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Marvin: lots of cool warm water stuff, smallmouth bites just going to keep getting better,
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Marvin: or particularly if you like fish in topwater.
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Marvin: So 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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