S6, Ep 70: Hot Weather Fishing Tips and Techniques with Mac Brown
Join host Marvin Cash on The Articulate Fly for another engaging episode of Casting Angles with Mac Brown. In this episode, Mac shares his insights on fishing during the summer heat, emphasizing the benefits of targeting warmwater species like bass and bream when trout fishing conditions are less favorable. He discusses various techniques for line control and strike detection, which are essential skills that can be honed on stillwater and slow-moving waters during the warmer months.
Mac also delves into the importance of deliberate strike techniques and how practicing these on warmwater species can translate into more effective trout fishing. He highlights the significance of observing the water and adapting your approach based on the available food sources, such as minnows and dragonflies. Additionally, Mac shares tips on animating flies and the patience required to entice quality fish, particularly smallmouth bass.
Whether you're a seasoned angler or just getting started, this episode is packed with valuable tips and strategies to enhance your fishing experience. Tight lines!
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Marvin Cash:
Hey, folks, it's Marvin cash, the host of the articulate fly. We're
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back with another casting angles with Mac Brown. Mac, how are
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you?
Marvin Cash:
I'm doing great. How you doing, Marvin?
Marvin Cash:
Uh, I'm just trying to stay cool. It's kind of funny. You were belly aching about
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how hot it is where you are, and it's at least 15 degrees cooler than
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where I am.
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Well, it's still hot for here, for this
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early in, well, late June,
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you know, early summer. We've been. We've seen
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some hot temperatures already the last couple weeks, but,
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yeah, hopefully it's going to be a big cool down coming up
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next week.
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Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, last time we were coaching
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people that this was coming, you know, the DH was
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over. It's getting warmer. You know, you're going to end
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up, you know, having to fish either early or late or head high up into
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the mountains or go chase warm water species. And we thought
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one of the things would be helpful for folks is, you know, a lot
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of people, uh, uh, are reluctant to go
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fish, like farm ponds and lakes for, like, bremen
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bass, um, um, because they're trout anglers,
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predominantly. Um, um, but there are a lot of things
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you can do fishing for bass and brem that,
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you know, give you good skill translation for when it cools off and you
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get back on the water again in the fall.
Marvin Cash:
That's right. Yeah. There's a lot of line control
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tricks and, and strike detection tricks. You can
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learn, you know, on stillwater or,
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like, little t is pretty slow moving
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water. A lot of those big, big pools, it's like you're
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barely moving this time of year because it's not a lot of water in
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them. So, um, yeah, so if you're
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subsurface fishing, you can do a lot of
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things for strike detection. You know, play around with
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different rod tip actions and line retrieval
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speeds with your hand and just watching the line,
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keeping the rod tip low to the water and watching the line where it has
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that little curve coming off from the rod tip
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to where it meets the water, you know, and detecting strikes
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from far out. You can, you can see
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it instantly on, on that section of the line. So you can practice a
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lot of these things on the brim and bass,
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and it'll. It'll correlate, you know, directly to your trout
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fishing as well. So it just gives you better,
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um, attention, I guess, to the small
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details for your trout fishing. That's. That's one of the
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main. There's a lot of tricks, but that's one of the
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best things, I think, on this time of year to play
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with warm water fish for that reason.
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Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because it's exactly like just coming back to
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euro nymph. Right. And so you're looking at how deep your fly is
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based on the angle of your line to the water,
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right? Uh, uh. And then, and then to your
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point, right. You can, um. Um.
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You know, if you, if you're watching that angle, when that
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angle changes, it probably means you've got a fish.
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Right?
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Yeah, that's it. And then you go ahead and go straight into
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reacting to that, you know, with your strike.
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Go uh, ahead and moving the rod and putting it on.
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And you can, you know, you can strike
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deliberately like that in a
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short motion to test it. And if it's not there, then just keep
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fishing it. So I mean, it's really good
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for becoming disciplined and,
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um, how to strike. Like you learn that on warm
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water as easy as you do with trout. And,
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um, that would really be beneficial just
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because I would say
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over the course of 40 years of guiding that most people strike
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on an emotional response more
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so than a human computer or thought process. You
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follow me? So, so it's just all an emotion. By saying that, it's
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like think about chimpanzee. Uh,
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there's a good book, the chimp paradox that Steve Peters put
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out. And it talks all about
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like when people fish on emotions, it's like,
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I think I got a strike. So what do they do? They just basically make a
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back cast and the whole setups flying the other direction 40,
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50ft. And it's like, that's totally emotional
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because that's not the way we would ever set the
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hook. Does that make sense? And I would say the majority of people that
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don't go enough, that's how they set the hook. Um,
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so you learn that on warm water, like what we're talking about,
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to be deliberate, but short. I mean, you could do a line strike
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using your lined hand, move the rod just 810 inches to check
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and see if it's there. And if it's not, you're still fishing. You didn't, you didn't
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put it in the air and make a back cast or
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worse, say the fish was on, but you struck
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emotionally and now everything's broke off. So it's like,
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it's a great, great training methodology
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for becoming deliberate. Using the human computer part of
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your mind to set the hook
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rather than emotional. Set the hook, you know?
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Yeah. And then, you know, we've talked in various episodes
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about how, you know, there are times when you want to dead
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drift, but there are times when you want to
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animate the fly. Right. We talked about cattus. You know, we've talked
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about you fishing with Davey. Um, and so one of.
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Yeah. And so one of the great things you can do, right, a very common
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thing, right, in the evening is to fish some kind of popper,
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right? And, you know, particularly even if you're on a river, you
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know, fishing some kind of popper, probably with some rubber legs on it
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for smallmouth and understanding,
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you know, you know, how to animate
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that fly. Um, um, not just to make it move any
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which way, but just to start to understand, like, if I do this with the
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rod or if I do this with the line, what does that do to the
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fly? And that's going to make you a. A
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way better streamer angler and a way better dry fly
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angler when you get back on the trout stream.
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Oh, yeah, absolutely. And also playing around
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with the, uh, patience game, you know, with
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smallmouth, a lot of times on the popper is you
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can animate it, and then during the pause, when it's
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back at drift and animate it. And then during the pause,
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it's easy for people to want to rush that whole
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process, you know? And then, okay, I'm going to make another cast.
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But if we animate and pause, we can leave it out there
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for a very long time until it actually gets something.
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And usually you'll find that the better quality
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smallmouth around here are
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usually when it's sitting there for quite a while after
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it's been animated. And I mean, like, up to 90 seconds,
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most people are, I want to rush that back in 15 and
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let's launch another task. But I'm saying the best quality
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fish that I've seen over the years, like, even
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with, like, hoppers and cicadas and things,
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is, is the ones that stay there a very long time in a
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fishy spot, and all of a sudden the water boils,
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you know, sometimes as long as two minutes of
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waiting. But people don't tend
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to wait a lot when they're. When, when you're trying to
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get them to wait, they're. They're usually trying to rush that process. And I'm like,
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no, keep fishing it. Let it stay.
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But, yeah, the better quality fish usually,
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usually happen during that long pause game.
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Also teaches you, too, to kind of reinforce that, being
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deliberate about your presentation. Right. So, you know,
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some of it is pause with slight movement. You know, if
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that doesn't work. You can start short strips, you know, if you're
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fishing sliders or something that's got an open face,
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you know, do you pop it and leave it alone, or do you pop, pop,
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pop? And so it's the same things that we do fishing for
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trout, just in a slightly different situation.
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But if you, if you get in that mindset, like, you know, if you've been fishing
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it one way for an hour and you haven't caught anything,
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you might want to try something different, right?
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Oh, yeah, no, that's, that'd be good. And it's like, yeah,
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there's a lot of great, great lessons, um,
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from, from the rivers and ponds and lakes, you know, that you
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can transfer back over. And Matt, Matt did a good post the
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other day, but, um, I think it's, it's
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spot on, you know, with these kind of temperatures.
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He posted that up in Michigan. I guess Michigan's been really hot, too.
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And, um, but, you know, it's, it's,
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it's okay to give, give trout a break when it gets hot. You
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know, I see it here all the time. People still
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pressuring a lot of the private stuff in north Georgia,
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and it's just like, it's too warm.
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It really is. When you have two weeks of 80, 90 degree
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temperatures, chances are you'd be better off to go warm
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water and let the trout, let the trout alone for a
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while, you know, because the mortality rate's going to go way up the next few
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weeks for trout. I just think it's an ethical thing to leave them
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alone, you know? Yeah.
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And I think, too, you know, you know, it may sound kind of
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complicated to say we'll try all sorts of different things that people don't know
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where to start, but, I mean, I think it comes back to stuff you and I have talked about
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a lot, right. Is observation. Right. And so if you're
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on a farm pond or a lake or river, like, what food do you
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see? Right. If you're putting the boat in and you see
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lots of minnows, maybe you need to, you know, fish a ck
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bait fish or a woolly booger. Right. If you see dragonflies, like,
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I mean, it's just, you know, the water is going to tell you, you
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know, what's there to be eaten.
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Um.
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Um, you know, ah, you know, the, the fish don't
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have uber eats. Right?
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That's right. Well, I like the dragonfly idea because I
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fish a lot of dragonflies this time of year. Um, um,
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as far as the nips and I fish a lot of them, you know, as a
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dry with extended foam bodies. I mean, I really
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enjoy fishing a lot of the dragonflies and
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warm water fisheries. And actually, even
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for trout, I mean, there's times a year, you know, you do. Well, if
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we were somewhere where the water's cooler, it's getting tough
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to find cool water right now.
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And so, yeah, the dragonfly is a really fun,
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fun pattern. You know, you really can't go wrong with
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dragonfly anywhere in the southeast on one water fishery
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right now.
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Yeah, so I would just say, you know, folks kind of take all that and, you
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know, don't let the hot water keep you off the water. I mean, one of the
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benefits of the summertime is you can fish either really early or really
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late and you can go do other stuff, you know, if you're on a family
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vacation or whatever, you know, it's not going to be like you get
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to go out and fish all day long. Um, so just all sorts
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of stuff that, um, you know, Mack and I thought you guys might find
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helpful. And I know, Mack, you're done with your schools
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until the fall, but I guess, you know, you're guiding regularly and you've
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got, you've got some spots left in some of your casting schools in the fall.
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You want to let folks know kind of where they can find you. So if
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they want to go down the river with you, they can do that or get a casting
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lesson or fill one of those, uh, class slots for
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you.
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Yeah, that'd be good. It's a, uh, best way is at the
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URL. Mac brown fly fish. And then
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same name as far as on Instagram and Facebook.
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They can send a message on that, too. And that's
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probably the best, best way to reach me in the casting school, I
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think. September 17, I got two slots left in
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that still. So those will go probably the next
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couple weeks and then it'll be full. But, yeah,
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we're looking forward to that.
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Yeah, we've got all that stuff in the show notes. And, you know, folks, as I always
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say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few. Tight
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lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac,
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tight lines.
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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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