S7, Ep 100: Home Waters and Gratitude: Mac Brown's Thanksgiving Fishing Insights

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. We're back with another Casting Angles with Mac Brown. Mac, how are you?

I'm doing great. How are you doing, Marvin?

As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know, it's kind of funny. We're kind of heading into the holidays and kind of, you know, getting ready.Everybody's getting ready for the holidays. They're fishing a little bit. People are hunting still.And you were kind of looking towards show season and we were kind of talking about what we wanted to talk about. And we thought since Thanksgiving is on Thursday, we might want to talk about Thanksgiving, but in a fishing way.

Yeah, that'd be a good topic. And, and I think that, you know, there's a lot to be thankful for.And I, you know, we talked a little bit before we started just thinking about the blessings in your backyard, you know, because people always meet a lot of people that, that think they're going to find the, you know, the holy grail, always jumping on a plane, hoping it's going to be there or somewhere else in some exotic thing.And it's like, to be honest, I'm really thankful, like what's in my backyard, you know, and it's like, I mean, I like to travel, don't get me wrong, but raising kids and stuff, I don't travel near as much as I used to get to travel. But I mean, there's a whole lot of blessings, you know, right in your backyard.

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, you live in a great part of the world for fly fishing, for trout, and you've got other species, too.But you know, folks, wherever you are, you know, there are. There are ponds and their lakes and their water hazards on golf courses and rivers.There's always a way to get out that's probably less than an hour from your house.

That's right. And it's just.Yeah, just like the other day I had a group from outer Banks and floating down one of the tailwaters here and, you know, they were first timers and I. I was pretty excited for them because I told them, oh, you're going to do great. And I mean, they, they casted like chance, you know, right away, and they did everything like, just so good.And like, he ended up catching a nice, nice big fish, you know, towards the end of the day, like six pound, maybe six, seven pound, brown somewhere in that neighborhood. And he played to a tee like he'd been doing it all his life just because he was willing to Listen exactly what you were telling him. And.And I think that kind of reinforces this whole blessings in your backyard thing, you know, because he didn't try to, like, muscle it or hold the line or.Man, he used the reel when he should let it run, and it was just like, to a T. Then I thought, wow, he could fish the next 40 years and not play that any better than what he just did, you know?

Yeah. And I would say, too, I mean, the. The secret about getting better at fishing is to fish more. Right.And so the closer you are to home that you can fish, the more often you're going to fish and the better angler you're going to be.

Yeah, I think so, too. In. In. That makes a lot. I've got some good quotes here to read, too, Marvin. I just.I was thinking of these earlier, and I wrote them down on a piece of paper, and here's a good one for. For the. For the listeners.That's from William Blake, who was probably one of my favorite favorite authors when I was in school, like, college days, you know, that's a long time ago now, many moons back, but from William Blank, the. The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest. And there's all these things that, you know, really relate.This time of year is a fantastic time to be out on the water, and I just got a new boat from the White River a couple of weeks ago, and. And I'm really looking forward to getting out on the lakes before show season.You know, there's just so much potential on the lakes around where I live, and they get overlooked a lot in the summer, and I really love being on the lakes going into wintertime. Yeah.

And I would say, too, you know, also about being thankful and fishing, you know, closer to home is, you know, try to fish different species. Like, a lot of us like to fish for trout.I love fishing for trout, but, you know, go fish for brim, go fish for smallmouth bass, muskie, do other things, steelhead. And, you know, what you'll find is that by chasing other species, it's going to make you a better trout angler, if that's your main thing.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of potential with that. You know, here there's a lot of. There's a lot of good tailwaters.You know, they put, like, below Chioa, they introduced like, 500 Muskie about six years ago on the Chio Reservoir. And of course, that's a fantastic muskie fishery. Now they put them in, like, when they were a couple of Feet long.And now there's reports like four foot, four and a half foot, you know, muskie, and nobody's really even doing it. There's so much untapped potential just right around where we are. But you know, that's not a big thing.Everybody wants to come up here and flame thing, bobbers, you know, for trying to catch a wild, not a wild, but a hatchery rainbow, you know, that's eight inches big. It's like, which would you want to do in the winter? It's like I'm. I know where I'm going a lot this winter.There's a lot of other species that I enjoy, you know, pursuing and, and it's like there's so many of those locally around here with all the TVA impoundments and, and dick power, you know, lakes as well. So I think that's good advice too.It's just like there's, there's just so much of that around us that I'm thankful for what we have for sure around, around this part of the country. And you know, every time I travel somewhere else, I'm kind of always thinking, you know, I kind of like it back where I am too. I like it right here.

Yeah.And if you need more information on options, you can always go to your state, you know, wildlife, you know, resource commission website, lots of information there.Or you know, if you want to chase something different and you know, the fly shop folks don't know, go to a, go to kind of a typical outdoor sporting goods place with kind of conventional gear and they can tell you where to go catch, you know, all kinds of stuff.

That's right, yeah. That's where I got my boat registered day up there in Silva called Dream Catchers and yeah, I enjoyed that.The guy that started, that moved away and the new owner's name, Brian. And we had a really good talk about all the smallmouth fisheries and largemouth bass fisheries. You know what, that's, that's his gig.And I enjoyed it. I stayed in there about an hour, you know, after I got my registration.Just talking about all these different, you know, a lot of that's changed since I was a kid. You know, there's these huge, huge patterns they throw on like 25 pound fluorocarbon. Like you've seen like the rat and these big, you know, there's.We didn't ever think about throwing anything that big when I was a kid. So I mean I learned a lot talking with him.He fishes a lot of tournaments and it was quite enjoyable, I think I'm going to go try to go out with him here sometime the next few weeks and learn some stuff off of him, you know, just because a lot of that stuff's changed. I've been out of conventional tackle for a lot of years and. But I still, I still enjoy him and I like, I like bass fishing quite a bit.So I mean, it'll be fun to, fun to go learn something else, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. And of course, you know, we'll do turkey on Thanksgiving and then we'll kind of get full strut into the holidays.We'll have Black Friday and small, Small Business Saturday.And I know because I've been watching Instagram that folks have the opportunity to buy some of your classes through the fly fishing shows and actually buy tickets to the fly fishing shows as well.

That's right. And a lot of those classes went live. And I saw some good posts the other day with that.They put up about the, the first one up there in Boston with Glenda Powell from Ireland. And I'm really excited doing that, doing that show with her.And you know, she was, she's a big spay caster and she won world championships in that for years. And she's, she's been taught by the best in the business over there in Scotland and in Ireland and I just, I'm looking forward to that.And then also then an Edison the week later, you know, with Gary, Gary Borger. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting back on the circuit teaching, you know. Yeah.

And I know all that stuff's, you know, you're at all the fly fishing shows. So folks, if you go check out the fly fishing show website or you can go to the Articulate Fly website. We have all the shows listed.And I know, you know, we got a while, but you know, starting up in kind of March, you'll have, you know, guide schools and skill classes and casting classes too. If they go. We're not going to do smoke signals, right. Because we've got burn warnings in our neck of the woods because of the wind.Go to MacBrownFlyfish.com, right?

That's right. Yeah. And it's doing good. March has only got a spot left. I mean, so it's selling out earlier. I mean, it's a lot earlier than what I was expecting.So I've got a spot left in March and then it's full and then, then it'll go to April and people call all the time and go, when's the April? What? I shouldn't say this but what we decided to do is we used to just list them all, and it made it really a logistical nightmare.So anymore, I just list them. I list them till they're full, then I list the next day. I'm not going to. I don't put them all up. I've already got all the dates tentatively.But I don't list them until we fill them up. Because what happens is when you have that many, let's say there's 20 people, and they're all over the spectrum, and you've got three in each school.I can't run business with three. So, I mean, when it's full, we go to the next one. And there's a reason behind that?

No, it makes a ton of sense. Well, you know, folks, you know, if you're traveling, hope you have safe travels for your Thanksgiving dinner.Want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving? Happy Thanksgiving, Mac.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. And Happy Thanksgiving to you, Marvin.

Thanks, Mac. Take care.

You, too.