S7, Ep 35: Fly Fishing Fundamentals: Maximizing Efficiency on the Water with Mac Brown

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

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

I'm, I'm glad to be home. I've been traveling a lot and I think you've been teaching a lot, right?

Yeah, it's been busy. It's been busy since the last month. We've been doing, doing a lot of different little schools, casting schools and guide schools.And we, we're just now off this week getting caught up on emails and calls and all those other good things.

Yeah, it's funny, I think I told you before we started recording that not this weekend, but next weekend my oldest son graduates from Chapel Hill. And when I come home from that weekend, I will have been home a grand total of one out of the last six weekends.

Wow, that's a big event. That's a big life changing event too. So congratulations.

Yeah, I appreciate it when you remember him when he was talking junk to you when he was like 8 years old at the Raleigh Fly Fishing Show.

Yeah, when he was just a little kid. Yeah, I do remember that. It's hard to believe he's graduating.

He's 22. Dude, he'll be 23 in September.

Wow, they get big fast.

Yeah, they do. And you know, it's funny, right?We were talking before we started recording and we always kind of folks wrestle with, you know, what do we want to talk about?So we generally spend, I don't know, a good half hour catching up, brainstorming and what we wanted to talk about because, you know, really, you know, we're kind of in the sweet spot of, you know, spring fly fishing and kind of our neck of the woods is basically efficiency. And that shows up in a lot of different ways.And you know, a really simple way to think about it is, you know, if your fly's not in the water, you're not going to be catching fish. And so we kind of work everything in our process to, you know, keep the bugs in the water as much as possible. Right, Mac Brown?

That's right. That's right. And that's what we spent a lot of time with, with the school last week.Just talking about efficiency of movement, efficiency of, of drift and trying to maximize. How long is it in the water? How long are you fishing it? How much are you casting?You know, as much as we teach casting on the road, everybody thinks we must like to cast a lot. And I would say that's so far from the truth, I think what you'll see is most people that like casting cast the least by far.And I think that's a good point to get across about this efficiency of. Of movement during this podcast.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, we could probably start with just breaking down water. And, you know, if you're fishing upstream, you know, the general rule is fish close to far back to front, right?

Yeah. And just learn to fish, you know, around all the, you know, the clock faces around you.And the biggest thing we used to see in wreck trips, which is what we don't want to see at this age, is people will be looking at something for whatever known reason, and they. They put it in and it's not exactly where they wanted, then they yank it. I used to call that the yank syndrome. So that's definitely not efficient.You put it in and you make a big splash and pull it back out and then put it in, you missed your spot again and you yanked it back out. So. So the Yank syndrome is. Definitely needs to go.So let's address that first because that's actually a really common problem when you work in, folks.

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing, right. Cause almost nothing good happens from doing that.You're better off to just kind of fish it out because you're probably going to put down any fish that were there ripping your flies out, right?

Oh, yeah. And then they throw it back in and get close to the same spot they ripped it out. Now those fish are 20ft away anyway.So when you're sitting there watching it, you just shake your head and kind of wonder, like, what are we doing here? So you got to kind of get on that early if that's going on. But yeah, usually, usually on the water, we try to do things where. Where we get it.You know, so much emphasis on casting over the years that really. About line controller, what do we do once it's on the water? And that takes a lot, really.I think line control is a lot tougher to teach than casting, to be honest. But what we try to do is optimize like what Swisher and Richards talked about in Selective trout back in 72, about the clock faces.Learn to work 12, 3, 6, 9 o'clock, all the way around you, wherever you're standing.And then to maximize the drift, if you want to fish downstream, of course, that means we're going to fish probably a lot more line than what most people think. And then when we go upstream, let's say we're only casting 30ft upstream, up and across. We're going to use a reach man.So we don't want the line sitting on top of the fish you're trying to catch. And then let's say we can let it go downstream 30ft.So that's a 60 foot drift you're never going to see on guide trips like wreck anglers getting 60 foot drifts. Cause that's just not what they think of. But that's what they should be thinking of.So I think that's a good part of the podcast karma here tonight is to try to talk about that efficiency. Why can't they get 60ft? Because it's just not in their repertoire. Yeah.

And I think some of that though, you know, if you think about it, you know, the, the longer you make your drift, I think it makes you, it makes your casting more efficient. Right.Because if you've got a long drift downstream of you, you know you're going to be pretty close to being tight to start your forward cast pretty much when you start lifting those flies. Yeah.

And then it's all one motion. There's no false casting, there's no anything. It's just, just throw me. You can waterload it. If you want to change angle and go further across stream.You can take the rod tip and swing it around back of you, you know, so it, so it's not straight downstream. It's you know, 9ft or 10 foot, whatever length rod you're holding. But you can have it more lined up than to throw up in a cross.But that's just a single motion. It's not a false cast. It's not. It's just a single cast. I mean it's one cycle. It's a forward cast.And so that's what we don't see enough of, you know, over the years.And I just think that would really help people because that's what we did when we floated during the school and it fished one day on the talk it fished pretty tough. We had a cold front come in. One day was the slowest day was when the cold front came in. It fished really good.The cloudy days last week on, on several of the park streams Nanahala we fished Webster one day. Those all fished during the cloudy days incredibly well with just dried robber. But.But yeah, when you're trying to reposition something, you know, by doing it like what we're talking about letting it go all the way downstream now you got the water helping you make the next move movement. It's not like a false cast at all. It's not a two and from to and from for five or ten times like a lot of people do on the river.Man, if we, if we took a video camera even here it's springtime, it's tourist season, the rectangles are out in force. But if we just maybe I wouldn't do it because I'd get in trouble.But if we just drove up the river Marvin and filmed it and then posted it, you know how many friends would make just by talking about look how much waving is going on here. I don't really understand why it still goes on as much today as when I was a 20 year old kid. It's just, I guess that's what people think. You do?

Yeah, I mean it's easy.It makes it so much easier from an accuracy perspective too because if you're having problems with accuracy, I mean I don't generally have my thumb on top but if you have that straight line and you kind of bring it forward and wherever you point with your thumb is, you know, if you've got enough force, that's where that fly line is going to go.

Yeah. Wherever you point to point it, it's going to, should move it there as long as it's close to 180 to begin with.And but yeah, I mean that came up a bunch this last week during the, during the God school and, and just efficiency of, of of movement. Trying to use the least amount of movement to make something happen. And the more more you do that the more your flies in the water being fished.Of course good things happen then fish are just a byproduct of, of better behavior, you know. So that's why efficiency is a hard thing to really a tough topic because there's not like a formula of efficiency except looking at data.The more time your fly's floating, the more fish, you know, gonna fall. And it's like, it's hard to say here's a formula like F equals MA for efficiency. Doesn't happen that way.So all that can happen is just say Marvin, like if you, if you were you know, working with one of your kids or something and just tell them to quit false casting so much. That's the first big step.

Yeah.And I, but I would say you know, when you've got that line downstream of you know, back to your point like you don't really need false casts to get more line out. Just slip some line right. And the current's going to get you, get you tight again and then you can keep casting.And that's a way and that's a way not to, you know, wave things around unnecessarily.And then I would say the other caveat is, you know, if you're nymphing with an indicator, you know, you're going to want to basically draw kind of a reverse, you know, C loop. Right.I always tell you, can kind of find the people that, you know, nymph a lot in our part of the world because they generally have that kind of lob. Right. And it's pretty accurate when you've got enough weight. But it's the exact same motion.It's just you need to have a little bit more of an open loop. So you kind of make a, you know, backwards C on your forward cast.

That's right. And then. And with the dry fly, you know, you hear a lot of.A lot of folks say they got a false cast a lot to dry their fly, and that's not true either. So let's talk about the seat pickup, the up, down pickup. If you add that in with the dry fly, gain doesn't matter where the fly is.It's dry as soon as you move it in one cycle. Totally dry, because it's moving through.When you do an up, down or a circle C pickup, the flies moving through as you go to make the cast, it's moving through at about 650 plus miles an hour. All the water's flung out in that one motion.You don't have to wave it to and from, to and from for 10 or 15 times to think it's dry because it's dry in one. But most people don't do a circle pickup or an up down, so. So there. There is a better way. It's just.That's something to throw in there with efficiency. If they did that, it's dry on one. One repetition.

Yeah.And then I would say, too, you know, to kind of start the day off with things in your favor, you know, just gink the fly and then keep some sila, some of the silicone dust with you. Right. Lots of different brand names.

Oh, yeah.

And that'll. That'll keep you going for a while. But yeah, the.You know, the little circle pickup, you know, which is really kind of like throwing a little bit of a roll cast and then picking your fly line up when it straightens out.

That's right.

And you want to talk to folks about what the up downcast is.

It's just like, go up slow and come down fast, and then your rod tips low, and then go ahead and make your cycle. Make Your pickup, when you do that, it puts a little V shape traveling down the line towards the nail knot or however you tie the leader on.And of course the fly has to come through that same shape and then you're accelerating, you know, the other direction. And of course the water's all thrown right out of the fly. So we do it a lot with Dry Dropper too.And I mean that's, that's basically what we fished a lot last week during those cloudy days. Dry Dropper's been phenomenal up here the last week, and it really has. I'm not.I mean, I think this is probably the peak of it last week when it was cloudy because we're looking at 80 plus degrees coming up. And I mean, even May, everybody talks about May. May's better if you're further north.You know, our season is really March and April is when it's at its best and May come and it might be some 90 degree days in middle of May and it's over. You know what I mean? Water starts getting warm, then you got to start going early in the morning and.But you know, when we talk about May, United States is a big place. And when you talk about that, it's really further up north, Mace, like getting in the peak.I mean, they're fishing hatches in Pennsylvania that we fished six weeks ago right now. So we're, we're way further ahead, being this far south in southern Appalachia, you know.So our hatches will start coming to a close here in the next couple of weeks then. Terrestrial game. Yeah.

And I'll leave one more kind of casting tip to avoid the, the motorboat when you're dry fly fishing.And if you lift slowly on the pickup and wait until basically your line leader connection is off the water before you snap back, you won't get the, the motorboat.

That's right. Yeah, that's a good one too. It's just, yeah, just having a, just thinking of that, those little things, thinking about, you know, efficiency.I think it's good for the, for the listeners to think about every action that they do on the water, like try to make it have some purpose and intent behind it rather than falling back into a trap of habits that's, you know, like put it down and yank it all. I mean, false cast it a bunch of times.All those things are working so, so much against folks that it's just good to bring that up since it's still a really good time of year to be out the next, you know, the next couple months.

Yeah.And I would also say, you know, last thing we'll say before we kind of move on to calendar and all that kind of good stuff is you don't have to do this all in one trip. You know, pick one part of it, incorporate it until you're comfortable with it, then add something else.

That's right. And build on, build on it. It's time to go out. That's, that's good advice.

Yeah. So you finished two schools, you're done speaking. So you don't have another school until September. So it's really the God game and the fall, right?

Yeah, we've, we've got really just the, the schools like September, there's casting schools. We're doing the school down in Mountain Home with Davey, Davey Walton in Mountain Home, Arkansas. Wet fly school. What else we got?We got a couple of schools here. October, November, five day schools. And that's pretty much it until show season starts again.So I'm kind of trying to think about where to go have a little holiday. Because I need a holiday. Marvin. I've been kind of burning the candle here the last five months.I'm going to take off and go somewhere sometime in the next month. I'm not sure where, where yet. I'm kind of debating that loading the truck up and getting everything working.

Yeah, well. And folks, if you have a suggestion for Mac, DM them on social media.And Mac, before I let you go, you want to let folks know where they can find you to book a guide trip or to get on the waiting list or sign up for one of the schools.

Yeah, the best, the best place to either message me at Mac Brown fly fish like Instagram or Facebook or MacBrownFlyfish.com URL and that'll take you to the link for the guide school.The five day schools, they're both cross linked and anything on one page you can find back, back and forth from that other fly fishing guide school website as well. That's probably the best way.

Well, there you go. Well folks, as I always say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines everybody. Tight lines, Mac.

Tight lines. Marvin.