S8, Ep 15: The Beginner's Mindset: Mac Brown on Embracing Continuous Learning in Fly Fishing

In this episode of The Articulate Fly fly fishing podcast, host Marvin Cash sits down with master casting instructor Mac Brown of Mac Brown Fly Fish in Bryson City, North Carolina for another edition of Casting Angles. The two discuss the philosophy of continuous learning in fly fishing — specifically the value of approaching the sport with a beginner's mindset at every skill level — drawing on Mac's four stages of learning framework and his experiences teaching at fly fishing shows across the country. Mac references the "circle of knowledge" concept to illustrate why intermediate anglers often plateau, and both hosts share insights on how fly tying conventions and in-person instruction accelerate skill development in ways books and YouTube cannot replicate. The episode closes with a timely preview of the upcoming Lancaster Fly Fishing Show, Mac's spring guide and casting school calendar, and a field report on early-season dry fly hatches — including Quill Gordon and Blue-Winged Olive emergence — signaling the transition from winter to spring on Southern Appalachian freestone streams.

EPISODE SUMMARY

Guest: Mac Brown – Master Casting Instructor, Owner of Mac Brown Fly Fish and Fly Fishing Guide School, Bryson City, NC

In this episode: Casting instructor Mac Brown shares his framework for skill development and self-improvement in fly fishing, exploring why intermediate anglers stagnate and what it takes to break through to advanced performance. Topics include the four stages of learning, the "beginner's mind" philosophy, the limits of self-directed learning from YouTube and books versus in-person instruction, early-season hatch conditions in Western North Carolina and the Southern Appalachians, and upcoming Lancaster Fly Fishing Show events and spring school schedules.

Key fishing techniques covered:

• Dry fly fishing the Quill Gordon hatch on freestone wild streams
• Fishing Quill Gordon and BWO hatches early season
• Understanding mayfly hatch timing and surface window (15–20 minute float duration)
• Seasonal approach to trout fishing: asking what the food is doing, what the trout are doing, and responding accordingly
• Introduction to wet fly, dry fly and nymphing-focused schools as applied technique development

Location focus: Western North Carolina (Bryson City, Great Smoky Mountains National Park area), Southern Appalachian freestone streams and wild trout waters; Lancaster, Pennsylvania (fly fishing show venue)

Target species: Wild trout (brown trout, rainbow trout) on freestone streams

Equipment discussed: Size 12–16 dry fly imitations for Quill Gordon hatch; macbrownflyfish.com specialty class listings; two-day casting school; three-day focused schools (wet fly, dry fly, nymphing); five-day guide school

Key questions answered:

• Why do intermediate anglers plateau and stop improving?
• What are the four stages of learning in fly fishing?
• How does a beginner's mindset accelerate skill development?
• When do Quill Gordon hatches begin on Southern Appalachian streams?
• What size flies work best for Quill Gordon hatches?
• How can I find Mac Brown's casting schools and guide school schedule?

Best for: Intermediate to advanced anglers interested in fly casting instruction, skill development philosophy, spring hatch fishing on Appalachian freestone streams, and fly fishing education

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Marivn Cash00:00:00

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

Mac Brown00:00:11

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

Marivn Cash00:00:13

As always, just trying to stay out of trouble and, you know, you're just back from teaching on the west coast and, you know, we'll. Our paths will cross again in Lancaster here, I guess not this weekend, but next weekend.And you know, one of the interesting things before we started recording, we were kind of talking about teaching and learning process and all that kind of good stuff. And that's just something that kind of, you know, comes to the forefront of your, your mind when you're teaching at all these fly fishing shows.And we thought it would be interesting to talk to folks about kind of a. A posture for self improvement and, you know, the importance of having a mind like a beginner.

Mac Brown00:00:48

That's right. Yeah. The mind like a beginner is a really, a beautiful thing in that they already know. They don't know a lot because they're starting out brand new.So they're really open to filling up their. Filling up their mind with all kinds of new things. And yeah, that's, that's kind of the.Usually the one that excels, you know, quite a bit in a class or whether, you know, regardless of what type of class it is. And.Yeah, what kind of made me think of going down this rabbit hole was I had several letters from Bellevue and one of them that was in Pleasanton, they were talking about the fact that, you know, they've been doing this 30 to 40 years and all the improvement that that brought to them just from a two and a half, they're like, this is my first real lesson. And everything else, I guess, was from reading books and YouTube and things. And then they realized there's a. There's a bunch more for them to get.And I think that that kind of makes for a good talk.

Marivn Cash00:01:47

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing, right? Like, not to pick on YouTube and books, but, you know, a lot of people buy books and they don't read them. Right.Or they're at a fly fishing show and they watch a demo and they think they know it.And I think the biggest challenge, you know, technology is great in the sense that it allows you to reach people all over the world that are interested in what you're interested in. But sometimes quality curation, for lack of a better word, is lacking, right?

Mac Brown00:02:11

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it.And I wanted to throw in one thing my father in law did with my kids when they were little and I've used this quite a bit on the road and you make an okay symbol with your hand and you see all that little circle inside is where we are today. And what we know today about something, whether it's casting or whether it's about math or whatever it is you're into.And then you double that circle, of course, and everything outside the circle is still infinite amount of things that we don't know yet. So there's this huge thing of infinite space of what we don't know.So every time we make it bigger and bigger, say it's the size of, you know, Bryson City or Scarlett and you think, wow, that's a lot of knowledge, but it's still infinite. Around the outside of that circle is all the things we don't know.So no matter how big that circle gets, point being is there's going to be way more stuff that we don't know which is part of the whole fun part or motivating part about learning something new.

Marivn Cash00:03:06

Yeah, I think it's interesting too because I think, you know, that's one of the reasons why it's so hard for, you know, we can talk about intermediate casters or intermediate anglers, but really kind of intermediate anybody?Because to make that jump from being intermediate to being either more advanced, intermediate or being advanced, they actually have to have that light bulb moment to realize what they don't know because they kind of probably are approaching whatever it is they're interested in, fly casting, fishing, fly tying or whatever, thinking that they've done it a long time and they're probably 95% of the way there and it really kind of slows down their development. Right?

Mac Brown00:03:42

Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it because if they already perceive that they're there, I think that puts the stagnant wheels and moat, you know, that puts the stagnant part for the wheels turning relative to say, the beautiful mind of a beginner that's open to putting as much stuff as they can into their quiver.And then when they, they think they know a lot because they've been doing it a lot of years or they've been to this place or that place making memories, that kind of puts the stagnation part in motion.So yeah, one of the, one of the things I wanted to bring up too is that I refer to it a lot on the road is the article off the, off the website about the four stages of learning I mean that right there says it all. People just need to go in there and read it because basically the intermediate we're talking about is at stage two. It's a.They realize finally they got a problem, they don't know how to fix it. Maybe I need some help. Does that make sense? That's, that's the stage two. There's three and four. Does that kind of make sense?So, so we go from the beginner in stage one is trying to take it all in. And stage two is basically that second, second form.What people really want, if they really want to immerse themselves in it, is to work towards getting to stage four. Well, how do we get them to stage four if we've got a 85% of the people we meet on the road that are stuck in stage two?Does that kind of make sense at the intermediate level?

Marivn Cash00:05:02

Yeah, I mean, and I just think that's, you know, in so much of this is.I think it's true for, you know, you and I have talked about this in lots of different ways about elite performance, whatever you're doing, whether you're running track or you know, archery or whatever, you know, the. What becomes the differentiator is the mental component. Right.Whether it's the posture for self improvement or the ability to settle your nerves and perform under pressure. Right,

Mac Brown00:05:29

exactly. And yeah, just the, the wherewithal to have quality assignment, you know, to where we, we keep reminding ourselves of that circle.We talked about that there's things, you know, that we're still trying to acquire to know at all these levels. I mean, because we're never going to know anything, I guess. Well mention Albert.I mean that's, that's another one that always thought that way in a lot of his writings later in his life, of all the things that he came up with, Albert Einstein, that there was all these things he didn't know and time was running out and if somebody at that level still appreciates the factors, all these things which I think we're all that we all gotta realize there's all these things that we want to do and want to know that we're not going to get there unless we quit acting. I mean, we need to go back to that beautiful mind of a beginner to get there.

Marivn Cash00:06:19

Yeah. And I think too, I think the amazing thing is even the teachers and the presenters learn every time they interact with people. Right.Because you realize you don't know it all.And so I'm always, I mean a super interesting place to see it is in like fly Tying like it's almost impossible to be around tiers and not pick up a trick. And it may not even be from the most advanced tire. That's, you know, at the time table.

Mac Brown00:06:47

That's right. No, there's tons of that. That's where I used to spend all my time early in my career.Just because I would always pick up so many things from the tiers. You know, back when we had the big tying conventions in the early 90s, that one of them was in Asheville one year for the whole, whole country.And I meant that's where I met like Jim Stewart was there, Dave Whitlock was there, we had Gary LaFontaine was there. You go along with the college ruled notebook and you could sit down with all these people for an hour or two.You could sit all day if you wanted with one person. But my goal was to fill up that notebook.So I'd go around to all these people and I filled up a notebook full of just things that I would have never learned from any books. Of course that was way before YouTube. So that notebook is still hugely invaluable to me.I still find myself kicking back through there and remembering it brings stuff back like once I see it in writing, you know what I learned from that one event. So yeah, I mean I think that that's a, a really good way to do it like with tires is take a notebook.You're not going to remember it, just watching a bunch of tires and recall it all. Unless you write it down, you know.

Marivn Cash00:07:54

Yeah. Or use your phone and take pictures. But you know, we're kind of in the home stretch, right.So you know, in two weeks we'll have the last fly fishing show of 2026 in Lancaster. And I suspect you're probably doing the same thing you normally do. You've got your day before class, right.Your all day class and then you're probably teaching some classes at the show and you know, I'll be doing the same thing. I've got a casting class and I've got a presentation as well.

Mac Brown00:08:16

Oh yeah, that'll be, that'd be fun.I'm looking forward to heading up to Lancaster and yeah, the all day classes on Friday and then of course the show Saturday and Sunday and looking forward to getting up there and meeting some new folks.

Marivn Cash00:08:30

Yeah, and I will, I'll drop links in the show notes for signup stuff folks. But at least from what I'm doing, I guess Saturday morning I've got, I think one of the first presentations.I've got my you know, seasonal approach to trout fishing. Right. Pretty.It's a pretty basic thing, I think, to, you know, if you just ask yourself what the food's doing, what's the trout doing, so what should you do? And we just walk through that, through all four seasons.But then Saturday afternoon I'm teaching the same introductory casting class that I taught in Edison that you and I worked on together, you know, where it's really probably 2/3 classroom, one third practical. So still spaces in both of those. Would love for you to join me.And I know Mac, when you get back, you know, it's kind of like you're full born to, you know, schools and everything. I think you've got a school coming up like maybe that next weekend or the weekend after that.You want to let folks know about that and kind of how to get on the educational calendar, the guide calendar and the casting lesson calendar coming into spring.

Mac Brown00:09:25

Yeah, that'd be good. macbrownflyfish.com. That'll have the link up under the far right column under specialty classes.And that's where they can get into like the guide schools, the two day casting schools. There's a lot of three day schools with wet fly, dry fly nymphing. Those, those are all dedicated just to that one aspect.Not, not trying to cover everything in those three days. So if, if somebody says I really want to get, you know, familiar with, with one of those and that's the one to look at, you know, for that.But really, in my opinion, I mean they're all, they're all fun to teach and all. But really I think the two day school is the most valuable personally.Obviously, if I would be in this rodeo going around the country doing mostly casting, casting, casting. Because we can't do any of these techniques if we can't cast. So. So in my opinion, that's where it all starts.If we can't get a fly to where we're trying to be, then we probably need to fix that first, you know.

Marivn Cash00:10:20

Yeah, absolutely. And so I will, I'll make sure that all that stuff's in the show notes too.And you know folks, if you can't make it to the shows, you know, it's starting to warm up here in our part of the world. And what that really means, like on the Tennessee tail waters and some of the mountain streams is expect to start seeing.I know people have already started seeing the little black stones and the blue wing olives. Yeah.

Mac Brown00:10:41

And what I'm going to try to do this week before I head to Lancaster, this is one of the best times of year for. For Quill Gordon starting to come off. It'll wake all the big fish up out of wintertime on these wild streams.And so I'm gonna go chase and try to just throw up top a bunch the next. The next week before Lancaster. And the Quill's probably My favorite dry fly hatch of the year.

Marivn Cash00:11:02

Yeah, and the funny thing, too, folks, Is remember that the nymphs Are as big as they're ever gonna be this year, because every successive hatch throughout the season Is gonna get smaller and smaller. So this is when those 14s and 16s will really work for you.

Mac Brown00:11:14

That's right. Yeah. And some of the quills Will be, like, size 12. A lot of them will be, like, as big as size 12.And that's just the beauty about that, Is they're on the water so long, when they come up to harden the wings, sometimes 20 minutes, depending on the air temperature, but it's usually around 15 to 20 minutes at a time they float. So that's where they're going to get preyed upon. So it's a dry fly paradise with the Quill Gordon.

Marivn Cash00:11:37

Yeah, absolutely. So, folks, you know, if you can get to Lancaster and see us next weekend, that'd be awesome.But if you can't and you can get out and fish, that's great. And if it's still cold where you are, Tie flies. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac.

Mac Brown00:11:49

Tight lines. Marvin.