S8, Ep 49: Mastering the Cast: Mac Brown's Insights on Shooting Line

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?

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

Yeah, just trying to stay out of trouble and, you know, stay cool. It's not as bad as it was around the fourth, but it's still pretty darn warm here in the mid Atlantic.

Yeah, it's been. It's been pretty warm here for a couple of weeks, it seems like. So we're ready for cooler days ahead.

Yeah. And so it kind of was kind of funny.We were talking before we started recording, and it's like, you know, there's really, you know, unless you're willing to go really, really, really high, kind of tough to fish for trout. And, you know, we've talked a lot about switching and chasing bass and panfish and smallmouth and all that sort of stuff.But, you know, one of the things Mac wanted to talk about this time is we wanted to talk about shooting line. Right, Mac?

Yeah, I just thought that'd be a good topic. Getting back to casting angles and talking about some things that'll. It'll help people.And that's been something that, you know, I was real interested in years ago at the college. I ran all kinds of studies about shooting line and.And just the perception of the ideology that people that think they are doing it and the difference of doing it and developing any kind of mastery at it is two different things.And so I just think it's a really good topic because even with something that, you know, say a cast that doesn't have the sufficient line speed, maybe the timing was off the synergy somewhere. The synergy was broken. And even a bad cast will take a little bit of line. So then you ask the student, are you. Are you shooting line?And Everybody will say, 100%, yeah, I'm shooting line. So whether that means one inch or 30ft or 40ft, everybody's doing it.So then my point is, if everybody's doing it, it's like everybody's a winner and going to get a trophy, then there's no incentive to really learn it. So I thought, well, this would be a great topic for this evening just to address some of the things with shooting line.

Yeah.And so, like, at a really basic level, you know, we can talk about what shooting line is, but also that you can do it on the forward and the back cast, right?

Yeah. It works out a little better for the back cast using an elliptical stroke, just because the Rod can point at it.In other words, you know, vertical stroke, like turning the casters, like doing accuracy. Shooting line doesn't work out so well going over a right angle, if that makes any sense.So a Belgian cast, for instance, constant tension cast, because the line's pointing at the unrolling line, like you see in saltwater a lot.Much more efficient because you can shoot great amounts of line in the back cast, but you're not going to shoot great amounts of line in the back cast with a vertical stroke. So, yeah, you can do it, but some things have to change.

Yeah. And then, you know, so we talk about that.And so, you know, then we talk about, like, the difference between, you know, shooting four or five feet a line or maybe less, but then also being able to, you know, a lot of good casters. Right. Once you get the head out, they can shoot the rest of the running line. Right.And so the trick is, what are those things that you need to do to start maximizing the distance that you can shoot? Line.

Yeah, let's talk about that. So the first thing would be, how do you get some line out?

Like, if you.

Let's think you're throwing a fly up and across stream, fly floats back to you how much you continue to stay with that drift. A lot of times you'll see people do this upstream, and they'll pick it up to go right back upstream. It's a lot easier, you know, if you're gonna say.Say you're throwing 40ft up and across. It's a lot easier to let that, you know, shorten it up, then feed line back out so you maintain 30, 40ft.But if you're doing it traditionally, you know, like upstream, traditional method would be like retrieve line, retrieve line, retrieve line, and then try to go back to 40. Now you're starting out with only 10ft, you know what I mean? Or 10 or 15ft, depending on the water quality of, you know, is it a rapid.Is it still water? If it's still water, you're going to pick it up way earlier than that and be going further than 40 to start with. So.So I guess the trick is learning how to slip line out before you ever get started. If you use a roll cast pickup, you can. You can shoot more line out right on the pickup itself.Shoot line on the back cast, and then go big on the next forward delivery. So it's like a pickup, a back cast, both of those entailed shooting line. And now let it rock and roll and let it go.And when you do that in that kind of sequence, you can go up to 90ft, you know what I mean? Like, you could sit there and easily let it all go and boom, you're. You went big, you know.But the problem is, like, I just know from the college programs years ago, when you did assessments and asked people, well, Marvin, how you doing? Shooting line? Everybody was telling me they had it down.And of course, I think it's just one of those things that tricks people because if they let a foot or two go or five feet go, they think they've got it. And I'm like, no, you don't have it until you.I'll tell you a good, A really good way to tell if people are getting mastery with it is this is start out with, say, 30ft and then measure what you can go to with a single back cast and forward cast. And if it's still at like 35 or 40, you probably don't have it. Does that make sense?And that, that, that's just a simple clue to get people motivated to want to go more.

Yeah, but I think the trick is let's help people a little bit more and kind of tell them mechanically what they need. Right. So we talked about this before we started recording. We're talking about having really good stops. Right.And we're talking about basically, for lack of a better word, kind of like the geometry of the fly line going through the fly rod. Right. And the guides.

Right.

And so, you know, you want to kind of expound on that a little bit. Cause, I mean, just telling people that they. They're going to go out there and do it and they're not going to know what to do.They're just going to know they're not going to hit the mark.

But they don't know how to do a lesson, too.

That's.

That's the selling pitch, Marvin. We got to get to that.

I got that. I was going to do that later.I was going to set it up, and we're going to tell people to hurry up and come because you're going to take August to go goof off somewhere, right?

Yeah, probably so. But. But is a good point. But yeah, I mean, all these things come together when we say synergy and developing line speed and proper mechanics and.Or the loop legs parallel, and it goes on and on and on. I mean, all those things given. Have to come together with what we're talking about.This is not just a sliver because this is also a big part of the big picture. Okay. All I'm trying to Say, about bringing this whole shooting line thing up is there's more.And the reason I say because there's more is because I've worked with a lot of people that are like, brand new and a lot of people that are traveling the world on exotic destinations. And the reality is, if we surveyed all of them over the years, I would say a hundred percent of them say they've already got the technique.And the reason I think it's a hot topic is to say that it's something that you're going to keep working at with shooting line your whole lifetime and it's going to get better and better and better. The better everything else gets with it. Okay. And I think. Does that kind of make sense?So, I mean, what you were saying about how do we get people there when we go back into talking about, you know, you said stopping points. Well, is the fundamental movement. Is the movement enhancing it or hurting it? You follow me? There's all these other things that go on.Is the timing excellent or is it poor? I mean, we could break it down to why it works. It doesn't work with just three things with pause, power, path. But does that kind of.Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah, it does. I mean, I was just going to try to maybe give people kind of a little bit of a drill.And I would say something, I mean, and you know, gosh, please chime in because you know more about it than I do. But I would say if you wanted to drill it, don't shoot on the back cast and just practice shooting on the forward cast. Right.And so we talk about the three P's, but, you know, when you get that stop, right?And the lines going out, you know, we talked about, you know, holding the line kind of, you know, when the okay symbol in your hand to get the best distance, you know, you want that fly line is parallel, you know, to the fly rod on the stop as you can, so that it's not having to, you know, climb over a guide and go out. Cause that's going to really kill your distance, right?

That's right. You want to point the rod like where you're shooting it and. No, that's a good point. And the reason we hold. Let's talk about that real quick, too.Cause you brought up a good point.We talked about it before we started and we were talking about, you know, you want to make just an okay symbol with your line hand between your thumb and index finger.And the reason we do that, a lot of people will say, well, Marvin, that's So you can stop it in case you're going to throw your tarpon fly in the mangroves or hit a rhododendron if you're trout fishing in Appalachia. But the real reason we do it is if you just let go of it.If you have a lot, if you develop some adequate line speed, the line's jumping all over the place. If you look at it on film, which I did that a lot at the college with high speed cameras and strobe lights years ago and did a study on.When I was doing the fly line study and we did a big study on shooting line. And what happens is we're talking 3 to 4 foot of oscillations of line trying to go through a stripping eyelet.That's what is it, 10 millimeters roughly at the top, the first strip and eyelet. So the problem is all that line has to go through a little tiny hole. And when you hold it in your. Okay. Symbol, you've.You've reduced those oscillations to 3 to 5 inches instead of like 3 to 5ft. And that's the real reason we hold it and slip it through that okay. Symbol. Of course, you also get the added advantage.You could stop it if you wanted.But the real reason for distance is you're going to get much greater distance because you don't have these huge oscillations going through a small hole.

Yeah. And you won't wrap it around the butt of the rod either. And so this will be the place, Mac, where I'll let you go sell it. Right.Because I know you might have a few like short workshops, but you're empty in August and then kind of gearing back up in the fall. So if people want to work on shooting line with you, where should they go? And all that kind of good stuff.And also prime the pump for the fall classes.

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. We have a bunch of that on the, on the website. It's pretty easy to get to under the menu of, of it's called Masterclass Fly Casting Workshop.And it breaks down the, the three of them that we do. The, the first one is called a Fly Casting Mastery Workshop.For those that already have a lot of those fundamentals down and they're pretty solid at casting. We have a spey elite casting clinic in the fall as well. And there's a saltwater masterclass as well. So it just depends what they're into, you know.But I would say there is a hierarchy. I mean, to all of it. Like there Kind of is because, I mean, the saltwater stuff, we're jumping into a lot more.I wouldn't call it advanced concepts, but they need to have some rock solid fundamentals already. So, in other words, the progression would be the first one. The casting Mastery workshop. And it's hard to.It's kind of hard to funnel everybody in the right space, if that makes any sense, Marvin. But the reality is we got to come up with, you know, a decent fundamental cast before we jump into a saltwater class, is what I'm trying to say.There's no point of talking about double hauling and all the other topics we cover if they can't form a decent loop already at 30ft, you know.

Yeah, I was going to say you can't cast 90 if you can't cast 30.

Well, that's kind of why there has to be a hierarchy. So if somebody's interested in those, I mean, I would say make sure they do the fundamental one first, you know what I mean?Because then we know that's down.And something that we've been working at a lot is went back and took all the student handout curriculums and things we used to use at the college programs and a lot of these clinics over the last four decades, and there's like seven handouts for these. These courses. And it's like, then there's student assessment. There's all kinds of stuff.When they sign up, they get all these things to read beforehand and hopefully get familiar with some of the concepts before they show up. You know, that's the. That's the idea.

Yeah, absolutely.And so I would say, folks, if you have a question for me or Mac, you know, email me or DM me and you might hear us talk about it on another casting angles, you know, also, on the housekeeping side of things, I would say, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend to subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcast app of your choice. Because in the age of AI, it's more important than ever.And as it's getting hot, I would say, you know, fish early, fish late, fish farm ponds, and get out there and catch a few tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac.

Tight lines, Marvin.