Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
Marvin: and we're back with another Casting Angles with Mack Brown. How are you, Mack?
Mac: I'm doing great. How are you doing, Marvin?
Marvin: As always, trying to stay out of trouble. You know, it's interesting.
Marvin: You had a great weekend. Your oldest son graduated from high school this past weekend.
Mac: Yeah, that was a big, that was a fun time. I think that's the first time probably
Mac: since Jennifer and I've been married with all the
Mac: family on her side and my side was all up here in the great town of Bryson City
Mac: and we had a big cookout on the deck and celebrating that so that was a lot of fun.
Marvin: Yeah it's interesting you know so that's a you know transition to summer I know
Marvin: you were telling me Duncan is working on Deep Creek with the tubers and Connor's
Marvin: down in Alabama at a camp but you know the other thing that's happened is you
Marvin: know kind of that traditional kind of fall winter spring delayed harvest is over in North Carolina.
Marvin: And so it's maybe a time to think about maybe some other options.
Mac: Oh yeah, there's a lot of other good options. You know, this time of year,
Mac: I like going like the Little Tennessee or the Pigeon. There's a lot of other
Mac: great places with like Brim and Smallmouth and farm ponds.
Mac: We don't have that many ponds here, but like where I grew up in East Tennessee,
Mac: there was literally probably a hundred in Greene County.
Mac: I mean, great farm ponds, some of them two and three acres big.
Mac: And of course, that was a big part of fly fishing growing up and would get into
Mac: summer, would be going to the farm ponds a lot and chasing bass and brim and
Mac: catfish and all kinds of stuff on the farm ponds.
Mac: And, you know, catfish are a lot of fun this time of year too,
Mac: because a lot of people think catfish, you know, throwing bait and fishing down deep.
Mac: But catfish until they're about 17, 18 inches are insectivores,
Mac: just like a trout. So they're beautiful, smooth, same size as a trout.
Mac: And they eat in, you know, you go down to Little Tennessee and throw a single
Mac: dry fly and catch all kinds of catfish that come up and eat it just like a trout.
Mac: So there's a lot of other things to go after for sure now that the D.H. is gone.
Mac: Kind of opened up and then of course we still got a lot of high elevation streams
Mac: if they want to chase blue line and deep trout but i think i don't know it's
Mac: a lot of fun still the water the water temp still in great condition here but
Mac: i've been on deep creek a lot this last week and,
Mac: and we're over at nolan creek and those creeks are still plenty cold.
Marvin: Yeah it's interesting i mean i guess i would say you know if you were kind of
Marvin: trying to figure it out i would say try to you know fish up on the blue lines
Marvin: until maybe there's a water problem later in the summer.
Marvin: And then the great thing about fishing farm ponds and lakes for bass and brim
Marvin: and catfish is you can kind of beat the heat because you either get up really
Marvin: early in the morning and you're done about 11 o'clock or you go fish that last like hour and a half,
Marvin: two hours of sunlight at the day.
Marvin: And, you know, it makes it a little bit easier to kind of fit in with all the
Marvin: other stuff we do in the summertime.
Mac: That's right. Now I'm hoping we're going to get, I've been crossing my fingers,
Mac: we're going to get these epic cicada hatches that they're
Mac: having all over the country but we still have yet
Mac: to see a one like on where i live in
Mac: the valley at deep creek i haven't heard one or seen
Mac: a shock or anything but they're definitely happening in a lot of places and
Mac: uh my aunt sent a photo from where i grew up in the ozarks and they're literally
Mac: the husker like hundreds of thousands sitting around the bases of trees so i
Mac: mean certain places are getting them and if you happen to have that you know
Mac: if you're having a big cicada activity,
Mac: there's some really good stuff you can do with that i mean we're just not getting
Mac: it here but throwing cicada patterns on those same warm water cold water rivers
Mac: whatever you got whatever kind of water you got that's going to be definitely
Mac: preyed upon from a lot of different species yeah.
Marvin: It's interesting because you know down here the periodics uh have pretty much
Marvin: run their course and we're probably i would guess about a month away probably
Marvin: from getting our you know normal annuals which is you know kind of what will
Marvin: be the game kind of where i grew up in central virginia too but uh but yeah
Marvin: it's interesting to see fish move to uh to crush those cicadas if they have a chance.
Mac: Oh, yeah. I keep thinking maybe we're going to get them. I keep waiting at night.
Mac: We sit on the patio every night on the back deck and sit around the caveman
Mac: television with the big bonfire pit.
Mac: I mean, if they're here, you'd hear them, but we're just not hearing them.
Mac: I don't think we have them here where I live, but maybe they're where some of the listeners live.
Mac: That'd be a fun thing to have. I've got boxes and boxes of cicadas just stuck
Mac: in here. I'm going to have to go somewhere where they're happening because I
Mac: don't think they're going to happen here.
Mac: I might go up to, I think they're probably happening up there in southern Virginia.
Mac: I've heard reports of some friends
Mac: up there that talked about having some pretty good cicada activity.
Mac: And I know up by Lake, by Hickory.
Mac: What's the name of the lake that's on 40 as you're driving to Hickory? Is that Lake James?
Mac: I don't know if they're having them.
Marvin: Yeah, it might be.
Marvin: Yeah, I'd have to think about that because it's not far enough east to be in the Pee Dee River chain.
Marvin: But, yeah, I mean, they pretty much run their course here and around Greensboro
Marvin: and kind of up into southwest Virginia because they've been out for,
Marvin: you know, four to six weeks. And I think they only live about a month.
Marvin: So, you know, if you figure they come out kind of over two weeks,
Marvin: they pretty much kind of run their course. One thing I thought might be helpful
Marvin: on the warm water front for folks, a lot of those bugs are pretty wind-resistant poppers.
Marvin: Maybe talk to people a little bit about terminal tackle and technique.
Marvin: I know one thing I do when I'm fishing poppers is I generally fish a pretty
Marvin: short leader because it doesn't matter.
Marvin: It helps those big bugs turn over a whole lot better. Sure.
Mac: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then the small poppers too, like you don't have to go to
Mac: these massive big poppers.
Mac: Like on the little Tennessee, we throw poppers a lot of the time that are half
Mac: the length of your thumb, you know, just little small poppers with some rubber,
Mac: like Matamex rubber on the sides, you know, make an X pattern and then have
Mac: a little bit of marabou on the tail.
Mac: And those are quick to tie and they're real durable. we throw a lot of those for,
Mac: red eye bass and there's a lot of brim and there's a lot of catfish and smallmouth
Mac: that'll eat those small poppers and that's really the better pattern size to
Mac: throw as far as to see a lot of variety and different numbers of what's in there
Mac: and when you start going to the really big stuff,
Mac: in hopes of you know kind of like a lot of the big flies in the,
Mac: streamer game then you're going to be a little more lonely throwing a lot more
Mac: cast and if you catch one yeah it'll probably be a good fish but
Mac: But as far as on trips and things, if you're taking people down,
Mac: we try to stay on the smaller size stuff because they can see a lot more numbers
Mac: of a wider variety of fish, carp included, like glass carp.
Mac: And of course, those are a lot of fun on a popper.
Marvin: Yeah. And I would say on the streamer front, I would keep it simple,
Marvin: folks. I would say woolly boogers. I would say small finesse changers.
Marvin: I'm a big fan of fish and CK bait fish. I think they're easy to tie and they're absolutely killer.
Mac: Yeah that'd be that'd be a good choice up here that'd be
Mac: a good choice all over and uh it's a lot
Mac: of fun i mean it's just kind of a different season a different time to time
Mac: to chase different you know i remember uh one of the trips marvin since we're
Mac: talking about going after different you know seasonal time change i remember
Mac: several years ago it's probably five or six years ago the kids we went out did
Mac: two and a half weeks on the buffalo river in Arkansas.
Mac: It's a wild, it's like a national wild scenic river.
Mac: And it was, it was amazing. I mean, we had the kids and the cousins there from
Mac: Colorado and it was just so, so much diversity.
Mac: I mean, Whitlock, you know, when he lived up there in Mountain Home,
Mac: that was, that was where he'd go the most to try a lot of his different patterns and things.
Mac: But it's an amazing fishing on the Buffalo. I'd like to go back out and do that.
Mac: I'd do that again in a second if I had the time to do it right now.
Marvin: It's definitely your busy time of year, and I know you know that you're guiding,
Marvin: and although there's a little bit of a transition there, but you also have the schools.
Marvin: You want to let folks know about kind of the upcoming schools and kind of how
Marvin: to get on your guide calendar?
Mac: Yeah, the best way is probably on the URL at backgroundflyfish.com.
Mac: And the next big thing probably is September.
Mac: As far as the casting school, there's a couple of spots left open for that,
Mac: and then it will be full, and we'll cap it off.
Mac: And there's a couple of specialized things still going on right now with –,
Mac: And different specialized type schools of, you know, dry fly,
Mac: wet fly type schools that are weekend courses. And those have been a lot of fun.
Mac: It's kind of fun to have, you know, eight, ten people a weekend to teach that
Mac: too instead of just like one person at a time.
Mac: It's just a little bit easier efficiency use of time, you know,
Mac: because you're going to cover all the same thing, whether it's one or ten.
Mac: So it might as well be ten.
Marvin: Yeah. And so just to help folks, you know, if they want to do one of those,
Marvin: I know, have you had your wet fly one yet? I know that was one that we've been
Marvin: talking about the last couple of times we've been together.
Mac: Yeah, yeah, we did that. And that went over real good. And it was a good time
Mac: of year, still really cold, cold water.
Mac: And yeah, I have to look, actually. I don't even, I've been so busy with like
Mac: casting clinics and trips this last week before the graduation that it's bad
Mac: when you have to look at your calendar yourself to find out when stuff is.
Mac: But that's kind of where I'm at right now, Marvin. and I'm a little bit,
Mac: just from the last week of all the festivities, I'm a little bit behind.
Marvin: Yeah, it's all good. You either need to hire somebody to keep you straight or
Marvin: maybe just have a monkey paw and get reset.
Mac: Yeah, that'd probably be a good thing.
Marvin: Well, listen, you know, folks, we have lots of opportunities kind of in the
Marvin: southeast mid-Atlantic, you know, still time to chase trout,
Marvin: lots of cool warm water stuff, smallmouth bites just going to keep getting better,
Marvin: or particularly if you like fish in topwater.
Marvin: So as I always say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac.
Mac: Tight lines, Marvin.