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, Marvin?

Marvin: As always, I'm just living the dream. And you know, it's kind of funny,

Marvin: you know, we had the Northern Lights pretty far south, and I know a lot of people

Marvin: got excited about that, but we were trying to kind of talk through,

Marvin: you know, why fishing has been a little bit funky, Right.

Marvin: Because we kind of got out of that cold weather we had.

Marvin: But as you noted a couple of weeks ago on your Instagram feed,

Marvin: this is something we're seeing kind of everywhere that hatches are a little

Marvin: bit off schedule or not happening.

Marvin: And, you know, so we thought it would be a good idea to talk to folks about,

Marvin: you know, what do you do when you go to the water and you think,

Marvin: you know, what it's going to be like and nothing is the way that you expect it to be.

Marvin: And, you know, what's the strategy for putting some fish in the boat?

Mac: Yeah i think that's a good that's pretty much a

Mac: real a real scenario you know

Mac: these days and it's like today was zero percent

Mac: chance of rain and it's like then you add that in there

Mac: and of course it rained all day and as soon

Mac: as we put in it rained till we took out at five o'clock and i'm

Mac: like what happened to that zero percent that was the

Mac: latest doppler forecast from the ashville radar

Mac: are so um yeah it's kind of

Mac: funny so that right there alone i was kind of like

Mac: a little bit shocked had car hearts on

Mac: and a sims jacket and i thought well if i'd have known it was going to rain

Mac: all day we probably would have put waders on but i

Mac: don't really like wearing waders this time of

Mac: year marvin so it is what it is but

Mac: it did it didn't really uh we had

Mac: really overcast skies and rain falling all day

Mac: so you know i knew it'd probably be better

Mac: up top but we never saw any thing rise or break water the whole

Mac: whole day down down the river so we

Mac: tried a lot of different things and i kept going back to the dry swath

Mac: and enticing stuff to come up by using the

Mac: skating techniques and you can of course dance it from far away by shaking the

Mac: line and making it look erratic rather than just dead drift everywhere and pretty

Mac: much that's what everybody caught and had a couple of boats out there for the

Mac: trip and the guys are all buddies from 30 years ago up up in Wisconsin, in St.

Mac: Paul area. And that's what everybody basically ended up doing.

Mac: So even though we tried all the other techniques, tried a little bit of nymphing,

Mac: nyphing, water's a little off color, to make it all fair for the nymphing game.

Mac: But yeah, so I figured nymphing wasn't really gonna be it either.

Mac: So there's a lot of boats around us that were all nymphing.

Mac: Never saw them hook up anything. So I pretty much abandoned that within about 30 minutes.

Mac: But, yeah, it's funny how when you think something's going to go a certain way,

Mac: then you kind of change and change.

Mac: But I'll say this, usually in low light conditions like this with the,

Mac: you know, lead-colored skies, whether it's a wet fly game up high near the surface,

Mac: or a dry fly game, it's usually I'll bet up on the very top.

Mac: I would put my best guess coming up to the top. So I don't have as much confidence.

Mac: In low light like that saying let's nymph deep or throw streamers deep you know

Mac: because that's usually not where it's at.

Marvin: Yeah it's interesting too like i imagine probably the

Marvin: approach might be a little bit different you know if you're waiting versus in

Marvin: a boat because i would think you know most people that

Marvin: fish nymphs out of a boat probably aren't as

Marvin: skilled at you know animating the way that you

Marvin: talk about you know fishing with like davy or somebody like that and so it's

Marvin: a little bit harder you know to maybe you know if you're in a run to stand there

Marvin: and kind of work you know jig and different retrieves you're like well that

Marvin: doesn't work and you keep progressing but you know it might be a little bit

Marvin: harder to do with the average angler on a guy trip in a boat yeah.

Mac: Yeah i think it is and it's like yeah it's it's it's still tricky even to animate

Mac: you know wets and wets and dries up in the upper layer you know i mean because

Mac: if it's something they haven't done a lot um i think that makes it.

Mac: Kind of a learning curve on the fly but then having you know having something uh blow up and,

Mac: hit when it starts to skate and then blam they get a strike and it misses and that's always the,

Mac: you know that's a pretty good clue but the big part of it is too even with those

Mac: whether it's on the wet game or the or the dries to not not react with the rod

Mac: like you know a lot of people but when they're not doing it enough,

Mac: they want to do 100% rod movement when that happens.

Mac: And I'm like, well, now we're not even in the game because, you know,

Mac: the fry just got yanked away from the fish and you don't have any chance of catching it.

Mac: So learning to do that with the line hand rather than the rod is a hard thing to break people up.

Mac: You'll get people that fish 40 years that still rely on the rod,

Mac: which means somebody never taught them to, you know, use the line hand is what that really means.

Mac: But it's hard to break. It's hard for people to break.

Mac: Then you're telling them over and over quit using the

Mac: rod to set everything because the rods you

Mac: know what i mean so if they get excited and it's not there then it's basically

Mac: a back cast isn't it there's no chance of catching it that's the reason and

Mac: the other reason of course if it if it did did connect it's also a lot higher

Mac: likelihood of breaking off on five or four x isn't it you know i mean because

Mac: if it's a little bit too aggressive then blam you just broke the tippet it so

Mac: but if you use your line hand then you get a nice constant bend in the rod you got the fish on,

Mac: win-win so that's that's kind of the fun part about the upper layer yeah.

Marvin: It's interesting too though right because i mean we were talking and it's not

Marvin: just that hatches this year are late it's just like some hatches that we would

Marvin: expect to see aren't happening.

Mac: Yeah some of them i think are gone i think a lot of the a lot of the stuff that

Mac: we used to see i mean i really think are gone like that post that I put up on

Mac: Instagram a few weeks ago.

Mac: I heard from friends over in the Blue Mountains in Australia.

Mac: I heard from friends below Queenstown, all kinds of places across North America.

Mac: But yeah, the sad thing about it really, the one I posted about is the Mother's

Mac: Day Caddis because it was just Mother's Day yesterday, you know.

Mac: And that's always been a really predominant hatch here in the park for the park

Mac: streams, like all of them, like Hazel Creek, Nolan Creek, Forney Creek.

Mac: We have that on every park stream since I've lived here.

Mac: And the more Jimmy Estes brought it to my attention, you know,

Mac: a couple of years ago, he goes, Mac, I'm not seeing the larva.

Mac: Have you seen them? And I'm like, well, Jim, I hadn't really looked at them.

Mac: Because when I'm running trips, I'm not sitting there rock scouring,

Mac: looking at, you know, I'm not teaching entomology or anything like,

Mac: like at Western years ago anymore.

Mac: So I just, I just assumed they're always going to be there.

Mac: And then sure enough, when he

Mac: brought that up, I started kind of paying attention and looking up on the,

Mac: the watersheds that are around me, and I can't find the larvae.

Mac: I haven't found a single larvae yet. We used to have millions of them.

Mac: So I think the bad news is I think that Mother's Day caddis hatch is gone from here permanently.

Mac: Because if we can't find a single larvae, that tells you something.

Marvin: Yeah, and is the Mother's Day caddis, is that a case larvae?

Marvin: So is that when you flip the rocks over and you see those little cases, or is it a stick builder?

Mac: Builder it's no it's a little trapezoid shape

Mac: it's a little brown it's a little green worm in a trapezoid

Mac: shape they go through like 11 11 to 12

Mac: instars and it's about the size this time of year before they hatch should be

Mac: about the width of your little finger you know where your fingernail is on your

Mac: little finger that's about the size and those are the filters so what they do

Mac: is they attach a little silk thread on the rock they come up and suspend we

Mac: used to get hundreds of them Like when you dry dropper years ago,

Mac: your nymph would catch on that silk line, so then you'd catch it on your hook.

Mac: I mean, you'd catch the little larva on your hook.

Mac: So about every fifth cast years ago, when they were filtering in the water,

Mac: you'd have to take that back off, and you'd throw it back out,

Mac: and you'd catch another one because of silk line.

Mac: But yeah, that's how they would feed. They filter by using that little silk

Mac: line, and they suspend in the water column, and they keep the silk line attached

Mac: to the rock, kind of like a spider web.

Mac: And that's the ones that I'm talking about are disappeared from here.

Mac: So that's a bad sign, though, because they're real tolerant of pollution. That's the kicker.

Mac: So the mayflies, not as tolerant for pollutants, but when you start to lose

Mac: cata species, then it starts to mean there's a bigger problem.

Marvin: Yeah, and so to kind of back up, to give people kind of a process,

Marvin: I know you ended up basically fishing, you know, wets in the film and dries today.

Marvin: But, you know, if you walk out and, you know, your current plan isn't working,

Marvin: kind of what's the progression and how rapidly should you work through technique

Marvin: and fly changes to try to dial something in?

Mac: I think the progression starts first with the conditions that you see,

Mac: like if it's bright blue sky versus overcast sky.

Mac: I think that right there is the same on the lake too for trout.

Mac: But on a river, if you know it's overcast, if you're going to nymph,

Mac: then you're going to nymph high.

Mac: You're going to try to keep the tabletop layer we talk about just from the surface down, say, a foot.

Mac: We're going to try to fish nymphs up high in the column.

Mac: That wouldn't be a good idea to say, let's fish nymphs rowing the bottom on

Mac: an overcast day like what we had today.

Mac: So I didn't even go there because that's what all the boats around me are doing.

Mac: You can also learn a lot, pay attention to the people around you.

Mac: I mean, I do that a lot. And if I look out and there's four boats and they're

Mac: all nymphing a bobber with 12 feet of tippet, they're already fishing the bottom.

Mac: And if you're sitting there doing your game and you notice, hey,

Mac: they hadn't hooked a fish yet, it's been an hour, and there's no point of copying that, is there?

Mac: So I'm saying I think there's a little bit of cat and mouse like paying attention

Mac: to the people around you too because if the game was on down there,

Mac: then they'd all have bent rods.

Mac: So, I mean, I have a lot more faith on overcast day, like I say, staying up in the top.

Mac: So the changes I was doing was mostly based on that assumption,

Mac: which is kind of like going back a long time ago, like the Gillies that are in Ireland.

Mac: And those places in the world, they've had that in their literature and in their

Mac: repertoire for a very long time.

Mac: And I think there's a reason that those, what do you call it,

Mac: gut instincts is a good thing to pay attention to.

Mac: You know, first, it wouldn't be a good idea to go out there and change nets

Mac: 20 times deep when you still haven't got a strike.

Mac: And it's not a fly pattern problem then because we're talking about a DH program

Mac: where a majority of them are hatchery fish.

Mac: And so I think that that's a big part of it too.

Mac: You know, you have, I don't remember, I didn't look at the schedule,

Mac: but I know sometime in the past week they put 7,000 or 8,000 more on the section here through town.

Mac: So that's a pretty high population density per mile of river.

Mac: So basically the way out here, unlike a DH would work, is once you're dialed

Mac: in and doing the right thing, saying,

Mac: which is kind of just experimentation, like I said, from being cloudy.

Mac: That's what happened toward the end. Once we were dialed in,

Mac: they were getting strikes like every cast in the spot we were in before we got done today.

Mac: And, I mean, we had some moments like that where you know you're doing the right thing.

Mac: How do you know? Because you're getting success every time you throw out.

Mac: You're getting a strike. Whether you caught it or missed, it doesn't matter. You got a strike.

Mac: That's kind of how I count it. I don't really care. They're,

Mac: you know, I shouldn't say I don't care, but whether they got it in or not is

Mac: beyond my pay grade at that point.

Mac: If they got a strike and missed it, I could care less that we got it in the net or not.

Mac: Does that make sense? It's giving me the feedback that I want is what I'm trying to say.

Marvin: Yeah. And then, you know, to kind of turn it around, if you had a bright,

Marvin: sunshiny day, you would want to fish deep and on structure because the fish

Marvin: don't have eyelids and they're not going to be up at the surface because it's

Marvin: a little too bright, right? Plus predators.

Mac: Yeah. And then we'd go back and play the other game. you know

Mac: about dead drift licensing lift

Mac: um jig jig jig

Mac: jig swing swing swing and you know hand crawl back up there's five techniques

Mac: to run your nips down deep and it's like we'd sit there and play that game on

Mac: a deeper level which is a whole different kind of game than what i'm describing

Mac: what we did today but it's just a whole different process that's why i guess

Mac: the willingness to to change,

Mac: to kind of sort through that.

Mac: But sorting through that, a lot of people would say, start out,

Mac: fish deep, go through all that process first, then kind of play around with

Mac: the streamer for a little while, then play around with this a little while.

Mac: No, what I'm saying is when it's these kind of conditions, I think you can filter

Mac: to the answer a lot quicker than saying, do everything that you know how to do.

Mac: We're not there to do everything we know how to do. We're there to do what we

Mac: know we need to do for the condition that we have.

Mac: Does that kind of help?

Marvin: No, it does. I just wanted to kind of boil it down so people can write that

Marvin: on a three-by-five card and stick it in their fly box, and they'll have that

Marvin: in their shirt pocket the next time they go out.

Marvin: I know you wrapped up your last casting school until the fall a few weeks ago,

Marvin: but you probably have some kind of topical schools coming up throughout the summer, right?

Mac: Yeah we have some uh there's still some wet fly schools and some there's some

Mac: dry fly schools coming up um next few months there's a lot of specialty weekend

Mac: type schools those are on the the website and uh yeah those are a lot of fun

Mac: because they just focus specifically,

Mac: into that you know into that realm of tactics to to you know to perfect because

Mac: a lot of people are like well isn't the wet fly you just throw it and swing

Mac: it's like no if that's what you think

Mac: of wet sloven because something that's for the class but that's what a lot of

Mac: people think of wet fly they think well marvin isn't that that boring technique

Mac: we just throw it out hope something jumps on but that's wet fly has as many

Mac: techniques as dry fly or nymphing or anything else,

Mac: it's just there's a whole array of things to put in the um the wet fly quiver

Mac: that make it highly productive got.

Marvin: It and you know also too i imagine you probably you know you're booking trips

Marvin: with you and then also you run a handful of guides if folks wanted to uh to

Marvin: reach out and book a day with you on the water what's the best way for them to get in touch.

Mac: Probably the website at mack brown fly fish or yeah i'd prefer that because

Mac: sometimes people will put something to,

Mac: instagram or something i don't really look at that as much i'll answer an email

Mac: a lot quicker than i will social media thing because i don't really look at

Mac: the social media thing that often and Marvin.

Mac: So I think the email's the best way off the website.

Marvin: Yeah. Well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, you owe it to yourself to get

Marvin: out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac.

Mac: Tight lines, Marvin.