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 you doing, Mack?

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

Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble, and you know, it's kind of funny.

Marvin: Everybody's excited that spring came a little bit early in our neck of the woods.

Mac: Oh yeah it's been it's been really nice uh really nice warm days and i had a few,

Mac: few exciting days there during the nationals last week that a lot of rain and

Mac: cold but um for the most part i think it was the third most mild february on record yeah.

Marvin: It's interesting about the nationals i imagine some of those guys from out west

Marvin: that are used to fishing tailwaters were We're a little bit surprised at how

Marvin: much water is in the system.

Mac: Yeah, the creeks are plenty high. And the rains, of course, brought it up a little more.

Mac: But it was cold. Like Friday, I watched the sessions up in Cherokee on the Ravens

Mac: Fork and the general water as well.

Mac: And I tell you, it was cold. I mean, 1 o'clock and it was still 33 degrees.

Mac: It was a mix of sleet and snow and rain the whole morning and not the most ideal,

Mac: pleasant conditions to be out in with the wind and all too.

Mac: So, yeah, that was probably, I think, the toughest day was Friday from what I saw.

Marvin: Yeah, and it was interesting. We started talking before we started recording,

Marvin: and kind of the idea we had to talk about this time, you know,

Marvin: from you watching everybody fish the nationals, was to talk a little bit about

Marvin: the four components of mindset.

Mac: Yeah, yeah, that'd be a great topic, and we'll hit a few of those maybe on our,

Mac: On our show tomorrow, on the fundamentals casting that we've got going on tomorrow

Mac: night, I thought that would be a good lead-in for what does that require.

Mac: The first one, we'll just jump into it. The first one I would say is remaining curious.

Mac: The more curious you remain, the faster I think you're going to grow.

Mac: And so I think that's really one of the big components is having that curiosity that remains high.

Mac: And then the second one, I think,

Mac: is discipline, like discipline to how to get to where you want to be.

Mac: I mean, that goes into what we've been preaching for 38 years.

Mac: Like, how much does somebody practice? Oh, never.

Mac: Then they go out on the river expecting to do great things, but yet they've

Mac: never practiced anything.

Mac: So it's just like that's kind of a waste of time. So we'll just say that you've

Mac: got to get disciplined and get a regimen of practice. practice.

Mac: And if you don't have that, then you're kind of wasting time spinning your wheels, you know.

Mac: And then the third one would be humility, you know, because if you think you

Mac: know way more than you really do know, then you're probably in trouble.

Mac: And I think the best people that I know out there as far as instructors,

Mac: teachers, and even the comp anglers that are on top of the world right now,

Mac: they're incredibly humble because they're always trying to get more.

Mac: Yet, didn't And you see the ones that are not as humble and I think they know

Mac: a lot. And that's kind of a dangerous recipe as well.

Mac: Cause that's kind of a limit to getting where they wanna be as well.

Mac: And I'll go ahead, hit the fourth one is, and this falls under it with observation,

Mac: that is to remain a naturalist and question everything.

Mac: Like when you go out, and I don't mean just the fish and what bugs are in a

Mac: spider web. I mean, are the birds singing or is it dead quiet?

Mac: Are the cows laying down? Are they walking around seed and all those things,

Mac: I think with the best anglers that I've known over the years,

Mac: they're incredibly in tune, call it in sync, being a naturalist.

Mac: They pay attention to everything, not just what they're doing, going to the river.

Marvin: Yeah, and I think all those things put together really is kind of a positive

Marvin: posture for life, right?

Marvin: I mean, because if you kind of put all that together, you know,

Marvin: the people that you find that not just are successful in the fly fishing world,

Marvin: but in other aspects of, let's just say, air quotes, real life, right? Right.

Marvin: You know, these are people that are incredibly disciplined about improving.

Marvin: They never stop and they're always curious.

Mac: Yeah i mean it's just like jimmy jimmy's one of my best friends here that you

Mac: know jimmy estes that did the the mop fly back in the mid 90s and i fished with

Mac: jimmy since i moved here in 87,

Mac: and when i looked at the curiosity level i think jim is in his early 80s now,

Mac: and uh he's still just tinkering non-stop kind of like in the light of dame juliana's book,

Mac: trees of fishing with an angle which was the first book ever written on the

Mac: sport of fly fishing and she's real encouraging throughout that book about making

Mac: all your own gear and modifying it when you can and keep growing and tinkering

Mac: with stuff and he's still tinkering with lines,

Mac: probably more so now than when he when he you know had a real job he's been

Mac: in retirement for years but i mean every time i see him he's like mac i got

Mac: another line i want you to try and he's all the time playing with all these

Mac: different setups and just tinkering in other words he's never ever really content with where he is.

Mac: And that's really kind of a beautiful thing. Talk about curiosity.

Mac: He's still as curious as when he first started as a kid, you know?

Mac: So I think that's a good attribute.

Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, folks, we're going to take a deeper dive into this.

Marvin: So this is going to come out Wednesday morning on the 6th. On that evening,

Marvin: Mac and I are going to be doing a class, The Fundamentals of Casting.

Marvin: And we've been talking about this quite a bit on the Casting Angles series.

Marvin: You know, we've worked really, really hard to try to kind of distill things

Marvin: down to kind of get rid of kind of the noise and the fluff because we don't

Marvin: like fluff, do we, Mac Brown?

Mac: No, no. It's funny that out there on the World Wide Web.

Marvin: Yeah, so to try to boil it down, and so the link will be in the show notes.

Marvin: It's going to be at 7.30 Eastern time. If you can't make it,

Marvin: no worries. We're going to record it and it'll be up there.

Marvin: But it's the first in a series of three parts,

Marvin: that's going to, I think, really help you have a completely different perspective

Marvin: perspective about how casting fits into your fishing life on the water and you

Marvin: know mac i know you've got one fly fishing show coming up to go go to and you're done right.

Mac: Yeah, I'll be done after this coming weekend,

Mac: and I'll go to Michigan on Friday, so the Midwest Fly Fishing Expo,

Mac: and we wrap up Sunday night, and I think that's my last one,

Mac: unless I go to, I might go to Munich still, I don't know, but I'm not sure on

Mac: that, I hadn't committed to that one yet.

Marvin: Well, that sounds interesting, get on an airplane, fly across the pond, right? Right.

Mac: Oh, yeah. The only reason I want to do it if I go is there's a lot of friends

Mac: that I've did I teach with over there over the years that I'd like to see.

Mac: And I don't get to see him that much in America. So if I did go to that, it'll be more for me.

Mac: I'll have to teach and do the same things that I do here, but it'd be more the

Mac: industry friends that work there.

Mac: For me, that that would be that'd be the only reason I consider it right now.

Marvin: Yeah, got it. And, you know, it's warming up. So, you know, I imagine that means

Marvin: guide trips and schools. Where can folks get more information?

Mac: The best place is probably on the website. It's at flyfishingguideschool.com

Mac: for the school information.

Mac: And then macbrownflyfish.com would be the best place to find out.

Mac: And it has all the contact info and it spells out, you know,

Mac: big thing too, I'll just emphasize is read it. because the worst thing in the

Mac: world, I've been in tourism 38 years and it's not fun answering the phone and

Mac: everything's written in the first paragraph but people didn't read the first paragraph.

Mac: You know what I'm saying? So they ask you the same thing that's already there.

Mac: So there's a reason why we put a lot of time in writing it and making it pretty

Mac: concise and to the point.

Mac: And I don't think many people spend more than a few seconds.

Mac: They see the website and they're like, there's Marvin's number, I'm going to call him.

Mac: But there's a reason it's written up in the first paragraph how it works.

Marvin: Yeah, and interesting too, right? Right. Because it kind of goes back to the

Marvin: whole mindset conversation we started out this episode with that tells you a whole lot.

Marvin: Right. About how that person internalizes the mindset for improvement.

Mac: Yeah. Yeah. It kind of ties right back into it, doesn't it?

Marvin: Yeah. And so, you know, folks, check out the schools, get out on the water with

Marvin: Mac and, you know, it's warming up.

Marvin: You know, if you're out west, we've still probably got a few more fly fishing

Marvin: shows running kind of, you know, maybe into March, deeper into March, maybe early April.

Marvin: Roll but you know go to a show if the weather where you are is not great tie

Marvin: some flies otherwise get out on the water tight lines everybody tight lines matt tight lines marvin.