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.