Hey, folks, it's Marvin cash, the host of the articulate fly. We're

back with another casting angles with Mac Brown. Mac, how are

you?

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

Uh, I'm just trying to stay cool. It's kind of funny. You were belly aching about

how hot it is where you are, and it's at least 15 degrees cooler than

where I am.

Well, it's still hot for here, for this

early in, well, late June,

you know, early summer. We've been. We've seen

some hot temperatures already the last couple weeks, but,

yeah, hopefully it's going to be a big cool down coming up

next week.

Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, last time we were coaching

people that this was coming, you know, the DH was

over. It's getting warmer. You know, you're going to end

up, you know, having to fish either early or late or head high up into

the mountains or go chase warm water species. And we thought

one of the things would be helpful for folks is, you know, a lot

of people, uh, uh, are reluctant to go

fish, like farm ponds and lakes for, like, bremen

bass, um, um, because they're trout anglers,

predominantly. Um, um, but there are a lot of things

you can do fishing for bass and brem that,

you know, give you good skill translation for when it cools off and you

get back on the water again in the fall.

That's right. Yeah. There's a lot of line control

tricks and, and strike detection tricks. You can

learn, you know, on stillwater or,

like, little t is pretty slow moving

water. A lot of those big, big pools, it's like you're

barely moving this time of year because it's not a lot of water in

them. So, um, yeah, so if you're

subsurface fishing, you can do a lot of

things for strike detection. You know, play around with

different rod tip actions and line retrieval

speeds with your hand and just watching the line,

keeping the rod tip low to the water and watching the line where it has

that little curve coming off from the rod tip

to where it meets the water, you know, and detecting strikes

from far out. You can, you can see

it instantly on, on that section of the line. So you can practice a

lot of these things on the brim and bass,

and it'll. It'll correlate, you know, directly to your trout

fishing as well. So it just gives you better,

um, attention, I guess, to the small

details for your trout fishing. That's. That's one of the

main. There's a lot of tricks, but that's one of the

best things, I think, on this time of year to play

with warm water fish for that reason.

Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because it's exactly like just coming back to

euro nymph. Right. And so you're looking at how deep your fly is

based on the angle of your line to the water,

right? Uh, uh. And then, and then to your

point, right. You can, um. Um.

You know, if you, if you're watching that angle, when that

angle changes, it probably means you've got a fish.

Right?

Yeah, that's it. And then you go ahead and go straight into

reacting to that, you know, with your strike.

Go uh, ahead and moving the rod and putting it on.

And you can, you know, you can strike

deliberately like that in a

short motion to test it. And if it's not there, then just keep

fishing it. So I mean, it's really good

for becoming disciplined and,

um, how to strike. Like you learn that on warm

water as easy as you do with trout. And,

um, that would really be beneficial just

because I would say

over the course of 40 years of guiding that most people strike

on an emotional response more

so than a human computer or thought process. You

follow me? So, so it's just all an emotion. By saying that, it's

like think about chimpanzee. Uh,

there's a good book, the chimp paradox that Steve Peters put

out. And it talks all about

like when people fish on emotions, it's like,

I think I got a strike. So what do they do? They just basically make a

back cast and the whole setups flying the other direction 40,

50ft. And it's like, that's totally emotional

because that's not the way we would ever set the

hook. Does that make sense? And I would say the majority of people that

don't go enough, that's how they set the hook. Um,

so you learn that on warm water, like what we're talking about,

to be deliberate, but short. I mean, you could do a line strike

using your lined hand, move the rod just 810 inches to check

and see if it's there. And if it's not, you're still fishing. You didn't, you didn't

put it in the air and make a back cast or

worse, say the fish was on, but you struck

emotionally and now everything's broke off. So it's like,

it's a great, great training methodology

for becoming deliberate. Using the human computer part of

your mind to set the hook

rather than emotional. Set the hook, you know?

Yeah. And then, you know, we've talked in various episodes

about how, you know, there are times when you want to dead

drift, but there are times when you want to

animate the fly. Right. We talked about cattus. You know, we've talked

about you fishing with Davey. Um, and so one of.

Yeah. And so one of the great things you can do, right, a very common

thing, right, in the evening is to fish some kind of popper,

right? And, you know, particularly even if you're on a river, you

know, fishing some kind of popper, probably with some rubber legs on it

for smallmouth and understanding,

you know, you know, how to animate

that fly. Um, um, not just to make it move any

which way, but just to start to understand, like, if I do this with the

rod or if I do this with the line, what does that do to the

fly? And that's going to make you a. A

way better streamer angler and a way better dry fly

angler when you get back on the trout stream.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And also playing around

with the, uh, patience game, you know, with

smallmouth, a lot of times on the popper is you

can animate it, and then during the pause, when it's

back at drift and animate it. And then during the pause,

it's easy for people to want to rush that whole

process, you know? And then, okay, I'm going to make another cast.

But if we animate and pause, we can leave it out there

for a very long time until it actually gets something.

And usually you'll find that the better quality

smallmouth around here are

usually when it's sitting there for quite a while after

it's been animated. And I mean, like, up to 90 seconds,

most people are, I want to rush that back in 15 and

let's launch another task. But I'm saying the best quality

fish that I've seen over the years, like, even

with, like, hoppers and cicadas and things,

is, is the ones that stay there a very long time in a

fishy spot, and all of a sudden the water boils,

you know, sometimes as long as two minutes of

waiting. But people don't tend

to wait a lot when they're. When, when you're trying to

get them to wait, they're. They're usually trying to rush that process. And I'm like,

no, keep fishing it. Let it stay.

But, yeah, the better quality fish usually,

usually happen during that long pause game.

Also teaches you, too, to kind of reinforce that, being

deliberate about your presentation. Right. So, you know,

some of it is pause with slight movement. You know, if

that doesn't work. You can start short strips, you know, if you're

fishing sliders or something that's got an open face,

you know, do you pop it and leave it alone, or do you pop, pop,

pop? And so it's the same things that we do fishing for

trout, just in a slightly different situation.

But if you, if you get in that mindset, like, you know, if you've been fishing

it one way for an hour and you haven't caught anything,

you might want to try something different, right?

Oh, yeah, no, that's, that'd be good. And it's like, yeah,

there's a lot of great, great lessons, um,

from, from the rivers and ponds and lakes, you know, that you

can transfer back over. And Matt, Matt did a good post the

other day, but, um, I think it's, it's

spot on, you know, with these kind of temperatures.

He posted that up in Michigan. I guess Michigan's been really hot, too.

And, um, but, you know, it's, it's,

it's okay to give, give trout a break when it gets hot. You

know, I see it here all the time. People still

pressuring a lot of the private stuff in north Georgia,

and it's just like, it's too warm.

It really is. When you have two weeks of 80, 90 degree

temperatures, chances are you'd be better off to go warm

water and let the trout, let the trout alone for a

while, you know, because the mortality rate's going to go way up the next few

weeks for trout. I just think it's an ethical thing to leave them

alone, you know? Yeah.

And I think, too, you know, you know, it may sound kind of

complicated to say we'll try all sorts of different things that people don't know

where to start, but, I mean, I think it comes back to stuff you and I have talked about

a lot, right. Is observation. Right. And so if you're

on a farm pond or a lake or river, like, what food do you

see? Right. If you're putting the boat in and you see

lots of minnows, maybe you need to, you know, fish a ck

bait fish or a woolly booger. Right. If you see dragonflies, like,

I mean, it's just, you know, the water is going to tell you, you

know, what's there to be eaten.

Um.

Um, you know, ah, you know, the, the fish don't

have uber eats. Right?

That's right. Well, I like the dragonfly idea because I

fish a lot of dragonflies this time of year. Um, um,

as far as the nips and I fish a lot of them, you know, as a

dry with extended foam bodies. I mean, I really

enjoy fishing a lot of the dragonflies and

warm water fisheries. And actually, even

for trout, I mean, there's times a year, you know, you do. Well, if

we were somewhere where the water's cooler, it's getting tough

to find cool water right now.

And so, yeah, the dragonfly is a really fun,

fun pattern. You know, you really can't go wrong with

dragonfly anywhere in the southeast on one water fishery

right now.

Yeah, so I would just say, you know, folks kind of take all that and, you

know, don't let the hot water keep you off the water. I mean, one of the

benefits of the summertime is you can fish either really early or really

late and you can go do other stuff, you know, if you're on a family

vacation or whatever, you know, it's not going to be like you get

to go out and fish all day long. Um, so just all sorts

of stuff that, um, you know, Mack and I thought you guys might find

helpful. And I know, Mack, you're done with your schools

until the fall, but I guess, you know, you're guiding regularly and you've

got, you've got some spots left in some of your casting schools in the fall.

You want to let folks know kind of where they can find you. So if

they want to go down the river with you, they can do that or get a casting

lesson or fill one of those, uh, class slots for

you.

Yeah, that'd be good. It's a, uh, best way is at the

URL. Mac brown fly fish. And then

same name as far as on Instagram and Facebook.

They can send a message on that, too. And that's

probably the best, best way to reach me in the casting school, I

think. September 17, I got two slots left in

that still. So those will go probably the next

couple weeks and then it'll be full. But, yeah,

we're looking forward to that.

Yeah, we've got all that stuff in the show notes. And, you know, folks, as I always

say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few. Tight

lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac,

tight lines.

Marvin.