Marvin Cash: 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?
Marvin Cash: I'm doing great. How you doing, Marvin?
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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?
Marvin Cash: 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?
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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?
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: Um.
Marvin Cash: Um, you know, ah, you know, the, the fish don't
have uber eats. Right?
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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.
Marvin Cash: 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 Cash: Marvin.