Latest / The Articulate Fly / S8, Ep 53: Cool Waters and Hot Days: Mac Brown’s Guide to Summer Fishing

Transcript

S8, Ep 53: Cool Waters and Hot Days: Mac Brown’s Guide to Summer Fishing · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly.
• 0:06
  We're back with another Casting Angles with the man himself, Mac Brown.
• 0:09
  Mac, how are you?
• 0:11
  I'm doing great.
• 0:12
  How are you doing, Marvin?
• 0:13
  I'm just trying to stay cool.
• 0:14
  How about you?
• 0:16
  Well, it's, it's far from cool I guess these days still.
• 0:20
  But we're about to get another little thunder shower it looks like here pretty shortly.
• 0:24
  That'll cool us down a little.
• 0:26
  Yeah, we're walking into the dog days of summer.
• 0:28
  We're gonna get a cool off later this week, but it's kind of tough and we were kind before we started recording, folks.
• 0:33
  We're really kind of talking about, you know, making lemonade.
• 0:35
  Cause this is really not a great time to go chase trout, right?
• 0:40
  No, it's really not.
• 0:42
  Unless you got somewhere that's gonna be.
• 0:44
  Stay, stay constant, you know, close to constant temperature like a tailwater.
• 0:51
  For the most part it's getting a little bit on the warm side.
• 0:54
  You can go early, you like at daylight till 9:30 or so and, and find some fish active activity.
• 1:01
  But after about 9:30, 10 o', clock, it starts to get a little bit too warm.
• 1:06
  Yeah.
• 1:07
  And I would say, you know, the change up that we suggest, you can still go fish for warm water stuff.
• 1:10
  But what's happening particularly on bigger bodies of water is as the days get hotter and the water gets warmer, the fish just go deeper and you kind of get to a point where it's really, really hard to get
• 1:21
  them on a fly ride.
• 1:22
  So that's something to think about.
• 1:23
  But like Mac said, you know, we're very, very lucky in this part of the world.
• 1:26
  We got two great tail waters in East Tennessee.
• 1:28
  The Watauga and the South Holston.
• 1:30
  And the Watauga during the summer has a recreational flow for a good chunk of the day.
• 1:36
  So there's water and there's cold water in there pretty much all the time.
• 1:41
  That's right.
• 1:42
  Yeah.
• 1:42
  And that's a good thing having the tail waters, you know, East Tennessee, Watauga, Holston, I mean Nantahala over here.
• 1:52
  The Tuck is a tailwater just doesn't seem to come out that cold.
• 1:55
  You know, it's not at all like, like those other three.
• 1:58
  So even though it's a tailwater, it's just.
• 2:00
  There's not enough fight there with the dams where it comes out, you know, stays cold like, like it should.
• 2:06
  So.
• 2:07
  So yeah, another one's the clinch.
• 2:09
  I.
• 2:09
  I had a buddy that was on the Clinch last week and he Gave me an update on that and that was actually fishing pretty well.
• 2:16
  They got a weir.
• 2:18
  There's a weir below the dam there below Norris, Tennessee and that's another good tailwater if somebody's over there close to that.
• 2:26
  But for the most part, other than those four, those are probably the four that come to mind.
• 2:32
  Yeah.
• 2:32
  And so I would say folks, you can kind of check release schedules and water temperatures using USGS gauges.
• 2:39
  And you know, the app that I always use, they're a sponsor of the podcast is TroutRoutes.
• 2:45
  That's a great place to go and look at flow data.
• 2:48
  Not all streams and rivers have temperature gauges on them, but the ones that do, you can look at that in the app.
• 2:54
  And so that's a good way too to kind of do your homework because, you know, nothing's worse than getting up early and finding out the water still warm to fish, right Mac Brown?
• 3:02
  Yeah, that's right.
• 3:03
  And it could we.
• 3:04
  I've been going down some to to the below the Tennessee river system here below Fontana.
• 3:09
  That's actually really good right now.
• 3:13
  It stays really cold.
• 3:14
  Of course, Fontana's the second tallest dam in the country and 470 foot deep.
• 3:19
  So the water coming out of that stays right at the low 50s, so even this time of year.
• 3:24
  So that's, that's a nice relief.
• 3:26
  You know, build a fine cold water like that.
• 3:29
  But for the most part, the average temperature on these freestones is getting up around 69 to 70 degrees by 10 o'.
• 3:35
  Clock.
• 3:35
  And that's even the streams coming out at 6,800 or 6,700ft elevation.
• 3:41
  So that gives people an idea.
• 3:43
  If it's getting that kind of temperature with that kind of elevation, then it's getting on the warm side.
• 3:49
  Yeah.
• 3:49
  And I would say too, you know, we're going to get a bit of a cool off and you know, the real trick is right.
• 3:53
  You know, like when I was talking to Mac about this before we started recording, he lives in Bryson City, so it's easy for him to walk out the front door and go fish for a couple hours and go
• 4:01
  do something else, but kind of hard to travel.
• 4:04
  And so if you're in that situation where you're working or you need to travel and you're trying to match up with good weather conditions, sometimes the best thing you can do is just say, I'm going to wait until
• 4:12
  we know it's cooler.
• 4:14
  And when you have time that you want to do fishy stuff, you can work on your casting early and late.
• 4:19
  You know, on A soccer field.
• 4:20
  Or you can stay in the air condition and watch baseball and drink beer and tie flies.
• 4:26
  There you go.
• 4:27
  Yeah.
• 4:27
  Tying flies.
• 4:28
  That sounds like a good plan, too.
• 4:30
  Yeah.
• 4:30
  Cause that's, you know, baseball right now is the only game we've got going on because we'll, I guess we'll start seeing the first preseason NFL football game here in about a month.
• 4:38
  And those aren't really worth watching unless you really follow a team.
• 4:41
  But, you know, drinking cold beers or seltzer waters or lemonade and tying flies in the air condition is not a bad way to make the next, you know, few weeks go a little bit faster.
• 4:51
  That's right.
• 4:51
  And it'll be here before we know it.
• 4:53
  I mean, a lot of times it'll cool off big once August rolls around, and then usually it will.
• 4:59
  I think this is probably the.
• 5:00
  The peak of it right now for heat.
• 5:02
  Yeah.
• 5:03
  So if we're optimistic and we're.
• 5:04
  We've given you guys a bunch of strategies to fish and.
• 5:06
  Or be fishy and not fish.
• 5:09
  Mac, when we talk about cooling off, we start to think about, like, fall schools.
• 5:12
  You want to kind of tease that with folks and tell them where to get info.
• 5:16
  Yeah, probably the best place is on the URL at macbrownflyfish.com and that is up there on the top menu.
• 5:24
  There's a thing with dates, and that's the easiest place to navigate all that.
• 5:28
  There's a bunch of casting schools and different types of dry fly, wet fly type schools.
• 5:34
  And there's four day schools.
• 5:35
  I mean, all the info's there.
• 5:36
  It's easiest to click that and you can go read about them.
• 5:39
  When you click it, it'll take you straight to the itinerary and tell you what it's all about.
• 5:44
  Absolutely.
• 5:45
  You know, folks, and if you have a question for me or you have a question for Mac, you know, DM me or send me an email and you might hear your question on an episode.
• 5:52
  The casting angles.
• 5:53
  And I would say, you know, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
• 5:55
  But if it's too hot to, you know, make the most of your time on the water, practice your casting or tie some flies.
• 6:02
  Tight lines, everybody.
• 6:04
  Tight lines, Mac.
• 6:05
  Tight lines.
• 6:06
  Marvin.