Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 24: Casting Angles with Mac Brown

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S6, Ep 24: Casting Angles with Mac Brown · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
• 0:06
  Marvin: and we're back with another Casting Angles with Mack Brown. How you doing, Mack?
• 0:11
  Mac: I'm doing great. How you doing, Marvin?
• 0:12
  Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble, and you know, it's kind of funny.
• 0:16
  Marvin: Everybody's excited that spring came a little bit early in our neck of the woods.
• 0:22
  Mac: Oh yeah it's been it's been really nice uh really nice warm days and i had a few,
• 0:29
  Mac: few exciting days there during the nationals last week that a lot of rain and
• 0:33
  Mac: cold but um for the most part i think it was the third most mild february on record yeah.
• 0:40
  Marvin: It's interesting about the nationals i imagine some of those guys from out west
• 0:43
  Marvin: that are used to fishing tailwaters were We're a little bit surprised at how
• 0:46
  Marvin: much water is in the system.
• 0:49
  Mac: Yeah, the creeks are plenty high. And the rains, of course, brought it up a little more.
• 0:55
  Mac: But it was cold. Like Friday, I watched the sessions up in Cherokee on the Ravens
• 1:00
  Mac: Fork and the general water as well.
• 1:04
  Mac: And I tell you, it was cold. I mean, 1 o'clock and it was still 33 degrees.
• 1:08
  Mac: It was a mix of sleet and snow and rain the whole morning and not the most ideal,
• 1:14
  Mac: pleasant conditions to be out in with the wind and all too.
• 1:17
  Mac: So, yeah, that was probably, I think, the toughest day was Friday from what I saw.
• 1:24
  Marvin: Yeah, and it was interesting. We started talking before we started recording,
• 1:27
  Marvin: and kind of the idea we had to talk about this time, you know,
• 1:30
  Marvin: from you watching everybody fish the nationals, was to talk a little bit about
• 1:33
  Marvin: the four components of mindset.
• 1:37
  Mac: Yeah, yeah, that'd be a great topic, and we'll hit a few of those maybe on our,
• 1:42
  Mac: On our show tomorrow, on the fundamentals casting that we've got going on tomorrow
• 1:46
  Mac: night, I thought that would be a good lead-in for what does that require.
• 1:54
  Mac: The first one, we'll just jump into it. The first one I would say is remaining curious.
• 2:00
  Mac: The more curious you remain, the faster I think you're going to grow.
• 2:05
  Mac: And so I think that's really one of the big components is having that curiosity that remains high.
• 2:11
  Mac: And then the second one, I think,
• 2:12
  Mac: is discipline, like discipline to how to get to where you want to be.
• 2:15
  Mac: I mean, that goes into what we've been preaching for 38 years.
• 2:19
  Mac: Like, how much does somebody practice? Oh, never.
• 2:21
  Mac: Then they go out on the river expecting to do great things, but yet they've
• 2:24
  Mac: never practiced anything.
• 2:25
  Mac: So it's just like that's kind of a waste of time. So we'll just say that you've
• 2:29
  Mac: got to get disciplined and get a regimen of practice. practice.
• 2:32
  Mac: And if you don't have that, then you're kind of wasting time spinning your wheels, you know.
• 2:38
  Mac: And then the third one would be humility, you know, because if you think you
• 2:43
  Mac: know way more than you really do know, then you're probably in trouble.
• 2:46
  Mac: And I think the best people that I know out there as far as instructors,
• 2:49
  Mac: teachers, and even the comp anglers that are on top of the world right now,
• 2:53
  Mac: they're incredibly humble because they're always trying to get more.
• 2:57
  Mac: Yet, didn't And you see the ones that are not as humble and I think they know
• 3:02
  Mac: a lot. And that's kind of a dangerous recipe as well.
• 3:04
  Mac: Cause that's kind of a limit to getting where they wanna be as well.
• 3:09
  Mac: And I'll go ahead, hit the fourth one is, and this falls under it with observation,
• 3:14
  Mac: that is to remain a naturalist and question everything.
• 3:18
  Mac: Like when you go out, and I don't mean just the fish and what bugs are in a
• 3:21
  Mac: spider web. I mean, are the birds singing or is it dead quiet?
• 3:25
  Mac: Are the cows laying down? Are they walking around seed and all those things,
• 3:28
  Mac: I think with the best anglers that I've known over the years,
• 3:32
  Mac: they're incredibly in tune, call it in sync, being a naturalist.
• 3:36
  Mac: They pay attention to everything, not just what they're doing, going to the river.
• 3:41
  Marvin: Yeah, and I think all those things put together really is kind of a positive
• 3:45
  Marvin: posture for life, right?
• 3:47
  Marvin: I mean, because if you kind of put all that together, you know,
• 3:49
  Marvin: the people that you find that not just are successful in the fly fishing world,
• 3:53
  Marvin: but in other aspects of, let's just say, air quotes, real life, right? Right.
• 3:57
  Marvin: You know, these are people that are incredibly disciplined about improving.
• 4:02
  Marvin: They never stop and they're always curious.
• 4:05
  Mac: Yeah i mean it's just like jimmy jimmy's one of my best friends here that you
• 4:10
  Mac: know jimmy estes that did the the mop fly back in the mid 90s and i fished with
• 4:15
  Mac: jimmy since i moved here in 87,
• 4:17
  Mac: and when i looked at the curiosity level i think jim is in his early 80s now,
• 4:22
  Mac: and uh he's still just tinkering non-stop kind of like in the light of dame juliana's book,
• 4:29
  Mac: trees of fishing with an angle which was the first book ever written on the
• 4:32
  Mac: sport of fly fishing and she's real encouraging throughout that book about making
• 4:36
  Mac: all your own gear and modifying it when you can and keep growing and tinkering
• 4:41
  Mac: with stuff and he's still tinkering with lines,
• 4:43
  Mac: probably more so now than when he when he you know had a real job he's been
• 4:48
  Mac: in retirement for years but i mean every time i see him he's like mac i got
• 4:52
  Mac: another line i want you to try and he's all the time playing with all these
• 4:56
  Mac: different setups and just tinkering in other words he's never ever really content with where he is.
• 5:02
  Mac: And that's really kind of a beautiful thing. Talk about curiosity.
• 5:05
  Mac: He's still as curious as when he first started as a kid, you know?
• 5:10
  Mac: So I think that's a good attribute.
• 5:12
  Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, folks, we're going to take a deeper dive into this.
• 5:15
  Marvin: So this is going to come out Wednesday morning on the 6th. On that evening,
• 5:19
  Marvin: Mac and I are going to be doing a class, The Fundamentals of Casting.
• 5:22
  Marvin: And we've been talking about this quite a bit on the Casting Angles series.
• 5:25
  Marvin: You know, we've worked really, really hard to try to kind of distill things
• 5:28
  Marvin: down to kind of get rid of kind of the noise and the fluff because we don't
• 5:33
  Marvin: like fluff, do we, Mac Brown?
• 5:35
  Mac: No, no. It's funny that out there on the World Wide Web.
• 5:40
  Marvin: Yeah, so to try to boil it down, and so the link will be in the show notes.
• 5:43
  Marvin: It's going to be at 7.30 Eastern time. If you can't make it,
• 5:47
  Marvin: no worries. We're going to record it and it'll be up there.
• 5:49
  Marvin: But it's the first in a series of three parts,
• 5:53
  Marvin: that's going to, I think, really help you have a completely different perspective
• 5:57
  Marvin: perspective about how casting fits into your fishing life on the water and you
• 6:01
  Marvin: know mac i know you've got one fly fishing show coming up to go go to and you're done right.
• 6:08
  Mac: Yeah, I'll be done after this coming weekend,
• 6:11
  Mac: and I'll go to Michigan on Friday, so the Midwest Fly Fishing Expo,
• 6:15
  Mac: and we wrap up Sunday night, and I think that's my last one,
• 6:19
  Mac: unless I go to, I might go to Munich still, I don't know, but I'm not sure on
• 6:24
  Mac: that, I hadn't committed to that one yet.
• 6:26
  Marvin: Well, that sounds interesting, get on an airplane, fly across the pond, right? Right.
• 6:30
  Mac: Oh, yeah. The only reason I want to do it if I go is there's a lot of friends
• 6:34
  Mac: that I've did I teach with over there over the years that I'd like to see.
• 6:38
  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.
• 6:44
  Mac: I'll have to teach and do the same things that I do here, but it'd be more the
• 6:47
  Mac: industry friends that work there.
• 6:50
  Mac: For me, that that would be that'd be the only reason I consider it right now.
• 6:54
  Marvin: Yeah, got it. And, you know, it's warming up. So, you know, I imagine that means
• 6:58
  Marvin: guide trips and schools. Where can folks get more information?
• 7:01
  Mac: The best place is probably on the website. It's at flyfishingguideschool.com
• 7:06
  Mac: for the school information.
• 7:08
  Mac: And then macbrownflyfish.com would be the best place to find out.
• 7:13
  Mac: And it has all the contact info and it spells out, you know,
• 7:17
  Mac: big thing too, I'll just emphasize is read it. because the worst thing in the
• 7:20
  Mac: world, I've been in tourism 38 years and it's not fun answering the phone and
• 7:25
  Mac: everything's written in the first paragraph but people didn't read the first paragraph.
• 7:28
  Mac: You know what I'm saying? So they ask you the same thing that's already there.
• 7:31
  Mac: So there's a reason why we put a lot of time in writing it and making it pretty
• 7:34
  Mac: concise and to the point.
• 7:36
  Mac: And I don't think many people spend more than a few seconds.
• 7:39
  Mac: They see the website and they're like, there's Marvin's number, I'm going to call him.
• 7:43
  Mac: But there's a reason it's written up in the first paragraph how it works.
• 7:47
  Marvin: Yeah, and interesting too, right? Right. Because it kind of goes back to the
• 7:50
  Marvin: whole mindset conversation we started out this episode with that tells you a whole lot.
• 7:54
  Marvin: Right. About how that person internalizes the mindset for improvement.
• 8:00
  Mac: Yeah. Yeah. It kind of ties right back into it, doesn't it?
• 8:03
  Marvin: Yeah. And so, you know, folks, check out the schools, get out on the water with
• 8:08
  Marvin: Mac and, you know, it's warming up.
• 8:09
  Marvin: You know, if you're out west, we've still probably got a few more fly fishing
• 8:13
  Marvin: shows running kind of, you know, maybe into March, deeper into March, maybe early April.
• 8:17
  Marvin: Roll but you know go to a show if the weather where you are is not great tie
• 8:22
  Marvin: some flies otherwise get out on the water tight lines everybody tight lines matt tight lines marvin.