Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 50: Beyond the Forecast: Mac Brown's Guide to Fishing in Fickle Conditions

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S6, Ep 50: Beyond the Forecast: Mac Brown's Guide to Fishing in Fickle Conditions · 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 are you, Mack?
• 0:11
  Mac: I'm doing great. How are you, Marvin?
• 0:13
  Marvin: As always, I'm just living the dream. And you know, it's kind of funny,
• 0:16
  Marvin: you know, we had the Northern Lights pretty far south, and I know a lot of people
• 0:21
  Marvin: got excited about that, but we were trying to kind of talk through,
• 0:24
  Marvin: you know, why fishing has been a little bit funky, Right.
• 0:28
  Marvin: Because we kind of got out of that cold weather we had.
• 0:31
  Marvin: But as you noted a couple of weeks ago on your Instagram feed,
• 0:34
  Marvin: this is something we're seeing kind of everywhere that hatches are a little
• 0:37
  Marvin: bit off schedule or not happening.
• 0:39
  Marvin: And, you know, so we thought it would be a good idea to talk to folks about,
• 0:42
  Marvin: you know, what do you do when you go to the water and you think,
• 0:45
  Marvin: you know, what it's going to be like and nothing is the way that you expect it to be.
• 0:49
  Marvin: And, you know, what's the strategy for putting some fish in the boat?
• 0:52
  Mac: Yeah i think that's a good that's pretty much a
• 0:55
  Mac: real a real scenario you know
• 0:58
  Mac: these days and it's like today was zero percent
• 1:01
  Mac: chance of rain and it's like then you add that in there
• 1:04
  Mac: and of course it rained all day and as soon
• 1:07
  Mac: as we put in it rained till we took out at five o'clock and i'm
• 1:10
  Mac: like what happened to that zero percent that was the
• 1:12
  Mac: latest doppler forecast from the ashville radar
• 1:15
  Mac: are so um yeah it's kind of
• 1:18
  Mac: funny so that right there alone i was kind of like
• 1:21
  Mac: a little bit shocked had car hearts on
• 1:23
  Mac: and a sims jacket and i thought well if i'd have known it was going to rain
• 1:26
  Mac: all day we probably would have put waders on but i
• 1:29
  Mac: don't really like wearing waders this time of
• 1:32
  Mac: year marvin so it is what it is but
• 1:35
  Mac: it did it didn't really uh we had
• 1:38
  Mac: really overcast skies and rain falling all day
• 1:41
  Mac: so you know i knew it'd probably be better
• 1:44
  Mac: up top but we never saw any thing rise or break water the whole
• 1:47
  Mac: whole day down down the river so we
• 1:49
  Mac: tried a lot of different things and i kept going back to the dry swath
• 1:52
  Mac: and enticing stuff to come up by using the
• 1:56
  Mac: skating techniques and you can of course dance it from far away by shaking the
• 2:01
  Mac: line and making it look erratic rather than just dead drift everywhere and pretty
• 2:06
  Mac: much that's what everybody caught and had a couple of boats out there for the
• 2:10
  Mac: trip and the guys are all buddies from 30 years ago up up in Wisconsin, in St.
• 2:15
  Mac: Paul area. And that's what everybody basically ended up doing.
• 2:19
  Mac: So even though we tried all the other techniques, tried a little bit of nymphing,
• 2:22
  Mac: nyphing, water's a little off color, to make it all fair for the nymphing game.
• 2:27
  Mac: But yeah, so I figured nymphing wasn't really gonna be it either.
• 2:31
  Mac: So there's a lot of boats around us that were all nymphing.
• 2:34
  Mac: Never saw them hook up anything. So I pretty much abandoned that within about 30 minutes.
• 2:40
  Mac: But, yeah, it's funny how when you think something's going to go a certain way,
• 2:45
  Mac: then you kind of change and change.
• 2:47
  Mac: But I'll say this, usually in low light conditions like this with the,
• 2:51
  Mac: you know, lead-colored skies, whether it's a wet fly game up high near the surface,
• 2:57
  Mac: or a dry fly game, it's usually I'll bet up on the very top.
• 3:02
  Mac: I would put my best guess coming up to the top. So I don't have as much confidence.
• 3:10
  Mac: In low light like that saying let's nymph deep or throw streamers deep you know
• 3:14
  Mac: because that's usually not where it's at.
• 3:16
  Marvin: Yeah it's interesting too like i imagine probably the
• 3:19
  Marvin: approach might be a little bit different you know if you're waiting versus in
• 3:22
  Marvin: a boat because i would think you know most people that
• 3:26
  Marvin: fish nymphs out of a boat probably aren't as
• 3:29
  Marvin: skilled at you know animating the way that you
• 3:31
  Marvin: talk about you know fishing with like davy or somebody like that and so it's
• 3:35
  Marvin: a little bit harder you know to maybe you know if you're in a run to stand there
• 3:39
  Marvin: and kind of work you know jig and different retrieves you're like well that
• 3:42
  Marvin: doesn't work and you keep progressing but you know it might be a little bit
• 3:45
  Marvin: harder to do with the average angler on a guy trip in a boat yeah.
• 3:49
  Mac: Yeah i think it is and it's like yeah it's it's it's still tricky even to animate
• 3:54
  Mac: you know wets and wets and dries up in the upper layer you know i mean because
• 4:00
  Mac: if it's something they haven't done a lot um i think that makes it.
• 4:06
  Mac: Kind of a learning curve on the fly but then having you know having something uh blow up and,
• 4:12
  Mac: hit when it starts to skate and then blam they get a strike and it misses and that's always the,
• 4:19
  Mac: you know that's a pretty good clue but the big part of it is too even with those
• 4:24
  Mac: whether it's on the wet game or the or the dries to not not react with the rod
• 4:29
  Mac: like you know a lot of people but when they're not doing it enough,
• 4:33
  Mac: they want to do 100% rod movement when that happens.
• 4:36
  Mac: And I'm like, well, now we're not even in the game because, you know,
• 4:39
  Mac: the fry just got yanked away from the fish and you don't have any chance of catching it.
• 4:43
  Mac: So learning to do that with the line hand rather than the rod is a hard thing to break people up.
• 4:49
  Mac: You'll get people that fish 40 years that still rely on the rod,
• 4:53
  Mac: which means somebody never taught them to, you know, use the line hand is what that really means.
• 4:58
  Mac: But it's hard to break. It's hard for people to break.
• 5:02
  Mac: Then you're telling them over and over quit using the
• 5:05
  Mac: rod to set everything because the rods you
• 5:08
  Mac: know what i mean so if they get excited and it's not there then it's basically
• 5:11
  Mac: a back cast isn't it there's no chance of catching it that's the reason and
• 5:15
  Mac: the other reason of course if it if it did did connect it's also a lot higher
• 5:20
  Mac: likelihood of breaking off on five or four x isn't it you know i mean because
• 5:24
  Mac: if it's a little bit too aggressive then blam you just broke the tippet it so
• 5:28
  Mac: but if you use your line hand then you get a nice constant bend in the rod you got the fish on,
• 5:33
  Mac: win-win so that's that's kind of the fun part about the upper layer yeah.
• 5:39
  Marvin: It's interesting too though right because i mean we were talking and it's not
• 5:42
  Marvin: just that hatches this year are late it's just like some hatches that we would
• 5:46
  Marvin: expect to see aren't happening.
• 5:47
  Mac: Yeah some of them i think are gone i think a lot of the a lot of the stuff that
• 5:52
  Mac: we used to see i mean i really think are gone like that post that I put up on
• 5:58
  Mac: Instagram a few weeks ago.
• 5:59
  Mac: I heard from friends over in the Blue Mountains in Australia.
• 6:02
  Mac: I heard from friends below Queenstown, all kinds of places across North America.
• 6:08
  Mac: But yeah, the sad thing about it really, the one I posted about is the Mother's
• 6:13
  Mac: Day Caddis because it was just Mother's Day yesterday, you know.
• 6:17
  Mac: And that's always been a really predominant hatch here in the park for the park
• 6:22
  Mac: streams, like all of them, like Hazel Creek, Nolan Creek, Forney Creek.
• 6:26
  Mac: We have that on every park stream since I've lived here.
• 6:29
  Mac: And the more Jimmy Estes brought it to my attention, you know,
• 6:33
  Mac: a couple of years ago, he goes, Mac, I'm not seeing the larva.
• 6:36
  Mac: Have you seen them? And I'm like, well, Jim, I hadn't really looked at them.
• 6:39
  Mac: Because when I'm running trips, I'm not sitting there rock scouring,
• 6:41
  Mac: looking at, you know, I'm not teaching entomology or anything like,
• 6:45
  Mac: like at Western years ago anymore.
• 6:46
  Mac: So I just, I just assumed they're always going to be there.
• 6:50
  Mac: And then sure enough, when he
• 6:51
  Mac: brought that up, I started kind of paying attention and looking up on the,
• 6:55
  Mac: the watersheds that are around me, and I can't find the larvae.
• 6:59
  Mac: I haven't found a single larvae yet. We used to have millions of them.
• 7:03
  Mac: So I think the bad news is I think that Mother's Day caddis hatch is gone from here permanently.
• 7:09
  Mac: Because if we can't find a single larvae, that tells you something.
• 7:12
  Marvin: Yeah, and is the Mother's Day caddis, is that a case larvae?
• 7:16
  Marvin: So is that when you flip the rocks over and you see those little cases, or is it a stick builder?
• 7:23
  Mac: Builder it's no it's a little trapezoid shape
• 7:26
  Mac: it's a little brown it's a little green worm in a trapezoid
• 7:29
  Mac: shape they go through like 11 11 to 12
• 7:31
  Mac: instars and it's about the size this time of year before they hatch should be
• 7:36
  Mac: about the width of your little finger you know where your fingernail is on your
• 7:40
  Mac: little finger that's about the size and those are the filters so what they do
• 7:44
  Mac: is they attach a little silk thread on the rock they come up and suspend we
• 7:48
  Mac: used to get hundreds of them Like when you dry dropper years ago,
• 7:51
  Mac: your nymph would catch on that silk line, so then you'd catch it on your hook.
• 7:56
  Mac: I mean, you'd catch the little larva on your hook.
• 7:59
  Mac: So about every fifth cast years ago, when they were filtering in the water,
• 8:04
  Mac: you'd have to take that back off, and you'd throw it back out,
• 8:06
  Mac: and you'd catch another one because of silk line.
• 8:09
  Mac: But yeah, that's how they would feed. They filter by using that little silk
• 8:13
  Mac: line, and they suspend in the water column, and they keep the silk line attached
• 8:17
  Mac: to the rock, kind of like a spider web.
• 8:19
  Mac: And that's the ones that I'm talking about are disappeared from here.
• 8:25
  Mac: So that's a bad sign, though, because they're real tolerant of pollution. That's the kicker.
• 8:31
  Mac: So the mayflies, not as tolerant for pollutants, but when you start to lose
• 8:38
  Mac: cata species, then it starts to mean there's a bigger problem.
• 8:44
  Marvin: Yeah, and so to kind of back up, to give people kind of a process,
• 8:48
  Marvin: I know you ended up basically fishing, you know, wets in the film and dries today.
• 8:53
  Marvin: But, you know, if you walk out and, you know, your current plan isn't working,
• 8:58
  Marvin: kind of what's the progression and how rapidly should you work through technique
• 9:03
  Marvin: and fly changes to try to dial something in?
• 9:08
  Mac: I think the progression starts first with the conditions that you see,
• 9:14
  Mac: like if it's bright blue sky versus overcast sky.
• 9:18
  Mac: I think that right there is the same on the lake too for trout.
• 9:22
  Mac: But on a river, if you know it's overcast, if you're going to nymph,
• 9:27
  Mac: then you're going to nymph high.
• 9:28
  Mac: You're going to try to keep the tabletop layer we talk about just from the surface down, say, a foot.
• 9:36
  Mac: We're going to try to fish nymphs up high in the column.
• 9:39
  Mac: That wouldn't be a good idea to say, let's fish nymphs rowing the bottom on
• 9:43
  Mac: an overcast day like what we had today.
• 9:46
  Mac: So I didn't even go there because that's what all the boats around me are doing.
• 9:50
  Mac: You can also learn a lot, pay attention to the people around you.
• 9:53
  Mac: I mean, I do that a lot. And if I look out and there's four boats and they're
• 9:56
  Mac: all nymphing a bobber with 12 feet of tippet, they're already fishing the bottom.
• 10:00
  Mac: And if you're sitting there doing your game and you notice, hey,
• 10:03
  Mac: they hadn't hooked a fish yet, it's been an hour, and there's no point of copying that, is there?
• 10:08
  Mac: So I'm saying I think there's a little bit of cat and mouse like paying attention
• 10:11
  Mac: to the people around you too because if the game was on down there,
• 10:15
  Mac: then they'd all have bent rods.
• 10:17
  Mac: So, I mean, I have a lot more faith on overcast day, like I say, staying up in the top.
• 10:21
  Mac: So the changes I was doing was mostly based on that assumption,
• 10:26
  Mac: which is kind of like going back a long time ago, like the Gillies that are in Ireland.
• 10:32
  Mac: And those places in the world, they've had that in their literature and in their
• 10:36
  Mac: repertoire for a very long time.
• 10:39
  Mac: And I think there's a reason that those, what do you call it,
• 10:44
  Mac: gut instincts is a good thing to pay attention to.
• 10:47
  Mac: You know, first, it wouldn't be a good idea to go out there and change nets
• 10:50
  Mac: 20 times deep when you still haven't got a strike.
• 10:52
  Mac: And it's not a fly pattern problem then because we're talking about a DH program
• 10:56
  Mac: where a majority of them are hatchery fish.
• 10:59
  Mac: And so I think that that's a big part of it too.
• 11:03
  Mac: You know, you have, I don't remember, I didn't look at the schedule,
• 11:06
  Mac: but I know sometime in the past week they put 7,000 or 8,000 more on the section here through town.
• 11:11
  Mac: So that's a pretty high population density per mile of river.
• 11:18
  Mac: So basically the way out here, unlike a DH would work, is once you're dialed
• 11:23
  Mac: in and doing the right thing, saying,
• 11:26
  Mac: which is kind of just experimentation, like I said, from being cloudy.
• 11:31
  Mac: That's what happened toward the end. Once we were dialed in,
• 11:34
  Mac: they were getting strikes like every cast in the spot we were in before we got done today.
• 11:42
  Mac: And, I mean, we had some moments like that where you know you're doing the right thing.
• 11:45
  Mac: How do you know? Because you're getting success every time you throw out.
• 11:48
  Mac: You're getting a strike. Whether you caught it or missed, it doesn't matter. You got a strike.
• 11:52
  Mac: That's kind of how I count it. I don't really care. They're,
• 11:55
  Mac: you know, I shouldn't say I don't care, but whether they got it in or not is
• 11:59
  Mac: beyond my pay grade at that point.
• 12:01
  Mac: If they got a strike and missed it, I could care less that we got it in the net or not.
• 12:05
  Mac: Does that make sense? It's giving me the feedback that I want is what I'm trying to say.
• 12:08
  Marvin: Yeah. And then, you know, to kind of turn it around, if you had a bright,
• 12:11
  Marvin: sunshiny day, you would want to fish deep and on structure because the fish
• 12:16
  Marvin: don't have eyelids and they're not going to be up at the surface because it's
• 12:19
  Marvin: a little too bright, right? Plus predators.
• 12:22
  Mac: Yeah. And then we'd go back and play the other game. you know
• 12:25
  Mac: about dead drift licensing lift
• 12:28
  Mac: um jig jig jig
• 12:31
  Mac: jig swing swing swing and you know hand crawl back up there's five techniques
• 12:35
  Mac: to run your nips down deep and it's like we'd sit there and play that game on
• 12:40
  Mac: a deeper level which is a whole different kind of game than what i'm describing
• 12:44
  Mac: what we did today but it's just a whole different process that's why i guess
• 12:50
  Mac: the willingness to to change,
• 12:51
  Mac: to kind of sort through that.
• 12:54
  Mac: But sorting through that, a lot of people would say, start out,
• 12:56
  Mac: fish deep, go through all that process first, then kind of play around with
• 13:00
  Mac: the streamer for a little while, then play around with this a little while.
• 13:03
  Mac: No, what I'm saying is when it's these kind of conditions, I think you can filter
• 13:09
  Mac: to the answer a lot quicker than saying, do everything that you know how to do.
• 13:13
  Mac: We're not there to do everything we know how to do. We're there to do what we
• 13:16
  Mac: know we need to do for the condition that we have.
• 13:20
  Mac: Does that kind of help?
• 13:22
  Marvin: No, it does. I just wanted to kind of boil it down so people can write that
• 13:25
  Marvin: on a three-by-five card and stick it in their fly box, and they'll have that
• 13:29
  Marvin: in their shirt pocket the next time they go out.
• 13:31
  Marvin: I know you wrapped up your last casting school until the fall a few weeks ago,
• 13:36
  Marvin: but you probably have some kind of topical schools coming up throughout the summer, right?
• 13:43
  Mac: Yeah we have some uh there's still some wet fly schools and some there's some
• 13:47
  Mac: dry fly schools coming up um next few months there's a lot of specialty weekend
• 13:52
  Mac: type schools those are on the the website and uh yeah those are a lot of fun
• 13:57
  Mac: because they just focus specifically,
• 13:59
  Mac: into that you know into that realm of tactics to to you know to perfect because
• 14:05
  Mac: a lot of people are like well isn't the wet fly you just throw it and swing
• 14:08
  Mac: it's like no if that's what you think
• 14:10
  Mac: of wet sloven because something that's for the class but that's what a lot of
• 14:13
  Mac: people think of wet fly they think well marvin isn't that that boring technique
• 14:17
  Mac: we just throw it out hope something jumps on but that's wet fly has as many
• 14:21
  Mac: techniques as dry fly or nymphing or anything else,
• 14:24
  Mac: it's just there's a whole array of things to put in the um the wet fly quiver
• 14:29
  Mac: that make it highly productive got.
• 14:33
  Marvin: It and you know also too i imagine you probably you know you're booking trips
• 14:37
  Marvin: with you and then also you run a handful of guides if folks wanted to uh to
• 14:40
  Marvin: reach out and book a day with you on the water what's the best way for them to get in touch.
• 14:44
  Mac: Probably the website at mack brown fly fish or yeah i'd prefer that because
• 14:51
  Mac: sometimes people will put something to,
• 14:54
  Mac: instagram or something i don't really look at that as much i'll answer an email
• 14:57
  Mac: a lot quicker than i will social media thing because i don't really look at
• 15:01
  Mac: the social media thing that often and Marvin.
• 15:03
  Mac: So I think the email's the best way off the website.
• 15:07
  Marvin: Yeah. Well, there you go. Well, listen, folks, you owe it to yourself to get
• 15:10
  Marvin: out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac.
• 15:15
  Mac: Tight lines, Marvin.