Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 54: Casting Angles: Mac Brown on Goals, Drifts and Memorial Day

Transcript

S6, Ep 54: Casting Angles: Mac Brown on Goals, Drifts and Memorial Day · 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 doing, Marvin?
0:13
Marvin: As always, just trying to stay out of trouble. And, you know,
0:16
Marvin: we were talking before we started recording.
0:17
Marvin: We're recording this on the evening on Memorial Day. We want to wish all of
0:21
Marvin: our veterans in active duty, military, a happy Memorial Day and thank them for
0:26
Marvin: everything they do for us.
0:28
Mac: That's right a lot of them gave it all and it's a great day to remember and
0:34
Mac: honor those vets that served.
0:37
Marvin: And I'll also just put out a public service announcement close to where I grew
0:40
Marvin: up in Lynchburg but in Bedford Virginia on June 6th there's the National D-Day
0:47
Marvin: Memorial and they're going to have a very very special,
0:51
Marvin: multi-day ceremony to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion,
0:57
Marvin: Oh.
0:57
Mac: That'd be good. Are you going to go up?
0:58
Marvin: I very well may. I'm still trying to kind of work things out,
1:02
Marvin: but it's an amazing thing.
1:03
Marvin: And one of the reasons why they put the National D-Day Memorial there was because,
1:08
Marvin: you know, back in the Second World War, you know, a lot of times you served
1:11
Marvin: kind of with everybody from your hometown. town.
1:14
Marvin: And apparently Bedford had the highest casualty rate of kind of any town in
1:20
Marvin: the United States on D-Day.
1:22
Marvin: So it's there. It's a phenomenal memorial.
1:26
Marvin: And I think, you know, if folks make the effort to get up there,
1:29
Marvin: they won't be disappointed.
1:32
Mac: Well, that sounds like a good time. Maybe we'll go up there and stay at your
1:35
Mac: mom's and eat lasagna and go to bed.
1:38
Marvin: That yeah there you go and maybe get a little uh smallmouth bass fishing in
1:42
Marvin: but uh speaking of uh smallmouth bass i know it's been uh you know in our neck
1:46
Marvin: of the woods down here in the mid-atlantic we've been getting ripped with rain
1:49
Marvin: um and uh you and i were talking before we started recording that uh unless
1:54
Marvin: you like chocolate milk you probably need to stay off the dh and head up high right.
1:59
Mac: Pretty much we've been getting hammered with thunderstorms like for weeks like
2:04
Mac: every just just about every day and it's run chocolate out there.
2:08
Mac: There's not a lot of floats and things going on. It's been pretty dirty for
2:12
Mac: about two and a half weeks.
2:13
Mac: So we've been going up on the wild streams more up high and that those are fishing really well.
2:19
Marvin: Yeah. And I know you also had some good news because, uh, I saw your Instagram
2:23
Marvin: feed that both the, uh, most important to you, right?
2:26
Marvin: Cause your son's run on the boys team, but the boys and the girls track team
2:29
Marvin: at Swain County high school won the state championship.
2:33
Mac: That's right. Yeah, that was really neat. We've been going down there since
2:37
Mac: Connor was in high school, and he graduates next week.
2:40
Mac: And it's been a long learning process for all of them,
2:44
Mac: and it was nice for those seniors that are going out to go out that way because
2:50
Mac: that's the first time in Swain County history that the boys pulled that off.
2:55
Mac: And the girls, I think that was the girls' 10th state title in a row.
3:00
Mac: The girls really have a dynasty going here. right now, but I thought that it
3:06
Mac: would lead us in maybe to just talking about goals because, you know,
3:09
Mac: I was thinking about my son graduating.
3:11
Mac: He started doing all this in third grade and he was serious about it.
3:15
Mac: You know, real serious like through middle school and high school.
3:19
Mac: Just talk about some basic kind of goals if people go up high to try out the,
3:23
Mac: you know, the wild streams to have a purpose what they're doing there.
3:27
Mac: You know, there's so much on social media showing these, you know,
3:31
Mac: nice fish and And this and that all over the country, but it's like,
3:36
Mac: I think the big process is to have a specific goal.
3:40
Mac: Just from doing this for 40 years, I'd say a great goal for the listeners would
3:45
Mac: be to go out and just pick a big dry soil you can see.
3:50
Mac: You know, something like a golden stone. There's still a lot of golden stones
3:53
Mac: out there. So a size 12 golden stone that you can see in fast water.
3:58
Mac: And just work on drift for the whole day. and when we say we've got to make
4:03
Mac: a goal with that I would say work on drift a lot of people go well that's a
4:06
Mac: good drift and it's two or three feet and other people say well six feet,
4:10
Mac: well if somebody really plays that game.
4:14
Mac: Then it really shouldn't be a limit. You know, even with the multiple complex
4:18
Mac: currents, they ought to be able to pull out 20, 30 feet and make it go from
4:23
Mac: 30 feet above to 30 feet below. Now we're talking 60 feet.
4:26
Mac: So that's all line control, what we do after it's on the water.
4:30
Mac: As much as we teach and talk about casting, Marvin, I think that the drift exercise
4:35
Mac: is just a wonderful drill for line control of what we do to enhance it.
4:41
Marvin: Yeah, and it's interesting, right, Because you kind of start with where you
4:44
Marvin: put your body to get the best cast possible.
4:47
Marvin: But what we're really talking about, depending on conditions,
4:50
Marvin: is probably some type of a reach cast.
4:53
Marvin: And then you're managing your line until it comes to you and gets below you.
4:56
Marvin: And then you're going to probably start stack mending below you to keep the drift.
5:01
Mac: And there's going to be stack mends. Like if we do the example I just said and
5:06
Mac: go 60, that's one of the main drills.
5:07
Mac: I can remember years ago with the youth kids when they were winning all the gold in Europe.
5:13
Mac: Every one of those kids that was on that would work with them individually up
5:16
Mac: in the park and that was the goal i mean i just tell them look we're going to
5:20
Mac: go from here to there let them try it first let them fail show them how to do
5:24
Mac: it then they'd copy it and that was so,
5:28
Mac: important for pulling off those kind of drifts and so a lot of hump men's um you know a hump man,
5:36
Mac: is different it's like going up up up so when we're paying line
5:39
Mac: out below us but yeah there'll be stacks it's just
5:42
Mac: here's the thing to go like on a gradient
5:46
Mac: rich stream like the smoky size you're going to be doing something with the
5:50
Mac: rod the entire time it's never sitting out it's either being humped in or getting
5:55
Mac: ready to stack it out or something and that's that's what i've you know that
6:00
Mac: i've seen a lot over the years guiding that um.
6:05
Mac: Makes you want to go fish more than God, you know? Yeah. People don't see that
6:08
Mac: naturally. And so I'm saying it's a drill for people to improve.
6:12
Mac: Yeah, make the goal big, not just five, six feet. Make it big goal.
6:19
Mac: And you'll find that the more they exercise that drift game and,
6:23
Mac: you know, put the fish second, put drift as their priority, the fish will start following.
6:28
Mac: They're going to catch way more numbers of fish than they've ever dreamed of
6:31
Mac: just by making drift their exercise.
6:35
Marvin: Yeah. And then I guess we should also add that, you know, that's really talking
6:38
Marvin: about dead drift, but we also want to talk about learning to animate the fly
6:41
Marvin: and manage your line, right?
6:44
Mac: Oh, yeah. That's another one of the tricks. Like, is it going down?
6:47
Mac: You get it like in a little pocket or something to animate it and make it,
6:51
Mac: you can make it hop and skitter and dance.
6:53
Mac: That's what Mark Cathy was famous for here, is the animation of the fly,
6:58
Mac: you know, to make it look like it's alive.
7:01
Mac: And the best way to do that is in the evening, watch a don that's going down
7:06
Mac: the river late in the day, and it gets to a rapid at the tail end of a pool, and watch what it does.
7:12
Mac: When it sees the fast water coming up, it's got great eyesight,
7:15
Mac: and you'll watch it start jumping and skittering, trying to get flight,
7:19
Mac: trying to get flight while its wings are getting hardened. and it'll do everything
7:23
Mac: in its power to not go down in the riffle.
7:26
Mac: You know what I mean? To get flight. It'll do those little exercises.
7:29
Mac: So when it gets to the tail, it'll try to get flight.
7:32
Mac: It might come off the water six, eight inches and land four feet back up from
7:37
Mac: the tail of the pool and it drifts and it comes back up.
7:40
Mac: You can learn to animate that and mimic that with the line control that we're talking about.
7:47
Mac: You can do that with a dancing line mend than to make it come back up.
7:52
Mac: And I mean, so it's the combination. But I think deadrifts, I think it's easier to animate.
7:59
Mac: I don't know, I shouldn't say that. I guess everybody's different.
8:02
Mac: I mean, it might be easier.
8:03
Mac: I think deadrifts, though, you can mix them up, like practice deadrifts exercises,
8:09
Mac: then practice animating exercises, then practice the combination together, you know, to do both.
8:15
Marvin: Yeah, and then really to kind of step back out of it, what we're really talking
8:19
Marvin: about is the stuff that we've talked about over and over and over again about,
8:22
Marvin: you know, you know, striving for continuous improvement, being curious.
8:26
Marvin: And, you know, the great thing is you don't have to eat the elephant all at
8:29
Marvin: one time. You pick kind of one thing you want to work on on the water and go work on that.
8:33
Marvin: And, you know, you just, you know, you get it sort of figured out and then you
8:36
Marvin: kind of put that in your quiver and, you know, you pick another thing to work on.
8:39
Marvin: You don't have to like, you know, become the greatest fly fisherman ever on
8:43
Marvin: one outing. You know, you just kind of have to have a methodical approach.
8:46
Marvin: I imagine it's a lot like the way your boys train for track.
8:50
Mac: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they got specific goals. And, yeah, I mean,
8:54
Mac: looking at the schedule of what they did two months leading up to state,
8:58
Mac: I mean, it's pretty intense.
9:00
Mac: I went up there a lot to watch them. And what they do is they start resting
9:04
Mac: you less and less. So you're doing like 400 repeats, 200 repeats.
9:08
Mac: You know, normally early in the season, you might have a minute rest.
9:11
Mac: They keep cutting that time down and cutting it down to where you got 15-second
9:15
Mac: rest and you're still doing the same number. So it ends up being a lot higher
9:19
Mac: intensity because there's not as much rest in between.
9:23
Mac: But same thing in angling. I like that idea, what you said about don't try to
9:27
Mac: eat the elephant all at once because that's really true. I mean,
9:31
Mac: to be honest, it's impossible.
9:32
Mac: Nobody could eat the elephant all at once in a day, not with the amount of things that are out there.
9:37
Mac: There's just too many things to say. Somebody could do that in a day.
9:40
Mac: So, so having, having small goals that are attainable and to keep working on
9:46
Mac: those and keep building on those as far as like building blocks is really the best way to get it.
9:52
Marvin: Yeah. And I would say, you know, you know, thinking about that,
9:55
Marvin: I mean, there's so many things that actually have nothing to do with being on
9:57
Marvin: the water, right? Like your knots, right?
10:00
Marvin: Having your, you know, your gear arranged, right? And that's like,
10:03
Marvin: I'm a huge proponent of, you know, you can change your gear configuration,
10:07
Marvin: but don't change it every time you go out.
10:09
Marvin: Because if you reach in a pocket, you want the same thing that was there last
10:12
Marvin: time, unless you've made a conscious decision to move it somewhere else for a reason.
10:16
Marvin: And those are the things, you know, over time that, you know,
10:20
Marvin: you'll be able to get ready faster, you'll be able to re-rig faster,
10:23
Marvin: and you'll just become more confident on the water.
10:26
Mac: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they can do, I mean, knots are a great thing to do at home.
10:31
Mac: That's the best place to get fast at those, get fast at those at home.
10:35
Mac: And the key is, is just have a couple of knots. You don't need,
10:38
Mac: I mean, my gosh, fly fishing has so many different specialty knots,
10:43
Mac: but the way to do it, like what we use in the school, is really just two knots.
10:48
Mac: I mean, pretty much everything you ever want to do is two knots.
10:52
Mac: And you don't need, I mean, that's a big part of what intimidates people about
10:56
Mac: this sport is thinking about all the different knots and there's really not that many.
11:02
Mac: You can make it really simplified as far as once you have your butt section,
11:07
Mac: the leader on there, everything is two knots.
11:10
Mac: Then get fast at them, get them down three seconds, three, four seconds or less.
11:15
Mac: Yes, because I mean, I see far too many people in God and they get proud and
11:19
Mac: want to tie their own rig.
11:21
Mac: And I'm just like, let me tie it for you. No, I want to tie it.
11:24
Mac: And you look at them tie it and it's like six, eight minutes later,
11:27
Mac: you know, that's time wasted.
11:30
Mac: Get them fast. Six, eight minutes is unacceptable. I'll just go ahead and say it.
11:35
Marvin: But, you know, it's funny too, right? Because we've got, I don't know what we've
11:38
Marvin: got, maybe, I don't know, two weeks of DH left in North Carolina.
11:42
Marvin: So, you know, things are going to change. And so, you know, kind of building
11:45
Marvin: on this education theme, Mac, I know you've got some topical schools throughout the summer.
11:50
Marvin: You want to tell folks a little bit about those, kind of where they can get more information.
11:54
Marvin: And also, I know you're taking people down the river. And if you're not,
11:56
Marvin: you've got people that work with you that are.
12:00
Mac: Mm-hmm. Yeah, we've still got like a wet fly.
12:05
Mac: There's a dry fly school this weekend, a wet fly school coming up.
12:08
Mac: We run those specialty schools like two days long ton of a short like the week
12:14
Mac: long school we do compressed into two days just dedicated to the one,
12:18
Mac: topic and that way you know people can look at those and if they want to work
12:23
Mac: on you know their wet fly game and then we cover pretty much everything,
12:28
Mac: that we do in the week long school on wet fly during that and that just gives
12:32
Mac: them an opportunity and they can find that info on,
12:35
Mac: either on social media stuff Go to the website, mackbrownflyfish.com.
12:40
Mac: That's the easiest place to find it.
12:42
Marvin: Yeah, but you're an email or a phone guy, right?
12:47
Mac: Yeah, pretty much, or text. I like text. Texts work good, too,
12:52
Mac: because I'm in and out of service a lot this time of year.
12:55
Mac: When I go up high in the park, as soon as I go a mile from the house,
12:58
Mac: there's no service up there,
13:01
Mac: so I don't get the message until later on and leave a message,
13:03
Mac: too, because these days I'm getting so many telemarketers too a day that it
13:09
Mac: might be somebody looking for one of those schools,
13:11
Mac: but if I don't leave a message, then I assume it's a telemarketer.
13:14
Marvin: Yeah, there you go. And folks, I would say just remember, eat the elephant one
13:19
Marvin: bite at a time and just pick one thing to work on and work on it until you get
13:23
Marvin: it right and then add another thing.
13:24
Marvin: And as I always say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
13:28
Marvin: Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac.
13:31
Mac: Tight lines, Marvin.