S7, Ep 55: Low and Clear: Mastering Summer Fishing Strategies with Mac Brown

In this episode of The Articulate Fly, host Marvin Cash is joined by casting expert Mac Brown for another insightful installment of Casting Angles. As the summer heat intensifies, Mac shares his strategies for fishing in low and clear water conditions, emphasizing the importance of adjusting techniques and equipment for success.

Listeners will learn about the benefits of using longer leaders with stiffer butt sections to improve accuracy and precision when casting. Mac discusses the pitfalls of adding too much tippet and provides practical tips for effective nymph fishing without spooking fish. He also highlights the significance of planning presentations to avoid disturbing the water's surface.

The conversation shifts to innovative rigging techniques, including the use of dry flies as indicators and the advantages of using colored markers on leaders for better visibility. Mac even shares a unique method to treat leaders with Sno Seal for enhanced buoyancy, ensuring that anglers can maintain their setups throughout the day.

As the episode wraps up, Marvin and Mac discuss the importance of advocating for public lands and the ongoing legislative efforts that could impact outdoor recreation. They encourage listeners to make their voices heard in support of preserving access to these vital spaces.

This episode is packed with expert advice and actionable insights that will inspire anglers to adapt their approaches and make the most of their summer fishing adventures.

Trout Unlimited's Public Land Take Action

Related Content

S7, Ep 41 - Navigating High Water: Strategies for Success with Mac Brown

S6, Ep 83 - Hot Days and Clear Waters: Matt Reilly's Southwest Virginia Fishing Report

S7, Ep 34 - Casting in the Chaos: Navigating Windy Waters with Ellis Ward

S6, Ep 141 - Mastering Cold Weather Fly Fishing with Mac Brown

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Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash,the host of the articulate fly. We're
back with another castingangles with Mac Brown. Mac, how are
you?
I'm doing great. How are youdoing, Marvin?
Dude, I'm just trying to staycool. It is hot, hot, hot in the
Piedmont.
I bet it's hot up here. We'rehot in the mountains, I always think.
Yeah, I'm sure it's hot downin the Piedmont in the low country.

(00:25):
Yeah, we're in Charlotte.We're going to be bumping 100 degrees
pretty close probably until,you know, we were talking before
we started recording and we'vetalked a lot about when you should
and shouldn't fish and allthat kind of good stuff. But you
know, as we head deeper, youknow, into the summertime, the float,
the water flows are going toget lower and lower if you're not
fishing a tailwater. And so wethought it'd be a good idea to kind

(00:47):
of talk to people about, youknow, what do you do when you got
to go fish low and clear water?
Yeah, that'd be, I thinkthat's a good, a good topic. First
thing, go up higher. Try toget up high and fish early, early
in the morning at daylight.And far as equipment goes, lengthening
up the leaders and addinggreater, you know, longer tip, it

(01:09):
and, and going that routewould really help things because
when it water gets lower, it'sgoing to get a lot more technical
than with big water, you know.
Yeah. And I would say too,like if you roll your own on the
leader basis, if you, youknow, want to try to get a little
bit of help, you know, turningover a longer leader. You want a
stiffer butt section, right?

(01:30):
Oh, yeah, for sure. That's,that's the key. There's a lot of
confusion on that over theyears where people thought they just
had a whole bunch of tippet.Bad things happen when you add way
too much tippet and you justget a bunch of uncontrollable slack,
you know. So yeah, buttsection, midsection, you don't need
but a few feet of tip, youknow, three to four feet of tippet

(01:51):
tops. Most, most of theleaders, the other.
Yeah. And so, you know, mostof the time, right. You know, you
can either take a store boughtleader and clip it at the loop and
add more butt material. Right.Or you can roll your own.
Yeah, just roll your own.Yeah, it's a lot easier. Well, yeah,
man, I prefer to roll, rollthe own, but, but yeah, that's a

(02:14):
good idea if you're Gonna havelike I say, a 9 foot, 12 foot, store
bought leader. Then just addsome butt section to it. You know,
that'd be the, that'd be theway to go. And then, then, then add
a little bit of tip it. Butit'd work out a lot better. I've
seen it so many times sincethe mid-80s when we got into doing
this Marvin for a living, thateverybody would just add tip it and

(02:37):
I'd tip it to a short leaderto begin with. And it's just kind
of disastrous as far asperformance, you know.
Yeah. Unless you got like abead on that fly, you're gonna have
a really hard time not havinga puddle of mono or fluoro at the
end of that leader.
Yeah, that's what wouldhappen. And it would really, it just
really helps to have it whereit transfers properly. It means coming

(02:59):
from the bigger stuff, youknow, that way you still have your
accuracy, you still have, youknow, precision base. Because in
this part of the country,well, you know, it's the highest
number of deciduous trees inthe world. So you're all the time
having to drop the castingplane down there to the side, send
something up, you know,underneath. Like rhododendron is
usually the most common thing,but there's other things, I mean,

(03:21):
there's a lot of other treesand stuff too over the water, but
roto being probably thepredominant. And whenever you're
doing that, that's gonnatransfer a lot better, you know,
in the horizontal plane. Evenhaving some butt section where it
sends the fly way up and underwhere you want it to be.
Yeah, And I would say too, onpresentation, right. If you're nymph
fishing, you should leave theindicator in your shirt pocket. Right.

(03:42):
And because it's just going tomake a plop and you're going to probably
spook fish and you probablyeither want to use yarn or maybe
use a dry fly as an indicator.And then I always tell people that,
you know, when the water'sskinny, you got to kind of plan your
presentation. So maybe youhave to, you know, put the fly down,
you know, well above the fishso that you don't, they don't get
a splash right on top of theirhead and then go hide under the rocks.

(04:04):
Right?
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.Leave the bobbers. Leave the bobbers
out and really go to moretactical, finesseful setups like
small, you know, microcatisand things like. That's probably
a lot better option. You know,we, we were doing that a lot. We
were here we've just been hotlike you said. But, you know, we

(04:26):
had like a month of rain everyday and overcast weather and we were
doing a lot of dry dropper andplaying around a lot with the rigging.
You know, everybody alwaysthinks the, the small emerger or
whatever goes off the point.And a lot of times we'll do it the
other way where the dry fliesat the end and come back up and then
have just a short 4 or 5 inchtag and then have the emerger in

(04:50):
between the dry fly and you.And that way it's pretty easy to
tell when something happensbecause any kind of disturbance,
you know, you're looking outtowards where your dry fly is and
you see the disturbance.Always if a fly is only 4 or 5 inches
deep, you'll normally see adisturbance there on the surface.
And that makes it a little biteasier to fish that way, I think.
Yeah, I would say too, like,you know, you can do something like

(05:13):
that. You can always like, Ilike New Zealand yarn, but you know,
also too, I saw your Instagramreel. You had some of those SA cider
pens and you know, you canactually mark that high up on the
leader away from the fly andyou can just watch that movement
relative to where you thinkyour fly is. And that'll help you.
That's a really good way to doit too. And another trick that we

(05:33):
use a lot with that is snowseal. Like you put on telemark ski
boots and remember the oldleather boots you buy Snow seal,
it's mostly beeswax, butthat's the best product that I've
seen over the years that youcould commercially buy at a floated
leader is. I know they makelots of things and in the old days
you'd hear people say, putmucilin that just kind of washes

(05:55):
off and an oil slick rightaway on the water. So that's not
very good for longevity. Butsnow seal will stay on the leader.
So what I like to do a lot isuse those marker pins. And then after
the marker pins there, I puta, put a layer of snow seal right
over top of it and that'llfloat. That'll float all day long.
You don't have to retreat it.It's there for the duration, you

(06:16):
know.
Yeah. And I would tell peopletoo, you know, there's an advantage
to having more than one colorbecause you will find wherever you
fish that you're going to getbetter contrast probably with one
color versus the other. Andyou can even alternate colors. But
that's another trick, right?
Yeah. It is. I like to times Ido it on a form and I mean, that

(06:37):
sounds picky, but it's a wholelot easier and faster to do. So if
you just take it and roll iton like I carry a piece of PVC in
the truck. There's always alittle piece of PVC for ham radio
stuff, you know, and I'll justput, take the mono and wrap it like
ten times on say a inch and ahalf, two inch form. And then you
take one color and, you know,make it look like a yellow jacket.

(07:00):
You'd use yellow and black,you know, a chartreuse and pink.
I mean, you can do whatevercolor combo you want, but I like
to have a lot of separatecolors rather than just a solid color.
Usually I'll do, you know,multiple colors and it's real quick
to do. If you just wind it,then hit it, just draw a straight
line down, draw anotherstraight line down, and you're done,
you know.

(07:21):
Yeah, absolutely. I haven'tthought about beeswax since I was
in the Boy Scouts. That's whatI used to treat my, my boots with
and used to hit them with thehair dryer.
Oh, yeah, it'll make them,make them shine and repel water.
Yeah.
So some, just some tips,folks, you know, and I would say
too, you know, as we headdeeper into the summertime, you know,
don't forget what we've saidin the past few fishing reports about

(07:41):
how terrestrials are going tobecome more and more powerful. Inchworms,
beetles, ants, all kinds ofgood stuff. But one thing we wanted
to let you guys know about, ifhaven't seen it yet in the outdoor
community, there's been a lotof communication around in the, the
budget bill that's working itsway through Congress right now. The
Senate version has put in theprovision to sell a significant amount

(08:05):
of public land. And that'sobviously upset at, you know, hunters,
fishermen, hikers, all kindsof outdoor recreation enthusiasts.
And I'm going to drop a linkto Trout Unlimited is one of many
outdoor organizations. If youbelong to backcountry hunters and
anglers or Sierra Club or anyof those groups, they're going to
have links to reach out toyour senators and your congressmen.

(08:26):
But I would encourage you todo that. The deadline is the Fourth
of July weekend. That's kindof generally where the process is
running. So if you valueaccess to public lands to hunt, fish,
hike and recreate, I wouldencourage you to tap the link that
I'm going to put in the shownotes and let your Elected officials
know that.
That's right. Yeah, I thinkthat'd be. That'd be really helpful.

(08:46):
Cause that's about the onlyrecourse we have is. Is. Is anglers
and hunters and, you know,trail hikers. I mean, we like to
do a lot of hiking here in thenational park. It's not national
parks that are at risk. Butthere's so many Forest Service and
BLM land on the west westernpart of the United States are looking
at selling off. And it'd be agood thing to really push hard and

(09:09):
push back this next week for folks.
Yeah. And I would say, youknow, folks, you know, when it's
gone, it's gone. So if it'simportant to you, you need to make
your voice heard.
That's right. Yeah.
Well, as we both try to staycool. So you're drinking lemonade
and gin and tonics and beer inthe shade up in Bryson City. I know
you're guiding. You don't haveschools until the fall, but you want
to kind of let folks know howto reach out and get on the guidebook,

(09:31):
talk about schools and allthat kind of good stuff.
Mac Brown so the best placeprobably email off the [e-mail]
or the flyfishingguideschool.com then social
media, same name on Instagramand Facebook. It's better to email,
though, off the. Off the URL,because I don't always look at the.

(09:53):
I'm not as savvy about thesocial media stuff as somebody half
my age, probably. Marvin. Soemail's probably better.
Yeah, I'm savvy, but I stillprefer one mailbox as opposed to
six or seven. So that's justme, so. Well, folks, as I always
say, this time of year I'mgoing to add a little something.
You need to stay cool, and youowe it yourself to get out there
and catch a few. Tight lines,everybody. Tight lines.

(10:16):
Mac Tight lines. Marvin.