Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the articulate fly. And we're back with another casting angles with Mack Brown. Mack, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you doing, Marvin? As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. And you've had a fair amount going on in your neck of the woods. Yeah, we have. Yeah, we've had a lot of, a lot of people concerned sending well wishes and, you know, with the storm that hit.
And before the storm hit, I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks with my oldest boy and we got, he got checked out of Asheville the day the storm came in. So we're glad to have him back home here when all hit. Yeah. And I know, too that, um, you know, you were lucky. You were kind of in that, you know, far western part of the state that wasn't as severely affected as other places, right? That's right. We, we had the storm Friday when it came over.
I mean, the eye of the storm literally passed right over where we live. We sat out on the patio and looked and it was calm and big blue sky in a circle and you could see the cloud spinning, you know, the direction counterclockwise, which, yes, we got, we got missed with a lot of that. We really didn't have a lot of wind damage. We didn't really have a lot of flooding damage here, but just a little bit east and a little bit north. Thats where a lot of the big amounts really devastated some areas.
Yeah. I was watching the news over the weekend and they were saying that I guess just in western North Carolina, its an area the size of the state of Massachusetts thats really, really been leveled. Yeah, thats right. Especially with a lot of people that dont live in mountainous regions.
I think the big part that people miss out on, it's not just where you had like they set up over 30 inches at Mount Mitchell for the damage that that caused, but it's more the landslides that happen in the mountains. When you have that kind of rainfall, you're going to have lots of slides. And we're talking a lot of places are great big, you know, amounts of earth that come down from the mountain.
And that's, that's really what does the big, the devastation more than the floodwaters as the landslides and what that can do, you know, build a lake up within ten minutes and then that breaks free. That basically wipes, you know, everything, kind of wipes it away, you know, pretty quick. Yeah. And I know that there were so much rain on a lot of these streams and in rivers that not only did it wash out the bridge, it washed out the abutments and the roads. Mm hmm. That's right.
A lot of, the lot of the roads are, you know, were gone much of even up like where I grew up in East Tennessee in Greenville, they had a lot of damage, you know, from the old Chucky and municipal water. East Tennessee has a lot of, a lot of things going on, too, that, that were severely impacted with the storm. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of people have kind of reached out to me and im sure theyve reached out to you, Mack, and ill drop a link to this in the show notes.
Ive got a blog post thats got, um, just a handful of charities basically for southwest Virginia, east Tennessee, um, and western North Carolina. And, you know, they're generally like, there's the East Tennessee foundation because Elizabethton got hit really, really hard. All that money stays in the community. North Carolina disaster Relief Fund United way in, in North Carolina as well as in southwest Virginia.
You can actually designate, um, you know, the county if you want to, where you want your donation to go and so folks can look there. And I know, Mack, you had a couple other charities you wanted to let folks know about as well. Yes. Right. We're going to send those to you and you can put them on the, on the post, you know, with this one of them, french broad River Academy is doing a lot with keeping supplies going to the Chinook helicopters there at the airport in Asheville.
And they're actually able to take those supplies where they're needed most because a lot of the places are still isolated with not been able to just drive in there, you know, to take it. So that's a big, that's a big one. I've had a lot of people ask the last couple of weeks, you know, where not, I keep turning them to turn them to the articulate fly because I know you've done a good job putting up a lot of these places, but we'll get those to you, the notes.
And we're also getting a lot of questions, Marvin, on people calling about, you know, this fall. And I think we'll address that, too, and just say probably indefinite, like, I still haven't heard specifically like, where, you know what I mean for like DH programs and all that.
Pretty much what I've been telling people is I'm sure they're over because the water that they took up there in Brevard near where all of our fish come from for this part of the country was actually as high as and higher than when they lost them all in 21. So I'm sure that that's probably going to be on delay for a while. Yeah. You know, the, the word from, uh, in, at least from North Carolina, from the fish and game people, is that the DH stock stockings have been paused indefinitely.
And remember, too, folks, that they were already slated to basically renovate that Armstrong fishery up there on the Davidson river, and we were going to have diminished stockings for the next several years anyway. But the good news is, even though that's the case, if people are willing to hike into wild places and go up high where there wasn't a lot of water, you know, there's still opportunities to catch fish if they want to get out and, you know, catch a few trout this fall. That's right.
That's what, that's what we're doing pretty much still. And we had a lot of cancellations, of course, because a lot of places made it hard to get here with a lot of the different closures of roads. But a lot of the entries into this area, mainly out of the south and 129, the national park road, still open, you know, so they can still come in from a lot of areas, but there's still a lot of road closures up there. Upper East Tennessee and up just north of me, there's still a lot of road closures.
I mean, big, big, major highways, you know, closed, like 40 and 26 down there by those are going to take years to rebuild. I mean, that's not going to happen anytime soon for a lot of this to get back to having those pathways opened up, you know? Yeah. And I believe, folks, if you go to NCDrive dot gov, I think that's the site, that's the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
That's kind of the latest status on the various road issues, and that's a good place to go to get up to date information. And another thing I would really suggest is tourism is a huge part of the commerce in western North Carolina, east Tennessee, and southwest Virginia. So to the extent that you can get to these places and they're open for business, I would encourage you to try to get over there and support them.
But also, too, you know, on the fly shop front, something you can do kind of while things are getting sorted out is you can buy gift certificates and gift cards, and if you have trips on the books, you know, do the best you can to let those guides and outfitters hang on to that money and reschedule so that, you know, while they're trying to kind of get everything kind of back, you know, where it was before the storm that they don't have to worry about finding money to refund deposits and things
like that. Yeah, that's, that's good advice. I mean, I was lucky with that up in Michigan. We had several dozen that, that put it out to the 25, you know, which was nice of them to do. Not any of them tried to do it. All right. Then, you know, they just said, we'll just come in 25.
But that is, that's really good, good advice because I think that's going to be, I'm sure that the fall, just looking at town, you know, the fall leaves and all is starting to turn and, but it's going to be, it's, it's way off. Not just, you know, for angling, but bed and breakfasts and people that like to hike and look at leaves. I can just tell from looking at the traffic in town, it's going to be off because here we are in our peak and there's not a lot of people in town at all.
Normally it's, you know, it's packed this time of year, Marvin. Yeah. And it's going to take, it's going to take years to rebuild. So, you know, folks, I would encourage you, you know, this is something that's not going to be done by Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's. And so, you know, be on the lookout and, you know, you know, plan to, you know, kind of support relief, relief efforts to the extent that you can, you know, into 2025 and 2026. That's right.
And another thing, too, is all the folks, you know, it's pretty like East Tennessee is really just like over here. It's, people are really proud and the mountain strong and so many people volunteered their time ever since this happened, there's so many people that have donated from all over the country. And so just a huge shout out and thanks to all those people that are, that are helping with this whole relief effort.
Yeah. And I know you're, you're not going to be on the water kind of as much as you expected, Mack, but I do know that you will be traveling, Mack, in 2025. You want to let folks know where they can find you on the road during the 2025 show season. Yeah, we're going to start out with, I think Marlborough is the first show for the fly fishing show, and then we're doing all of those on their, on their website. I mean, it'll have the schedules and there'll be classes on the road.
And we'll do all those except for Lancaster, is that there's a school going on here. Then I couldn't had a conflict. But that one, I'm going to start off, actually, I've got one still coming up in the White river, which will be fun. I think that's October 8 9th weekend for the club down there. That's going to be a fun, really fun event. And then the one up in St. Paul, great Waters fly fishing expo. And I think that one's in third week of March. And then that's pretty much my show itinerary.
Well, there you go. Well, you know, folks, you know, if you're trying to find ways to support the relief efforts kind of in, you know, our neck of the woods, check out the link in the show notes. You know, everybody, you know, our thoughts and prayers are with you. There's been a tremendous loss of life and property in this part of the world. And, you know, you know, hang in there. And folks, you know, we're going to try to do as much as we possibly can. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines back.
Tight lines. Marvin.