S6, Ep 70: Hot Weather Fishing Tips and Techniques with Mac Brown

you know, early summer. We've been. We've seen some hot temperatures already the last couple weeks, but, yeah, hopefully it's going to be a big cool down coming up next week. Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, last time we were coaching people that this was coming, you know, the DH was over. It's getting warmer. You know, you're going to end up, you know, having to fish either early or late or head high up into

the mountains or go chase warm water species. And we thought one of the things would be helpful for folks is, you know, a lot of people, uh, uh, are reluctant to go fish, like farm ponds and lakes for, like, bremen bass, um, um, because they're trout anglers, predominantly. Um, um, but there are a lot of things you can do fishing for bass and brem that, you know, give you good skill translation for when it cools off and you get back on the water again in the fall.

That's right. Yeah. There's a lot of line control tricks and, and strike detection tricks. You can learn, you know, on stillwater or, like, little t is pretty slow moving water. A lot of those big, big pools, it's like you're barely moving this time of year because it's not a lot of water in them. So, um, yeah, so if you're subsurface fishing, you can do a lot of

things for strike detection. You know, play around with different rod tip actions and line retrieval speeds with your hand and just watching the line, keeping the rod tip low to the water and watching the line where it has that little curve coming off from the rod tip to where it meets the water, you know, and detecting strikes from far out. You can, you can see it instantly on, on that section of the line. So you can practice a lot of these things on the brim and bass,

and it'll. It'll correlate, you know, directly to your trout fishing as well. So it just gives you better, um, attention, I guess, to the small details for your trout fishing. That's. That's one of the main. There's a lot of tricks, but that's one of the best things, I think, on this time of year to play with warm water fish for that reason. Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because it's exactly like just coming back to

euro nymph. Right. And so you're looking at how deep your fly is based on the angle of your line to the water, right? Uh, uh. And then, and then to your point, right. You can, um. Um. You know, if you, if you're watching that angle, when that angle changes, it probably means you've got a fish. Right? Yeah, that's it. And then you go ahead and go straight into reacting to that, you know, with your strike. Go uh, ahead and moving the rod and putting it on.

And you can, you know, you can strike deliberately like that in a short motion to test it. And if it's not there, then just keep fishing it. So I mean, it's really good for becoming disciplined and, um, how to strike. Like you learn that on warm water as easy as you do with trout. And, um, that would really be beneficial just because I would say over the course of 40 years of guiding that most people strike on an emotional response more so than a human computer or thought process. You

follow me? So, so it's just all an emotion. By saying that, it's like think about chimpanzee. Uh, there's a good book, the chimp paradox that Steve Peters put out. And it talks all about like when people fish on emotions, it's like, I think I got a strike. So what do they do? They just basically make a back cast and the whole setups flying the other direction 40, 50ft. And it's like, that's totally emotional because that's not the way we would ever set the

hook. Does that make sense? And I would say the majority of people that don't go enough, that's how they set the hook. Um, so you learn that on warm water, like what we're talking about, to be deliberate, but short. I mean, you could do a line strike using your lined hand, move the rod just 810 inches to check and see if it's there. And if it's not, you're still fishing. You didn't, you didn't put it in the air and make a back cast or worse, say the fish was on, but you struck

emotionally and now everything's broke off. So it's like, it's a great, great training methodology for becoming deliberate. Using the human computer part of your mind to set the hook rather than emotional. Set the hook, you know? Yeah. And then, you know, we've talked in various episodes about how, you know, there are times when you want to dead drift, but there are times when you want to animate the fly. Right. We talked about cattus. You know, we've talked

about you fishing with Davey. Um, and so one of. Yeah. And so one of the great things you can do, right, a very common thing, right, in the evening is to fish some kind of popper, right? And, you know, particularly even if you're on a river, you know, fishing some kind of popper, probably with some rubber legs on it for smallmouth and understanding, you know, you know, how to animate

that fly. Um, um, not just to make it move any which way, but just to start to understand, like, if I do this with the rod or if I do this with the line, what does that do to the fly? And that's going to make you a. A way better streamer angler and a way better dry fly angler when you get back on the trout stream.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And also playing around with the, uh, patience game, you know, with smallmouth, a lot of times on the popper is you can animate it, and then during the pause, when it's back at drift and animate it. And then during the pause, it's easy for people to want to rush that whole process, you know? And then, okay, I'm going to make another cast. But if we animate and pause, we can leave it out there for a very long time until it actually gets something.

And usually you'll find that the better quality smallmouth around here are usually when it's sitting there for quite a while after it's been animated. And I mean, like, up to 90 seconds, most people are, I want to rush that back in 15 and

let's launch another task. But I'm saying the best quality fish that I've seen over the years, like, even with, like, hoppers and cicadas and things, is, is the ones that stay there a very long time in a fishy spot, and all of a sudden the water boils, you know, sometimes as long as two minutes of waiting. But people don't tend to wait a lot when they're. When, when you're trying to get them to wait, they're. They're usually trying to rush that process. And I'm like,

no, keep fishing it. Let it stay. But, yeah, the better quality fish usually, usually happen during that long pause game. Also teaches you, too, to kind of reinforce that, being deliberate about your presentation. Right. So, you know, some of it is pause with slight movement. You know, if that doesn't work. You can start short strips, you know, if you're fishing sliders or something that's got an open face, you know, do you pop it and leave it alone, or do you pop, pop,

pop? And so it's the same things that we do fishing for trout, just in a slightly different situation. But if you, if you get in that mindset, like, you know, if you've been fishing it one way for an hour and you haven't caught anything, you might want to try something different, right? Oh, yeah, no, that's, that'd be good. And it's like, yeah, there's a lot of great, great lessons, um, from, from the rivers and ponds and lakes, you know, that you

can transfer back over. And Matt, Matt did a good post the other day, but, um, I think it's, it's spot on, you know, with these kind of temperatures. He posted that up in Michigan. I guess Michigan's been really hot, too. And, um, but, you know, it's, it's, it's okay to give, give trout a break when it gets hot. You know, I see it here all the time. People still pressuring a lot of the private stuff in north Georgia, and it's just like, it's too warm.

It really is. When you have two weeks of 80, 90 degree temperatures, chances are you'd be better off to go warm water and let the trout, let the trout alone for a while, you know, because the mortality rate's going to go way up the next few weeks for trout. I just think it's an ethical thing to leave them

alone, you know? Yeah. And I think, too, you know, you know, it may sound kind of complicated to say we'll try all sorts of different things that people don't know where to start, but, I mean, I think it comes back to stuff you and I have talked about a lot, right. Is observation. Right. And so if you're on a farm pond or a lake or river, like, what food do you see? Right. If you're putting the boat in and you see lots of minnows, maybe you need to, you know, fish a ck

bait fish or a woolly booger. Right. If you see dragonflies, like, I mean, it's just, you know, the water is going to tell you, you know, what's there to be eaten. Um. Um, you know, ah, you know, the, the fish don't have uber eats. Right? That's right. Well, I like the dragonfly idea because I fish a lot of dragonflies this time of year. Um, um, as far as the nips and I fish a lot of them, you know, as a dry with extended foam bodies. I mean, I really enjoy fishing a lot of the dragonflies and

warm water fisheries. And actually, even for trout, I mean, there's times a year, you know, you do. Well, if we were somewhere where the water's cooler, it's getting tough to find cool water right now. And so, yeah, the dragonfly is a really fun, fun pattern. You know, you really can't go wrong with dragonfly anywhere in the southeast on one water fishery right now. Yeah, so I would just say, you know, folks kind of take all that and, you

know, don't let the hot water keep you off the water. I mean, one of the benefits of the summertime is you can fish either really early or really late and you can go do other stuff, you know, if you're on a family vacation or whatever, you know, it's not going to be like you get to go out and fish all day long. Um, so just all sorts of stuff that, um, you know, Mack and I thought you guys might find

helpful. And I know, Mack, you're done with your schools until the fall, but I guess, you know, you're guiding regularly and you've got, you've got some spots left in some of your casting schools in the fall. You want to let folks know kind of where they can find you. So if they want to go down the river with you, they can do that or get a casting lesson or fill one of those, uh, class slots for you. Yeah, that'd be good. It's a, uh, best way is at the

URL. Mac brown fly fish. And then same name as far as on Instagram and Facebook. They can send a message on that, too. And that's probably the best, best way to reach me in the casting school, I think. September 17, I got two slots left in that still. So those will go probably the next couple weeks and then it'll be full. But, yeah, we're looking forward to that. Yeah, we've got all that stuff in the show notes. And, you know, folks, as I always

say, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few. Tight lines, everybody. Tight lines, Mac, tight lines. Marvin.