sportsMar 5, 202611:55

S8, Ep 15: The Beginner's Mindset: Mac Brown on Embracing Continuous Learning in Fly Fishing

About this episode

Episode Overview

In this episode of The Articulate Fly, host Marvin Cash sits down with Master Casting Instructor Mac Brown for another installment of Casting Angles — a wide-ranging conversation on the philosophy of continuous improvement in fly fishing and fly casting. Recorded just before the Lancaster Fly Fishing Show, the episode centers on one of the most practical yet underappreciated principles in skill development: approaching your craft with a beginner's mind, no matter how many years you've been on the water. Mac draws on feedback from students at recent west coast events — including anglers with 30 to 40 years of experience who received their first structured casting instruction — to illustrate how long-held assumptions can silently ceiling growth. The conversation touches on Mac's "four stages of learning" framework, the infinite circle of knowledge and the parallels between fly casting mastery and elite performance in any discipline. Practical spring fishing news also surfaces in the second half: listeners get actionable intel on early-season Quill Gordon dry fly hatches on wild Appalachian freestone streams, the ideal nymph sizing window as hatches begin (sizes 12–16) and emerging activity of little black stones and blue winged olives on Tennessee tailwaters. Mac and Marvin also preview their respective Lancaster show appearances and detail upcoming guide schools and casting classes at macbrownflyfish.com for anglers planning their spring season.

Key Takeaways

How adopting a beginner's mindset — staying open to new information regardless of experience level — is the single most reliable driver of improvement in fly casting and fishing.
Why intermediate anglers stagnate: the false belief that years of time on the water equates to skill development, which shuts down active learning before it can happen.
How Mac's four stages of learning framework maps the path from novice to expert, and why most anglers get stuck at stage two.
When Quill Gordon dry fly hatches arrive on wild Appalachian freestone streams, they represent one of the season's best dry fly windows because the adult floats for 15–20 minutes while hardening its wings.
Why early-season nymphs (sizes 12–14) are as large as they'll be all year, making this the optimal window to fish bigger nymph patterns before successive hatches progressively reduce insect size.
How structured instruction — rather than YouTube, books or show demos alone — accelerates skill acquisition in ways self-directed learning rarely can.

Techniques & Gear Covered

The episode is primarily instructional and conceptual rather than gear-heavy, but several practical fishing frameworks emerge. Mac references his own book Casting Angles — a fly casting handbook endorsed by the ACA and FFI — as the source material for the four stages of learning discussion, and directs listeners to the article on his website for a deeper read. The conversation touches on the comparative limitations of self-directed learning via YouTube and books versus structured in-person instruction, particularly for developing proper casting mechanics. On the dry fly fishing side, Mac recommends dry fly presentations targeting Quill Gordons on freestone streams in size 12, with the extended float window (15–20 minutes) making these hatches unusually productive for surface takes. Marvin notes that pairing size 14 and 16 nymphs during this same early-season window takes advantage of the year's largest nymph profiles before they diminish through the season. Mac also promotes two-day casting schools through macbrownflyfish.com as the highest-value instructional investment for anglers who want to advance their skills heading into spring.

Locations & Species

The episode references wild freestone streams in the Western North Carolina / Great Smoky Mountains region — Mac's home water around Bryson City — as the primary context for the early Quill Gordon hatch discussion, with these streams producing active trout as water temperatures begin to rise. Tennessee tailwaters are also noted as waters where little black stoneflies and blue winged olives are already appearing, signaling the beginning of productive surface-feeding windows. The target species throughout is wild trout, with Mac's commentary on Quill Gordon hatches specifically framed around waking large fish that have been dormant through winter. The seasonal framing is early spring, a transition period characterized by warming daytime temperatures, emerging hatches and increasingly active trout — one of the most productive dry fly windows of the year in the Southern Appalachians.

FAQ / Key Questions Answered

How does a beginner's mindset improve fly casting and fishing skills?

Beginners enter instruction with no preconceptions to dismantle, which makes them highly receptive to new technique and feedback. Mac argues that anglers who believe they are already proficient — after years of fishing without formal instruction — unknowingly stop absorbing new information, effectively stalling their development at the intermediate stage.

What are the four stages of learning in fly casting?

Mac's framework progresses from stage one (open absorption of fundamentals) through stage two (recognizing a problem exists but not knowing how to fix it — where most intermediate anglers stall) to stages three and four, where skills become internalized and self-correcting. He recommends reading the full article on his website for a detailed breakdown of each stage.

When is the Quill Gordon hatch and why is it such a good dry fly opportunity?

The Quill Gordon is an early-season mayfly that emerges on wild Appalachian freestone streams, typically before most other major hatches of the year. The adults float on the surface for 15–20 minutes while hardening their wings — an unusually long window that gives trout ample time to key on them and gives anglers sustained dry fly fishing action. Size 12 patterns are appropriate at peak emergence.

Why should anglers fish larger nymph patterns in early spring?

Nymph size follows a seasonal arc: early in the year, aquatic insects are at or near maximum size before the first hatches reduce their populations and successive generations emerge progressively smaller. Sizes 14 and 16 are particularly effective in this early window, as they match the naturals more accurately than the smaller patterns that will dominate later in the season.

What does Mac Brown recommend for anglers who want to improve most efficiently?

Mac consistently points to in-person structured instruction — particularly his two-day casting school — as the highest-leverage investment for improvement. He contrasts this with YouTube and book-based learning, which lack the real-time feedback loop required to correct ingrained errors and build proper mechanics into muscle memory.

Connect with Our Guest

Follow Mac on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Follow the Show

Follow The Articulate Fly on Facebook, Instagram,

Get every episode summarized

Each time The Articulate Fly publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.

Email me new episodes

Free for 3 shows. No card needed.

Hosts & guests

TThe Articulate FlyHost

Transcript ready

146 searchable segments. Every word is indexed and playable.

Full transcript

The Articulate Fly — S8, Ep 15: The Beginner's Mindset: Mac Brown on Embracing Continuous Learning in Fly Fishing. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.

Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Flower back with another casting angles with the man himself, Mac Brown, Mac How are you? I'm doing great. How are you doing, Marvin? As always, just trying to stay out of trouble and you know, you're just back from teaching on the West Coast and you know, we'll, our paths will cross again in Lancaster here. I guess not this weekend, but next weekend and you know, one of the interesting things before we started recording, we were kind of talking about teaching and learning process and all that kind of good stuff and that's just something that kind of, you know, comes to the forefront of your mind when you're teaching at all these fly fishing shows and we thought it would be interesting to talk to folks about kind of a posture for self improvement and you know, the importance of having a mind like a beginner. That's right. Yeah, the mind like a beginner is really a beautiful thing in that they already know they don't know a lot because they're starting out brand new, so they're really open to filling

up their, filling up their mind with all kinds of new things and yeah, that's, that's kind of the, usually the one that excels, you know, quite a bit in a class or whether, you know, regardless of what type of class it is and yeah, what room kind of made me think of going down this rabbit hole was a head several letters from Bellevue and one of them that was in Pleasant and they were talking about the fact that, you know, they've been doing this 30 to 40 years and all the improvement that that brought to them just from a two and a half footer like this is my first real lesson and everything else I guess was from reading books and YouTube and things and then they realized there's a, there's a bunch more form to get and I think that, that kind of makes for a good talk. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing, right, like not to pick on YouTube and books, but, you know, a lot of people buy books and they don't read them, right, or they're at a fly fishing show and they watch a demo and they think they know it and I think the biggest challenge, you know, technology is great in the sense that allows you to reach

people all over the world that are interested in what you're interested in, but sometimes quality curation for lack of a better word is lacking, right? Yeah, I think that's a big part of it and I wanted to throw in one thing my father and all did with my kids when they were little and I've used this quite a bit on the road and you make an okay symbol with your hand and you see all that little circle inside is where we are today and what we know today about something, whether it's casting or whether it's about math or whatever it is you're into and then you, you double that circle of course and everything outside the circle is still infinite amount of things that we don't know yet. So there's this huge thing of infinite space of what we don't know so every time we make it bigger and bigger, say it's the size of a, you know, Bryson City or Charlotte and you think, wow, that's a lot of knowledge, but it's still infinite around the outside of that circle is all the things we don't know. So no matter how big that circle gets, point being this is going to be way more stuff that we don't know which is part of the whole fun part of motivating

part about learning something new. Yeah, I think it's interesting too because I think, you know, that's one of the reasons why it's so hard for, you know, we can talk about intermediate casters or intermediate anglers, but really kind of intermediate anybody because to make that jump from being intermediate to being either more advanced intermediate or being advanced, they actually have to have that light bulb moment to realize what they don't know because they kind of probably are approaching whatever it is they're interested in, fly casting, fishing, fly tying or whatever, thinking that they've done it a long time and they're probably 95% of the way they are and it really kind of slows down their development, right? Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it because if they already perceive that they're there, I think that puts the stagnant wheels in moat, you know, that puts the stagnant part for the wheels turning relative to say the beautiful mind of a beginner that's open to putting as much stuff as they can into their quiver and then when they think they've

know a lot because they've been doing a lot of years and they've been to this place of that place making memories that kind of puts the stagnation part in motion. So yeah, one of the things I wanted to bring up too is that I would refer to it a lot on the road is the article off the website about the four stages of learning, I mean, that right there says it all people just need to go on there and read it because basically the intermediate we're talking about is at stage two, they realize finally they got a problem they don't know how to fix it, maybe I need some help. Does that make sense? That's a stage two, there's three and four. Does that kind of make sense? So we go from the beginner in stage one, is trying to take it all in and stage two is basically that second, second form, what people really want if they really want to immerse themselves in it is to work towards getting to stage four. Well, how do we get them to stage four if we've got 85% of the people we meet on the road that are stuck in stage two? Does that kind of make sense at the intermediate level? Yeah, I mean, and I just think that's, you know, in so much of this is I think it's true for,

you know, I've talked about this in lots of different ways about elite performance, whatever you're doing, whether you're running track or you know, archery or whatever, you know, what becomes the differentiator is the mental component, right? Whether it's the posture for self improvement or the ability to settle your nerves and perform under pressure, right? Exactly. And yeah, just the, the wherewithal to have quality assignment, you know, to where we keep reminding ourselves of that circle we talked about that there's things, you know, that we're still trying to acquire to know at all these levels. I mean, because we're never going to know anything. I guess, well, mention Albert. I mean, that's another one that always thought that way in a lot of his writings. Later in his life of all the things that he came up with Albert Einstein, that there was all these things he didn't know and time was running out. And if somebody at that level still appreciates factors, all these things, which I think we're all, I mean, that we all got to realize there's all these things that we want to do and want to know

that we're not going to get there unless we clinic. I mean, we need to go back to that beautiful mind of a beginner to get there. Yeah. And I think too, you know, I think the amazing thing is, you know, even the teachers and the presenters learn every time they interact with people. Right? Because they, because, you know, you realize you don't know at all. And some always, I mean, a super interesting place to see it is in like fly time. Like it's almost impossible to be around tires and not pick up a trick. And it may not even be from the most advanced tire that's, you know, at the time table. That's right. Now there's tons of that. That's where I used to spend on the time early in my career just because I would always pick up so many things from the tires, you know, back when we had the big tie-in conventions in the early 90s, that one of them was an asshole one year for the whole whole country. And I meant, that's where I met, like Jim Stewart was there. Dave Whitlock was there. We had Gary LaFontaine was there.

You go along with the college real notebook and you can sit down with all these people for an hour or two. I just said, I'll die if you want with one person. But my goal was to fill up that notebook. So I'd go around to all these people and I filled up an notebook. So all of just things that I would have never learned from any books. Of course, I was way before YouTube. So that notebook is still hugely invaluable to me. I still find myself kicking back through there. Remembering it brings stuff back like once I see it and writing, you know, what I learned from that. One event. So yeah, I mean, I think that that's a really good way to do it. Like with tires, it's taking notebook. You're not going to remember it just watching a bunch of tires and recall it unless you write it down, you know. Yeah, or use your phone and take pictures. But you know, we're kind of in the home stretch, right? So, you know, in two weeks, we'll have the last fly fishing show of 2026 and Lancaster. And I suspect you're probably doing the same thing you normally do. You've got your day before class, right? You're all day class. And then you're probably teaching some classes at the show and, you know, I'll be doing the same thing. I've got a casting class and

I've got a presentation as well. Oh, yeah, and that'll be fun. I'm looking forward to heading up to Lancaster. And yeah, the club all day classes on Friday. And then of course, the show Saturday and Sunday. And I'm looking forward to getting up there and meeting some new folks. Yeah. And I will, I'll drop links in the show notes for sign-up stuff, folks, but at least from what I'm doing, I guess Saturday morning, I've got I think one of the first presentations. I've got my, you know, seasonal approach to trout fishing, right? It's a pretty basic thing. I think to, you know, if you just ask yourself what the food's doing, what's the trout doing? So what should you do when we just walk through that through all four seasons? But then Saturday afternoon, I'm teaching the same introductory casting class that I taught in Edison that you and I worked on together. And, you know, we're to really probably two-thirds classroom, one-third practical. So still spaces in both of those would love for you to join me. And I know Mac, when you get back, you know, it's kind of like your full-born, you know, schools and everything. I think you've got a school coming up, like maybe that next weekend or

weekend after that, you want to let folks know about that and kind of how to get on the educational calendar, the guide calendar and the casting lesson calendar coming into spring. Yeah, that'd be good. The backbrownslotsys.com that'll have the link under the far right column under specialty classes. And that's where they can get into like the guide schools, the two-day casting schools. There's a lot of three-day schools with wet, fly, dry, fly. Nymphing, those are all dedicated just to that one aspect, not trying to cover everything in those three days. So if somebody says, I really want to get, you know, familiar with one of those and that's the one to look at, you know, for that. But really, in my opinion, I mean, they're all fun to teach and all, but really, I think the two-day school is the most valuable personally, obviously. I would be in this rodeo going around the country doing mostly casting, casting, casting because we can't do any of these techniques if we can't cast. So in my opinion, that's where it all starts. If we can't get a fly

to where we're trying to be, then we probably need to fix that first, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And so I will, I'll make sure that all that stuff's in the show notes too. And you know, folks, if you can't make it to the shows, you know, it's starting to warm up here in our part of the world. And what that really means, like on the Tennessee tailwaters and some of the mountain streams is expect to start seeing, I know people have already started seeing the little black stones and the blueing dollars. Yeah, and what I'm going to try to do this week, before I head to Lancaster, this is one of the best times of the year for Quill Gordon starting to come off, head awake all the big fish up out of wintertime on these wild streams. And so I'm going to go chase and try to just throw up top a bunch in the next week before Lancaster and the Quill is probably my favorite dry flyhatch of the year. Yeah. And the funny thing too, folks, is remember that the Nymphs are as big as they're ever going to be this year because every successive hatch throughout the seasons go get smaller and smaller. So this is when those 14s and 16s are really work for you. That's right. Yeah. And some of the Quills will be like size 12s. A lot of them

will be like as big as size 12s. And that's just the beauty about that is they're on the water so long. When they come up to harden the weighing sometimes 20 minutes, depending on air temperature, but it's usually around 15 to 20 minutes at a time they float. So that's where they're going to get preyed upon. So it's a dry fly paradise with the billboard. Yeah, absolutely. So folks, you know, if you can get to Lancaster and see us next weekend, that'd be awesome. But if you can't and you can get out of the fish, that's great. And if it's still cold where you are, tie flies. Tightlines everybody. Tightlines Mac. Tightlines Mover.

More episodes