The Wet Fly
by
Eugene Macri

The Humble Wet Fly that Too Many Fly Fishermen Forgot About

The Wet Fly and Wet Fly Fishing is often ignored by too many fly anglers today. Wet flies are still great patterns and will often take selective trout from hard fished streams.  Here are just a few of the reasons why you should be fishing wet flies:

• Wet flies can imitate a variety of emerging insects.
• Wet flies can imitate or suggest numerous caddis patterns
• Wet fly patterns with certain combination of wings and body material can give you a pattern with the right contrast that will suggest to trout a similar contrast of fly that they have been feeding on.
• Wet flies can be fished in a number of ways.
• Wet flies can be fished on the surface for a damaged duns

These are just a few of the possible scenarios for the use of wet flies.  Then why don't fly anglers use them?  Well some do but these are the fly fishermen well versed in the art.  The new fly anglers do not understand the art and sport of fly fishing nor its history and believe that all the so called "new patterns" are better. To get a good idea about such patterns I recommend our Classic Fishing Library which contains some of the best books and information on wet flies and wet fly fishing for trout and salmon (especially at the price).

I hate even to tell you this but simply by trimming the wings on some of the wet fly patterns (just chopping them off to little short stubs if you want to know the truth) you have one the best emerger patterns that you can tie or buy for many mayflies and caddisflies!!!!!

Of course, most fly anglers don't know this and many of those that do won't tell you about it. My late friend Gene Utech, a fellow Letort Regular, was one of the best fly fishermen in the world. Some day I will reveal his theory on how to be so effective with these flies. Gene could take fish just about everywhere because he had a practiced method.

Wet flies are especially a good bet when there is no major hatch and the fish are just feeding on the drift.  But they are as equally effective when flies are hatching especially when there are a variety of stages active on the stream. So there you have it:  some the best flies that are easy to tie and buy, and relatively cheap to make compared with many patterns yet I doubt that 1 in 10 fly anglers use them.  So which patterns should you carry?  Well I give you a few of the ones I carry and why in the next article on wet flies.