how do you fly fish with a wet fly?

Answer 1

Wet flies are fished in a wide variety of ways.

Davy Wooten fishes them three to a line (check your regulations, many places only allow 2 flies) and he calls it A Cast of Flies. He fishes them in rivers and has the first fly fished really close to the surface with the other two trailing behind. I would recommend you get his DVD titled Wet Fly Ways. It is very instructional. He works his way upstream, working his flies in short casts, almost like High Sticking it, then he moves a couple of feet and casts again. It is a very effective way to fish a wet fly.

Personally, I mostly nymph fish in rivers, or fish dries. However, in lakes, I fish wet flies often, mostly soft hackles. I fish these just under the surface using a dry fly line and a long leader, like a 9 foot mono then add around 4 or 5 feet of fluorocarbon tippet, stepping the tippet down once or twice. These are fished slowly as it represents an emerging nymph that is ready to try to break through the surface tension of the water.

There is also streamer fishing, like with Woolly Buggers, another very effective way to fish.

Larry

Answer 2

a wet fly just means that they sink instead of float. I like to slowly pull it in and give it a real big jerk, then let it sink a little and repeat.