Description: This selection of Traditional Winged Wet Flies contains one dozen flies; two each of the following 6 classic patterns and comes with a "signature card" (see "More Images")
- Black Gnat
- Black & Silver
- Coachman
- Cowdung
- Professor
- Yellow Sally
Each of these patterns was chosen by combining their historic popularity and my personal success fishing them over many years, primarily in the waters of Pennsylvania and Maine.
Hook sizes:
- This selection contains 6 patterns; two flies per pattern; one fly in a #8 hook and one fly in a #10 hook.
- They are tied on a classic-style wet fly hook made using modern manufacturing technology; standard sproat bend 0x long wet fly hooks, high-carbon steel, chemically sharpened points, with mini-barbs. Modern hooks provide increased strength, higher hooking percentages, and fewer injuries to fish. If desired, the high-carbon mini-barb may be easily pinched down to effectively render the hook barbless.
What they imitate: Winged wet flies imitate drowned terrestrial or emerging aquatic insects, minnows, crustaceans, and various insect larva. They are also attractor patterns in that some wet flies represent nothing in nature, but entice fish to strike as a result of curiosity or by triggering an aggressive response. Many times, the fact any fishing fly is unfamiliar to fish and is small enough to fit in their mouth automatically relegates the fly to a potential "food item." This fact combined with varied action and technique during presentation often produces the strike.
When to fish them: Due to a wide range of sizes, style, and components, wet flies can be effectively fished any time of year.
Where to fish them: Wet flies can be fished in all types of water from the largest rivers to small streams and big lakes to small ponds. Flowing water of all fishable current speeds and the still water of impoundments or natural ponds is potential wet fly water.
How to fish them: A variety of techniques can be employed to fish wet flies, all depending on water type. Wet fly leaders are typically heavier than we use with drys and nymphs, and leaders must be made using stiff nylon monofilament to avoid tangling. Traditionally a "cast" was made up of three or more wet flies suspended from multiple droppers on one leader.
- Wet flies may be fished singly, in tandem, or in the traditional trio with either a floating or sink-tip line. In deep lakes, a full-sinking line is occasionally used. In flowing water an upstream cast followed by a down-and-across natural drift is the most traditional method to fish wet flies, but a variety of techniques incorporating rod tip action, hand stripping, or the old-time slow, hand-twist retrieve may be used. For example, in pocket water, wet flies can be swung downstream and "dappled" or skated across the surface. This technique is exciting because it produces aggressive rises.
- My experience of wet fly fishing in ponds is that a slow retrieve is best, and the angler must be attentive to what often come as subtle takes of the fly. The slightest resistance in the "feel" of the line calls for immediate setting of the hook. Sometimes it may feel merely like a blade of grass is caught on the leader, and at times it is. And sometimes it is a fish - this is how trout and bass for that matter, sometimes take a fly in still water - delicately.
- Wet fly fishing is fun and productive because of the wide variety of fishing methods than can be employed to bring success.
Approximate time to complete this order: 2 weeks
View Don's other fly sets and classic fly plates: Don's Flies