Mossy Creek Fly Shop

The three flies pulsated as they swung across the current. Each small eddy and seam in the riffle’s broken flow gave lifelike movement to their hackles, wings and even to the fly’s body fibers. When the cast of flies reached the end of their swing and were directly downstream from him; the angler resisted the temptation to rip them from the water and make another cast. Rather than making a new cast; the flies were left in and allowed to swim in the water below the angler.

The flies probed their way through likely looking lies, covering the water below in a wide swath; sometimes swimming upstream in the edge of a boulder eddy, sometimes tumbling back downstream in a natural drift as the fisherman gave back line that he had retrieved.

The flies were spaced on the leader approximately a foot and a half to two feet apart. The pattern on the end, the point fly, was a gold ribbed hare’s ear, the next one up the leader, the dropper, was a lead wing coachman. These patterns were two of the angler’s favorites, flies that he had faith in and almost always started with. The hare’s ear and the coachman have been producing for fly fishers for hundreds of years. The dropper fly at the top, the hand fly, was an orange fish hawk; chosen for its high visibility as well as its fish taking ability.

This is a scene that has been played and replayed countless times over the past five centuries. And yet the technique is rarely used by today’s anglers. The dry fly didn’t come into wide usage in the U.S. until 60 or 70 years ago but today fishing the dry has such a strong grip on modern fishers that use of the wet fly has been grossly neglected. A number of factors contribute to this phenomenon but it is beyond the scope of this article to explore them.  Suffice to say that if you do not now fish wet flies then you should take the time to learn. Your potential for catching fish will go up…way up.

Over the past 35 years I have faced numerous occasions when guiding a husband and wife where the hubby explained to me that he was an experienced fisherman and would I please help his wife…who was inexperienced. My response to this has always been to rig the lady with two or three wet flies and teach her to fish as described above. After directing her casts for a while; she would usually start catching fish on her own while her spouse flailed away with dry flies, often to no avail. I wish I had a nickel for every time that has happened!

The Equipment:

• Rods… A longer rod affords better line control than a short one and its greater reach allows more water to be covered from one position. A rod with a soft action is ideally suited to wet fly fishing. While fishing the wet fly the line is often tight to the fly and a soft rod absorbs the shock of a fish’s sudden strike and so protects tippets and hooks of smaller sizes. And, a fish is more likely to “hook itself” when using a softer more flexible rod than on a stiffer rod. When casting a wet fly forget those “tight loops”; casts should be made with a softer, open loop so as not to “snap” the water from the fly. The fly entering the water should be as wet as possible so that it will sink and begin fishing immediately. 
• Line… A good quality floating line that works with a minimum of false casting. 
• Leaders… The length and diameter of the leader should match stream conditions and the size of flies being fished. Low, clear water calls for a long, fine leader while in high and/or discolored water a shorter sturdier leader will suffice. 

• Dropper knots…There are a number of ways to attach droppers. I prefer tying a blood knot and leaving the heavier tag end (the one leading to the line) approximately 2-3 inches long. This is just right for attaching a dropper. Any longer is likely to lead to troubles with tangles when casting. Tying a tippet and fly from the bend of another fly is a down and dirty way of attaching a dropper and is anathema to me. Many fish are lost using this technique. Another fish grabbing the point fly can, and often does, rip the fly from the mouth of the fish hooked on the second fly. And you can rest assured that if this happens to you… it will be the fish of a lifetime that is lost. Why take a chance?  

• Fly Patterns… Thousands of books describing wet fly patterns have been written over the past 500 years. The flies may be broken down into three groups: winged, palmered and hackled. Experiment on your own…stick with the tried and proven patterns, to start, such as those mentioned and also the so called soft hackle patterns made popular in this country recently by  the writings of Sylvester Nemes.