Is There a Better Way to Swing a Wet Fly

[MD_Gene]

I really enjoy this time of year with the hatches underway. I particularly enjoy swinging wet flies. I have had my share of success. Sunday evening I was out for a couple of hours and had 5 solid hits. Five strikes but no fish. And you thought "three strikes and you're out"?

Here's what I normally do. If possible I wade near the middle of the stream and cast to the banks and let the emerger swing out and straighten were I think a fish might hold. Or I will stand near the bank and cast to let the fly sink and swing into the slower water. Holding the fly still at the end of the swing for about 5 seconds has done very well for me.

Here's the question. Is there a better way to approach this technique? Might I be scaring the fish below me as I wade downstream. And they are setting off alarms to the fish below them?

Thoughts?

 

[shakey]

i would let it hang for more than five seconds,maybe even thirty. then,lift your rod and drop it again before you retrieve .
you can vary your swing by pointing your rod at the other bank,the fly,the opposite bank ,etc,
you can vary your swing by utilizing a hand twist retrieve during the drift.
you can throw slack in your line to allow a dead drift before your swing.
you can cast upstream and let it drift while sinking,and strip in till it reaches you,then throw line back out and drift or swing.
you can vary the weight of your team of flies.
during a caddis hatch you can wiggle your rod a bit,to make the fly skate towards the end of your swing.
you can dress your wet with floatant so it stays up in the film,
you can vary the position of your bob,middle and point fly.i like the attractor in the middle.
you can add a large wet or streamer and strip it in like a streamer ,

 

[shakey]

you can also fish your wets like nymphs,or nymphs like wets.

you don't always swing,sometimes you fish up,sometimes you dead drift etc.

also,often a fish that's hooked on a swung wet will hook itself .

if you had five hits without a stick,double check that your hooks are sharp. many commercially bought wets are made on inferior hooks.

 

[hooker-of-men]

This might sound weird and be completely wrong - it's certainly a theory that I'm just making up - but I also feel like this time of year some stocked fish are just... bad at eating stuff on top or high in the film... Is that possible? Or maybe just bad at eating in a natural setting in general, but we only see it on top?

I was skittering caddis to very indiscriminate rising stockies yesterday, and the misses were pretty hilarious and intense on the part of the fish. I'm fairly certain they were going for my fly, as I caught a bunch and the fish missiles I was missing rocketed themselves out of the stream and past my fly in a very consistent grouping around my drift. They just seemed kinda bad at being fish.

Obviously if you weren't on stocked water, the point is moot. But my experience resonated with yours in some ways.

 

[SteveG]

If you're talking about a smaller stream, you're likely scaring many fish by wading right down the middle. I don't even like working downstream where I have cover along the bank. It can be tough to make out lies, features, and especially fish, before they see or feel your presence.

 

[dc410]

I honestly don’t think there is a wrong way to fish wet flies. The best way is whatever method seems to be producing the most takes on that particular stretch of stream at that particular time. I really enjoy fishing wet flies and trying many, many different types of presentations until I get it figured out how they want it. Once you figure it out you will likely continue to catch fish using that technique in similar types of water. However, they can seemingly turn off what was working great at any time “almost like a light switch”.

The other evening I was fishing a 3 fly wet fly rig and finally figured out that they were holding/feeding in a particular depth and speed of water and wanted the flies totally straight downstream fluttering under total tension. I slowly worked downstream using my rod tip shifting left and right to put my flies into the right kind of water and caught fish all evening using that method. I don’t often get hung up while fishing like this but that evening I directed my point fly into a piece of submerged wood. As I was approaching the snag to attempt to release it (nothing but leader out of the rod tip) I watched a wild brownie smash my middle fly as it was fluttering in the current as a result of my snag. When the fish hooked itself it turned and headed downstream effectively releasing my point fly from the snag, and it was “game on”.

Shakey has a pretty good list of techniques in his above post all of which could work well at any given time. Another one I thought to add is occasionally bumping your rod with your line hand sending vibrations down through your system of wet flies. I’ve had this method also be effective in triggering strikes. Don’t get stuck in a rut! If your not getting hits keep changing it up.

 

[Mike]

On larger streams where spooking the fish might be less of a problem, wading downstream is probably producing an unintentional low density chum line of macroinvertebrates, which may be an asset at certain points of the swing.

 

[Baron]

I have significant arthritis in hips and low back. can't really make headway going up stream. So I generally bank fish with knee boots. I'd think it would work if I fished downstream in waders but was under the impression it was self defeating. On a typical small stream Like Monocasy and Martins and Lehigh how far upstream can the fish see you? Years ago I would nite fish for stockies by trailing a worm line down fast current into the pools that held fish. Worked well at night. A fellow said to me "wet down dry up".

 

[Dave_W]

Mike wrote:
On larger streams where spooking the fish might be less of a problem, wading downstream is probably producing an unintentional low density chum line of macroinvertebrates, which may be an asset at certain points of the swing.

Ahhh... the ole "San Juan Shuffle."

I guess we now have "Mike's Wet Fly Stride."

 

[Dave_W]

Baron wrote:
A fellow said to me "wet down dry up".

This is good advice - streamers on the down too.

 

[Dave_W]

I've always found that swinging wets produced a lot of hard strikes but a poor hook-up ratio for me.

 

[turkey]

A couple of "in house" resources.

 

[redietz]

hooker-of-men wrote:
This might sound weird and be completely wrong - it's certainly a theory that I'm just making up - but I also feel like this time of year some stocked fish are just... bad at eating stuff on top or high in the film... Is that possible? Or maybe just bad at eating in a natural setting in general, but we only see it on top?
/quote]

No. Hooking fish on the swing is an acquired skill, and goes against every instinct you have as an angler. And you can lose the skill if you don't practice it.

I went out today for the first time in over two months, fishing over wild browns (Gunpowder Falls). The first 10 takes I had resulted in 5 misses and five long distant releases. Again, not stocked fish, and they weren't all dinks. I finally landed a fish, and then repeated the whole process -- twice. Three fish landed out of about 30 takes.

I finally had to start repeating to myself "keep the rod tip up and keep a loop under your finger." As soon as I did that, I didn't miss any more fish and only two LDR's. I quit after 14 fish landed. It could have been a 40 fish day, but I was out of practice, and I pretty much fish nothing but wet flies.

It's not that the fish -- stocked or wild -- are bad at eating stuff on top, it's that we're bad at hooking them. Trout feed on bugs by sucking them in, sort of like drinking through a straw. If you're fishing downstream, you'll feel a tug before the bug even gets into the trout's mouth. If you immediately set the hook, you're just pulling it away from the fish, possibly before it even entered it's mouth. If you do hook the fish, chances are it will be very lightly hook, almost literally "by the skin of its teeth." The trick is to allow enough slack for the fly to get into the mouth, and then let the fish hook itself. And that's actually hard to do when you're used to striking hard at the first sign of a take.

 

[hooker-of-men]

I prefer blaming the fish.

Also, I fish by the personal dictum that if a fish is so stupid it only wants to eat nymphs, then it is too stupid for me to want to catch. Fish are philosophically complicated in my world...

 

[dc410]

redietz wrote:

hooker-of-men wrote:
This might sound weird and be completely wrong - it's certainly a theory that I'm just making up - but I also feel like this time of year some stocked fish are just... bad at eating stuff on top or high in the film... Is that possible? Or maybe just bad at eating in a natural setting in general, but we only see it on top?
/quote]

No. Hooking fish on the swing is an acquired skill, and goes against every instinct you have as an angler. And you can lose the skill if you don't practice it.

I went out today for the first time in over two months, fishing over wild browns (Gunpowder Falls). The first 10 takes I had resulted in 5 misses and five long distant releases. Again, not stocked fish, and they weren't all dinks. I finally landed a fish, and then repeated the whole process -- twice. Three fish landed out of about 30 takes.

I finally had to start repeating to myself "keep the rod tip up and keep a loop under your finger." As soon as I did that, I didn't miss any more fish and only two LDR's. I quit after 14 fish landed. It could have been a 40 fish day, but I was out of practice, and I pretty much fish nothing but wet flies.

It's not that the fish -- stocked or wild -- are bad at eating stuff on top, it's that we're bad at hooking them. Trout feed on bugs by sucking them in, sort of like drinking through a straw. If you're fishing downstream, you'll feel a tug before the bug even gets into the trout's mouth. If you immediately set the hook, you're just pulling it away from the fish, possibly before it even entered it's mouth. If you do hook the fish, chances are it will be very lightly hook, almost literally "by the skin of its teeth." The trick is to allow enough slack for the fly to get into the mouth, and then let the fish hook itself. And that's actually hard to do when you're used to striking hard at the first sign of a take.

Totally agree with this!

Patience is very key in hooking up on wet fly takes. I also like to let a loop of line off of the reel and through my fingers on the rod hand that I usually let out on the take. I also do a kind of reverse hook set by moving my rod hand toward the fish by about 6-8” allowing the fish to turn in the current and complete the hook set.

I also love using Maxima material to tie my wet fly leaders (both Chameleon and Ultragreen). I feel it acts kind of like a built in shock absorber and I have gained a lot of confidence when fishing leaders built with this material. Confidence is a huge asset in any kind of flyfishing.

 

[BruceC2C]

Per Redietz wisdom...May I emphasize

"keep the rod tip up and keep a loop under your finger."

"keep the rod tip up and keep a loop under your finger."

"keep the rod tip up and keep a loop under your finger."

May I also suggest a smidge of slack line between
waist\thigh high rod tip and water.



....imo, swinging wet flies on a " tight line" is poor practice

 

[Baron]

This new guy asks:

Why rod tip up? If you put tip down and line tight you only have to lift a bit on a take and you should have it. Where did you rod tip up come from. If you get a strike you have no where to go.

 

[Baron]

nice explanation video Turkey. I'm at the stage whereby I found it best to listen to the experienced fly fishermen. It got me catching fish. No that I don't question things. But my rate of catch goes up every time I listen to those in-the-know.
I wish I believed the tip-high thing........but I'm doing it.

 

[redietz]

It puts a catenary curve in the line, which allow the line to move down stream as it straightens out, thereby avoiding pulling the fly out of the fish's mouth before you can release the loop of line held under your finger. If you keep the rod tip down and pointed at the fly, you're going to miss every fish every time. And the very last thing you want to do when swinging wets is "set the hook."

 

[LongLineRelease]

Unfortunately missed fish are a fact of life with the swung wet. A couple things you can do though is hold your rod tip higher to allow more slack between the rod tip and the fly. Also keep a foot or so of reserve line between reel and first guide. Hold your line lightly to allow it to slip on a hard strike. Doing these will help sometimes but not all the time.