Wet flies have gone in and out of favor a lot over the past century, but many anglers swear by them. As this great video from The New Fly Fisher shows, the key to a good wet-fly swing is mending. Angler Norm Bolen describes the essentials of wet-fly fishing along with professional guide Rob Heal. They cover casts, presentation and fly patterns. Watch the video, tie on a classic Partridge and Orange or some modern variant, and see what you can swing up!
Great fly fishing
Great video. Caught about 10 today on the Brule River using this technique.
Good job. I was there last week and had a hard time finding fish.
Good refresher.
Never discussed how to get the fly down in the water column. I did not see any bead heads.
I was able to catch a few small fish while fishing the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River last week fishing tiny dries directly downstream but then swung some partridge and green wet flies and really started to catch a fair number of fish! It wasn’t dry fly fishing for which the river is typically fished (which is really technically difficult on this highly pressured water) but swinging soft hackles made them more grabby! I’ve used this on a lot of different water and found it effective for medium speed water.
I was there Sunday, above FF and had no luck with wets, but had a fair amount of action tight-lining a Beadhead Prince Nymph.