How to increase successful hookups with wet flies.

[Acristickid]

Do you have any success stories on increasing hookups with wets?

I am about 50%, I think.

Is this just the nature of this type of fishing?

Try to get the angle of rod up (not pointed at the drift or down into the water), keep a decent amount of line on the water.

Not sure if I notice a difference in success with mending the line or not. Guess it could help for deeper water.

Do you ever weight your line? I usually do not but have occasionally.

Usually use 2 flies, one off a 3-6 inch dropper from tag end of knot and the other a couple feet down on the point. Usually a nymph rig and I just switched over to wets.

 

[David]

Greasing them up and fishing them on top should help.

 

[jayL]

Nature of the beast. Actively fished flies miss fish much more so than the glorified bait fishing than the dead drifters are doing.

 

[pcray1231]

Partially, its the nature of the beast.

But one thing I'll say, is that wets are often fished downstream, and when fishing anything downstream, the hookset angle is of vital importance. Must have that downstream set.

When a fish is upstream of you, its real hard to get a bad angle, but not so when the fish is down.

 

[gochs]

I've been having this problem recently. The past six fish I've hooked into I've lost. I'm just taking a week off and hoping my hook sets reset.

 

[govtmule]

try not to set the hook when fishing wets/softs downstream...have a tight line with a little extra line under your finger...when you feel the hit, dont do anything except let the little slack you have go...make sure your drag is not too tight also...

 

[CatchingChrome]

Tie your wets on trebles!

No I like to fish a team of wets, 3-4 I ties them off small swivels I use for steelhead fishing. No weight is critical at the end of the swing I like to raise my rod tip to about 11 oclock and kind of swim then up. Or I will make about 8-10 strips back in kind of like a streamer. Alot of times I will get a good bang on the 3-4th strip.

 

[Chaz]

You don't point the rod at the fly, you make sure there is a hinge between the rod and line and get the fly down to where the fish are.

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

I always set the hook upstream and to the side about 10 or 11 oclock when fishing wets. Alotta fish set them selves as long as there on a tight line. And as far as mending goes i use that to stear my fly either side to side or up and down in the water colum.

 

[plombardo]

paco..don't let the creeper(theMuskY) know you swing wets or Sink/Dries HE HATES THAT...

 

[mutzinbaugh]

try stripping the line quickly and lifting up on your rod. this seems to work well for me.

 

[Festus]

govtmule wrote:
try not to set the hook when fishing wets/softs downstream...have a tight line with a little extra line under your finger...when you feel the hit, dont do anything except let the little slack you have go...make sure your drag is not too tight also...

Govt Mule nailed it.

 

[Wetfly01]

Try lowering the tip of your rod about 24" off the water holding the rod at a slight upward angle. This will create a slight belly in your fly line from the tip of your rod to the water and act as a shock absorber. It also helps if your using a medium action or a slow action rod to also take up some of the shock. Probably during a hatch you encounter more misses just because the fish are feeding actively under the surface I know this is when I would miss a lot of fish. But with the right action rod and putting that slight belly in the line will hook you more fish.

 

[lv2nymph]

Yep, this is how I go about it. Except I hold the rod tip up a good bit higher,about shoulder height. The slack that doing that creates allows the fish to take the fly turn and begin to return to the bottom before they feel any pressure, the line will staighten out then you softly raise the rod and get a hook set in the corner of the mouth. ( most times, nothings guarantied ) That bit of advise given to me by an Englishman that I feel really knows his stuff really increased my catch rate and lowered my had a lot of takes but did'nt hook em rate. Hope this helps.