dry/wet files

[Thundercatcher]

I am new to fly fishing. Whats the differnce between wet flies and dry flies? And what the best way to learn about flys and what each one is called.

[tonyflyfish]

Experience teaches us all! Some of us have been fly fishing for years and will never know everything.

Dry flies are fished on the surface.
Wet flies are fished below the surface.

A streamer as an example is a wet, so is a chironimd, so is a nymph.

An imitation mosquito is a dry, so is an imitation bee, or grasshopper. Some of these are made of foam to be very boyant (sp). Some can become "wets" if you use a little weight or a weighted line.

Stay wtih it as it will all come together.

Join us at a gathering and you will learn even more-some BS-lol

tony

[boot]

Like Tony said, if it's intended to float above the surface of the water, then it's a dry fly. Otherwise, it's a wet fly.

I personally wouldn't bother trying to learn as many flies as possible. I'd suggest learning a few of the more popular flies for the area that you're going to fish and start there.

It's more important to practice your casting (to avoid frustration and tangles) and to learn the waters.

Cheers and good luck!

[Argentus]

For fishing purposes, I second Boot: learn a few flies and how to use them and you'll be off to a good start. I usually lug around several hundred flies (been tying for 20 years and I'm bad at cleaning out the boxes) but I usually only fish about 6 of them and only catch fish on about three of those.

If you're interested in learning to identify flies for academic reasons, which can be fun, try Fly Anglers Online at flyanglersonline.com (I just Google FAOL). There's more fly fishing information there than you can shake a stick at (and you can shake a stick at quite a bit of information!).

This thread on whatever forum Google took me to seems to have some good resources too.

Happy Fishing!