Hi all,

As a complete newbie to fly fishing, I?m running into lots of questions. I sure I could post one a day for a month and still have more! Along the way, I?ll probably test the old adage that ?there is no such thing as a stupid question.? I?m trying to keep them as specific as possible, but I greatly appreciate some advice from all of you folks!

First, I?m having a challenge figuring out how to fish some of my new flies. Specifically, how do I know when to use flotant, when to let it float naturally, and when to encourage it to sink? Right now the basic ones that confuse me the most are:
1) spinners with big fluffy hackles?are they meant to be skimmed across the water? Should I use flotant?
2) Spinners without hackles (e.g. rusty spinners)?do I use flotant? Do I fish them wet or dry?
3) Terrestrials?my hoppers have big fluffy bits, do they get flotant? How the cricket I have that?s a big ball of coarse hair tied together with legs? Should they float or sink? Ants seem like they must be sinkers, since they don?t have anywhere logical to put flotant.
4)One that has me baffled is the caddis fly. It?s got a delta wing, so it looks like a wet fly. It?s also got a bunched, short-cropped elk hair head to it that makes it look like a muddler. This makes it the fly look (to me anyway) like a wet fly. Should it be fished dry? Again, should I use flotant?

Most importantly, are there any general rules of thumb I should be following in figuring this out? To date, most of my success has been on either streamers or dry blue winged olives.

Thanks in advance!