A lot of my attempts to set pods are not successful. I usually end up doing this between 10:00 am and 11:00 am in the mornings. Often I do not see any glistening at the tip of the stigma to indicate there is fluid present. But it is normally this late in the day before the pollen on many plants look fluffy.
I read that you could take the the style and stigma from another plant and rub in on the stigma you are wanting to use and transfer the fluid, thus activating the pollen. Is it correct that this should be done before the pollen is dabbed, or should it be done afterward, or both? I would assume before?
Anyone with experience using this...any success? Any better techniques?

Hmm, I'm surprised you are having issues this early in your season.

I pollinate before work, typically before 8 am. I often use pollen that isn't fluffy & I rarely see any liquid on the stigma.

That being said I have yet to correlate anything with days when I dab & get pods and days when I don't get pods. The general trend is rain & humidity are bad for pollen formation but not always. Some perfect days (low humidity, sunny) nothing takes.

My best advice is to keep trying. Do you have any plants that set tons of pods? I'd try mostly with them first even if they aren't what you want to cross. Try using both fluffy & not fluffy pollen. Try wet & not wet stigmas. Also make sure you aren't stingy with the pollen. I make sure the entire stigma is covered in a thick layer of pollen.

Good luck! I'm sure pods will start setting soon!

The stigma does not need to be wet with fluid for pollination to work. If it is dry when the pollen is added then it will still become moist (produce stigmatic fluid) as normal later. That is, as long as the daylily does normally produce stigmatic fluid and as long as the pollen is not killed by weather (high temperatures, humidity, etc.).

Adding stigmatic fluid will not change an infertile pod parent into a fertile pod parent.

Many crosses may not set pods because either one or both of the parents is infertile.

If the parents have been available for a number of years you might check the databases to see if offspring have been registered using the daylilies as parents. Often you may find that a registered cultivar is often the pod parent but not often the pollen parent or vice versa. That suggests their fertility is better when used as the pod parent or when used as the pollen parent.

Thanks,
So is the tip to use another style and stigma from another plant to add stigmatic fluid to the targeted plant something I can cross off of my list of tips? Is it possible for some plants to have "weak" stigmatic fluid and this process might help? I am guessing that the hybridizers who suggested this ( I have seen it a few times) thought it was a worthwhile practice.

@seedfork
Adding the liquid from another daylily (or the liquid from a true lily - Lilium) cannot hurt.
I do not know of any objective evidence that it has made a pod infertile daylily cultivar become fertile. Nor that it has increased the number of pods set for a pod fertile cultivar or that it has increased the number of viable seeds produced from a pod fertile cultivar, etc.

There are many "tips" in the daylily world that many hybridizers believe in and may use but that have never been supported by objective evidence. Most may never have been objectively tested. Most have never been mentioned in published scientific research reports for other plant species. Some might work some times in specific circumstances but I do not think that most have much chance of working. A caveat - when one works with living organisms one learns to never say never - as soon as one indicates something is "impossible" a report will be published for some species in some circumstances doing just that - the previously considered "impossible".