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Bump is the easiest one to explain. It is a bit like increasing/decreasing your springs rates.
So increasing bump damping will be like increasing the spring rate. The stiffer you go the more the car will tend to slide more on that corner. Decreasing it tends to give more grip on that corner. HOWEVER, if stiffening the bump damping is stopping something horrible happening with the suspension (such as bottoming out, poor camber control, bump steer, hopelessly mismatched springs etc) or your sliding is caused by cold tyres then it will produce LESS sliding on that corner.
Rebound damping is far more subtle in it's impact on the cars handling. It has more to do with how a lesser loaded part of a car in a corner affects the rest of the car and is much more of a driver preference. Generally less rebound will make the car softer and easier to drive but won't have nearly such an effect on lap times as bump.
If the car bounces round corners then the problem is usually insufficient damping for the spring rate (or just a very bumpy surface!). HOWEVER, the first thing to check is whether the spring is working at all. Is there any possibility of the 'bouncy' end going solid? Remember you need to whether the bump stop is being hit, the spring is going coil bound, the damper is going solid internally or any suspension component is hitting the chassis. I have had ALL of those at one time or another.
On the subject of wet setup. Road tyres would NORMALLY be lowered from their dry cold setting, race wets would either be kept the same or increased a little. Some people advocate raising the temperature to 'open up' the grooves in the tyre, these people usually aren't the poor sod who has got to get round a slippery wet corum curve on one season old dried out road tyres!
If you have proper gas mono tube dampers (ie not the cheaper twin tube dampers with some gas in a crisp packet type) then you should also check whether they have enough gas pressure in them to work properly. Not having it can cause some really odd things to happen!
As for which end to stiffen/soften. What are your tyre temperatures like? If the answer is "they feel warm when I get out of the car" then you need to beg/steal/borrow a tyre temperature probe and start using it, especially with slicks! I guarantee that the probe will improve your lap times more per pound spent than ANY other purchase you could possibly make.
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