MINOR TACTICS OF THE
CHALK STREAM
AGENTS
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[Illustration]
ROUGH SPRING IRON BLUE DUN.
OLIVE. NO. 00.
NO. 1.
GREENWELL’S GREENWELL’S WATERY DUN.
GLORY. GLORY. NO. 00 DOUBLE.
NO. 0. NO. 00 DOUBLE.
PALE SUMMER PALE SUMMER
GREENWELL’S GREENWELL’S BLACK GNAT.
GLORY. GLORY. NO. 00.
NO. 1. NO. 00 DOUBLE.
TUP’S TUP’S
INDISPENSABLE. INDISPENSABLE. OLIVE NYMPH.
WET. NO. 0. WET. NO. 00 NO. 0.
DOUBLE.
DOTTEREL TUP’S
HACKLE. INDISPENSABLE.
TIED FLOATER.
STEWARTWISE. NO. 0.
NO. 00.
MINOR TACTICS OF THE CHALK STREAM
AND KINDRED STUDIES
BY
G. E. M. SKUES
(_SEAFORTH AND SOFORTH_)
SECOND EDITION
[Illustration: [Logo]]
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1914
_First published in March, 1910_
=Dedicated=
_TO MY FRIEND THE DRY-FLY
PURIST, AND TO MY
ENEMIES, IF I HAVE ANY_
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
It would ill become me if I allowed a Second Edition of “Minor Tactics
of the Chalk Stream” to go to the public without expressing to those
writers who have dealt with my volume in the Press my grateful sense of
the generosity with which, whether they were or were not in agreement
with the main object of the work—the endeavour to put the wet fly in
what I conceive to be its right place on the chalk stream—they have one
and all received it. In the fifty or so Press notices, short and long, I
find, without exception, an absence of the harsh word, and a pervading
urbane and kindly spirit which is of the true Waltonian still. Such
fault as has been found has in the main been that I have shown undue
timidity in dealing with the pretensions of the dry-fly purist. To that
criticism I should like to reply that in dedicating my book to my
_friend_ the dry-fly purist I was using no idle word—that in asking him
to make room for the wet fly beside the dry fly as a branch of the art
of chalk-stream angling, I knew myself to be making a claim on him which
he would not willingly concede, and I was determined that no harsh or
provocative word of mine should give offence to any of the many good
friends, good anglers, and good fellows who would not—at the first
onset, at any rate—find themselves able to see eye to eye with me.
I take leave to hope that the interval since the first publication of
“Minor Tactics” has brought a good few of them round to the view that,
without ousting the dry fly from pride of place as major tactics of the
chalk stream, the wet fly has its subsidiary, but still important, place
of honour in chalk-stream fishing.
G. E. M. SKUES.
FOREWORD
Rising from the perusal of “Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice,” on
its publication by Mr. F. M. Halford in 1889, I think I was at one with
most anglers of the day in feeling that the last word had been written
on the art of chalk-stream fishing—so sane, so clear, so comprehensive,
is it; so just and so in accord with one’s own experience. Twenty years
have gone by since then without my having had either occasion or
inclination to go back at all upon this view of that, the greatest work,
in my opinion, which has ever seen the light on the subject of angling
for trout and grayling; and it is still, as regards that side of the
subject with which it deals, all that I then believed it. But one result
of the triumph of the dry fly, of which that work was the crown and
consummation, was the obliteration from the minds of men, in much less
than a generation, of all the wet-fly lore which had served many
generations of chalk-stream anglers well. The effect was stunning,
hypnotic, submerging; and in these days, if one excepts a few eccentrics
who have been nurtured on the wet fly on other waters, and have little
experience of chalk streams, one would find few with any notion that
anything but the dry fly could be effectively used upon Hampshire
rivers, or that the wet fly was ever used there. I was for years myself
under the spell, and it is the purpose of the ensuing pages to tell, for
the benefit of the angling community, by what processes, by what stages,
I have been led into a sustained effort to recover for this generation,
and to transmute into forms suited to the modern conditions of sport on
the chalk stream, the old wet-fly art, to be used as a supplement to,
and in no sense to supplant or rival, the beautiful art of which Mr. F.
M. Halford is the prophet. How far my effort has been successful I must
leave my readers to judge. I myself feel that in making it I have
widened my angling horizon, and that I have added enormously to the
interest and charm of my angling days as well as to my chances of
success, and that, too, by the use of no methods which the most rigid
purist could rightly condemn, but by a difficult, delicate, fascinating,
and entirely legitimate form of the art, well worthy of the naturalist
sportsman.
In the course of my too rare excursions to the river-side, I have
elaborated some devices, methods of attack and handling, which I have
found of service, some applicable to wet-fly, some to dry-fly fishing,
or to both. In the hope that these may be of interest or service, I have
included papers upon them.
In conclusion I should like to express my gratitude to the proprietors
of the _Field_, for permission to reprint a number of papers contributed
by me to that journal over the signature “Seaforth and Soforth,” which
come within the scope of the work; and to Mr. H. T. Sheringham, for his
invaluable advice and assistance in the arrangement of these papers.
G. E. M. SKUES.
CONTENTS
PAGE
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION vii
FOREWORD ix
CHAPTER
I. OF THE BEGINNING OF THINGS 1
OF THE INQUIRING MIND 1
II. SUBAQUEOUS HAPPENINGS IN NATURE 8
OF THE DROWNING OF DUNS AND OTHER INSECTS 8
OF THE STAGES IN A RISE OF DUNS 9
III. SUBAQUEOUS HAPPENINGS IN ART 14
OF MEDICINE FOR BULGERS 14
OF UNDER-WATER TAKING, ITS INDICATIONS, AND THE TIME
TO STRIKE 17
OF ROUGH WATER AND GREY-BROWN SHADOW 20
IV. SUPPLEMENTARY IN THE MATTER OF FLIES 24
OF WET-FLY DRESSINGS FOR CHALK STREAMS 24
OF THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR OF TYING SILK 29
OF THE IMITATION OF NYMPHS, ETC. 30
V. SPECIAL CONDITIONS AND WET-FLY SOLUTIONS 36
NERVES 36
OF THE TROUT OF GLASSY GLIDES 38
OF THE WET FLY IN POOLS, BAYS, AND EDDIES 41
OF THE JUDICIOUS USE OF THE MOON 44
OF THE WET-FLY OIL TIP 45
OF GENERALSHIP AND THE WET FLY 47
A POTTED TROUT, AND ONE OTHER 49
OF TWO SATURDAY AFTERNOONS 54
VI. UNCLASSIFIED 57
OF HOVERING 57
OF THE PORPOISE ROLL 59
VII. SUNDRY CONSIDERATIONS 60
OF THE RELATION OF PATTERN TO POSITION 60
OF THE USE OF SPINNERS 63
OF GENERAL FEEDERS 67
ON ATTENTION TO CASUAL FEEDERS 70
OF THE FREQUENTATION OF DITCHES 73
OF THE NEGOTIATION OF TAILERS 76
OF THE FASCINATION OF BRIDGES 78
VIII. MAINLY TACTICAL 81
OF THE DELIBERATE DRAG 81
IN THE GLASS EDGE 84
OF THE CROSS-COUNTRY CAST 87
WHAT TUSSOCKS ARE FOR 89
OF THE ALLEGED MARCH BROWN 91
OF GENERAL FLIES 92
IX. CONSIDERATIONS MORAL, TACTICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND
INCIDENTAL 95
OF FAITH 95
OF THE BANK OF VANTAGE 98
OF COURAGE AND THE JEOPARDIZING OF TUPPENCE
HA’PENNY 103
OF IMPOSSIBLE PLACES 105
OF THE USE OF THE LANDING-NET 109
OF THE WEEDING TROUT 115
INCIDENTALLY OF THE LIGHT ROD ON CHALK STREAMS 117
AND OF WET-FLY CASTING 120
X. FRANKLY IRRELEVANT 122
A DRY FLY MEMORY 122
XI. ETHICS OF THE WET FLY 126
XII. APOLOGIA 131
MINOR TACTICS OF THE
CHALK STREAM,
AND KINDRED STUDIES
CHAPTER I
OF THE BEGINNING OF THINGS
OF THE INQUIRING MIND.
I read recently in that fine novel, “A Superfluous Woman,” a sentence
enunciating a principle of wide application, to which anglers might with
advantage give heed: “We ought not so much to name mistakes disaster as
the common practice of servile imitation and faint-hearted
acquiescence.” In no art are its practitioners more slavishly content
“jurare in verba magistri” than in angling. Tradition and authority are
so much, and individual observation and experiment so little.
There is, indeed, this excuse for the novice, that, going back to the
authorities of the past after much experiment, he will find that they
know in substance all, or practically all, that, apart from the advance
of mechanical conveniences and entomological science, is known in the
present day. The difficulty is to dissociate the dead knowledge, which
is reading or imitation, from the live knowledge, which is experience.
And if these pages have any purpose more than another, it is not to lay
down the law or to dogmatize, but to urge brother anglers to keep an
open and observant mind, to experiment, and to bring to their angling,
not book knowledge, but the result of their own observation, trials, and
experiments—failures as well as successes.
In all humility is this written, for I look back upon many years when it
was my sole ambition to follow in the steps of the masters of
chalk-stream angling, and to do what was laid down for me—that, and no
other; and I look back with some shame at the slowness to take a hint
from experience which has marked my angling career. It was in the year
1892, after some patient years of dry-fly practice, that I had my first
experience of the efficacy of the wet fly on the Itchen. It was a
September day, at once blazing and muggy. Black gnats were thick upon
the water, and from 9.30 a.m. or so the trout were smutting freely.
In those days, with “Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice” at my
fingers’ ends, I began with the prescription, “Pink Wickham on 00 hook,”
followed it with “Silver Sedge on 00 hook, Red Quill on 00 hook, orange
bumble, and furnace.” I also tried two or three varieties of smut, and I
rang the changes more than once. My gut was gossamer, and, honestly, I
don’t think I made more mistakes than usual; but three o’clock arrived,
and my creel was still “clean,” when I came to a bend from which ran,
through a hatch, a small current of water which fed a carrier. Against
the grating which protected the hatch-hole was generally a large pile of
weed, and to-day was no exception. Against it lay collected a film of
scum, alive with black gnats, and among them I saw a single dark olive
dun lying spent. I had seen no others of his kind during the day, but I
knotted on a Dark Olive Quill on a single cipher hook, and laid siege to
a trout which was smutting steadily in the next little bay. The fly was
a shop-tied one, beautiful to look at when new, but as a floater it was
no success. The hackle was a hen’s, and the dye only accentuated its
natural inclination to sop up water. The oil tip had not yet arrived,
and so it came about that, after the wetting it got in the first
recovery, it no sooner lit on the water on the second cast than it went
under. A moment later I became aware of a sort of crinkling little swirl
in the water, ascending from the place where I conceived my fly might
be. I was somewhat too quick in putting matters to the proof, and when
my line came back to me there was no fly. I mounted another, and
assailed the next fish, and to my delight exactly the same thing
occurred, except that this time I did not strike too hard.
The trout’s belly contained a solid ball of black gnats, and not a dun
of any sort. The same was the case with all the four brace more which I
secured in the next hour or so by precisely the same methods. Yet each
took the Dark Olive at once when offered under water, while all day the
trout had been steadily refusing the recognized floating lures
recommended by the highest authority. It was a lesson which ought to
have set me thinking and experimenting, but it didn’t. I put by the
experience for use on the next September smutting day, and I have never
had quite such another, so close, so sweltering, with such store of
smuts, and the trout taking them so steadily and so freely.
It was a September day two or three years later when I had another hint
as pointed and definite as one could get from the hind-leg of a mule,
but I didn’t take it. There was a cross-stream wind from the west, with
a favour of north in it, and all the duns—and there were droves of
them—drifted in little fleets close hugging the east bank, where the
trout were lined up in force to deal with them, and feeding steadily.
Fishing from the west bank, I stuck to four fish which I satisfied
myself were good ones, and in over two hours’ fishing I never put them
down. I tried over them all my repertoire. I battered them with Dark
Olive Quill, Medium Olive Quill, Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear, Red Quill (two
varieties), Grey Quill and Blue Quill, Ogden’s Fancy, and Wickham, and I
left them rising at the end with undiminished energy, and went and sat
down and had my lunch. Then I sought another fish, and began again, when
suddenly it occurred to me that I had not tried the old-fashioned
mole’s-fur-bodied, snipe-winged Blue Dun. I had only a solitary
specimen, and that was tied with a hen’s hackle; but such as it was, and
greatly distrusting its floating powers, I tied it on. I did not err in
my distrust, for after a cast or two it was hopelessly water-logged. I
dried it as well as I could in my handkerchief, and despatched it once
more on its mission. It went under almost as it lit, just above a
capital trout, but for all that it was taken immediately. The next
trout, and the next, and the next, took it with equal promptitude; one
was small, and had to go back, but the others were quite nice average
fish.
Then, in my eagerness, I was too hard on my gossamer gut when the next
trout took my fly, and he kept it. I had no more of these Blue Duns, and
I did not get another fish till the evening.
Still I did not realize that I was on the edge of an adventure, nor yet
did I realize whither I was tending when Mr. F. M. Halford told me how a
well known Yorkshire angler had been fishing with him on the Test, and,
by means of a wet fly admirably fished without the slightest drag, had
contrived to basket some trout on a difficult water.
Indeed, it was several years later that, after fluking upon a successful
experience of the wet fly on a German river which in general was a
distinctively dry-fly stream, I began to speculate seriously upon the
possibility of a systematic use of the wet fly in aid of the dry fly
upon chalk streams. In conversation with the late Mr. Godwin (held in
affectionate remembrance by many members of the Fly-fishers’ Club, and,
indeed, by all who knew him), who had seen the very beginnings of the
dry fly on the Itchen, and remembered well and had practised the methods
which preceded it, I learned how, fishing downstream with long and
flexible rods (thirteen or fourteen feet long), and keeping the light
hair reel-line off the water as much as possible, these early fathers of
the craft had drifted their wet flies over the tails of weeds, where the
trout lay in open gravel patches, and caught baskets of which the modern
dry-fly man might well be proud.
I gathered, however, that a downstream ruffle of wind was a practical
necessity; and as I could not pick my days, and such as I could take
were few and far between, I realized that, even if they appealed to
me—which they did not—these methods would not do for me, as I might, and
often did, find the river glassy smooth, but that, if I were to succeed,
it must be by a wet-fly modification of the dry-fly method of upstream
casting to individual fish.
I could not believe that the habits of the trout were so changed as to
make this impossible, and I began to look for opportunities to
experiment. The bulging trout presented the most obvious case, yet it
was rather by a chain of circumstance than by the straightforward
reasoning which now seems so simple and obvious that I was led into
experiments along this line.
How I effected some sort of solution of the problem with a variant of
Green well’s Glory, and later on with Tup’s Indispensable, is detailed
elsewhere, as also are my experiments with the trout of glassy glides
(who seldom break the surface to take a winged insect, presumably
because of the drag), together with other fumblings in the search of
truth; but from that time forth I have seldom neglected an opportunity
to test the wet fly on chalk-stream trout. It may be that on many
occasions I have used the wet fly when the dry would have been more
lucrative. On the other hand, I have found it furnish me with sport on
occasions and in places when and where the dry fly offered no
encouragement, nor any prospect of aught but casual and fluky success,
and I have provided myself with a method which forms an admirable
supplement to the dry fly, and has frequently given me a good basket in
apparently hopeless conditions, and in the smoothest of water and the
brightest of weather.