Frederic Michael Halford. George Edward Mackenzie Skues.
Two fly angling giants of Britain’s Victorian Era. What do they have to do with me?
I am taking a break from the salt and making a pilgrimage to the original Mecca of dry-fly trout fishing, the River Test in Hampshire, England. My wife and I are taking a vacation to London & Paris, and I just couldn’t resist packing a travel 4-weight and a box of flies and making a day trip to the countryside to test my skills against the ultra selective British salmo trutta.
The River Test is the classic English chalk stream, originating in a limestone topography whose pourousity stores vast amounts of groundwater and regulates the impact of rainfall on the river’s flow, turbidity, and temperature. This creates an incredibly fertile steam for aquatic life that is mostly temperature stable and consistently gin clear. What more could a trout want? The river winds its way through picturesque villages and meadows for approximately 40 miles before reaching the sea.
Mr. Halford and Mr. Skues regularly fished the Test and other Hampshire chalk streams in the late 1800s and early 1900s, each developing and writing about new techniques and methods that contributed heavily to angling’s body of knowledge. Although the two men did fish together on occasion, Mr. Halford came somewhat earlier than Mr. Skues, publishing works such as Floating Flies and How to Dress Them, and Dry Fly Fishing In Theory and Practice. Mr. Halford somewhat created a cult of self described purists who only fished dry flies and only cast the fly upstream to a visibly rising fish. Wet flies and nymphs were afforded a certain … disdain. Mr. Skues followed with Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream and The Way of the Trout with the Fly, which emphasized his nymphing technique that he claimed was more effective, owing to the relative prevalence of subsurface bug availability to hatching bug availability.
Esteemed source Wikipedia claims there was immediate “tension” between Halford’s dry fly adherents and Skues’s nymphing practitioners. However, there was no evidence of any personal animosity between the two anglers over their chosen methods. Just two gentlemen debating the merits of different angling techniques. Halford passed in 1914, so he was not present for a 1938 debate on the two methods at The Flyfisher’s Club, an esteemed London sporting club (current patron – Charles, Prince of Wales). Nonetheless, Halford’s adherents successfully upheld his beliefs over Skues at the debate, with the dry fly technique winning, despite the obvious effectiveness of nymphing.
Let me sum that up for you. War is about to break out all over Europe, and these gentlemen meet up to decide that dry fly fishing is most preferred over nymphing, despite the fact that you might catch more fish with the wet fly. This is high art folks. I can only assume that the toxic addiction of seeing a trout rise to a properly presented and mended dry fly could explain why these gents would eschew numbers for spectacle.
Not one to ruffle feathers with our friends across the pond, I have left my nymphs and streamers at home, and carefully choosing a selection of mayfly and caddisfly imitations that should be hatching at the time of our trip. Just don’t tell the riverkeeper I’ve also brought a box of gaudy foam ants and hoppers. I’m not sure what Halford would have to say about tempting a trout with a 1” chunk of foam designed to mimic a careless terrestrial insect.
Check back soon for a report on my trip to “back where it all begins.” In the meantime, enjoy the Allman Brothers 1994 release “Back Where It All Begins.”