MINOR TACTICS


In 1910 G. E. M. Skues published Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream. The minor tactic that Skues spent most his time on was the casting of single wet flies upstream to visible feeding trout.


Skues was not the first to write about casting wet flies upstream to feeding fish, Robert Venables wrote on this topic in 1662, Richard Bowlker also discusses the topic in 1747 and more recently William C. Stewart wrote about this very same topic in 1857. However, Skues was the first to write about this topic in relation to the chalk stream sense Frederic M. Halford has published his highly acclaimed Floating Flies and How to Dress Them in 1886 and Dry Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice in 1889. During this time period the Dry Fly theory was the dominant theory for the chalk streams and the angler cast upstream to trout that were feeding and visible to the angler.