Chalkstream Tales

The hallowed chalkstreams of the United Kingdom cannot be neglected in any fly fishing publication. Apparently there are only 200 chalkstreams on earth with 85% in the UK. That’s 170. We’ll only touch on three: the Hampshire Avon, The River Itchen and the Test, all in southern England, as we uncover a few of the flyfishing illuminati who trapsed their riverbanks in years past.

You already knew that English chalkstreams are the birthplace of modern fly fishing, right?

Well, back in the day, 1642 to be precise, an army dude called Robert Venables wrapped some hackle tips onto hooks, floated them on the surface – albeit briefly as this was long before Loon – and thus made it into angling history books (and onto Substack).

Walton – Author & Angler

“The Compleat Angler” written in 1653 by Izaak Walton celebrated early techniques, mainly of those Walton fished with, rather than his own innovations. It was obviously a reasonable earner, as he managed to get out five editions over 25 years; one of which graces my angling library.

The English chalkstreams were progressively domesticated, channeled for flour mills, banks raised to hold back floodwaters; their twisting riverside boundaries fought over, fortified, fenced and farmed.

The chalkstreamers, even two hundred years later, were still challenged with getting dry flies to float. Somewhat surprising, given the propensity of deer hair in these parts.

[As an aside, future angling history will document that the birthplace of Clark Reid’s popular Clarks Cicada was New Zealand but that’s a whole other story. I’m just capturing it here for posterity.] Anyway, I digress.

Image: Beautiful water on the Itchen

Halford – First Dry Fly Influencer

By the mid-1800s, fly anglers had not yet invented the Internet, but they were documenting the challenges of fishing upstream in the angling magazines of the era. The Field has been acknowledged as a source of inspiration for a chap called Halford.

Frederic M. Halford is credited with devising and drafting the dry fly angling etiquette that was progressively introduced to many if not all of the major chalkstreams of Southern England. This is likely due to his authorship, but was undoubtedly the work of a wider group of angling authoritarians.

In 1886, Halford, who incidentally rocked the pseudonym ‘Detached Badger’, published the influential title, “Floating Flies and How to Dress Them”, with significant input from another gentleman, George Selwyn Marryat, who chose to remain anonymous. A copy of this edition, signed by the author, is only US$12,500 if you’re interesting in reading it.

In this, Halford defined dry fly fishing as “… presenting to the rising fish the best possible imitation of the insect on which he is feeding in its natural position.”

There were four attributes of this angling style:

1. First finding a fish feeding on winged insects;

2. Throw out a respectable imitation of the natural insect both as to size and colour to the fish;

3. Offer it to him in its natural position, “cocked” and afloat; and finally

4. Alight the fly gently on the water so that it floats accurately over him without drag.

Halford also determined that all this should happen without the fish noting the angler’s presence. A wise man.

Dry fly on the Chalkstream now had a set of rules to follow that persist to this day in some hallowed locations.

Clearly the book sold well too. Halford retired from his family business three years later aged 45 to become a fulltime author and trout bum. His dry fly fishing technique, and this ‘retire early to fish’ concept caught on with many anglers as evidenced by the myriad of YouTubers now full time dedicated to the fly fishing cause.

 
Image: The River Itchen in Autumn

And then along cames Skues

George Edward MacKenzie Skues (1858–1949), or G. E. M. Skues as we know him, really put the cat amongst the pigeons with his radical subsurface ideas.

Skues fished the Itchen every season until 1938. He even fished with Halford in 1891, with Halford nominating him for membership in the prestigious Flyfishers Club in London. I bet Halford and his extremist dry fly zealots regretted that decision.

G.E.M. pioneered a new method of fishing an artificial nymph imitation upstream to feeding trout weaving below the water surface. His first book, Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream, was published in 1910 and explored his early nymph vs dry experimentation. This put him on a hard collision course with the dry stalwarts. But fly fishing had stagnated for over fifty years. Downstream wet or upstream dry now had a formidable, and highly effective, opponent in the upstream nymph on a greased line.

Vilified by dry fly purists, Skues’ resolutely published his second book The Way of a Trout with a Fly in 1921 (yes, 103 years ago), well after Halford’s death. But the fight continued into the 1930’s with a defining debate in 1938 at the Flyfisher Club (of course!) deftly declaring that Halford’s dry fly doctrine should remain on some chalkstreams, whilst accepting the effectiveness of Skues nymphing techniques.

I digress to think of my earliest winter fishing on the Tongariro River in Taupo, New Zealand. Nymphing was definitely novel with the majority of fish caught on downstream lures fished deep. This reversed rapidly as upstream nymphing, utilising high floating modern plastic fly lines, dominated catches only a decade or so later. Yes, techniques are slow to change. We’re a stubborn lot, aren’t we!

Sawyer & his Pheasant Tails

Around the time of the debate, a chap called Frank Sawyer was kicking off his career as a riverkeeper on the River Avon. Incidentally, the six mile section he managed is now privately owned by the musician, Sting. I guess every breath you take on that river must be a good one.

It’s worthy of mention that Sawyer was also a writer, a common thread through influential anglers. Perhaps now they’re bloggers!

Anyway, Frank was also an inventor - of flies. Good ones, clearly. He used copper wire instead of tying thread on his most famous Pheasant Tail nymph. He whipped up a mean Grey Goose pattern, invented the Killer bug promisingly named by his mate, Lee Wulff, and a popular swedish nymph called the ‘Sawyer Swedish Nymph’. I’m guessing Lee wasn’t with him that day. This fly imitates the nordic Siphlonurus mayfly.

His Killer Bug was designed to imitate freshwater shrimps and used to clean up an oversupply of grayling in the Avon to allow territory to migrating salmon and reduce competition to aid his beloved resident trout population to flourish. He caught thousands of Grayling using this fly.

He released Keeper of the Stream in 1952 and the well-known Nymphs and the Trout in 1958. This latter title was re-released in 2006 as Frank Sawyer's Nymphing Secrets, with some previously unpublished material added.

Frank Sawyer died in 1980 and will be remembered for his authorship alongside his fly inventions.

It is useful to reflect on the contributions of these authors, thinkers, inventors and anglers. Without them – and their testbeds of the Avon, Test and Itchen chalkstreams – fly fishing would have woven a quite different journey.

Here's a fly through of one section of the River Test.