Around a hundred years ago, George Edward MacKenzie Skues was nymph fishing for brown trout on the chalk streams of England. Skues was, without any doubt, one of the greatest trout fly fishermen of his time, and in 1910 he started some controversy with his book, Minor Tactics. The book’s title seems almost apologetic, and it was dedicated to “My friend, the dry-fly purist (most likely directed at Halford), and to my enemies, if I have any.” 

At the time, the upstream dry fly was at its peak and the only real gentlemanly way to take a trout, and here he was talking and what is worse, writing of fishing with a wet fly, or nymph. “Simply not cricket my dear sir,” may have been a common response to him at the time. 

I can’t help wonder what Skues, and the great dry fly man of his day, Mr. F.M. Halford, would think of our modern flies with their twinkle, beads, cone heads, and other synthetics. I do think Skues would have liked the progress, and I believe we owe a great debt to men like Skues and to all forward thinking anglers. Fly fishing, like any sport or pastime, evolves! 

I’m a wild trout fly fisher that fishes for salmon often, and when I do, I adapt a bit of Skues’ nymphing techniques and try to carry them even further: fish the way you would as if trout fishing while casting sunk flies upstream. I’ve of course enjoyed success on normal salmon flies, and the Yellow Shrimp, the Silver Stoat Tail, and the Silver Ally’s are a few of my favorites. But in low water conditions, I’m a great believer in fishing for salmon with gold head or heavy nymphs, the sort found in most trout anglers’ fly boxes but carried by few salmon anglers. 

Now I know adult salmon aren’t feeding on underwater insects as they run up river to spawn, they don’t need to. But juvenile salmon do feed on them, and crustaceans, and invertebrates before they leave the river for the sea. And maybe these trout nymphs trigger a faint memory, who knows? Anglers have been discussing why a salmon takes in fresh water for many years—it’s one of angling’s great mysteries. But I know nymphing for salmon has worked for me and many other anglers when the more conventional salmon flies have had many swims through the river and produced nothing. 

I am reminded of a time when my fellow angling instructors, Tom Woods and Ian Gamble, and I had been fortunate to do some spot survey work for the Loughs Agency on the River Mourne, a major river on the Foyle system in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.  Though it’s more renowned for its salmon fishing than for its trout fishing, the job actually involved

fishing for trout on the Saa, which is a famous stretch of the river owned by The Duke of Abercorn. Our job, if you can call it a “job”, was to see if brown trout fishing was viable on the water, which normally is only fished by salmon anglers. And in addition, we were given strict orders to fish when the river was low and at a time of year that was apparently too early for most of the salmon. 

On the hike to the river, we had a quick chat with a local angler carrying a 14 foot double handed rod. He had fished all day for nothing, not even a pull, and said the river was far too low and that in his opinion, the grilse had not come up river yet. In fact, he said we were wasting our time! 

When we reached the Mourne, its fast stretches and long pools reminded me of the fishing I had done in central Finland, where the Finnish guides were masters of deep nymphing, or “Czech” nymphing techniques. So I began fishing a very heavy size 10 gold head Hare’s Ear on the point and a size 12 gold head Pheasant Tail with an orange thorax on the dropper, and it was not long before the fly line checked and I was playing my first trout. 

While I was casting upstream in a fast run, the fly line zipped as a silver grilse took my dropper fly, giving me great sport on my 9 foot Hardy Swift rod. After a bit of fun I returned the fish and four more times that evening the grilse took the nymphs. Between us we had landed eight grilse, not massive but all great sport, and all on gold head nymphs in a couple hours of fishing.  

A similar event happened to me on the beautiful river Drowes in Ireland. The Drowes is regarded as one of the premier salmon fisheries in this part of the world and frequently produces the first salmon of the season on January 1^st, opening day. The river is some five and half miles in length with over seventy named pools. The Drowse flows from Lough Melvin at Lareen Estate, to the sea at Tullaghan, and it’s a lovely medium sized river set in stunning scenery.

Anyway, I was working on one of the Hardy/Greys Academy game fishing tuition weekends that Stephen Kennedy, Pat Mulholland and I run, with the help of the Lareen Estate owners Shane Gallagher and his lovely wife Karen. I was endeavouring to teach a party how to nymph fish for trout, which there is a good head of in the Drowes, when I suddenly hooked a lovely silver fish on a gold head nymph to the amazement of the clients which had gathered around. To be honest, I was also quite surprised, as the day had been very bright and no fish had been taken until then. But there it was—a bar of Atlantic silver had taken a gold head Hare’s Ear, and was going mental pulling me downstream as it headed for the sea.