Minor Tactics of The Chalk Stream - Reviews

Reviews

In A History of Fly Fishing for Trout (1921), John Waller Hills wrote:

But there is another, and that is the revival of the sunk fly, even on ground from which it was believed to have been banished for ever. This revival is due largely to the writings of Mr. G. E. M. Skues, whose Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream was published in 1910. In this book he proves conclusively that the sunk fly has its use on the shyest chalk stream, that it will kill when the dry fly will not, and that it is a form of fishing as difficult and as entrancing as the other. It is an original book, and it is no disparagement to its originality to say that it is founded on the wisdom of our ancestors. Mr. Skues is indebted to Stewart both for his method of fishing and of tying flies, a debt which he amply acknowledges. His great merit is that he has revived and brought up to date for use on chalk streams what was a lost art. He has rediscovered and restated it in terms suited to to-day. His book gives fishing a new starting point, and opens a new chapter in its history.

In Notable Angling Literature (1945) James Robb said of Skues and Minor Tactics

One of the subtlest writers on fishing with fly in any form is G.E.M. Skues, the author of Nymph Fishing. His book Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream, put and end to the dry-fly purist and brought the angling world back to sanity

In A Summer on the Test (1930) by John Waller Hill as quoted by Arnold Gingrich in The Fishing in Print (1974) Hills wrote:

When, exactly twenty years ago, Mr. Skues wrote Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream, he effected a revolution. The dry fly was a height of its intolerant dictatorship, and the other method was discarded and ridiculed to such an extent that enthusiasts of the school of Halford regarded Mr. Skues as a dangerous heresiarch... More and more each year does nymph fishing become part of the modern angler's equipment, and he who does not possess the art is gravely handicapped....Flies got smaller and smaller, but it was not until Mr. G.E.M. Skues produced Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream in 1910 that underwater fishing was again systematised...Hense comes the modern school of nymph fishing

In Skues on Trout (2008) Paul Schullery notes:

Skues first book, Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream (1910), tentatively rebelled against the exclusivity with which dry-fly advocates perceived themselves as the highest and most refined form of anglers