Dean's Chain Gang Caddis (green), courtesy Rainy's Flies.

“Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element were made for wise men to contemplate, and fools to pass by without consideration.”

Never far from my hand is a small, worn printing of “The Compleat Angler,” first published by Izaak Walton in 1653 then added to by Charles Cotton after Walton’s death.

We are said to be anglers, those of us that knot hook to line — baited or wrapped with feather — and hang or dangle it upon the water; but where did this term come from?

Some have supposed that the hook is the angle, therefore that is the root of the term. Others have said it comes from the name of the angleworm, which we put on hooks. That’s like saying we call the animal a horse because it has horsepower.

Is the term angling not instead derived from the root word for English, which people were a subset of the Germanic tribes that crossed the Nordsee in the fifth century to settle in the Britons?

In the old Anglish, these were the Angols, the Angli, the Angles. Unlike the other Germanic peoples who fished with nets, the Angles used a hook and a line, which in Walton’s day was not less than or not more than two horse hairs for a tippet.

The period of time in which The Compleat Angler was written is called the Interregnum; in which, after the Second English Civil War, King Charles I was beheaded on a scaffold in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall in 1649 and no monarch sat upon the throne for 11 years.

The mid-1600s were unsettled times. Wise men went fishing instead of to war or to Whitehall. “Tis not all fishing to fish,” Walton said.

We might argue about what ways of fishing are best, and which are the most engaging, but there is no thrill like tying on a dry, and upon casting it, to make a perfect mend over twisted currents, to see a trout rise in the water column, sip the fly and turn.

“O, sir, doubt not that angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly?”

Some of the best dry fly fishing I have enjoyed in Central Oregon has been in February, and I hope this month will prove the same. Midges and blue-winged olives are in evidence on the Crooked River, the Fall River and the Deschutes, and on certain days a little black stonefly will show itself. There are many ways to take trout in winter, but none as satisfying as to take them on the surface on a dry fly.

“To fish fine, and far off is the first and principal Rule for Trout Angling,” Charles Cotton wrote. In Part II, chapter VII, the author writes of tying a “plain Hackle, or palmer-Flie, made with a rough black body, either of Spaniel’s fur, or the whirl of an Estridg feather …” sounds like a midge to me.

One of the best things an angler can do is sit. Find a place where the stream may be watched and then sit down, look at the water, observe the fish and the insects, the play of light and shadow, the direction of the wind. What bugs are on the water or struggling in the surface film? The trout themselves show how they can be caught.

“Study to be quiet,” Walton said.

This month and the next, leave the box of beadheads and streamers at home and fish fine and far off. Tie up with 5X and 6X tippets and put on the “magnifier” glasses if you must to knot on the No. 16s and 18s to the business end. Bugs will dance over the water when the sun washes through the branches in early afternoon.

If we are honest it is that promise of a trout taking a fly on the surface that made us take to angling with the artificial fly. To angle with light line and our feathered creations on the surface of water is not a waste of time like some of your less-discerning relatives tell you. Let them argue with Walton and Cotton.

Fishing, Walton, said, “is an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.” And further, “Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned.”

On the River Dove between Staffordshire and Derbyshire and in the Lea Valley he must have seen men pass by on the road or cross the stone bridges without a glance at the water. The same thing happens every afternoon on rivers like the Deschutes, the Williamson, the Metolius, Fall River and the Crooked. “These poor rich men, we anglers pity them perfectly.”

This is a fly for July and August when the caddis begin their final transitional stage. When the time is right, the pupa breaks out of its cocoon-like case and begins to migrate to the edge of the stream. That’s where this pattern from Pennsylvania’s Dean Myers comes in.

Exploit this “pre-hatch” phase with a tandem rig that includes a pupal imitation up top and a larva imitation down deep.

Fish the two-fly rig on a dead-drift then let the flies swing at the end of the drift. Accentuate this part of the presentation with a little twitch or two, which is effected by turning the tip of the rod in a small circle. Now your dead-drifted flies are mimicking emergents. The trout are watching.

Tie this version of Dean’s Chain Gang Caddis on a No. 12-14 wet fly or scud hook. Clip off a 4-bead strand of electric green bead chain and knot it to the hook. Build the body with black dubbing, securing it behind the first bead. Tie in a couple of turns of soft, wet fly grizzly hackle then finish with a black dubbed head or use black chenille as an alternate.

—Gary Lewis, For The Bulletin