Quotes on
Fishing and Fly-Fishing
"There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process."
"Fly-fishing is the most fun you can have standing up."
"Fly-fishers are usually brain-workers in society. Along the banks of purling streams, beneath the shadows of umbrageous trees, or in the secluded nooks of charming lakes, they have ever been found, drinking deep of the invigorating forces of nature - giving rest and tone to over-taxed brains and wearied nerves - while gracefully wielding the supple rod, the invisible leader, and the fairy-like fly."
"A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it."
"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains."
"Listen to the sound of the river and you will get a trout."
"There is certainly something in fishing that tends to produce a gentleness of spirit, a pure serenity of mind."
"It is not a fish until it is on the bank."
"A bad day's fishing is better than a good day at work."
"If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles."
"O, sir, doubt not that Angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly?"
"Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling."
"If fishing is like religion, then fly-fishing is high church."
"If fishing is interfering with your business, give up your business."
"Calling Fly Fishing a hobby is like calling Brain Surgery a job."
"The difference between fly fishers and worm dunkers is the quality of their excuses."
"The two best times to fish is when it's rainin' and when it ain't."
"Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt." ~by Izaak Walton, 1653~ "I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout." ~by Paul O'Neil~ "In my family, there was no clear division between religion and fly fishing."
"Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to contemplate."
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." ~Chinese Proverb~ "He fishes well who uses a
golden hook." ~Latin Proverb~ Fishing is the sport of drowning worms.
"A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work."
"May the holes in your net be no larger than the fish in it."
"I fish better with a lit cigar; some people fish better with talent." ~by Nick Lyons, Bright Rivers, 1977~ "All the romance of trout fishing exists in the mind of the angler and is in no way shared by the fish." ~by Harold F. Blaisdell, The Philosophical Fisherman, 1969~ "There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind." ~by Washington Irving~ "Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl." ~by Ernest Hemingway~ "The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad." ~A.K. Best~ "The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing." ~Babylonian Proverb~ "It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming." ~John Steinbeck~ "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day." ~Author Unknown~ "Bragging may not bring happiness, but no man having caught a large fish goes home through an alley." ~Author Unknown~ "Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." ~by Henry David Thoreau~ "All fishermen are liars; it's an occupational disease with them like housemaid's knee or editor's ulcers." ~by Beatrice Cook, Till Fish Do Us Part, 1949~ "An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won't let him do it at home." ~Author Unknown~ "If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles." ~by Doug Larson~ "Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him for the entire weekend." ~by Zenna Schaffer~ "There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot." ~by Steven Wright~ "The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope." ~by John Buchan~ "Fishing is a... discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before fish." ~by Herbert Hoover~ "Calling fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job." ~by Paul Schullery~ "...of all the liars among
mankind, the fisherman is the most trustworthy." ~by William Sherwood Fox, Silken Lines and Silver Hooks, 1954~ "...trout that doesn't think two jumps and several runs ahead of the average fisherman is mighty apt to get fried." ~by Beatrice Cook, Till Fish Do Us Part, 1949~ "I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout... " ~by Paul O'Neil~ "Three-fourths of the Earth's surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn." ~by Chuck Clark~ "Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls..." ~by Jim Harrison, Just Before Dark, 1991~ "Reading about baseball is a lot more interesting than reading about chess, but you have to wonder: Don't any of these guys ever go fishing?" ~by Dave Shiflett, quoted in Houston Chronicle, 29 April 1990~ "There is no greater fan of fly-fishing than the worm." ~by Patrick F. McManus, Never Sniff a Gift Fish, 1979~ "People who fish for food, and sport be damned, are called pot-fishermen. The more expert ones are called crack pot-fishermen. All other fishermen are called crackpot fishermen. This is confusing." ~by Ed Zern, 1947~ "Our tradition is that of the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish." ~by Roderick Haig-Brown, about modern fishing, A River Never Sleeps, 1946~ "Even eminent chartered accountants are known, in their capacity as fishermen, blissfully to ignore differences between seven and ten inches, half a pound and two pounds, three fish and a dozen fish." ~by William Sherwood Fox, Silken Lines and Silver Hooks, 1954~ "If you've got short, stubby fingers and wear reading glasses, any relaxation you would normally derive from fly fishing is completely eliminated when you try to tie on a fly." ~by Jack Ohman, Fear of Fly Fishing, 1988~ "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish." ~Author Unknown~ "Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught." ~Author Unknown~ "My biggest worry is that my wife (when I'm dead) will sell my fishing gear for what I said I paid for it." ~by Koos Brandt~ "Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary." ~by Patrick F. McManus~ "Bass fishermen watch Monday night football, drink beer, drive pickup trucks and prefer noisy women with big breasts. Trout fishermen watch MacNeil-Lehrer, drink white wine, drive foreign cars with passenger-side air bags and hardly think about women at all. This last characteristic may have something to do with the fact that trout fishermen spend most of the time immersed up to the thighs in ice-cold water." ~Author Unknown~ "Even a fish wouldn't get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut." ~Author Unknown~ "There will be days when the fishing is better than one's most optimistic forecast, others when it is far worse. Either is a gain over just staying home." ~by Roderick Haig-Brown, Fisherman's Spring, 1951~ "Unless one can enjoy himself fishing with the fly, even when his efforts are unrewarded, he loses much real pleasure. More than half the intense enjoyment of fly-fishing is derived from the beautiful surroundings, the satisfaction felt from being in the open air, the new lease of life secured thereby, and the many, many pleasant recollections of all one has seen, heard and done." ~by Charles F. Orvis, 1886~ "Fly-fishing may well be considered the most beautiful of all rural sports." ~by Frank Forester, 1895~ "An angler, sir, uses the finest tackle, and catches his fish scientifically - trout for instance - with the artificial fly, and he is mostly a quiet, well-behaved gentlemen. A fisherman, sir, uses any kind of 'ooks and lines, and catches them any way; so he gets them it's all one to 'im, and he is generally a noisy fellah, sir, something like a gunner." ~by Dr. George Washington Bethune, 1847~ "The man who coined the phrase "Money can't buy happiness", never bought himself a good fly rod!" ~by Reg Baird, from his video Labrador Trout~ "Fly-fishing is a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing, I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other." ~attributed to Samuel Johnson
(a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature"), "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman." ~by Norman Fitzroy Maclean, A River Runs Through It~ "Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise." ~by Norman Fitzroy Maclean, A River Runs Through It~ "And for winter fly-fishing it is as useful as an almanac out of date." ~by Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (Author's Preface)~ "Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt" ~by Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler ~ "After the doctor's departure Koznyshev expressed the wish to go to the river with his fishing rod. He was fond of angling and was apparently proud of being fond of such a stupid occupation." ~by Tolstoy, Anna Karenina~ "Fly fishing is for those who hold that the fun in the race of life is in the running, not just the winning, that existence is its own justification, that a day spent in a stream or a pond with a goal in mind is a joy even if the goal is not achieved, though a greater joy if it is." ~by Jon Margolis and Jeff MacNelly, How to Fool Fish with Feathers~ "By the time I had turned thirty, I'd realized two important things. One, I had to fish. Two, I had to work for a living." ~by Mallory Burton~ "In the best stories about fly fishing ... big fish are caught or lost; people say wild and spontaneous words; event becomes memory and sometimes, in the hands of a master, bleeds into art." ~by Nick Lyons, author of Bright Rivers and Confessions of a Fly Fishing Addict~ "To ask certain questions is to answer them. The answer to 'Should we punt?' is always yes. The answer to "Is that Sinatra or one of the other guys?' is always one of the other guys. The answer to 'Is this fly too big?' is always yes." ~by Jon Margolis and Jeff MacNelly, How to Fool Fish with Feathers~ "When I go fishing I ... want to get away from it all, for it is silence and solitude even more than it is fish that I am seeking ... As for big fish, all is relative. Not every tuna is a trophy." ~by William Humphrey~ "My wife wonders why all women do not seek anglers for husbands. She has come in contact with many in her life with me and she claims that they all have a sweetness in their nature which others lack." ~by Ray Bergman, author of Trout, and Just Fishing~ "Fishing takes anglers to the best places, at the best times of year." ~Anonymous~ "I look into ... my fly box, and think about all the elements I should consider in choosing the perfect fly: water temperature, what stage of development the bugs are in, what the fish are eating right now. Then I remember what a guide told me: 'Ninety percent of what a trout eats is brown and fuzzy and about five-eighths of an inch long.'" ~by Allison Moir, "Love the Man, Love the Fly Rod", in A Different Angle: Fly Fishing Stories by Women~ "Fish are, of course, indispensable to the angler. They give him an excuse for fishing and justify the fly rod without which he would be a mere vagrant." ~by Sparse Grey Hackle (Alfred Miller), 1972~ "Often, I have been exhausted on trout streams, uncomfortable, wet, cold, briar scarred, sunburned, mosquito-bitten, but never, with a fly rod in my hand, have I been in a place that was less than beautiful." ~by Charles Kuralt-1990~ "The great charm of fly-fishing is that we are always learning; no matter how long we have been at it, we are constantly making some fresh discovery, picking up some new wrinkle. If we become conceited through great success, some day the trout will take us down a peg." ~by Theodore Gordon-1907~
~by Charles Orvis-1883~ "In the lexicon of the fly-fishermen, the words rise and hooked connote the successful and desirable climax; landing a fish is purely anticlimax." ~by Vincent C. Marinaro-1950~ "The climax in the poem of trouting, is the spring of the split bamboo." ~by Lewis France-1884~ |
