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"Fishermen never lose their love for the employment. Keep him at home a few days, or set him at other labor, and you shall see that he longs for the toss of the swell on the reef, and the sudden joy of a strong pull on his line."

WC Prime "I Go A-Fishing"

"What pleasure has fallen to our lot! Yes, there was joy in the anticipation of the trip, in overhauling the equipment and supplying deficiencies. What zest in planning the trip and making engagements of guide and quarters. Long sketches of precious enjoyment could be read from the leaves of the fly-book, and certain flies seemed almost alive and anxious to drop into old haunts."

D H Bruce in "Favorite Flies and Their Histories"

"And who among us is there, who would not now prefer to spend a hour in the dear old wood, or follow the banks of the old brooks, to a day in any other place?"

D H Bruce in "Favorite Flies and Their Histories"

". . . perhaps the greatest satisfaction on the first day of the season is the knowledge that evening that the whole rest of the season is to come."

Arthur Ransome "The First Day At The River" Rod And Line

"If you are a passionate angler, the chanches are that someone caused you to be that by hooking you on fishing when you were young. Those of us who are hooked young, by someone who knows what he (or she) is doing, rarely get off, and often we turn into fishers of kids ourselves."

Charles Gaines "The Next Valley Over"

What does fishing do to connect you to your world? Sometime while you are out flailing the water take ten minutes to sit on a big riverside boulder. Consider that the rock has been there for maybe ten thousand years being warmed by the sun and knocked about by flood waters. Listen to the voices of the river, feel the strength of the rock. These are the real heroes, but if you still think you want to be one why don’t you go buy a race car?

--Marty Sherman, “Heroes, Real and Imagined” in July-October 1987 Flyfishing

Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries – stand that man on his legs, set him a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region … Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.

--Herman Melville, Moby Dick

The angling hydropsyche, the fisherman’s absorbing consciousness of water – its motions, sounds, and texture; its variety and constancy; the scope and density of the life it sustains – this awareness is a habit of min and temperament. It is a way of seeing and thinking about things, an orientation born from a mind magnetized by an irrepressible fascination with springs and creeks and rivers.

n      -- Ted Leeson, Hydropsyche in Nov-Dec 1988 Flyfishing

Hydropsyche – The water-consciousness collapses and superimposes time, telescopes our personal histories into a  simultaneous present – and time, in the ordinary sense, stops.

n      Ted Leeson, Hydropsyche in Nov-Dec 1988 Flyfishing

I have two hopes for the future. The first and lesser one is that game commissions will one day have sense enough to set limits that measurably reflect the sport safely available. The second and deeply urgent one is that we shall grow a race of sportsmen no one of whom will ever consider it a matter of pride to have killed a limit.

--Roderick L. Haig-Brown

"Every autumn, I try to make a trip into the mountains of northern California to do some trout fishing, and this past year was no exception.  I was more eager than ever, in face, because I hadn't done any fishing for a
while, and I felt an acute biological need for open spaces."
Bill Barich in "The Armchair Angler"

"All fisherman are lairs; it's an occupation disease with them like housemaid's knees or editor's ulcers."
Beatrice Cook in "The Armchair Angler"

"In the flesh this perfect dry-fly fisherman does not exist, and it is doubtless a good thing that he does not, for surely hew would be intolerable to all use imperfect anglers."
Alfred Miller in "The Armchair Angler"
 

"I spent the evening before I left sorting through my tackle. I wanted to get rid of the worthless stuff, but I couldn't bring myself to throw out anything.  Nostalgia seems to infuse every aspect of fishing, including the gear."
Bill Barich   in "The Armchair Angler"
 

"Now I like to fish, but I'm a convert; I wasn't born that way. However, unlike the addict, I can take it or leave it, and I'd rather leave it at four in the morning when a January gale is strong enough to blew a salmon scale backwards."
Beatrice Cook   in "The Armchair Angler"

"Midge fishing differs from ordinary dry-fly fishing in two ways.  Instead of doing everything possible to make one of the tiny flies float high by spraying it with a silicone solution and carefully snapping the water droplets from it, the fly is cast into the surface film so as to float flush like a drowning insect."
Vincent Marinaro in "The Armchair Angler"
 

"Almost nothing makes me happier than to leave on a fishing trip.  I feel like I'm doing something active for a change instead of hanging around on a street corner waiting for a bus to jump the curve and run me over."
Bill Barach  in "The Armchair Angler"
 

The water not only washes over the streambed, but courses through the psychological geography of the fisherman, giving definition and density to the angler's private world.
Ted Leeson, "The Order of the Angler" in January-February 87 Flyfishing
 

The angler's trout is not, or not merely, a fish. Rather, it is a kind of idea, woven with elegant subtlety into the motion of the stream, into the rocks and gravel, sand and silt, the vegetation, into all the diminutive life that swims or crawls or burrows or clings, into the sweep and slope of landscape that give the stream its very shape. The trout hovers, quiet and
fluid, at the center of a web of relations -- of orderedness -- that is the angler's world and the soul of fly fishing. "Trout" is simply a shorthand for this world, and "trout fishing" the pursuit of it.
Ted Leeson, "The Order of the Angler" in January-February 87 Flyfishing
 

"And who among us is there, who would not now prefer to spend a hour in the dear old wood, or follow the banks of the old brooks, to a day in any other place?"
D H Bruce in "Favorite Flies and Their Histories"

"Twice I had the feeling, which I have talked about to other anglers and they have had it too, of a sudden anticipation of catching a fish so strong that it amounts to certainty. I suppose it is partly the harmony of effective presentation when everything else is auspicious, so that a take seems in that moment to be the only feasible conclusion. But it's not quit as simple as that, it's ore like a shaft of intuition. In must, logically, be an illusion; possible, to, you tend to remember it when it works and forget it when it doesn't.   But, for all that, it's a curious experience."
"J R Hartley Casts Again"

"It's just that the longer I fish, the more I long for simplification and lightness."
Tom Sutcliff, MD "Reflections on Fishing"

"I fished a little while ago with a man, not in his first youth, who had wasted the flower of his life on business and golf and gardening and motoring and marriage, and had in his way postponed his initiation to trout fishing far too long!"
Arthur Ransome "On Giving Advice To Beginners"

"You can't say enough about fishing. Though the sport of kings, it's just what the deadbeat ordered."
Thomas MCGuane "In Silent Seasons"

"Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It is not even clear if catching fish is actually the point."
John Gierach "Dances With Trout"

"Take my friends and my home - - - as an outcast I'll roam: Take the money I have in the bank: It is just what I wish, but deprive me of fish, and my life would indeed be blank!"
Lewis Carroll "The Two Brothers"

"The fish is an animal that grows excessively fast between the moment when it is taken and the moment when the fisherman describe it to his friends."
Pierre Masson

"I doubt if I shall ever outgrow the excitement bordering on panic which I feel the instant I know I have a strong, unmanageable fish, be it brook trout, brown trout, cutthroat, rainbow, steelhead or salmon on my line."
Edward Weeks "Fresh Waters"

"Not everything about fishing is noble and reasonable and sane . . . . Fishing is not an excape from life, but often a deeper immersion into it, all of it. the good and the awful, the joyous and the miserable, the comic, the embarassing, the tragic, and the sorrowful."
Harry Middleton "Rivers of Memory"

"In the recollection of the trout fisherman it is always spring. The blackbird sings of a May morning. The little trout jump in the riffles, and the German brown comes surely to the fly on the evening rise."
R. Palmer Baker "The Sweet of the Year"

"Fishing simply sent me out of my mind. I could neither think nor talk of anything else, so my mother was angry and said that she would not let me fish again because I might fall ill from such excitement."
Sergei Aksakov  "Memoir" Translated by Arthur Ransome

"...the sporting qualities of a fish are dependent neither on its size nor its weight, but on the efforts of concentration, the skill and mastery it demands from the fisherman."
Charles Ritz "A Fly Fisher's Life"

"...secretly I lament the hundreds [of fish] we never caught because we forever persisted in fishing only the likeliest holding water."
Tom Sutcliffe "Reflections on Fishing"

"The ancients wrote of the three ages of man, I propose to write of the three ages of the fisherman.
When he wants to catch all the fish he can.
When he strives to catch the largest fish.
When he studies to catch the most difficult fish he can find, requiring the greatest skill and most refined tackle, caring more for the sport than the fish."
Edward R. Hewitt "A Trout And Salmon Fisherman For Seventy-Five Years"

"No angler merely watches nature in a passive way. He enters into its very existence."
John Bailey "Reflections of the Water's Edge"

"However angling may be classed by others, whether as a fool's pastime or as a wise man's recreation. I have always found great pleasure in recognizing what its indulgence costs me as so much saved from my doctor's bill."
George Dawson "Pleasures of Angling"

"Of all the liars of mankind, the fly fisherman is the most trustworthy."
William Sherwood Fox

"It is the glory of the art [of angling] that its disciples never grow old. The muscles may relax and the beloved rod become a burden, but the fire of enthusiasm kindled in youth is never extinguished."
George Dawson "The Pleasures of Angling"

Fishing in general has always seemed to me a form of subversion anyway. In a world that insists upon “means” and “ends,” that dooms every path to a destination, fishing eludes the categories and so slips the distinction altogether. You become engaged in the nonterminal, participial indefiniteness of “going fishing.” … To go fishing is essentially functionless, though that’s not at all the same thing as saying it is without purpose.

Bliss Perry

The very artificiality of the means employed heightens the enjoyment of fly-fishing. You choose deliberately the lightest tackle that will hold the fish. Perhaps you use a barbless hook, to increase the odds against you. At any rate, you give the fish a sporting chance. You neither net nor spear nor dynamite him. You challenge him to a trial of wits, his against yours.

Bliss Perry

"Good roads lead to bad fishing"
Eric Wight, Maine Game Warden

"Calvin Coolidge's exploits as a fisherman are well known. One of his favorite angling places was the River Brule. Once a newspaper reporter asked him how many fish approximately were in the Brule, and the President answered that the waters were estimated to contain about 45,000 fish. 'I haven't caught them all yet,' he said, 'but I've intimidated them."
John McKee (1933)

"Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface."
Edward Abbey

"When the going gets rough, head for the stream. You might not catch a thing, but your psyche, body and soul will benefit from a little solitude and fresh air. If you can't do that, why not keep one of your better fly rods at the office and fondle it from time to time. Just the feel of a fine fly rod in your hand will do wonders for your health."
Jimmy D Moore

"An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because is wife won't let him do it at home."
Author Unknown

"It [flytying] is a relief to the uneasy mind by calming the disorders that disappointments might have caused, and by cheering the hearts of those who pursue it as relaxation and enjoyment."
William Blacker

"Flies have a strong, marvelous power, and each is meaningful as a point of contact with nature. Embodied in the fly is a message that reflects the tyer's point of view about nature. By creating an enduring fly, you convey your message to future fly fishers."
Nori Tashiro

" I cannot, personally, be happy with a fly unless I can rediscover it, relating it to the naturals and to such few wild trout as have escaped the notice of the Army Engineers. Lots of flies will catch some fish. The interesting thing is to learn Why."
Datus Proper

"Advanced fly tying techniques aren't about knowing the obscure, they're about understanding the simple."
Neil Patterson

"A trout lives in a secret world. It is a small world in which many dramatic events are played out in watery obscurity, veiled from the keenest eyes."
Vincent Marinaro

"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. "
Ed Zern

"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."
Roderick Haig-Brown, Fisherman's Spring

"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."
Jack Ohman, Fear of Fly Fishing

"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."
William Sherwood Fox, Silken Lines and Silver Hooks

"All the romance of trout fishing exists in the mind of the angler and is in no way shared by the fish."
Harold F. Blaisdell, The Philosophical Fisherman

"For this form of fishing (with a wet fly), the rod is no longer a shooting machine but a receiving post, with super-sensitive antennae, capable of registering immediately the slightest reaction of the fish to the fly."
Charles Ritz - A Fly Fisher's Life

"The indications which tell the dry-fly angler when to strike are clear and unmistakable, but those which bid a wet-fly man raise his rod-point and draw in the steel are frequently so subtle, so evanescent and impalpable to the senses, that, when the bending rod assures him that he has devined aright, he feels an ecstasy as though he had performed a miracle each time."
G.E.M Skues - Minor Tactics of the Chalk-Stream

"I continually read of men who said they would be just as happy not catching trout as catching them. To me, that even then sounded pious nonsense, and rather more of an excuse than a statement of fact. No, I want to catch them, and every time I slip on my waders and put up a fly, it is with this in mind."
Brian Clarke - The Pursuit of the Stillwater Trout

"It is the constant - or inconstant - change, the infinite variety in fly fishing that binds us fast. It is impossible to grow weary of a sport that is never the same on any two days of the year."
Theodore Gordon

"It mattered little what the weather was, and scarcely more as to the time of year, John Pike must have his fishing every day, and on Sundays he read about it and made flies. All the rest of the time he was thinking about it."
R.D. Blackmore  - "Crocker's Hole"

"There is no substitute for fishing sense, and if a man doesn't have it, verily, he may cast like an angel and still use his creel largely to transport sandwiches and beer."
Robert Traver - Trout Madness

"Fishing is not like billiards, in which it is possible to attain a disgusting degree of perfection."
Arthur Ransome "On Giving Advice to Beginners"

"When dressing dry-flies, we must always keep in mind the fish's point of view rather than our own."
Romilly Fedden - Golden Days

"Success begets confidence and confidence begets success - and that fine upward spiral is the best restoration of streamside sanity."
Howard T Walden II - Upstream and Down

" Nothing is more trying to the patience of a fishermen than the remark so often made to them by the profane: "I had not patience enough for fishing!""
Arthur Ransome - "Fisherman's Patience"

"If all the fish in the world suddenly disappeared, I know of many fly tyers who would go right on tying flies as if nothing had happened, myself included!"
Jimmy D Moore - Outdoor Memories

Why do people fish? Nary a word is to be found amid all the encyclopedias in the world to explain what perverse impulse, what freakish strain, what incomprehensible urge causes an otherwise normal and sane citizen to don a pair of uncomfortable rubber waders, lace a dozen pounds of hobnailed boots onto his aching feet, truss himself helplessly in canvas vest and landing net and creel, and hike upstream ten miles in a pouring rain, fighting midges and black flies, scratching his face on brambles, wincing whenever the elastic strap of his landing net catches on a twig and lets go like a slingshot, smacking him smartly between the shoulder blades.

Corey Ford

The following quotes are from Ken Marsh’s “Breakfast at Trout Place”

Around this time every year, it’s the same; you’re ready to fish but winter stands in the way. So you learn to find nourishment in dreams, to console yourself into fitful contentment the way a starving prospector might eat boiled shoe leather.

Flyfishers seem drawn to waters that reflect something of themselves, explaining the sport’s diversity of personalities: steelhead fanatics, dry-fly purists, bonefish fools … Bound by nature to recreate ourselves in our passions, we return to the places that have shaped us; these are our home waters.

Flyfishing sometimes comes off, rightly, as a marriage of sport and art, a sensual melding of action, vision, physics, and philosophy. It becomes a kind of self-expression, an extension of ourselves as we imitate form, color, movement and other elements of nature. This may explain, perhaps, why there are so many reasons to stand thigh-deep in ice water waving a stick as there are moods and flyfishers.

Tying is as good a way of losing track of time as fishing in a stream.

Jan Zita Grover in Northern Waters

Hooking fish is the paradoxical method by which anglers rap on the watery door of the animals we seek.

Jan Zita Grover in Northern Waters

To a fisherman, the sounds of a river are as musical as any symphony, and twice as compelling.

AJ McClane

Fishing is not so much getting fish as it is a state of mind and a lure for the human soul into refreshment.

Herbert Hoover

Fishing is the chance to wash one’s soul with pure air, with the rush of a brook, or with the shimmer of the sun on the blue water.

Herbert Hoover

Next to prayer, fishing is the most personal relationship of man.

Herbert Hoover

The man with a rod or gun sees more and feels more in the woods than if he were to go empty-handed.

Bliss Perry

I'll agree that few things are more thrilling than watching a trout take your elegant little dun from the surface. But if the trout aren't looking up -- and they usually aren't -- then dry-fly fishing becomes only an aesthetically pleasing form of self-abuse. And there's a logical flow in the dry fly's canonization: Compared with nymph fishing, dry-fly fishing is easy. A dry fly is always visible, and the strike is unmistakable; even someone terminally clueless knows when to set the hook. But a nymph is submerged and therefore invisible, and the trout's underwater take is subtle and fleeting.

James R. Babb, "The Indicator Papers" in February 1998 Gray's Sporting Journal

The greatest charm of fly fishing could be that its disciples never have to win anything; that being lucky enough to occasionally find oneself out there doing it may be by far its greatest prize.

Rober Traver

Fly fishing is a magic way to recapture the rapture of solitude without the pangs of loneliness.

Rober Traver

Fly-fishing is a game of skill, but more than that it is a relaxation of normal attentions and a drift into instinct as absorbing and renewing as sleep.

Charles Gaines, The Next Valley Over

"The finest gift you can give to any fisherman is to put a good fish back, and who knows if the fish that you caught isn't someone else's gift to you?" Lee Wulff in March/April 1984 Rod & Reel

Releasing a fish is an act of faith, the same as planting a tree. It requires faith that the seed will take, and that our own progeny will want and will deserve and will in their turn protect and pass on the things - the walnut trees and the wild rivers and the wild fish - that we preserve and pass on to them.
Dave Hughes, "A Time to Plant" in March/April 1984 Rod & Reel

The following quotes are from Home Rivers by: Paul Schullery

For the alert fisherman, especially the fly fisherman, the surface is not a mirror but a window.

Fly fishing has at times been more a way of life than a sport.

Trout, having no hands, must examine curious objects with their mouths, whether they think they are food or are just amusing themselves to pass the time.

A home river is that rarest of friends, the one who frequently surprises you with new elements of personality without ever seeming a stranger. The revelations are gifts, not shocks. … I seemed always to be discovering new secrets of the river; they weren’t really secrets at all, just places waiting for me to become smart enough to notice them. It might be a new trout lie, hidden under a log and invisible from the trail I usually walked; a beaver dam that must be fished this season because it will be silted shallow by next; a deer bed in the willows behind a favorite pool; a deep pocket I never noticed until I walked the bank opposite the trail. What makes this so precious, like so many other meaningful pastimes, is the anticipation of revelations yet to come, or discoveries not fully understood.

Fishing is a quest for knowledge and wonder as much as a pursuit of fish.

My home river does not always give me her fish, but the blessings of her company are always worth the trip.

You can view the entire first chapter of this wonderful book at

http://www.midcurrent.com/articles/books/schullery_mountain_time.aspx

"Locating a large trout is the greatest thrill for the angler, for here is an adversary worthy of his skill.  He may try for hours or even days without success, and still return home satisfied.  As my father recently said to me in an armchair session, it is not the hundreds of fish taken that one remembers, but those few heavy trout taken or lost under difficult conditions.   Just the knowledge that a big fish is present adds flavor to the pool."
 Ernest G. Schwiebert, Jr. in "Matching the Hatch"

" Many satisfying things are to be found along trout water, and on hard-pressed streams they help to compensate for the lack of fish.   These things were viewed as streamside distractions by William Schaldach in his book Currents and Eddies.  It is true that the sensitive angler remembers not only the trout taken or lost, but also the little things along the streams.  I can remember distractions like the scores of ducks and geese on a Yellowstone pond, the intense blue of the Wyoming sky on those crisp September mornings, and the doe and fawn that crossed the Boardman riffle at twilight in Michigan.  There was the mother bear with cubs that crossed the Madison in Montana, and the memory of a three-pound brown that fell to my dry fly on the Ausable is pleasantly mixed with the whippoorwills on those Adirondack ridges.  And a scoreless evening in the Catskills was saved by the balmy pine-scented wind that swept down the valley just at dusk."
Ernest G. Schwiebert, Jr. in Matching the Hatch [1955]

"Beginners may ask why one fishes if he is to release his catch.  They fail to see that the live trout, sucking in the fly and fighting the rod is the entire point to our sport.  Dead trout are just so much lifeless meat."
Ernest G. Schwiebert, Jr

"People generally take up angling for contemplation, fun, and genial companionship. Then there are midge fishermen.  Their terminal tackle is 'something invisible attached to nothing'.  They take up angling for the same reason blind swordsmen take up the blade in samurai films."
"The Armchair Angler"

" Looking good on the stream doesn't mean a thing to the trout."

Jimmy D. Moore

"More flies are tied to attract fly fishers than are tied to attract trout."

Jimmy D. Moore

"Most fly-dressers fail to make really good flies because they put too much stuff on the hook rather than too little.  Many of them, and this applies especially to the producers of London flies, have no knowledge of the living insect of which they are presumed to be making something of an imitation.  An exact imitation of a fly, as every old fly-fisher knows, is quite unneccessary; but those who aim to dress flies accurately should certainly take the trouble to examine the living insect on the water, and learn something of its life-history."
T.E. Pritt, North-Country Flies [1886]

" I looked on with worshipful eyes as I silently absorbed the old fellow's natural wisdom and philosophy.  Here were Experience and Adventure personified and I was properly impressed and thrilled.  'Now ye take this pole and get behind that bush yonder so's ye won't be seen.'  I took the rod gingerly and then started noisily toward the brook.  'Hyar, hold on! Ye'll scare every trout in the pool if ye don't watch out.  Them banks is soft and boggy an they shivers like all get
out ev'ry time ye step down on the groun hard.  Them shivers carries down to the stream an warns the fish that somethin's wrong.  Let me go first an ye can follow.  Go easy, just as if ye were trying to stalk a gray squirrel"
Ra Bergmanin "Just Fishing [1945]

"Izaak Walton wrote in 1653: 'He that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit; but he must also bring a large measure of hope and patience.'  In these days of hard-fished waters, ethics and philosophy play an ever increasing role in our enjoyment, and to Father Walton's measure of hope and patience, let us add the spice called charity."
Ernest G. Schwiebert, Jr., "Matching the Hatch" [1955]

" Worm fishing teaches the beginner where trout lie in the streams.  That alone makes it worth while.  It also teaches him the ways of trout with bottom food, a necessary knowledge to successful wet fly and nymph fishing.  While bait fishing the novice should carefully catalog locations and the incidents of his various expeditions in his mind for future reference.  He will find such information invaluable when entering upon the higher branches of the art."
Ray Bergman, Just Fishing [1945]

...this planet is covered with sordid men who demand that he who spends time fishing shall show returns in fish.
Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.

"I am a fishwife - or so it seems after being married over twenty years to a fishin' fool. I married one and raised two and claim to know more about fishermen than a salmon does, which is saying a lot, for fish are smarter than high school girls. I've shared a fisherman's life and therefore know the extremes of unreasonable exaltation or blackest despair."
Beatrice Cook in "The Armchair Angler"

"It is not my intention to offer any remarks on the antiquity of angling, or say much in its defense.  Dame Juliana Berners, Izaak Walton, an more recent authors, have discoursed learnedly on its origin, and defended it wisely and valiantly from the aspersions and ridicule of those who cannot appreciate its quiet joys, and who know no the solace and peace it brings to the harassed mind, or how it begets and foster contentment and love of nature."
Thaddeus Norris   in "The Armchair Angler"

"Like the finest umbilicus, casting your line into water joins you to it. the currents speak to your bones in iced tongues. the loam perfume of conifer rot and mud attunes your nose to the local biology. You taste its chemistry, wash your ears in its sweet white noise, let it take you back to a time before words and teach you things language never could."
"I Don't Know Why I Swallowed The Fly" Jessica Maxwell

"They don't feel the fascination of a stream, but then, neither, did I before I began fishing. Oh, I was dazzled by the flow and sparkle, but that can be taken in at first glanced, and unless you're in the mood to be hypnotized, it's not enough to hole one's attention for long."
Le Anne Schreiber in "Fly Fishing Stories by Women"

"The passion. Sometimes it's not about catching fish, but rather about a continuing natural order in the cosmos- something I can peg my world onto, something I can count on."
Ailm Travler in "Fly Fishing Stories By Women"

"Fly fishing is an art, something to do while you are fishing."
Margot Page in "Fly Fishing Stories by Women"

Parachute flies have several advantages. First you don't need the higher-grade hackle to construct the fly. A #3 dry fly neck will do about as well as a #1, which will cost much more. the fact that the hackles radiate outward from the hook means they will better support the fly on the surface. I personally feel that parachute files give a more realistic impression of an insect to the fish that views the fly, since the hackles are in the same position as the insect's legs. and when tied with brightly colored hackles, these flies are easier to see on the float. A final advantage is that in rough water, a parachute-hackled dry fly will float longer and better than a conventional one."
"Advanced Fly Fishing Techniques" by Lefty Kreh

"Despite all the variables and advise, like love and marriage it seemed to me that learning to cast ought to be a lot easier than it was."
"I Don't Know Why I Swallowed The Fly" Jessica Maxwell

"There is no future in not fishing. The future lies in the man who fishes."
Jimmy D Moore

" We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us to our fish. "
Jimmy D Moore

" I caught ten rainbows, five browns, three brookies and seven cutthroats and was savoring the "grand slam" that I'd been trying for all my fly fishing life. I was basking in my success and getting ready to post my reaport to the VFB, FFW, and Hill CountryFly Fishing Lists, when my wife woke me up with, " Jimmy, you promised me you'd fix the shower drain this morning." Ah, retired life, ain't it great!
Jimmy D Moore

"There is no use in your driving 200 miles to fish when you can be just as unsuccessful near home."
Mark Twain

"There is no taking trout in dry breeches."
Don Quixote

"The nights are often spent at the tying bench, the house warmed from the heat of a roaring fire, with welcome thoughts of fishing to come. Soon the seasons will turn and once again, as they have for many thousands of years, the trout will rise to the fly and we anglers will again cast out carefully tied attempts at imitation gently upon the waters. Let us hope we may continue to do so."
"Tying Flies The Paraloop Way" Ian Moutter

"A trout fisherman is something that defieth understanding."
Corey Ford - Introduction to Trout Fishing - By Dan Holland

"Between them, the old men must have created hundreds of trout flies and insect mutants as bizarre and seductive as any to drop from a fly tier's vise. With perhaps two exceptions, none of their titillating offerings ever stired a trout's interest, a fact that didn't bother them at all."
Harry Middleton - The Earth is Enough

"An elderly member of a distinguished fishing club . . . became so bored during the winter closed season that he took his fly boxes to bed. The wife, plucking an errant Blue Charm from a sensitive part of her anatomy, possibly in the dead of night, had a legitimate complaint. She, a good woman at heart, allowed him back into her bed, with his boxes, providing he counted his flies before and after."
Conrad Voss Barl - A Fly On The Water

"When you think you have a handle on trout fishing, the wiley trout will make a damn fool out of you."
Jimmy D Moore

"I have learned not to go crazy if I hike for a while only to find someone in my private water."
Steven J. Meyers - San Juan River Chronicle

"If - The fisherman's conjunction," Jud said aloud and smiled a bit. "The fishing will be good tomorrow, if the wind doesn't blow, if the mayflies come out, if it doesn't rain, if it's not too hot, if it's not too cold, if the creeks don't rise, and if the trout are willing."
"Travers Corners" By Scott Waldie

"My elation at taking that particular fish was quite beyond rational justification. I experienced an illusion of triumph which contained not only the impression that I had finally succceeded in outfoxing a shrewd and calculating adversary, but that the trout had been made to know the humiliation of defeat."
Harold Blaisdell - The Philosophical Fisherman

"I carry fewer flies each year, and less gear. Each year I watch a little more, fish a little less. My expertise with a fly rod, such as it is, fails to improve much."
Christopher Camuto - A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge

"The years will bring their Anodyne, But I shall never quite forget. The fish that I had counted mine And lost before they reached the net."
Colin Ellis - "The Devout Angler"

"Fishing textbooks being written by intensely practical men, sometimes omit to remind us, if their authors think of it at all, that fly fishing needs to have a touch of magic about it if we are to enjoy it to the fullest."
Conrad Voss Bark - A Fly On The Water

"Were it possible to take a limit of trout every time we fished our favorite stream, how long would it take before the sport began to pall?"
Art Flick - Art Flick's Streamside Guide

"A young environmental engineer I met once, who was wise beyond her years, said 'the solution to pollution is dilution' and she is right, especially with fisherman. Dilute the number of fisherman on any stretch of water and they all do better. Dilute the catch limits and they also always do better."
Warner Durocher

"I once gave up fishing, it was the most terrifying weekend of my life."
Anonymous

"Fishing for trout is like being married, you never know what's going to happen next."
Jimmy D Moore

"I have fished most of my life, from the time my Dad gave me a Heddon bamboo fly rod for my nineth birthday, through all phases of chunking and winding and spinning. I have owned my share of bass boats, bay boats, canoes and jonboats. I have fished in lakes, rivers, and streams and the gulf and pacific oceans and have enjoyed them all to the fullest, I have caught thirty plus largemouth bass over 8 pounds and enough King Mackerel and blues to live on for a year. However, all this pales when compared to catching a 10" rainbow on my little "flea rod", a 1 wt, 5 foot bamboo fishing my favorite river, the tiny Rayado in New Mexico, for on that little river, I was "reborn".
Jimmy D Moore

WET OR DRY ? By Jimmy D. Moore Copyright, Dec.3, 2002 Halford argued dry and Skues argued wet and that age old arguement isn't over yet! Some fish both wet and dry, but never bother to understand why. Some fish only wet and some only dry. Some don't care as long as it's a pretty fly. "Might as well fish a worm", said the dry fly man as he shifted his feet in the burning hot sand. "To catch big browns you must fish wet my friend," said the wet fly man as he slowly sipped his Gin. "I'll catch'em on top", said the dry fly man and If I try long enough, I know that I can. "Why waste your time with pretty little fly", when you could go deep with something really sly", countered the wet fly guy. "But I must see the take", said the dry fly man, as he slowly cast his dry fly again and again. "I'll fish my wet while you watch your dry", quipped the wet fly guy, his fresh hooked brown rocketing toward the sky! And the pretty little fly still floats round and round, while the dry fly guy waits patiently for his big brown. Alas, be they wet or be they dry, I'll fish them both till the day I die.
Jimmy D Moore

"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."
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"Today she met me at the door, said I would have to choose, if I picked that fishing pole today, she'd be packing all her things and she'd be gone by noon....well I'm gonna miss her when I get home tonight. Right now I'm on this lake shore, and I'm sitting in the sun! I'm sure it'll hit me when I walk thru that door tonight. Yeah, I'm gonna miss her. Oh lookie there, I gotta bite!"
Brad Paisley

"New jobs are like hooked fish: they feel big at first but tend to be smaller once you get to know them."
Chinese Proverb

"The third reason for my liking the joys of rod and reel is it's relative cheapness." - - - "It has been my experience that fish usually strike fastest and hardest in inverse ratio to the amount of money spent on equipment."
Allan Fish

The associations connected with artificial flies are so many and so pleasant that they should neither be lost nor ignored, since they constitute one of the charms of angling. To us, beyond the value of service, past or prospective, a fly is often of more real interest in being a reminder of more than its actual worth."
Mary Orvis Marbury "Favorite Flies and Their History"

"Some time ago I was brought back to earth by an incident in one of my fishing schools. I usually show a movie call 'The Way of the Trout,' which concludes with a strong please for catch-and-release fishing. right after the final dramatic scene, which ends with the release of a large rainbow trout, an eleven-year-old boy impulsively jumped up and said, "I wouldn't let that fish go!' As he sat down, a little embarrassed, he explained,'I wouldn't let that fish go. I've never caught a fish that big.' In the awkward silence that followed, I realized that most of the people in that room - and, for that matter, he vast majority of anglers - wouldn't have let that fish go, either. I don't remember exactly what I said to that class and to that young man, but I do remember feeling awfully inadequate."
Mel Kreiger in "The Essentials of Fly Fishing"

" 'Over the years,' he once wrote,'great minds have brooded about whether fishermen were crazier than golfers.' There is much to be said for both sides. Golfers spend hours knocking an innocent little ball across the landscape, often getting wet and numb in the process, and return home with nothing to show for their efforts. Fishermen, on the other hand, spend hours dragging an innocent herring through the water, often getting wet and numb in the process, often getting wet and numb in the process, and return home with nothing to show for their efforts. On successful days in both sports, joy reign supreme because the participant has triumphed through enormous sill, but at leas the fisherman's rush comes from outsmarting something that has a nervous system."

"Moose Dropping & Other Crimes Against Nature"

"In the Yuan period, the hermit fisherman became the symbol of the unemployed scholar . . . . The true hermit scholar fished for fish, not fame; others merely pretended to fish while waiting to return to politics."

Shengmu

"Heaven seems a little closer in a house beside the water."

Anonymous

"I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel."

Roderick Haig-Brown  in "The Armchair Angler"

"To a fisherman born, there is nothing so provoking of curiosity as a fly rod in a case."

Roland Pertwee "The River God"

"Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives. Time doesn't seem to be of the essence and somewhere in the system is what they are looking for."

Thomas McGuane "Midstream"

"When your fly rod breaks and your fly box is bare, it's time to quit fishing. Go sit in your chair. Light up your pipe. Pour some Glenlivet and drink till you're ripe. Don't worry about your rod and your flies. Just sit with your buddies and tell fishing lies."

Jimmy D. Moore "The End of the Day"

". . . had I a river I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, but where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'free fishing' spells no fishing at all."

Andrew Lang "Introduction to Walton's Compleat Angler"

"I don't mind my hand shaking so much; it improves my "S" cast."

Spoken by Ed Zern, one of our greatest angling humorists, not long before he died from Parkinson's Disease

"Although it's pretty well established that black bass can distinguish between some colors, and may even prefer one color over another, I believe that the "HOT" colors have more to do with the latest TV fishing show or magazine article than with the bass.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I find it strange that bass will hit only a motor-oil colored worm one year and a pumpkinseed worm the next.  On the other hand, even skeptics like me will change colors when the fish aren't biting."
A.D. Livingston, "Bass on the Fly"

" I've always been of two minds about fly fishing.  On the one hand, here's a guy standing in cold water up to his liver throwing the world's most expensive clothesline at trees.  A full two-thirds of his time is spent untangling stuff, which he could be doing in the comfort of his own home with old shoelaces, if he wanted.  The whole business costs like sin and requires heavier clothing.  Furthermore, it's conducted in the middle of black fly season.  Cast and swat.  Cast and swat.  Fly fishing may be a sport invented by insects with fly fishermen as bait.  And what does the truly sophisticated dry-fly fisherman do when he finally bags a fish?  He lets the fool thing go and eats baloney sandwiches instead.   On the other hand, I wouldn't be completely happy doing any other kind of fishing. "
P.J. O'Ruark, Fly Fishing Primer, taken from Seasons of the Angler

"So I say it is good to lose fish.  It we didn't, much of the thrill of angling would be gone."
Ray Bergman  in "The Armchair Angler"

"No misanthropist, I must nevertheless confess that I like and frequently prefer to fish alone.  Of course in a sense all dedicated fishermen must fish alone; the pursuit is essentially a solitary one, but sometimes I not only like to fish out of actual sight and sound of my fellow addicts, but alone to in the relaxing sense that I need not consider the convenience or
foibles or state of hangover of my companions, not subconsciously compete with them, nor, more selfishly, feel any guilty compulsion to smile falsely and yield them a favorite piece of water."
Robert Traver in "The Armchair Angler"

"Fishing makes rivers my corrective lens; I see differently."
Nick Lyons  in "The Armchair Angler"

"Curves are too hard to throw and succeed too seldom for you to bother with them.  For every fish there is one place from which you can cast to him with a straight line and still get a free float.  Figure out where it is and go there even if it means walking back a hundred yards to cross the stream and come up the other side."
Alfred Miller in "The Armchair Angler"

" I fished a little while ago with a man, not in his first youth, who had wasted the flower of his life on business and golf and gardening and motoring and marriage, and had in this way postponed his initiation (to fly fishing) far too long."
Arthur Ransome, "On Giving Advice To Beginners", Rod & Line (1929)

"Love affairs, viewed from the sancturay of middle age and bittersweet memory, are almost impossible to document, because human emotion is a merciful thing. It is different with trout. Trout are absolutely unique in that a man's initial involvement seldom becomes a wry memory dismissed as the folly of youth. It is simply love at first sight, perpetuated and strengthened through a lifetime. One's affection for this lovely creature steadily increases as the years slide by."

" TROUT HUNTING" Frank Woolner, 1977

" The take instantly validates our efforts, conferring a measure of definitiveness and closure to an enterprise otherwise riddled with uncertainty and inconclusiveness. Few things in life, I think, have this to offer."

Ted Leeson "The Heart of Rivers"

"Never throw a long line when a short one will serve your purpose."

Richard Penn [1833]

"The trout is, as you know, a very capricious fish. At one season he likes one fly, at another season he likes another fly. One day he takes your flies, the next day he will not look at them."

W L Bumgardner in "Favorite Flies and Their Histories"

I FISH... because trout do not lie or cheat or cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietism and humility and endless patience

John Volker

" My own experience with the Cleveland Wrecking Yard began two days ago when I heard about a used trout stream they had on sale at the yard. "
Richard Brautigan in Trout Fishing in America

"Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish."
Rafael Sabatine

"The current subject of debate is the existence, or lack thereof, of an intangible, ESP-like angling skill that ser have agreed to call, for lack of  better term, 'fish sense'. On one side of the argument are those who think that here's simply no mystery to fly-fishing success' it's about technique, timing and luck.  On the other side are those of us who have witnessed fish
sense in action and who believe that there are those among us who just seem more attuned tot he angling environment - who somehow know where the fish are and how to catch them.  Usually these guys can't even explain it themselves; their instincts just tell them what to do."
Phillip Monahan in Jan-Feb "American Angler"

"There is only one theory about angling in which I have perfect confidence, and this is that the two words, least appropriate to any statement, about angling, are the words "always" and "never."

Lord Grey of Fallodon Fly-Fishing

"Knowing a river intimately is a very large part of the joy of fly fishing."

Roderick L. Haig-Brown A River Never Sleeps

"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."

Ray Bergman, author of Trout, and Just Fishing

"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."
Jon Margolis and Jeff MacNelly, How to Fool Fish with Feathers

"Solitude, particularly for the city man, is at the heart of fishing for trout." 
R Palmer Baker Jr   in "The Armchair Angler"

"Once upon a time fishermen used to tie flies in winter to pass the time and help preserve a smidgin of sanity between seasons, but today more and more of them write books.  And as this curious literary trend continues, all across the land I envision more and more littered tying benches being turned into writing desks as more and more of  Mr. Mustad's hooks are foresaken for books.  Things have reached such a pretty pass, my runners inform me, that some old tyers who turned from the dangling thread to the dangling participle have even stooped to buying their own flies."

Robert Traver, Trout Magic

"One of the first rules in fishing is that there are few rules in fishing that resourceful trout do not manage to break.  Indeed, if there be any they don't smash to smithereens at one time or another my top candidate is this one: if you want to make sure the fishing will turn lousy, just dare invite a fellow angler from far away; the farther, the lousier.  Before the poor man's visit is over you can lay ten to one you'll be muttering some version of the classic lament of Pierre the Guide, "Mistaire, you shoulda been 'ere las' week."

Robert Traver, Trout Magic

"Did you know that there's a roped-off, , high priority section of Heaven exclusively reserved for  the wives of fishermen?... This is a welll-earned reward for those who, on earth, nursed husbands and sons through all the stages of fishing fever."

Beatrice Cook in "The Armchair Angler"

I know some people who are quite content to spend the whole day on one or two good pools, and can fish and refish the same water over and over again without tedium. Personally I cannot, and by the time I have been twice down a pool, I am longing for “fresh fields and pastures new.”

Major Kenneth Dawson, "From Major to Minor"

The man who succeeds in salmon fishing is he who uses his brains, who takes the game seriously, and instead of sticking to old rule of thumb and copy-book exercises is always making experiments, trying new ways, and scheming new schemes. If one won’t answer, try summat else; do not just be content to slog away in a dull, unimaginative sort of manner, with the idea that what was good for my grandfather is good enough for me.

Major Kenneth Dawson, "From Major to Minor"

But it just bears out what I said about lake fishing being a good deal a question of luck. As a mater of fact, the fickle jade Fortune plays a big part in all kinds of angling, and not least in your new venture, salmon fishing. Skill, of course, counts, and counts very largely, and the expert will always beat the novice or the bungler in the long run and on a whole season’s results; but I have more than once seen a beginner get a fish on a day when all the savants had gone empty away, and a real dud hook a salmon in a pool which had just been fished blank by an artist at the job.

Major Kenneth Dawson, "From Major to Minor"

The more salmon fishing one does, the more one realizes that here is a creature about which it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to lay down any rules or laws. Often in former days I settled some point to my complete satisfaction, and then no sooner had I come to this conclusion than something happened to upset all the preconceived ideas.

Major Kenneth Dawson, "From Major to Minor"

" There are two distinct kinds of visits to tackle-shops, the visit to buy tackle and the visit which may be described as Platonic when, being for some reason unable to fish, we look for an excuse to go in, and waste the tackle dealer's time. "
Arthur Ransome "On Tackle Shops"
Rod & Line

"The passion. Sometimes it's not about catching fish, but rather about a continuing natural order in the cosmos- something I can peg my world onto, something I can count on."
Ailm Travler in "Fly Fishing Stories By Women

"There are dozen of justifications for fishing."
Herbert Hoover  in "The Armchair Fisherman"

" For while the trout fisherman's efforts are ostensibly aimed at taking tout, his preoccupation is concerned with preserving the illusion that his elaborate methodology is at all times justified."
Harold Blaisdell The Philosophical Fisherman (1969)

I feel about a busy stream as the villagers felt about the Czar: Lord bless him and keep him - far away from me.  Maybe you don't share this aversion to crowds. Be aware, in any case, that the trout do learn, and you won't catch the big ones many times in a season.
Datus C. Prosper, "Real Fishing" in Spring 2004 Fish & Fly

"Take my friends and my home - as an outcast I'll roam: Take the money I have in the bank:  It is just what I wish, but deprive me of fish, And my life would indeed be blank."
Lewis Carroll "The Two Brothers"

"There are two distinct kinds of visits to tackle-shops, the visit to buy tackle and the visit which may be described as Platonic when, being for some reason unable to fish, we look for an excuse to go in, and waste the tackle dealer's time. "
Arthur Ransome "On Tackle Shops" Rod & Line

"Thus did the bluegill hook me on fly fishing. Although my hand has grown considerably since the, I  still some times quest for hand-size bluegills.  But that's because I still sometimes feel like a kid and want from fishing what I wanted then.  I want an absolute guarantee that I'll catch some fish on a fly, and I want it to be simple."
William G Tapply in The "Spring 1996 Fly Tyer"

"When I go bluegill fishing, I don't care whether I catch 10 or 30 or 50. I know I won't get skunked and although it's fun to catch big ones, catching small ones is fun enough,  It's therapeutic, once in a while, to fish without goals or expectations.  So bluegills never disappoint me.  I still think they're beautiful, and I have never tired of seeing one slurp in a surface fly."
William Tapply in the "Spring 1996 Fly Tyer"

"Tying trout flies is a disease.  There are tyers,( my version of  spelling), of trout flies , who would go right on tying flies even if all the trout streams dried up and  fly fishing ceased to exist. ;-)  I won't bother to name our fellow members who fit that bill, but I think you know who you are.  The rest of us certainly do!  Oh well, to get you started I'll name one since he invented fly tying - DonO!

Jimmy D. Moore

"When you are next complaining about the selectivity of trout, bear the thought in mind: were it not for this fortunate trait, how long would our stream fishing last?"
Art Flick, Art Flick's Streamside Guide

"Never believe a fisherman when he tells you that he does not care about the fish he catches.  He may say that he angles only for the pleasure of being out-of-doors, and that he is just as well contented when he takes nothing as
when he makes a good catch."
Henry Van Dyke  in "The Armchair Angler"
 

"There comes a time in life when, because you are on an adventure, even an uncomfortable one, you enjoy yourself."
William Humphrey  in "The Armchair Angler"
 

" The indications which tell your dry fly angler when to strike are clear and unmistakable, but those which bid a wet fly man raise his rod-point and draw in the steel are frequently so subtle, so evanescent and impalpable to the senses, that, when the bending rod assures him that he has divined aright, he feels an ecstasy as though he had performed a miracle each time. "

G.E.M. Skues, Minor Tactics Of The Chalk-Stream

"Trout will bite when the wind blows and when it does not.  A cloudy day is best except when they rise better on a bright, sunny one.  They also often bite well when it rains."
Charles Bradford  in "The Armchair Angler"

They say that the time spent fishing is not deducted from a person’s days on earth. When you consider that stress is known to exacerbate every illness from flu to schizophrenia, this does not seem so far off; that the gentle art of fishing is not only a pastime, but a tonic. In the seventeenth century, when the average life expectancy of a man was forty, the father of modern angling and author of the Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton, lived to be ninety years old.

James Prosek, Fly-Fishing the 41st

 
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