Fly
Fishing Quotes
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Mark well the various seasons of
the year,
How the succeeding insect race
appear;
In this revolving moon one
colour reigns,
Which in the next the fickle
trout disdains.
Oft have I seen a skillful
angler try
The various colours of the
trech’rous fly;
When he with fruitless pain hath
skimm’d the brook,
And the coy fish rejects the
skipping hook,
He shakes the boughs, that on
the margin grow,
Which o’er the stream a waving
forest throw;
When if an insect fall, (his
certain guide)
He gently takes him from the
whirling tide;
Examines well his form, with
curious eyes,
His gaudy vest, his wings, his
horns are size;
Then round his hook the chosen
fur he winds,
And on the back a speckled
feather binds;
So just the colours shine
through ev’ry part,
That Nature seems to live again
in art.
Thomas Best
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Patience is ever allowed to be a
great virtue, and is one of the first requisites for an angler.
Charles Bowlker
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The Kinds of Anglers
There is the Fussy Angler, a
great bore; of course you will shun him. The “Snob” Angler, who speaks
confidently and knowingly on a slight capital of skill or experience. The
Greedy, Pushy Angler, who rushes ahead and half fishes the water, leaving
those who follow, in doubt as to whether he has fished a pool or rift
carefully, or slurred it over in his haste to reach some well-known place
down the stream before his companions. The company of these, the quiet,
careful angler will avoid.
We also meet sometimes with the
“Spick-and-Span” Angler, who has a highly varnished rod, and a
superabundance of useless tackle; his outfit is of the most elaborate kind
as regards its finish. He is a dapper “well got up” angler in all his
appointments and fishes much in-doors over his claret and poteen, when he
has a good listener. He frequently displays bad taste in his tackle,
intended for fly-fishing, by having a thirty dollar multiplying reel, filled
with some of Conroy’s very best relaid sea-grass lines, strong enough to
hold a dolphin. If you meet him on the teeming waters of northern New York,
the evening’s display of his catch, depends much on the rough skill of his
guide.
The Rough-and-Ready Angler, the
opposite of the aforenamed, disdains all “tomfoolery” and carries his tackle
in an old shotbag, and his flies in a tangled mess.
We have also the Literary
Angler, who reads Walton and admires him hugely; he has been inoculated with
the sentiment only; the five-mile walk up the creek, where it has not
been fished much, is very fatiguing to him; he “did not know he must wade
the stream,” and does not until he slips in, and then he has some trouble at
night to get his boots off. He is provided with a stout bass rod, good
strong leaders of salmon-gut, and a stock of Conroy’s “journal flies,”
and wonders if he had not better put on a shop just above his
stretcher-fly.
The Pretentious Angler, to use a
favorite expression of the lamented Dickey Riker, once Recorder of the City
of New York, is one “that prevails to a great extent in this community.”
This gentleman has many of the qualities attributed to Fisher, of the
“Angler’s Sourvenir,” to Sir Humphrey Davy. If has attained the higher
branches of the art, he affects to despise all sport which he considers less
scientific; if a salmon fisher, he calls trout “vermin;” if he is a trout
fly-fisher, he professes contempt for bait fishing.
The True Angler is thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of gentle old Izaak. He has no affectation, and when
a fly-cast is not to be had, can find amusement in catching Sunfish or
Roach, and does not despise the sport of any humbler brother of the angle.
With him, fishing is a recreation, and a “calmer of unquiet thoughts.” He
never quarrels with his luck, knowing that satiety dulls one’s appreciation
of sport as much as want of success, but is ever content when he has done
his best, and looks hopefully forward to a more propitious day. Whether
from boat or rocky shore, or along the sedgy bank of the creek, or the stony
margin of the mountain brook, he deems it an achievement to take fish when
they are difficult to catch, and his satisfaction is in proportion. If he
is lazy, or a superannuated angler, he can even endure a few days’ trolling
on an inland lake, and smokes his cigar, chats with the boatman, and takes
an occasional “nip,” as he is rowed along the wooded shore and amongst the
beautiful islands.
A true angler is
generally a modest man; unobtrusively communicative when he can impart a new
idea; and is ever ready to let a pretentious tyro have his say, and
good-naturedly (as if merely suggesting how it should be done) repairs his
tackle, or gets him out of a scrape. He is moderately provided with all
tackle and “fixins” necessary to the fishing he is in pursuit of. Is quietly
self-reliant and equal to almost any emergency, from splicing his rod or
tying his own flies, to trudging ten miles across a rough country with his
luggage on his back. His enjoyment consists not only in the taking of fish;
he draws pleasure from the soothing influence and delightful accompaniments
of the art.
With many persons
fishing is a mere recreation, a pleasant way of killing time. To the true
angler, however, the sensation it produces is a deep unspoken joy, born of a
longing for that which is quiet and peaceful, and fostered by an inbred love
of communing with nature, as he walks through the grassy meads, or listens
to the music of the mountain torrent. This is why he loves occasionally –
whatever may be his social prity indoors – to shun the habitations and
usual haunts of men, and wander alone by the stream, casting his flies over
its bright waters; or in his lone canoe to skim the unruffled surface of the
inland lake, where no sound comes to his ear but the wild, flute-like cry of
the loon, and where no human form is seen but his own, mirrored in the
glassy water.
No wonder, then that
the fly-fisher loves at times to take a day, all by himself; for his very
loneliness begets a comfortable feeling of independence and leisure, and a
quiet assurance of resources within himself to meet all difficulties that
may arise.
When the hoarse roar
of the creek, where it surges against the base of the crag it has washed for
ages, strikes his ear, or he hears it brawling over the big stones, his step
quickens, and his pulse beats louder – he is no true angler if it does not –
and he is not content until he gets a glimpse of its bright rushing waters
at the foot of the hill.
That like voices
from far off
Call to us to pause
and listen,
Speak in tones so
plain and childlike,
Scarcely can the ear
distinguish
Whether they are
sung or spoken.
What an unveiling of
the heart it is, when the angler is alone with God and nature.
Thaddeus Norris
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A fisherman,”
wrote Roderick Haig-Brown, “is good in proportion to the satisfaction he
gets out of his sport. [So] a merry duffer is better than a dour master.”
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A pessimist is
any angler who thinks the weather is too bad to fish. An optimist is any
wife who thinks her husband won’t fish anyway.
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"I compare fishing
with a cane rod to driving a fine automobile, eating Blue Bell Ice Cream,
savoring good whiskey, or sitting by a roaring fire in the dead of winter
reading Sparse Grey Hackle. Need I say more?"
JIMMY D MOORE - June 4, 2004
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There can be no
hard and fast rule covering the flies used in trout fishing. One can only
experiment and then apply the results of such experiences to his fishing.
Ray Bergman in
Just Fishing
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Fishing, if I a
fisher, may protest
Of pleasures is
the sweet’st, of sports the best,
Of exercises the
most excellent,
Of Recreations the
most innocent.
But now the sport
is marred, and wot ye why?
Fishes decrease,
and fishers multiply.
“Fishing,” by
Reverend Thomas Bastard, 1498
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With every cast
the possibility of perfection arises. That brief moment when randomness
ceases to exist and time and the universe stop to enjoy the beauty of your
struggle. That pristine balance of love and loss, of hope and terror
radiating from a single point at the end of a clear strand of line, up
through your trembling hands and body and into your very heart, leaving it
overflowing with God’s best intentions.
Lyman Yee, “The
Headlock Manifesto” in Fly Rod & Reel, July/October 2004.
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"Fly tackle has
improved considerably since 1676, when Charles Cotton advised anglers to
'fish fine and far off,' but no one has ever improved on that statement."
John Gierach
"Fly Fishing the High Country"
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"Fish are strange
creatures. They're even more unpredictable than women - and that's going
some."
R.V "Gadabout" Gaddis (1967)
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"If I'm not going to catch
anything, then I 'd rather not catch anything on flies"
-- Bob Lawless.
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definition of a flyrod-----an antenna, which transmitts, peace, tranquility,
excitement, fellowship, and most of all, an awareness, and appreciation, for
the outdoors.---
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A
fisherman is always hopeful -- nearly always more hopeful than he has any
right to be. - Roderick Haig-Brown
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"Right here, may I
inject a thought that may prevent the ruination of a good rod -- perhaps
loss of a treasured friendship at the same time. Many anglers, to be good
fellows, loan their fly-fishing equipment to someone else. When this friend
returns it after two or three weeks of use, the owner finds the rod just
does not feel the same. So the friend is blamed for giving the rod improper
use and thereby ruining it. He is generally right, too! However, both owner
and friend are equally to blame. No man should ask the loan of another's
fishing tackle, and no owner should grant the use of his equipment to
anyone, no matter how close he may be as a friend. Why? Here we come back to
"balance" again! Because of the difference in physical characteristics
between individuals each and every angler exerts the pressure needed in
casting in a different way. And this difference in leverage means that the
rod action, or strain on the rod, whichever you call it, occurs in a
different place on a rod. Therefore, when some man other than the owner uses
it for a length of time he forces a "stress" at a different place on the rod
and a change in action through the weakening of the bamboo cells at a new
place."
from "With Fly, Plug and Bait" by Ray Bergman
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"Lest the
reader become too discouraged let me say that one can fish beautifully with
a rod that is not perfection, but at the expense of undue physical exertion.
For years I fished with what I now realize were very poor rods, but I found
that I could place a fly as accurately as the next man, and execute the
curve cast and other necesssities of fly fishing. Only when I acquired the
unusually excellent rod I speak of, was I aware of the greater ease with
which these things could be done."
from "Any Luck?" by Eugene Connett
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"The joy of owning fine
tackle is so great that it is often difficult to distinguish between basic
needs and the urge to possess that which delights the sensitivities."
"I have preached against indulgence, but in truth I am a sentimental moron
when it comes to fishing tackle."
"How can one find adequate words to describe the sweet feel of a rod that
makes casting an esthetic delight, yet which adds little to one's ability to
catch fish?"
from "The Philosophical Fisherman" by Harold Blaisdell
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"A good fly-rod
is worth every cent you pay for it -- and more; also it should be said that
good tackle of any sort is not only its own reward but is absolutely
essential if you would have the best of the sport. Shoddy tackle conduces to
careless work on the stream and consequently to poor success. On the other
hand, good tackle tends to interest one in its proper handling, both in
casting and also fishing the flies, and as a result the angler finds his
interest and success increasing rather than otherwise."
from :The Fine Art of Fishing" by Samuel G. Camp
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"Again, let me remind
you that rod action is an elusive and variable thing, refusing to be
encompassed by exact definition. The mathematics involved are complex in the
extreme, even in the theoretical stage, and its permutations make admissible
only the loosest of generalities."
from "Field Book of Fresh-Water Angling" by John Alden Knight
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"...buying a fly rod in
the average city store, that is, joining it up and safely waggling it a bit,
is much like seeing a woman's arm protruding from a car window: all one can
readily be sure of is that the window is"
from Anatomy of a Fisherman by Robert Traver
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Creeps and idiots
cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.
~ John Gierach
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Fly-fishing may
well be considered the most beautiful of all rural sports.
~ Frank Forester
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"The true
sportsman needs neither game laws nor bag limits, nor does the securing of a
license make a sportsman. He must be moderate in his kill, find part of the
pleasure in being afield, and in observing the lives of the denizens of the
streams and wood. Many of our best days are those in which a large catch was
not made."
-- "Uncle" Lloyd Taylor
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"As with
a faint star in the night's sky, one can better understand fishing's allure
by looking around it, off to the side, not right at it."
-- Holly Morris
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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.
Norman McLean – A River
Runs Through It
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"If fishing is like
religion, then fly fishing is high church."
Tom
Brokaw
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Of all the world's
enjoyments That ever valued were, There's none of our employments With
fishing can compare.
Thomas Durfee (or
D'Urfey)
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"Fly fishermen are born
honest, but they get over it."
Ed Zern
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"I have
made it a matter of policy to disbelieve all fishing stories on
their first telling; they begin to have the ring of truth, however,
after I've repeated them several times."
Paul Quinnett (1998)
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"Wading
in and starting to fish to soon is the most common mistake fishermen make on
high country lakes, or any other trout water for that matter."
John
Gierach "Fly Fishing the High Country"
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Time
flies so fast after youth is past that we cannot accomplish one half
The many things we have in mind.
Or indeed one half our duties. The only safe and sensible plan is
to make other things give way to the essentials, and the first of these
is flyfishing.
Theodore Gordon
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And sometimes he fishes not
because he regards fishing as so terribly important but because he suspects
that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant ... and
not nearly so much fun.
Robert Traver, Trout Madness
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When we as anglers seek to find
the beauties that complement our pleasures, we are certain to meet and
become intimate with streams that possess personalities that charm,
fascinate, and take us into their confidence.
Roy Wall, The Contemplative
Angler
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There is no mistaking the fact
that the small-mouthed bass is a shy, wary fish and he will not countenance
at any time a crass, disrespectful attitude on the part of the angler. An
adult bronze back taken from heavily fished water is a prize worthy of the
most expert angler's ambition.
Roy Wall, The Contemplative
Angler
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The brown trout and the Loch
Leven are European species that have been introduced into the waters of this
continent . In the year 1882, Herr Von Behr, then president of hte Deutsche
Fischerei Verein, sent to New York the first eggs of the brown trout. During
the next two years Herr Von Behr sent additional eggs to America, which
doubtlessly accounts for the fact that the brown trout is occasionally
referred to as the Von Behr.
Roy Wall, The Contemplative
Angler
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Streams are blessed with
personalities that beckon or challenge, that take you into their confidence,
or dispute your right to explore their secrets.
Roy Wall, The Contemplative
Angler
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I have many loves and Fly Fishing
is one of them; it brings peace and harmony to my being, which I can then
pass on to others.
Sue Kreutzer
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Bumper stickers
"I fish, therefore I lie."
"Fishing is not a matter of life
or death. It's more important than that."
"My rod and reel, they comfort
me."
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Fishing may be termed a disease
with some men, but it is not necessarily catching.
Tony Spezio
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I imagine that no art has ever
been learned from books. Fly fishing is no exception.
G. E. M. Skues
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I don't lie about the size of the
fish I catch, I just remember them bigger.
Alan Di Soma
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For the man who has everything,
trout fishing is the greatest gift.
Jody Moore
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Behold the fisherman.
He riseth up early in the morning
And disturbeth the whole household.
Mighty are his preparations.
He goes forth full of hope,
Returning when the day is far spent
Smelling of strong drink and the
Truth is not in him.
Kevin Anderson from a plaque from his Grandfather
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Through fishing and hunting, we
are confronted with the fact that we are part of the web of life and the
natural world, NOT apart from the natural order of things, as our daily
lives may often suggest.
Ed Engleman
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"The two best times to fish is
when it's rainin' and when it ain't."
-- Patrick McManus
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"Men and fish are alike. They both
get into trouble when theytheir mouths."
-- Jimmy D. Moore
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The Fishing was good, it was the
Catching that was bad.
A.K. Best
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If fishing is interfering with
your business, give up your business.
- Sparse Grey Hackle (Alfred W.
Miller).
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Angling is an art. At the lower extreme, true,
it is a most prosaic affair, what with all the mechanized devices concocted
in the name of fishing tackle, the use of the ancient offal of fowl and
other such appetizing tidbits. But, rising from this, it attains great
heights as practice, observation, and skill are blended with the
enchantment, appreciation, and beauty of all nature to create an inner peace
that, in the final analysis, is the true angler’s great adventure.
Izaak Walton, in his classic of angling
literature, The Compleat Angler, likened the art of angling to “the
knowledge of Mathematics, Musik, and the rest of those precious arts, which
by God’s appointment or allowances were preserved from perishing in Noah’s
flood.”
The Contemplative Angler by Roy Wall |
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ST. ANTHONY TO THE FISHES
Although the infinite power and providence of
God (my dearly beloved Fish) discovers itself in all the works of his
creation, as in the heavens, in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars, in
this lower world, in man, and in other perfect creatures; nevertheless the
goodness of the Divine Majesty shines out in you more eminently, and appears
after a more particular manner, than in any other created beings. For
notwithstanding you are comprehended under the name of reptiles, partaking
of a middle nature between stones and beasts, and imprisoned in the deep
abyss of waters, notwithstanding you are tost among billows, thrown up and
down by tempests, deaf to hearing, dumb to speech, and terrible to behold:
notwithstanding, I say, these natural disadvantages, the Divine Greatness
shows itself in you after a very wonderful manner. In you are seen the
mighty mysteries of an infinite goodness. The holy scripture has always made
use of you, as the types and shadows of some profound sacrament.
Do you think that, without a mystery, the first
present that God Almighty made to man, was of you, O ye fishes? Do you think
that without a mystery, among all creatures and animals which were appointed
for sacrifices, you only were excepted, O ye fishes? Do you think there was
nothing meant by our Saviour Christ, that next to the paschal lamb he took
so much pleasure in the food of you, O ye Fishes? Do you think it was by
mere chance, that when the Redeemer of the World was to pay a tribute to
Caesar, he thought fit to find it in the mount of a fish? These are all of
them so many mysteries and sacraments, that oblige you in a more particular
manner to the praises of your Creator.
It is from God, my beloved Fish, that you have
received being, life, motion, and sense. It is he that has given you, in
compliance with your natural inclinations, the whole world of waters for
your habitation. It is he that has furnished it with lodgings, chambers,
caverns, grottoes, and such magnificent retirements as are not to be met
with in the seats of kings, or in the palaces of princes. You have the water
for your dwelling, a clear transparent element, brighten than crystal; you
can see from its deepest bottom everything that passes on its surface; you
have the eyes of a lynx, or of an argus; you are guided by a secret and
unerring principle, delighting in everything that may be beneficial to you,
and avoiding everything that may be hurtful; you are carried on by a hidden
instinct to preserve yourselves, and to propagate your species; you obey, in
all your actions, works and motions, the dictates and suggestions of nature,
without the least repugnancy or contradiction.
The colds of winter, and the heats of summer,
are equally incapable of molesting you. A serene or a clouded sky are
indifferent to you. Let the earth abound in fruits, or be cursed with
scarcity, it has no influence on your welfare. You live secure in rains and
thunders, lightnings and earthquakes; you have no concern in the blossoms of
spring, or in the glowings of summer, in the fruits of autumn, or in the
frosts of winter. You are not solicitous about hours or days, months or
years; the variableness of the weather, or the change of seasons.
In what dreadful majesty, in what wonderful
power, in what amazing providence did God Almighty distinguish you among all
the species of creatures that perished in the universal deluge! You only
were insensible of the mischief that had laid waste the whole world.
All this, as I have already told you, ought to
inspire you with gratitude and praise towards the Divine Majesty, that has
done so great things for you, granted you such particular graces and
privileges, and heaped upon you so many distinguishing favours. And since
for all this you cannot employ your tongues in the praises of your
Benefactor, and are not provided with words to express your gratitude; make
at least some sign of reverence; bow yourselves at his name; give some show
of gratitude, according to the best of your capacities; express your thanks
in the most becoming manner that you are able, and be not unmindful of all
the benefits he has bestowed upon you. |
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No wonder, then, that the fly-fisher loves at
times to take a day all by himself; for his very loneliness begets a
comfortable feeling of independence and leisure, and a quiet assurance of
resources within himself to meet all difficulties that may arise.
n
Thaddeus Norris in “The American
Angler’s Book”
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People that have not been inoculated with the
true spirit may wonder at the infatuation of anglers—but true anglers leave
them very contentedly to their wondering, and follow their diversions with a
keen delights. Many old men there are of this class that have in them a
world of science—not science of the book, or of regular tuition, but the
science of actual experience. Science that lives, and will die with them;
except it be dropped out piecemeal, and with the gravity becoming its
importance, to some young neophyte who has won their good graces by his
devotion to their beloved craft. All the mysteries of times and seasons, of
baits, flies of every shape and hue; worms, gentles, beetles, composition,
or substances found by proof to possess singular charms. These are a
possession which they hold with pride, and do not hold in vain. After a
close day in the shop or factory, what a luxury is a fine summer evening to
one of these men, following some rapid stream, or seated on a green bank,
deep in grass and flowers, pulling out the spotted Trout, or resolutely but
subtilely bringing some huge Pike or fair Grayling from its lurking place
beneath the broad stump and spreading boughs of the alder. … Why, such a day
to such a man, has in it a life and spirit of enjoyment to which the
feelings of cities and palaces are dim. The heart of such a man—the power
and passion of deep felicity that come breathing from mountains and
moorlands; from clouds that sail above, and storms blustering and growling
in the wind; from all the mighty magnificence, the solitude and antiquity of
Nature upon him …. The weight of the poor man’s life—the cares of
poverty—the striving of huge cities, visit him as he sits by the beautiful
stream—beautiful as a dream of eternity, and translucent as the everlasting
canopy of heaven above him;--they come, but he casts them off for the time,
with the power of one who feels himself strong in the kindred spirit of all
things around; strong in the knowledge that he is a man; an immortal—a child
and pupil in the world-school of the Almighty. … It is not the rod and line
that floats before him—it is not the flowing water, or the captured prey,
that he perceives in those moments of admission to the heart of nature, so
much as the law of the testimony of love and goodness written on everything
around him with the pencil of Divine beauty. He is no longer the wearied and
oppressed—the trodden and despised—walking in threadbare garments amid men,
who scarcely deign to look upon him as a brother man—but he is reassured and
recognized to himself in his own soul, as one of those puzzling, aspiring,
and mysterious existences for whom all this splendid world was built, and
for whom eternity its expecting gates.
--William Howitt in Rural Life in England
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Claudius Aelianus, lived in the first
century, wrote De natura animalium -- The first, and indeed the only writer
amongst the ancients who makes mention of fishing with the artificial fly.
In the 15th Book of his History, he says: “The Macedonians, who
live on the banks of the river Astraeus, which flows midway between Berea
and Thessalonica, are in the habit of catching a particular fish in that
river by means of a fly called hippurus; a very singular insect it is – bold
and troublesome like all its kind, in size a hornet, marked like a wasp, and
buzzing like a bee.” From his account of these fish thy must have been
trout, and he exactly describes the method in which a trout feeds at
present, “when one of them sees the fly floating down towards him, he
approaches, swimming gently under the water, fearing to move the surface
lest his prey should be scared. Then drawing near underneath, he sucks in
the fly, as a wolf snatches a sheep from the fold, or an eagle a goose from
the farmyard, and having done so disappears under the ripple.” The
fisherman, he adds, cannot use the natural fly, for a touch of the human
hand rubs off its delicate bloom and destroys its wings. “Therefore,” he
resumes, “they overreach the fish by an artful device. Round the hook they
twist scarlet wool and two wings are secured on this wool from the feathers
which grow under the wattles of a cock, brought up to the proper color with
wax. The rod they use is six feet in length and the line is of the same
length. Then the angler lets fall his lure. The fish attracted by its colour,
and excited, draws close, and judging from its beautiful appearance that it
will obtain a marvelous banquet, forthwith its mount, but is caught by
the hook, and bitter indeed is the feast it enjoys, inasmuch as it is
captured.”
A modern Irish street ballad satirizing the
young women who fish for husbands begins –
As I rove out one evening down by the
riverside,
To catch some trout and salmon where the
streams so gently glide
Down by its brook my way I took, where there
by chance did spy,
A lovely maid both plain and gay just as she
passed me by.
From the anglers, eight dialogues in verse
(possibly by Dr. Thomas Scott):
To a man of any compass of thought and
experience in the world it is well-known that angling is not a mere
recreation, but a business – a business which employeth most orders,
professions and occupations among men. This might be fairly proved by an
introduction of particulars. For instance we booksellers angle for authors,
and authors angle for a dinner, or for fame. Again, doth not the lawyer
angle for clients, the doctor for a fee, the divine for preferment, the
statesman for secrets, the courtier for a pension, and the needy for a
place? Further what is he who offereth a bribe, but a fisher for another
man’s conscience? And what is he who taketh a bribe, but the silly fish that
is caught with the bait? What is here said may suffice to show the
universality of our author’s subject.
She spoke of the duty of being ready to
welcome happiness as well as tender pain, and of the strength and endurance
wins by being grateful for small daily choice, like the evening light, and
the smell of roses, and the singing of birds. She spoke of the faith that
rests on the Unseen Wisdom and Love like a child on its mother’s breast, and
of the melting away of doubts and the warmth of an effort to do some good in
the world. And if that effort has conflict, an adventure, and confused
noise, and mistakes, and an even defeats mingled with it, in the stormy
years of youth, is not that to be expected? The burn roars and leaps in the
den; the stream chase and frets through the rapids of the glen; the river
does not grow calm and smooth until it nears the sea. Courage is a virtue
that the young cannot spare; to lose it is to grow old before the time; it
is better to make a thousand mistakes and suffer a thousand reverses them to
refuse the battle. Resignation is the final courage of old age; and it
arrives in its own season; and is a good day when it comes to us. Then there
are no more disappointments; for we have learned that it is even better to
desire the things that we have than to have the things that we desire. And
is not the best of all our hopes - the hope of immortality- always before
us? How can we be dull or heavy while we have a new experience to look
forward to? It will be the most joyful of all our travels and adventures.
It will bring us our best acquaintances and friendships. But there’s only
one way to get ready for mortality, and that is to love this life, and live
it as bravely and cheerfully and faithfully as we can.
And you will remember that love is not
getting, but giving; not a wild dream of pleasure, and a man is so desire-oh
no, but is not that-it is goodness, and honor, and peace, and pure
living-yes, love is that; and it is the best thing in the world, and the
thing that lives longest.
It is a noble stream, stately and swift and
strong. It rises among the dense forests in the northern part of New
Brunswick—and moist upland region, of never-filling springs and innumerous
lakes—and pours a flood of clear, cold water one hundred and fifth miles
northward and eastward through the hills into the head of the bay of
Chaleurs. There are no falls in its course, but rapids everywhere. It is
steadfast but not impetuous, quick but not turbulent, resolute and eager in
it’s desire to get to the sea, like the life of a man who has a purpose.
An angler, like an Arab, regards hospitality
as a religious duty. There seems to be something in the craft which
inclines the heart to kindness and good-fellowship. Few anglers have I seen
who were not pleasant to meet, and ready to do a good turn to a
fellow-fisherman with a gift of a killing fly or the loan of rod. Not their
own particular and well-proofed favorite, of course, for that is a treasure
which no decent man would borrow; but with that exception the best in their
store is at the service of a brother.
The wild desire to be forever racing against
old Father Time is one of the kill-joys of modern life. That ancient
traveler is sure to beat you in the long run, and as long as you are trying
to rival him, he will make your life of burden. But if you will only
acknowledge his superiority and profess that you do not approve of racing
after all, he will settle down quietly beside you and jog long like the most
companionable of creatures. That is a pleasant pilgrimage in which the
journey itself is part of the destination.
What a charm there is in watching a swift
stream! The eye never wearies of following its curls and eddies, the shadow
of the waves dancing over the stones, the strange, crinkly lines of sunlight
in the shallows. There is a sort of fascination in it, lulling and soothing
the mind into a quietude which is even pleasanter than sleep, and making it
almost impossible to do that of which we so often speak, but which we never
quite accomplish –“think about nothing.”
Indeed, it is not from the highest peaks,
according to my experience, that one gets the grandest prospects, but rather
from those of middle height, which are so isolated as to give a wide circle
of vision, and from which one can see both the valleys and summits. It is
possible, in this world, to climb too high for pleasure.
How pleasant it his to fish in such a place
and at such an hour! And the novelty of the scene, the grandeur of the
landscape, lend a strange charm to the sport. But the sport itself it is so
familiar that one feels at home—the motion of the rod, the feathery swish of
the line, the site of the rising fish—it all brings back one hundred
woodland memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades, some far away
across the sea, and, perhaps, even now sitting around the forest camp-fire
in Maine or Canada, and some with whom we shall keep company no more until
we cross the greater If into the happy country whither they have preceded
us.
“Nay, let me tell you, there be many that
have 40 times our estates, that would give the greatest part of it to be
healthful and cheerful like us; who, with the expense of a little money, had
ate, and drank, and laughed, and angled, and sung, and slept securely; and
rose next day, and cast away care, and sung, laughed, and angled again;
which are blessings rich men cannot purchase with all their money.” Izaak
Walton; The Complete Angler.
It is one of the charms of life in the woods
that it brings back the high spirits of boyhood and renews the youth of the
world. Plain fun, like plain food, taste good out-of-doors. Nectar is the
sweet of a maple-tree. Ambrosia is only another name for well-turned
flap-jacks. And all the immortals, sitting around the table of golden
cedar-slabs, make merry when the clumsy Hephaistos, playing the part of Hebe,
stumbles over a root and upsets the plate of cakes into the fire.
The ideals, the attachments—yes, even the
dreams of youth are worth saving. For the artificial tastes with which age
tries to make good their loss grow very slowly and cast but a slender shade.
[ With respect to the fish that got away] The
spectacles of regret always magnify.
Who can explain the secret pathos of
Nature’s loveliness? It a touch of melancholy inherited from our mother Eve.
It is the unconscious memory of the lost paradise. It is the sense that
even if we should find another Eden, would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly,
nor stay in it forever.
The honest fisherman reflects that this world
is only a place of pilgrimage, but after all there is a good deal of cheer
on the journey, if it is made with a contented heart. He wonders who the
dwellers in the scattered houses may be, and weaves romances other shadows
on the curtain windows. The lamps burning in the wayside shrines tell him
stories of human love and patience and hope, and of divine forgiveness.
Dream-pictures of life float before him, tender and luminous, filled with
the vague, soft atmosphere in which the simplest outlines gain a strange
significance.
Men may say what they will in praise of their
houses, and grow eloquent upon the merits of various styles of architecture,
but, for our part, we are agreed that there is nothing to be compared with a
tent. Is the most venerable and aristocratic form of human habitation.
Abraham and Sarah lived in it, and shared its hospitality with the angels.
It is exempt from the base tyranny of the plumber, the paper-hanger, and the
gas-man. It is not immovably bound to one spot of earth by the chain’s of
the celler and a system of water-pipes. It has a noble freedom of
locomotion. It follows the wishes of its inhabitants, and goes with them,
the traveling home, as a spirit moves them to explore the wilderness. At
their pleasure, new beds of wildflowers surround it, new plantations of
trees overshadow it, and new avenues of shining water lead to its ever-
door. What the tent lacks in luxury it makes up in liberty: or rather let
us say that liberty itself is the greatest luxury. Another thing is worth
remembering—a family which lives in a tent never can have a skeleton in the
closet.
Sometimes we caught plenty and sometimes few,
but we never came back without a good catch of happiness.
After all, the glow of life comes from
friction with its difficulties. If we cannot find them at home, we sally
abroad and create them, just to warm up our mettle.
When tulips bloom in Union Square,
And timid breaths of vernal air
Are wandering down the dusty town,
Like children lost in Vanity Fair;
When every long, unlovely row
Of westward houses stands aglow
And leads the eyes toward sunset skies,
Beyond the hills where green trees grow;
Then weary is the street
parade,
And weary books, and weary trade:
I'm only wishing to go a-fishing;
For this the month of May was made.
I guess the pussy-willows now
Are creeping out on every bough
Along the brook; and robins look
For early worms behind the plough.
The thistle-birds have
changed their dun
For yellow coats to match the sun;
And in the same array of flame
The Dandelion Show's begun.
The flocks of young anemones
Are dancing round the budding trees:
Who can help wishing to go a-fishing
In days as full of joy as these?
I think the meadow-lark's
clear sound
Leaks upward slowly from the ground,
While on the wing the bluebirds ring
Their wedding-bells to woods around:
The flirting chewink calls
his dear
Behind the bush; and very near,
Where water flows, where green grass grows,
Song-sparrows gently sing, "Good cheer:"
And, best of all, through
twilight's calm
The hermit-thrush repeats his psalm:
How much I'm wishing to go a-fishing
In days so sweet with music's balm!
'Tis not a proud desire of
mine;
I ask for nothing superfine;
No heavy weight, no salmon great,
To break the record, or my line:
Only an idle little stream,
Whose amber waters softly gleam,
Where I may wade, through woodland shade,
And cast the fly, and loaf, and dream:
Only a trout or two, to dart
From foaming pools, and try my art:
No more I'm wishing--old-fashioned fishing,
And just a day on Nature's heart.
A river is the most human and
companionable of all inanimate things. It has a life, a character, a voice
of its own, and is as full of good fellowship as a sugar-maple is of sap. It
can talk in various tones, loud or low, and of many subjects, grave and gay.
Under favourable circumstances it will even make a shift to sing, not in a
fashion that can be reduced to notes and set down in black and white on a
sheet of paper, but in a vague, refreshing manner, and to a wandering air
that goes
"Over the hills and far
away."
For real company and
friendship, there is nothing outside of the animal kingdom that is
comparable to a river.
[When I invite my friend] to
share my orisons, or wander alone to indulge the luxury of grateful,
unlaborious thought, my feet … turn to the bank of a river, for there the
musings of solitude find a friendly accompaniment, and human intercourse is
purified and sweetened by the flowing, murmuring water. It is by a river
that I would choose to make love, and to revive old friendships, and to play
with the children, and to confess my faults, and to escape from vain,
selfish desires, and to cleanse my mind from all the false and foolish
things that mar the joy and peace of living. Like David's hart, I pant for
the water-brooks. There is wisdom in the advice of Seneca, who says, "Where
a spring rises, or a river flows, there should we build altars and offer
sacrifices."
[See] the song-sparrow,
perched on his favourite limb of a young maple, dose beside the water, and
singing happily, through sunshine and through rain. This is the true bird of
the brook, after all: the winged spirit of cheerfulness and contentment, the
patron saint of little rivers, the fisherman's friend. He seems to enter
into your sport with his good wishes, and for an hour at a time, while you
are trying every fly in your book, from a black gnat to a white miller, to
entice the crafty old trout at the foot of the meadow-pool, the
song-sparrow, close above you, will be chanting patience and encouragement.
And when at last success crowns your endeavour, and the parti-coloured prize
is glittering in your net, the bird on the bough breaks out in an ecstasy of
congratulation: "catch 'im, catch 'im, catch 'im; oh, what a pretty fellow!
sweet!"
In Professor John Wilson's
Essays Critical and Imaginative, there is a brilliant description of a
bishop fishing, which I am sure is drawn from the life: "Thus a bishop, sans
wig and petticoat, in a hairy cap, black jacket, corduroy breeches and
leathern leggins, creel on back and rod in hand, sallying from his palace,
impatient to reach a famous salmon-cast ere the sun leave his cloud, . . .
appears not only a pillar of his church, but of his kind, and in such a
costume is manifestly on the high road to Canterbury and the Kingdom-Come."
I have had the good luck to see quite a number of bishops, parochial and
diocesan, in that style, and the vision has always dissolved my doubts in
regard to the validity of their claim to the true apostolic succession.
There is such a thing as
taking ourselves and the world too seriously, or at any rate too anxiously.
Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society
comes from the vain idea that every man is bound to be a critic of life, and
to let no day pass without finding some fault with the general order of
things, or projecting some plan for its improvement. And the other half
comes from the greedy notion that a man's life does consist, after all, in
the abundance of the things that he possesses, and that it is somehow or
other more respectable and pious to be always at work making a larger
living, than it is to lie on your back in the green pastures and beside the
still waters, and thank God that you are alive.
The rod was a reward, yet not
exactly of merit. It was an instrument of education in the hand of a father
less indiscriminate than Solomon, who chose to interpret the text in a new
way, and preferred to educate his child by encouraging him in pursuits which
were harmless and wholesome, rather than by chastising him for practices
which would likely enough never have been thought of, if they had not been
forbidden. The boy enjoyed this kind of father at the time, and later he
came to understand, with a grateful heart, that there is no richer
inheritance in all the treasury of unearned blessings. For, after all, the
love, the patience, the kindly wisdom of a grown man who can enter into the
perplexities and turbulent impulses of a boy's heart, and give him cheerful
companionship, and lead him on by free and joyful ways to know and choose
the things that are pure and lovely and of good report, make as fair an
image as we can find of that loving, patient Wisdom which must be above us
all if any good is to come out of our childish race.
But when vacation came, with
its annual exodus from the city, there was only one sign in the zodiac, and
that was Pisces.
No country seemed to him
tolerable without trout, and no landscape beautiful unless enlivened by a
young river.
Among such
scenes as these the boy pursued his education, learning many things that are
not taught in colleges; learning to take the weather as it comes, wet or
dry, and fortune as it falls, good or bad; learning that a meal which is
scanty fare for one becomes a banquet for two--provided the other is the
right person; learning that there is some skill in everything, even in
digging bait, and that what is called luck consists chiefly in having your
tackle in good order; learning that a man can be just as happy in a log
shanty as in a brownstone mansion, and that the very best pleasures are
those that do not leave a bad taste in the mouth.
What could
be more delightful than to spend an hour or two, in the early morning or
evening of a hot day, in wading this rushing stream, and casting the fly on
its clear waters? The wind blows softly down the narrow valley, and the
trees nod from the rocks above you. The noise of the falls makes constant
music in your ears. The river hurries past you, and yet it is never gone.
"On my
word, master," says the appreciative Venator, in Walton's Angler, "this is a
gallant trout; what shall we do with him?" And honest Piscator, replies:
"Marry! e'en eat him to supper; we'll go to my hostess from whence we came;
she told me, as I was going out of door, that my brother Peter, [and who is
this but Romeyn of Keeseville?] a good angler and a cheerful companion, had
sent word he would lodge there tonight, and bring a friend with him. My
hostess has two beds, and I know you and I have the best; we'll rejoice with
my brother Peter and his friend, tell tales, or sing ballads, or make a
catch, or find some harmless sport to content us, and pass away a little
time without offence to God or man."
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From: Little Rivers by Henry Van Dyke
There’s no music like a
little river’s. It plays the same tune (and that’s the favourite) over and
over again, and yet does not weary of it like men fiddlers. It takes the
mind out of doors; and though we should be grateful for good houses, there
is, after all, no house like God’s out-of-doors. And lastly, sir, it quiets
a man down like saying his prayers.
n
Robert
Louis Stevenson: Prince Otto
It was not the walking
merely, it is keeping yourself in tune for a walk, in the spiritual and
bodily condition in which you can find entertainment and exhilaration in so
simple and natural a pastime. You are eligible to any good fortune when you
are in a condition to enjoy a walk. When the air and water taste sweet to
you, how much else will taste sweet.! When the exercise of your limbs
affords you pleasure, and the play of your senses upon the various objects
and shows of Nature quickens and stimulates your spirit, your relation to
the world and to your self is what it should be – simple, and direct, and
wholesome.
n
John
Burroughs: Pepaeton.
If, however, on the other hand angling is
looked upon with little favour by an unenlightened multitude, on the other
hand there is no amusement to which those who practice it become so much
attached. Nor do we think that anglers generally can fairly be accused
either of stupidity, or, let us say, patience. They have certainly in their
ranks a larger proportion of men of literature and science than can be found
among the followers of any other field sport; and for the comfort of those
who have not the much-despised gift of patience, we could point to a number
of celebrated anglers, who are by no means celebrated as possessing this
virtue …. Angling, when once embarked in by any person possessed of a
reasonable amount of soul and brains, becomes a passion, and like other
passions will grow and feed upon the smallest possible amount of
encouragement. Fish or no fish, whenever opportunity offers, the angler may
be found at the water-side. If this only went on in fine weather, people
could understand it, but now-a-days, even in summer, the weather is not
always fine; and when a man is seen standing in the water for hours in a
torrent of rain, with benumbed hands, and an empty basket, doubts of the
individual’s sanity naturally suggest themselves, mixed with feelings of
pity for the terrible consequences in the ways of colds, rheumatism, &c. …
It is surely better to have fresh air and exercise, even in wet, than to be
spending the whole day in some country inn, yawning over some second-rate
novel for the third time ….
“Though sluggards deem it but an
idle chase,
And marvel men should quit their
easy chair,
The toilsome way and long long
league to trace;
Oh! there is sweetness in the
mountain air,
And life that bloated ease can
never hope to share.”
That angling is good for exercise is
certain. That it is also good for amusement is equally certain; but the
pleasure derived from the catching of fish, like that derived from other
field sports, is more easily felt than described. There can be no doubt,
that by the great majority of people an amusement is valued on proportion as
it affords room for the exercise of skill – there is more merit, and
therefore more pleasure, in excelling in what is difficult – and though we
may astonish some of our readers, we assert, and shall endeavor to prove,
that angling is the most difficult of all field sports. It requires all the
manual dexterity than the others do, and brings more into play the qualities
of the mind, observation, and the reasoning faculties. .. The angler’s
wits, in fact, are brought into direct competition with those of the fish,
which very often, judging from the result, prove the better of the two.
Beside the mere pleasure of fishing,
however, angling has more varied attractions than almost any other
amusement. To the lover of nature no sport affords so much pleasure. The
grandest and most picturesque scenes in nature are to be found on the banks
of rivers and lakes. ….
We shall now mention in detail the
advantages of fishing up, in order to show its superiority over the old
method.
The first and greatest advantage is, that the
angler is unseen by the trout. Trout, as is well know, keep their heads up
stream; they cannot remain stationary in any other position. This being the
case, they see objects above and on both sides of them, but cannot discern
anything behind them, so that the angler fishing down will be seen by them
twenty yards off, whereas the angler fishing up will be unseen, although he
be but a few yards in their rear. The advantages of this it is impossible
to over-estimate. No creatures are more easily scared than trout; if they
see any object moving on the river’s bank, they run into deep water, or
beneath banks and stones, from which they will not stir for some time.
The next advantage of fishing up we shall
notice, is the much greater probability of hooking a trout when it rises.
In angling down stream, if a trout rises and the angler strikes, he runs a
great risk of pulling the flies straight out of its mouth; whereas, in
fishing up, its back is to him, and he has every chance of bringing the hook
into contact with its jaws. This, although it might not seem of great
importance to the uninitiated, tells considerably when the contents of the
basket come to be examined at the close of the day’s sport; indeed, no
angler would believe the difference unless he himself proved it.
Another advantage of fishing up is, that it does
not disturb the water so much. Let us suppose the angler is fishing down a
fine pool. He, of course, commences at the top, the place where the best
trout, and those most inclined to feed, invariably lie. After a few cast he
hooks one, which immediately runs down, and by its vagaries, leaping in the
air, and plunging in all directions alarms all its neighbours, and it is ten
to one if he gets another rise in that pool. Fishing up saves all this. The
angler commences at the foot, and when he hooks a trout, pulls it down, and
the remaining portions of the pool are undisturbed.
The last advantage of fishing up is, that by it
the angler can much better adapt the motions of his flies to those of the
natural insect. And here it may be mentioned as a rule, that the nearer the
motions of the artificial flies resemble those of the natural ones under
similar circumstances, the greater will be the prospects of success.
The great point in fly dressing, is to make the artificial fly resemble the
natural insect in shape, and the great characteristic of all river insects
is extreme lightness and neatness of form. Our great objection to the flies
in common use is, that they are much too bush; so much so, that there are
few flies to be got in the tackle-shops which we could use with any degree
of confidence in clear water. Every possible advantage is in favour of a
lightly-dressed fly; it is more like a natural insect; it falls lighter on
the water, and every angler knows the importance of making his fly fall
gently, and there being less material about it, the artificial nature of
that material is not so easily detected; and also, as the hook is not so
much covered with feathers, there is a much better chance of hooking a trout
when it rises. We wish to impress very strongly upon the reader the
necessity of avoiding bulky flies.
W.C. Stewart
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In this pleasant and harmless Art of Angling
a man hath none to quarrel with but himself, and we are usually so entirely
our own friends, as not to retain an irreconcilable hatred against
ourselves, but can in short time easily compose the enmity; and besides
ourselves none are offended, none are endamaged; and this recreation falleth
within the capacity of the lowest fortune to compass, affording also profit
as well as pleasure, in following of which exercise a man may employ his
thoughts in the noblest studies, almost as freely as in his closet.
The minds of anglers being usually more calm
and composed than many others. The angler, when he hath the worst success,
loseth but a hook or line, or, perhaps, what he never possessed, a fish; and
suppose he should take nothing, yet he enjoyeth a delightful walk by
pleasant rivers in sweet pastures, amongst odoriferous flowers, which
gratify his senses and delight his mind.
[The angler] leads the most happy life; and
if this art do not dispose and incline the mind of man to a quiet calm
sedateness, I am confident it doth not, as many other delights; cast blocks
and rubs before him to make his way more difficult and less pleasant. I
know no sort of men less subject to melancholy than anglers; many have cast
off other recreations and embraced it. but I never knew any angler wholly
cast off. though occassions might interrupt, their affections to their
beloved recreation.
All the fore-mentioned sorts of fish will
sometimes take the fly much better at the top of the water, and at another
time much better a little under the superficies of the water; and in this
your own observation must be your constant and daily instructor; for if they
will not rise to the top, try them under, it being impossible, in my
opinion, to give any certain rule in this particular.
When you come first to the river in the
morning, with your rod beat upon the bushes or boughs which hang over the
water, and by their falling upon the water you will see what sorts of flies
are there in greatest numbers.
You must have a very quick eye, a nimble rod
and hand, and strike with the rising of the fish, or he instantly finds his
mistake, and forces out the hook again.
When you try how to fit your color to the
fly, wet your fur, hair, wool, or moccado, otherwise you will fail in your
work; for though when they are dry, they exactly suit the colour of the fly,
yet the water will alter most colours, and make them lighter or darker.
When you angle at ground, keep your line as
straight as possible, suffering none of it to lie in the water, because it
hinders the nimble jerk of the rod.
When you have hooked a good fish, have an
especial care to keep your rod bent, lest he run to the line, and break your
hook, or his hold.
The first fish you take, cut up his belly,
and you may then see his stomach; it is known by its largeness and place,
lying from the gills to the small guts; take it out very tenderly, if you
bruise it, your labour and design are lost; and with a sharp knife cut itwithout bruising, and then you may find his food in it, and thereby
discover what bait the fish at that instant takes best, either flies or
ground-baits, and so suit them accordingly.
Fish are frightened with any the least sight
or motion, therefore by all means keep out of sight, either by sheltering
yourself behind some bush or tree, or by standing so far off the river's
side, that you can see nothing but your fly or float. And here I meet with
two different opinions and practices, some will always cast their fly and
bait up the water, and so they say nothing occurs to the fish's sight but
the line; others fish down the river, and so suppose, the rod and line being
long, the quantity of water takes away, or at least lessens the fish's
sight; but others affirm, that rod and line, and perhaps yourself, are seen
also.
Keep the sun, and moon, if night, before you,
if your eyes will endure, which I much question, at least be sure to have
those planets on your side, for if they be on your back, your rod will with
its shadow offend much, and the fish see further and clearer, when they look
towards those lights, than the contrary; as you may experiment thus in a
dark night, if a man come betwixt you and any light, you see him clearly,
but not at all if the light come betwixt you and him.
When you angle for the Trout, you need not
make above three or four trials in one place, either with fly or
ground-bait, for he will then either take it, or make an offer, or not stir
at all, and so you lose time to stay there any longer.
Make not a profession of any recreation, lest
your immoderate love towards it should bring a cross wish on the same.
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Excerpts from The Experienced Angler
Colonel Robert
Venables
The choice of the fly to be used precedes the
making of the cast in point of time, but is second to it in importance. It
is better to throw and float the wrong fly really well than to bungle with
the right one. In common with most anglers I carry about with me a much
larger variety of flies than I ever use, but successive seasons tends to
diminish rather than to add to it, and in practice I should be content with
four sorts.
In dry fly fishing there is an ideal way of
presenting the fly to a fish, and the angler knows when he has succeeded in
doing this: in wet fly fishing this process, from the moment the flies
alight upon the water, is out of sight, and even the rise itself is often
unseen. This is an instance in which the pleasure of the two methods
differs. In wet fly fishing the rise or the coming of a fish is more
unexpected. Surprise is a perpetual element of the day’s work. The angler
must be ready to strike at any moment, and it is in this constant readiness
to strike quickly that, other things being equal, the great difficulty of
this particular method of angling seems to lie. Time after time the rise of
a quick, active, north country trout comes upon me like an emergency for
which I am unprepared. I fail in the incessant watchfulness of hand and eye
that are required, not as in dry fly fishing, at an anticipated
moment, but at all moments, when the unseen flies are in the water. A double
watchfulness is needed. The hand must be ready to receive the message from
the eye, but must not wait for it, and the least touch under water needs
even quicker action than a visible rise. We fish both by sight and by
feeling, and many a day there is at the end of which the number of fish in
the basket bears a very small proportion to the number of those which have
been touched, and which might have been hooked and landed, by greater
promptness in striking. My own belief is, that in wet fly fishing for trout
the more quickly the strike can be made the better, and that nothing but
constant practice can give a high degree of efficiency in this respect.
It follows from what has been said that every
inch of water should be fished with as straight a line as possible; in still
water this is not difficult; in fishing across and down stream it is easy,
except in rough broken water, or where the stream is uneven, in which cases
a line, which was cast straight, may do all sorts of curious things in the
water, and the flies turn out to be in unexpected places; in fishing up
stream great care is always needed to prevent the line becoming slack. Here
is another difficulty, for assuming that a fairly skilful dry fly angler can
throw his wet flies lightly and accurately with a straight line, the
management of the line in the water will still be unfamiliar to him. The art
of keeping in touch with his flies in rough water is not learnt by the
angler in chalk streams. In wet fly fishing, if the line becomes slack, the
flies will sink deeper in the water. There is then less chance of seeing the
rise of the fish, and the probability is that any trout, which takes the
fly, will not be hooked or even felt when the line is slack. At the end of a
day’s fishing we know of the fish that have been touched or risen, but who
can say how many trout have taken the fly and rejected it, unfelt and
unseen? Here therefore is another piece of skill required besides that of
striking quickly, namely, that of keeping in constant touch with the fly
without interfering with its motion in the stream. This is essential to
success, but not easy to attain.
Fishing is to be enjoyed, but it will not be
enjoyed any the more by hurrying past what Nature has to give us on the way.
Variety and independence are great charms of
wet fly fishing for trout. There is not need of a ghillie or attendant to
show the pools as in salmon fishing, and to explain the habits of the fish
in each different river. Even on a strange river the angler’s own knowledge
of the habits of trout in general will enable him to use his flies with
effect. Intimate knowledge and long experience of any particular river do
give the angler who has them, a considerable advantage, and, other things
being equal, should make his basket heavier than that of a stranger, and may
well give him a sense of legitimate and innocent pride. But there is also a
pride, both pleasant and just, in drawing upon a store of general knowledge,
and applying it unaided to the trout in water which is new to the angler.
I cannot say which is better – to fish a new
river for the first time, or to fish on a good day water which has been long
known, on which one has the best of reasons for expectation and confidence.
Sometimes it is novelty and the spirit of enterprise, at others it is
loyalty to old associations and attraction of comparative certainty, that
decide the balance of pleasure.
To throw a fly well is one step, and it is
essential, but not by itself enough. A habit of attention and observation is
at least equally important, and this observation must have a wide range. It
must take notice of the ways of fish at all times, especially when feeding
and when hooked; of different conditions of weather and water, and of the
effect of these, till by degrees the angler will have at his disposal a
little individual store, peculiarly his own, of suggestion, hints and
probabilities. Things that he watches, or sees happen season by season, come
to have meanings, and are sings which suggest expedients as the result of
former experience. The attention of an angler must be a barren but a fertile
attention. His observation should add to his knowledge in a manner which as
a direct bearing on his sport. He should make guesses founded upon something
which he has noticed, and be ever on the watch for some further indications
to turn the guess into a conclusion.
We have now
arrived at two main qualities – the first being a certain physical
cleverness, and the second an attentive and suggestive mind. But there is a
third which seems to me important. It is self-control; for if an angler is
really keen, he will have many struggles with himself in early days. The
greater the keenness the more bitter the disappointment, and the more highly
nerves have been strung by excitement the more likely are we to collapse
under disaster. And yet it is a pity, and a waste of good things, that the
loss of even the biggest fish should make the other pleasures and successes
of the day of no account. In angling, as in all other recreation into which
excitement enters, we have to be upon our guard, so that we can at any
moment throw a weight of self-control into the scale against misfortune, and
happily we can study to some purpose, both to increase our pleasure in
success and to lessen the distress caused by what goes ill. It is not only
in cases of great disaster, however, that the angler needs self-control. He
is perpetually called upon to use it to withstand small exasperations. There
are times when all small things seem adverse, when the hook is perpetually
catching in inanimate objects, when unexpected delays and difficulties of
various kinds occur at undesirable moments, when fish will rise short, or
when they feed greedily on natural flies, and will not look at artificial
ones. These sorts of things tend to hurry and exasperation, which lead
certainly to bad fishing, which in turn ends in a small basket and disgust.
In angling, as in games, the earliest obvious
characteristic is the desire for success and the consequent excitement.
To those who are born-anglers, this excitement presents a peculiarly
attractive and irresistible aspect. There is first the expectation of
a bite or a rise, the sudden thrill when it comes, and directly a fish is
hooked the overwhelming rush of anxiety as to whether it will be landed.
There is more than this; there is the spirit which seems to enter into the
rod and line in playing a fish. They who do not feel these things will never
care much for fishing. Probably it is some subtle quality of
temperament which makes the difference between men in this respect, but
those who are anglers will probably admit that in early boyhood, or at the
first opportunity, they felt the excitement of having hooked an unexpectedly
large fish on a small rod and fine tackle.
It is the plain indiscriminating desire for
success which leads us to the second stage in angling, that of taking the
pains and trouble necessary to acquire skill. In early years we are content
to catch fish anyhow, even with a worm in flooded water. But rives are the
most part not in flood; on most days in the season, if trout are to be
caught at all, it must be in clear water, and we find, too, except in a
certain part of the season, that the greatest number can be hooked by using
artificial flies. It becomes our object to learn this art and to improve in
it by practice. At first the young angler, wholly bent upon success, may
value his skill chiefly for its results; he dwells upon these, compares each
good day with his own previous records, is probably competitive and anxious
that on any given day his basket should be as heavy as those of others who
have been fishing the same water. Whenever his basket is heavier than his
rival’s, he is delighted, and is probably not a little disappointed if, when
he thinks he has done well, he finds at the end of the day that some one
else has done much better. There is an age at which nearly every one who is
keen must be competitive, but as long as this lasts an angler has not
attained to the greatest enjoyment of his sport. He is missing more pleasure
than he gains; and he is preventing himself from having that detachment of
mind, and freedom and independence of spirit, which are among the charms of
angling. An angler who is keen will work hard, but he should do it without
the sense of strain which comes from trying to beat his own records, or
those of others. By all means let us find satisfaction to the end in having
a heavy or the heaviest basket, but do not let us make this the prime object
of the day. Rather let each day’s enjoyment stand upon its own merits
without being made comparative.
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As our skill increases we reach the third
stage, that of caring for skill for its own sake and less entirely for the
results. There comes to be some satisfaction in doing things well, even
when the results are not great, in continuing to throw a long line straight
and lightly even when fish are rising badly, or in putting a dry fly
perfectly to a trout in a difficult place though he refuses to take it. Some
measure of success, of course is always desired, and a man must surely be a
pedant, or a prig, to be content to fish all day without it; but for all
that, there is a certain delight in fishing water well, which for a time at
any rate is independent of results. This is especially the case at the
beginning of the day, when, for the first hour or so, to know or to think
that we are deserving success contents us.
-- Sir Edward Grey, Fly-Fishing
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Books about spot and country life should be
written and read, partly perhaps for the sake of hints, information and
instruction, but much more in the hope that the sense of refreshing
pleasure, which has been felt by the writer, may slide into a sympathetic
mind.
-- Sir Edward Grey, Fly-Fishing
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"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds
will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy while
cares will drop off like Autumn leaves."
John Muir
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“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 his feet a-going, and he will infallibly
lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be
athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan
happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one
knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.”
Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”
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"There is certainly something in angling that
tends to produce a gentleness of spirit and a pure sincerity of mind."
Washington Irving
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"Let it be seen that a love of the gentle artth first the heart then the fly-book and soon the stores and experience
of knowledge garnered up through long years, wheresoever we meet a "brother
of the angle" ; and that to us angling is an employment of our idle time,
which is not then idly spent; that therein we find "a rest to the mind, a
cheerer of the spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts,
a moderator of the passions, a procurer of contentedness, and that it begets
habits of peace and patience in those that possess and practice it."
Thaddeus Norris From - Fishing with the Fly
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"It has been said that the angler, like the
poet, is born, not made. This is a self-evident fact. Few men have risen
to the dignity of anglers who did not in early youth feel the unconquerable
impulse to go a fishing. There are, of course, noteworthy exceptions, but
the rule holds good. It might be added, too, that the genuine angler is
almost invariably a poet, although he may not be a jingler of ryhmes- a
ballad monger. Though, perhaps, lacking the art of vessification, his whole
life is in itself, a well-rounded poem, and he never misses the opportunity
to "cast his line in pleasant places."
F. E. Pond "Fishing with the Fly"
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Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the worlds more full of weeping
than you can understand.
excerpt from " The Stolen Child"
W.B. Yeats
from The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
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“There is a great deal of superfluous tackle
pictured and described in English books on angling. There is the clearing
ring, the angler’s friend, baiting-needle, disgorger, paternoster,
kill-devil, a plummet to get the depth of water, etc, etc, which would
better grace the window of a tackle shop, or a museum of useless tackle,
than an angler’s wallet. It is amusing and even wonderful, what an amount of
such stuff an ardent, green angler, with a flush pocket, can collect. As he
grows older in the art, of course he throws it away, or imposes it as a
present on some one no less verdant than he was himself a few summers
before, exclaiming with that ancient philosopher: “Lord, how many things
there are in this world of which Diogenes hath no need!”
-- Thaddeus Norris
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John Donne
The Bait
Come live with mee, and bee my love,
And wee will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and christall brookes:
With silken lines, and silver hookes.
There will the river
whispering runne
Warm'd by thy eyes, more then the Sunne.
And there the'inamor'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swimme in that
live bath,
Each fish, which every channell hath,
Will amorously to thee swimme,
Gladder to catch thee, then thou him.
If thou, to be so seene,
beest loath,
By Sunne, or Moone, thou darknest both,
And if my selfe have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
Let others freeze with
angling reeds,
And cut their legges, which shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poore fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowie net:
Let coarse bold hands, from
slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest,
Or curious traitors, sleavesicke flies
Bewitch poore fishes wandring eyes.
For thee, thou needst no such
deceit,
For thou thy selfe art thine owne bait,
That fish, that is not catch'd thereby,
Alas, is wiser farre then I.
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The file joiner http://www.boxedapp.com/ . http://www.custom-essay-writing.org/ is here to help all students . Seeking to find top quality dissertation at a reasonable price?Go to our internet site. People that
have not been inoculated with the true spirit may wonder at the infatuation
of anglers – but true anglers leave them very contentedly to their
wondering, and follow their diversions with a keen delight. Many old men
there are of this class that have in them a world of science – not science
of the book, or of regular tuition, but the science of actual experience.
Science that lives, and will die with them; except it be dropped out
piecemeal, and with the gravity becoming its importance, to some young
neophyte who has won their good graces by his devotion to their beloved
craft. All the mysteries of times and seasons, of baits, flies of every
shape and hue; worms, gentles, beetles, compositions, or substances found by
proof to possess singular charms. These are a possession which they hold
with pride, and do not hold in vain. After a close day in the shop or
factory, what a luxury is a fine summer evening to one of these men,
following some rapid stream, or seated on a green bank, deep in grass and
flowers, pulling out the spotted Trout, or resolutely but subtilely bringing
some huge Pike or fair Grayling from its lurking place beneath the broad
stump and spreading boughs of the alder. Or a day, a summer’s day, to such
a man, by the Dove or the Wye, amid the pleasant Derbyshire hills; by
Yorkshire or Northumbrian stream; by Trent or Tweed; or the banks of Yarrow;
by Teith or Leven, with the glorious hills and heaths of Scotland around
him. Why, such a day to such a man, has in it a life and spirit of
enjoyment to which the feelings of cities and palaces are dim. The heart of
such a man – the power and passion of deep felicity that come breathing from
mountains and moorlands; from clouds that sail above, and storms blustering
and growling in the wind; from all the mighty magnificence, the solitude and
antiquity of Nature upon him – Ebenezer Elliott only can unfold. The weight
of the poor man’s life – the cares of poverty – the striving of huge cities,
visit him as he sits by the beautiful stream – beautiful as a dream of
eternity, and translucent as the everlasting canopy of heaven above him; --
they come, but he casts them off for the time, with the power of one who
feels himself strong in the kindred spirit of all things around; strong in
the knowledge that he is a man; an immortal – a child and pupil in the
world-school of the Almighty. For that day he is more than a king – he has
the heart of humanity, and faith and spirit of a saint. It is not the rod
and line that floats before him – it is not the flowing water, or the
captured prey that he perceives in those moments of admission to the heart
of nature, so much as the law of the testimony of love and goodness written
on everything around him with the pencil of Divine beauty. He is not longer
the wearied and oppressed – the trodden and despised – walking in threadbare
garments amid men, who scarcely deign to look upon him as a brother man –
but he is reassured and recognised to himself in his own soul, as one of
those puzzling, aspiring, and mysterious existences for whom all this
splendid world was built, and for whom eternity its expecting gates.
-- Thaddeus
Norris
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Nestled together, rows on rows,
With their keen, sharp pointed toes,
Here's a Hare's Ear, there a Glory,
A Royal Coach with a wonderous story.
Wickhams's, fairies, a tiny dun,
That could tell of an hour of glorious fun
At a deep, dark pool, in the shadows dense
When the heart beat fast and nerves were tense
And six bright beauties rose and took
Each in his turn that fateful hook.
And I care not whether they're wet or dry
Fussy or sombre, yea not I
I love them all, yes, every fly.
~ H. Wheeler Perce
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If, however, on the other hand angling is looked
upon with little favour by an unenlightened multitude, on the other hand
there is no amusement to which those who practice it become so much
attached. Nor do we think that anglers generally can fairly be accused
either of stupidity, or, let us say, patience. They have certainly in their
ranks a larger proportion of men of literature and science than can be found
among the followers of any other field sport; and for the comfort of those
who have not the much-despised gift of patience, we could point to a number
of celebrated anglers, who are by no means celebrated as possessing this
virtue …. Angling, when once embarked in by any person possessed of a
reasonable amount of soul and brains, becomes a passion, and like other
passions will grow and feed upon the smallest possible amount of
encouragement. Fish or no fish, whenever opportunity offers, the angler may
be found at the water-side. If this only went on in fine weather, people
could understand it, but now-a-days, even in summer, the weather is not
always fine; and when a man is seen standing in the water for hours in a
torrent of rain, with benumbed hands, and an empty basket, doubts of the
individual’s sanity naturally suggest themselves, mixed with feelings of
pity for the terrible consequences in the ways of colds, rheumatism, &c. …
It is surely better to have fresh air and exercise, even in wet, than to be
spending the whole day in some country inn, yawning over some second-rate
novel for the third time ….
“Though sluggards deem it but an idle
chase,
And marvel men should quit their easy
chair,
The toilsome way and long long league
to trace;
Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain
air,
And life that bloated ease can never
hope to share.”
That angling is good for exercise is certain. That
it is also good for amusement is equally certain; but the pleasure derived
from the catching of fish, like that derived from other field sports, is
more easily felt than described. There can be no doubt, that by the great
majority of people an amusement is valued on proportion as it affords room
for the exercise of skill – there is more merit, and therefore more
pleasure, in excelling in what is difficult – and though we may astonish
some of our readers, we assert, and shall endeavor to prove, that angling is
the most difficult of all field sports. It requires all the manual
dexterity than the others do, and brings more into play the qualities of the
mind, observation, and the reasoning faculties. .. The angler’s wits, in
fact, are brought into direct competition with those of the fish, which very
often, judging from the result, prove the better of the two.
Beside the mere pleasure of fishing, however,
angling has more varied attractions than almost any other amusement. To the
lover of nature no sport affords so much pleasure. The grandest and most
picturesque scenes in nature are to be found on the banks of rivers and
lakes. ….
W.C. Stewart
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"But if the salmon and trout must be classified as elite in this mythical
social structure then let the black bass be given permanent status as the
working class of American gamefish. He's tough and he knows it. . . .
.He's a bass sax grumbling, get-down blues in the bayou. He's a factory
worker, truck driver, wild catter, lumberjack, barroom bouncer, dock
walloper, migrant farmhand, and bear wrassler. And if it's a fight you're
looking for, he'll oblige anytime, anywhere. Whether it's a backwater
at noon, a swamp at midnight, or dockside at dawn, he'll be there waiting.
He's a fierce-eyed, foul-mouthed, tobacco chewing redneck who has traveled
to every corner of the nation, paying his way and giving no quarter."
Pat Smith, "Old Iron Jaw", Lamar Underwood's Bass Almanac (1979)
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"The music of angling is more compelling to me than anything contrived in
the greatest symphony hall."
A. J. McClane, "Song of the Angler )
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"I stoop as low as needed when searching for "classic" bamboo fly rods.
I've been to the "fleaest" flea markets, the most run-down junk stores, the
dirtiest re-sale shops, the swarthiest pawn shops, etc.- all places my wife
wouldn't dare set foot in."
JIMMY D. MOORE, "Down & Dirty Bamboo" (2004)
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Fishing with an artificial fly is, certainly,
a very pleasant and gentlemanly way of angling, and is attended with much
less labour and trouble than bottom-fishing. The Fly-fisherman has but
little to carry, either in bulk or weight; nor has he the dirty work of
digging clay, making ground-baits, &c. & c. He may travel for miles, with a
book of flies in his pocket, and a light rod in his had, and cast in his
bait, as he roves on the banks of a river, without soiling his fingers; it
is, therefore, preferred by many to every other way of angling. Yet
fly-fishing is not without its disadvantages, for there are many kinds of
Fish that will not take a fly; whereas, all the different species which the
fresh waters produce, will take a bait at bottom, at some season of the
year; and it is also worthy of notice, that the Angler who fishes at bottom
has many months and days in the year when the Fish will so feed;
consequently he has frequent opportunities of enjoying his amusement, when
the Fly-fisherman is entirely deprived of the chance of sport by very cold
or wet weather, the Winter season, &c. Many good Jack and Pike are taken at
Christmas; but, at that season of the year, neither Trout nor Cub are likely
to rise for a fly, however skillfully made or thrown. Fly-fishing certainly
partakes more of science than bottom-fishing, and, of course, requires more
time, study, and practice, before the Angler can become anything like an
adept at making or casting a fly; indeed, artificial-fly making is somewhat
difficult to learn, but more difficult to describe. The young Angler would
gain much more information on the subject, by attending a Fly-fisherman,
while he is casting or making an artificial-fly; if he cannot avail himself
of such knowledge, he must persevere, and strictly follow the directions I
shall offer to his notice, in both making and casting a fly.
When artful flies the Angler would prepare,
This task of all deserves his utmost care:
Nor verse nor prose can ever teach him well
What masters only know, and practice tell;
Yet thus at large I venture to support,
Nature best followed best secures the sport:
Of flies the kinds; their seasons, and the
breed,
Their shapes, their hue, with nice observance
heed:
Which most the Trout admires, and where
obtain’d,
Experience will teach, or perchance some
friend.
Thomas Salter – The Angler’s Guide
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ANGLING WE WILL GO
1.
Of all the sports and pastimes
That happen in the year,
To Angling there are none, sure,
That ever can compare.
Then to Angle, etc.
2.
We do not break our legs or arms,
As Huntsmen often do,
For when that we are Angling
No danger can ensue.
Then to Angle, etc.
3.
Cards and dice are courtly games,
Then let them laugh who win,
There’s innocence in Angling,
But gaming is a sin.
Then to Angle, etc.
4.
Then you who would be honest,
And to old age attain;
Forsake the City, and the Town,
And fill the Angler’s train.
Then to Angle, etc.
5.
For health, and for diversion,
We rise by break of day,
While courtiers in their down beds
Sleep half their time away.
Then to Angle, etc.
6.
And then unto the River
In haste we do repair,
All day in sweet amusement,
We breathe good wholesome air.
Then to Angle, etc.
7.
Our constitution sound is,
Our appetites are keen,
We laugh and bid defiance
To vapours and the Spleen.
Then to Angle, etc.
8.
The gout and stone are often bread
By lolling in a coach,
But Anglers walk, and so remain
As sound as any Roach.
Then to Angle, etc.
9.
The Trout, the Pike, the Salmon,
The Barbel, Carp and Bream,
Afford good sport, and so the Perch
And Tench will do the same.
Then to Angle, etc.
10.
So let us now remember
To praise the smaller Fish,
Bleak, Gudgeon, Roach, and Dace,
Will garnish well a dish.
Then to Angle, etc.
11.
Through meadows, by a river;
Form place to place we roam,
And when that we are weary
We then go jogging home.
Then to Angle, etc.
12.
At night we take a bottle,
We prattle, laugh, and sing;
We drink a health upon our friends,
And so God bless the King.
Then to Angle, etc.
--Author Unknown.
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Fish are frighted with any the least sight or
motion, therefore by all means keep out of sight, either by sheltring your
self behind some bush or tree, or by standing so far off the Rivers side,
that you can see nothing but your flie or flote; to effect this, a long Rod
at ground, and a long Line with the artificial flie may be of use to you.
And here I meet with two different opinions & practices, some always cast
their flie & bait up the water, and so they say nothing occurreth to the
Fishes sight but the Line: others fish down the River, and so suppose (the
Rod and Line being long) the quantity of water takes away, or a least
lesseneth the Fishes sight; but the other affirm, that Rod and Line, and
perhaps your self, are seen also. In this difference of opinions I shall
only say, in small Brooks you may angle upwards, or else in great Rivers you
must wade, as I have know some, who thereby got the Sciatica, and I would
not wish you to purchase pleasure at so dear a rate; besides, casting up the
River you cannot keep your Line out of the water, which we noted for a fault
before; and they that use this way confess that if in casting your flie, the
line fall into the water before it, the flie were better uncast, because it
frights the fish; ten certainly it must do it this way, whether the flie
fall first or not, the line must first come to the fish or fall on him,
which undoubtedly will fright him: Therefore my opinion is, that you angle
down the River, for the other way your traverse twice so much, and beat not
so much ground as downwards.
Keep the Sun (and Moon, if Night) before you,
if your eyes will endure it, (which I much question) at least be sure to
have those Planets on your side, for if they be on your back, your Rod will
with its shadow offend much, and the Fish see further and clearer, when they
look towards those Lights, than the contrary; as you may experiment thus, in
a dark Night if a man come betwixt you and any light, you see him clearly;
but not at all if the light come betwixt you and him.
--Robert Venables
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Here lies Tommy Montague,
Whose love for Angling daily grew;
He died regretted, while late out,
To make a capture of a trout.
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20. Let him that would be a compleat Angler,
spend some time in Angling in all sorts of Waters, Ponds, Rivers, swift and
slow, stony, pebly, gravelly, sandy, muddy, chalky, and slimy; and observe
the differences in the Nature of the Soils and Ground on which they run or
stand; and likewise the Nature and Humour of each particular Fish, Water and
Bait, by which he’ll become a perfect and judicious Artist, and be able to
take Fish wherever he Angleth, and will find much difference between swift,
slow, and standing Waters.
Likewise let the Angler observe when he
takes store of Fish, the Age of the Moon, the Temperature of the preceding
Night, and the darkness, brightness or windiness of it; season and nature of
the Morning and Day, together with the Temperature of the Air, Water and
Wind, and all other precedent, concomitant, natural or adventitious
Advantages, that could any ways conduce to his Sport, and likewise on the
contrary all things he finds to be Obstacles and Obstructors of his pastime,
and enter them methodically in a Book, with the day of the Month, etc.
Hereby, with a little practice, he’ll be able to raise Conclusions for the
improvement of this Art.
21. In all sorts of Angling, be sure to keep
out of Fishes sight, and as far off the Rivers bank as possible, unless you
Angle in a muddy water, and then you may approach near the water.
-- James Cheatham
|
|
I have made you idlers at home and abroad,
but I hope to some purpose; and I trust you will confess the time bestowed
upon angling has not been thrown away. The most important principle,
perhaps, in life is to have a pursuit – a useful one if possible, and in all
events an innocent one. And the scenes you have enjoyed – the
contemplations to which they have led, and the exercise in which we have
indulged, have, I am sure, been very salutary to the body, and, I hope, to
the mind. I have always found a peculiar effect from this kind of life; it
has appeared to bring me back to early times and feelings, and to create
again the hopes and happiness of youthful days.
-- Sir Humphrey Davy
|
|
To furnish the small animal, provide
All the Gay hues that wait on female pride;
Let nature guide thee - sometimes golden wire
The shining belies of the fly require;
The peacock's plumes thy tackle must not
fail,
Nor the dear purchase of the sable's tail.
Each gaudy bird some slender tribute brings
And lends the glowing insect proper wings.
Silks of all colors must their aid impart,
And every fur promotes the fisher's art.
- John Gay, Rural Sports
|
|
When if or chance or hunger's powerful sway
Directs the roving trout this fatal way,
He greedily sucks in the twining bait,
And tugs and nibbles the fallacious meat.
Now, happy fisherman; now twitch the line!
How thy rod bends! behold, the prize is thine!
-John Gay Rural Sports (canto I, l. 150)
|
|
Around the steel no tortur'd worm shall
twine,
No blood of living insect stain my line;
Le me, less cruel, cast feather'd hook,
With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook,
Silent along the mazy margin stray,
And with fur-wrought fly delude the prey.
- John Gay, Rural Sports
|
|
The cheapness of the recreation abates not
its pleasure, but with rational persons heightens it; and if it be
delightful the charge of melancholy falls upon that score, and if example,
which is the best proof, may sway any thing, I know no sort of men less
subject to melancholy than anglers; many have cast off other recreations and
embraced it. but I never knew any angler wholly cast off. though occassions
might interrupt, their affections to their beloved recreation; and if this
art may prove a Noble brave rest to thy mind, it will be satisfaction
to his, who is thy well-wishing Friend.
Colonel Robert Venables in The
Experienced Angler
|
|
The minds of anglers being usually more calm
and composed than many others, especially hunters and falconers, who too
frequently lose their delight in their passion, and too often bring home
more of melancholy and discontent than satisfaction in their thoughts; but
the angler, when he hath the worst success, loseth but a hook or line, or,
perhaps, what he never possessed, a fish; and suppose he should take
nothing, yet he enjoyeth a delightful walk by pleasant rivers in sweet
pastures, amongst odoriferous flowers, which gratify his senses and delight
his mind; which contentments induce many, who affect not angling, to choose
those places of pleasure for their Summer's recreation and health.
Colonel
Robert Venables in The Experienced Angler
|
|
Fishing is the part of life that's filled with more or less regular
successes, and failures that don't really matter because there's always a
next time. You come to see that a life frittered away with sport and travel
makes perfect sense, but no one trip ever tells the whole story.
John Gierach Another Lousy Day in Paradise
|
|
1. The only sure remedy is to go a-fishing, as this is rest, recreation and
exercise all in one.
2. It is a recreation to dress flies when one cannot fish, most interesting
to follow the colours of the insects on the water, and often profitable to
copy a local pattern that is favored by the trout.
3. Too great pains cannot be taken with body and legs, and you will note
that the best fancy flies are usually harmonious in coloration. In Nature
this appears to be always true. The natural flies are dressed to perfection
by their Maker, in the most delicate and perfect colours: All are in
harmony with no glaring or unpleasant contrast.
Theodore Gordon
|
|
There are some things, of course, that have
always defied all forms of rationalization, and probably always will.
Love, for instance. And faith, maybe. ... Perhaps it's as futile and
as foolish .. to ask "why fly fishing?" as it is to ask "why jazz?" As
Fats Waller said: "Lady, if you've got to ask, you'll never know."
- Arnold Gingrich, The Well Tempered Angler
|
|
[Brookies] are the dumb blondes of this
wonderful world of trout, proving all over again that it is a rare exception
when the maximum in brains and beauty collide.
- Arnold Gingrich, The Well Tempered Angler
|
|
Some fishermen think that any rod they buy and pay for
should stand any form of abuse, and if it does not, the rod-maker is blamed
and his work decried. The makers know this, and that their reputation for
skilled and honest work is as sensitive as that of a woman. ......To such of
my readers as wish to buy and do not care to make, I would say that the
maker who has a reputation, will do his best to maintain it. If he once
turned out good work, competition will force him to do so still. If he has
the skill, you may be sure he will use it. No one knows better than he that
one bad rod will do him more harm than a hundred first class in every
respect will benefit him.....
- Henry P. Wells, "Fly Rods and Fly Tackle" - 1885
|
|
Mark well the various seasons of
the year, How the succeeding insect race appear, In their revolving moon one
color reigns, Which in the next the fickle trout disdains; Oft have I seen a
skilful angler try The various colors of the treach'rous fly; When he with
fruitless pain hath skimmed the brook, And the coy fish rejects the skipping
hook. He shakes the boughs that on the margin grow, Which o'er the stream a
weaving forest throw; When if an insect fall (his certain guide) He gently
takes him from the whirling tide; Examines well his form with curious eyes,
His gaudy vest, his wings, his horns, his size. Then round his hook the
chosen fur he winds, And on the back a speckled feather binds; So just the
colors shine through every part, That nature seems to live again in art.
- John Gay, in Rural Sports 1720
|
|
It is only the inexperienced and thoughtless who find
pleasure in killing fish for the mere sake of killing them. No sportsman
does this.
- W.C. Prime, 1888
|
|
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.
- Dr. George Washington Bethune, 1847
|
|
Go, take thine angle, and with practiced line, Light
as the gossamer, the current sweep; And if thou failest in the calm still
deep In this rough eddy, may a prize be thine. Say thou'rt unlucky where the
sunbeams shine; Beneath the shadow, where these flowing waters creep,
Perchance the monarch of the brook shall leap. For fate is ever better than
design Still persevere: the giddiest breeze that blows For thee may blow
with fame and fortune rife; Be prosperous, and what care if it arose Out of
some pebble with the stream at strife, Or that the light wind dallied with
the leafy boughs? Though art successful - such is human life!
- Thomas Doubleday, 1818
|
|
All the charm of the angler's life would be lost but
for these hours of thought and memory. All along the brook, all day on lake
or river, while he takes his sport, he thinks. All the long evenings in
camp, or cottage, or inn, he tells stories of his own life, hears stories of
his friend's lives, and if alone calls up the magic of memory.
- W.C. Prime, 1888
|
|
Up i' the early morning, Sleepy pleasures scorning,
Rod in hand and creel on back, I'm away, away! Not a care to vex me, Nor a
fear to perplex me, Blithe as any bird that pipes in the merry May. Out come
reel and tackle, Out come midge and hackle, Length of gut, like gossamer, on
the south wind streaming. Brace of palmers fine, As ever decked a line,
Dubbed with herl and ribbed with gold, in the sunlight streaming.
- Westwood, 1886
|
|
And this our life, exempt from public haunt Finds
tongues in trees, and books in running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good
in everything. I would not change it.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene 1
Line 2
|
|
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river
runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over
rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless
raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.
- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, 1976
|
|
Around the steel no tortur'd worm shall twine, No
blood of living insect stain my line; Let me, less cruel, cast the feather'd
hook, With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook, Silent along the mazy
margin stray, And with the fur-wrought fly delude the prey.
- John Gay, Rural Sports, 1720
|
|
The one great ingredient in successful fly-fishing is
patience. The man whose fly is always on the water has the best chance.
There is always a chance of a fish or two, no matter how hopeless it looks.
You never know what may happen in fly-fishing.
- Francis Francis, 1862
|
|
The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what
is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
- John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir
|
|
But, remember the back cast is the foundation, and
that unless it is solid the superstructure will be rickety. Remember also
that the motion of the rod through the air should be almost, or quite
noiseless. Nothing offends the angler's ear more than the "swish" of a
fly-rod. It is like a false note to an educated musical ear. It indicates a
degree of force about as appropriate to the end in view, as a burglar's
jimmy tong a watch. This should never be, except possibly when casting
directly against the wind or for distance only.
- Henry P. Wells, "Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle", 1885
|
|
For the supreme test of a fisherman is not how many
fish he has caught, not even how he has caught them, but what he has caught
when he has caught no fish.
- John H. Bradley "Farewell Thou Busy World" - 1935
|
|
When you fish with a flie, if it be possible, let no
part of your line touch the water, but your flie only.
- Isaak Walton, 1496
|
|
Oh, the brave fisher's life, It is the best of any, 'T
is full of pleasure, void of strife, And 't is beloved of many: Other Joyes,
Are but toyes, Only this Lawful is, For our skil Breeds no ill, But content
and pleasure.
- Isaak Walton, 1496
|
|
When the beginner can cast his fly into his hat, eight
times out of ten, at forty feet, he is a fly fisher; and so far as casting
is concerned, a good one.
- James A. Henshall, MD, 1881
|
|
O, sir, doubt not that Angling is an art; is it not an
art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly?
- Isaak Walton, 1496
|
|
Enjoy thy stream oh, harmless fish, And when an angler
for his dish, Through gluttony's vile sin, Attempts--a wretch--to pull thee
out God give thee strength, oh, gentle trout, To pull the rascal in.
- Peter Pindar
|
|
April 1st, 1878 -ng day. Fished Halfway brook
from Morgan brook to, and through the woods; then fished Ogden brook from
Van Husen's road to Gleason's. Banks more than full of roily snow water;
weather decidedly cold; strong wind from the Northwest; cloudy sky. Caught
one small trout that I returned to his native element to grow; discovered
from my single specimen of the Salvelinus fontinalis that they have the same
bright spots that they have always had; look the same, smell the same, feel
the same; other peculiarities lacking. Warm sun and rain required to develop
the characteristics we so much admire in our leaping friend. Managed to fall
into the Ogden brook - in fact went in without the slightest difficulty,
amid applause from the bank; discovered from my involuntary plunge that the
water is just as wet as last year, and if memory serves, a trifle colder.
Reached home in the evening, cold, wet, tired and hungry. Nevertheless, had
a mostglorious time.
- A. Nelson Cheney, 1878 |
|
In chapter seven of his delightful and
beautifully written book, My Moby Dick, writer William Humphrey
scourges current angling literature.
“If you were to compete with the crowds now
on the streams in quest of trout you needed to be a physicist, an
entomologist, a limnologist, a statistician, a biometrician. The angler had
metamorphosed into the ichthyologist, and the prevailing prose reflected the
change – if mud can be said to reflect.”
I love – any verb less freighted with emotion
would be inadequate – Humphrey’s writing. I’ve read his other books. I
would give all my graphites if I could write one-fourth as well. But I
disagree with him when he takes today’s angling writers to task. After all,
if a man is led by his sport to thirtst for knowledge of entomology, that is
his affair, and he is the better for it. Indeed, the whole world stands to
gain if the angler’s curiosity recruits him to defend the natural
environment.
Why condemn a sportsman because he comes to
find more – or at least equal – pleasure in seining a stream for nymphs than
in nymphing for trout? I haven’t arrived there yet, though I do keep a copy
of Lisinger’s Aquatic Insects of California on my bookshelf. But I
can understand, even empathize with the man in his affliction, because when
I was a boy I had just about as much fun hunting nightcrawlser with a
flashlight as I did dabbling those worms for trout. It was a skill, knowing
how to set on the worm before it darted underground, and how to play the
worm applying steady, measured pressure until the worm itred and came to the
bait can. And I learned a lot about the habits and ecological importance of
the worm.
But Humphrey falls short in his scorn. What
he fails to mention is that today’s angler must also be an etymologist (no,
I didn’t misspell the word for bug studier; an etymologist is a word
studier). What brings this to mind is my past struggle with the long family
name for the little bitty midge, Chironomidae.
I never at first paid much more attention to
that word than I would to a non-biting gnat. I just pronounced it as if it
were written, “cheer on, oh mid,” with the accent falling on the second
syllable. But I became a little uneasy when I realized that about half my
fellow anglers pronounced it like “cur-on-oh-mid.”
After awhile my scarred-over inferiority
complex commenced to smart and itch so badly that I looked the word up in
the twelve volume, etymology oriented Century Dictionary and found
that we were all wrong: it is pronounced ki-ro-nom I-de (say cairo-nom-id-day
with the accent on the nom) and it’s a Greek word for somebody who moves his
hands a lot when he talks.
And so it is that the cult of fly angling
leads the worshipper down strange and wonderful paths; and there is no use
resisting or being peevish about it like Mr. Humphrey; just let yourself go.
Next summer isn’t far away. There will be
garden parties. Fly anglers will have been momentarily dragged away from
their streams and lakes and will be in attendance, dressed in seersuckers,
or in white trousers and blue blazers. They will be in their best, Henry
James garden party conversation form.
It is late afternoon and the garden party is
in full flow. Guests wander in the manicured garden, a flux, forming and
reforming into small groups. The beautiful woman and the distinguished
angler have met by chance, alone in a garden niche, slightly apart.
Introductions are exchanged and conversation follows easily and richly
against the muted background of music and clinking glasses.
A tiny gnat buzzes around. The angler
contemplates the bug while jiggling the ice in his cocktail glass, and she
is already half dazzled by the brilliant and witty conversation of the
tanned, handsome stranger, and the angler says, “Ah, the Cairo-nom-id-day
hatch.”
A slender hand caresses his upper arm; a
lovely bare shoulder presses his chest. “You’re wonderful,” she sighs. “How
do you know all these marvelous things?"
Cult of Angling
By: Ben Shuey
November-December 1979
Flyfishing the West
|
|
10 Commandments
of Fishing
1) Thou shalt have no sports
before me. Water skiing is most profane, but lo, the man who trolleth
with cow bells.
2) Thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image. Pity the sinner who bows to the false idols of
spinner flies, bubble floats, those damneth fly/spin combos, but most evil
of all the Popeil Pocketeth Fisherman.
3) Thou shalt not take the
name of Izaak Walton in vain.
4) Remember the Sabbath day
and keep it wholly (for angling). On this day you must take up the
bamboo staff and make great pilgrimages. Do not look back, though if
thou dearly care to be an angler above all else, do not despair the shriven
tongue. (Translation - listen to a hell-fire sermon on the radio as
you chariot to the wilds.)
5) Honor thy rod and thy
reel.
6) Thou shalt not kill.
Catcheth and release is the key to the gates of the eternal fishery.
7) Thou shalt not commit
adultery. Guilt and punishment shall rain unto the man who consorts
the tempting bait with his stiffeth rod.
8) Thou shalt not steal.
The man who wadeth into another man's run shall bring a curse upon his name
for generation after generation. Behold the order Izaak, long toothed
in vengeance.
9) Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbor. Lay silent and still tongued before the
multitudes and cubits of fish claimed by thy neighbor. Justly, the
fish that floppeth from your own hook may also groweth as the word is
spread.
10) Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's buxom fishing partnereth, dritetch boat, signature series Pezon
Caneth rod, water tigheth, felt soleth waders, etceteraeth.
Let he who is without sin
among you cast the first No. 2/0 bucktail into the wind.
- From The
Fly Fisherman's Decalogue by Don Roberts, July-August 1978 Flyfishing the
West
|
|
"Fly fishing is a mental and
emotional distraction, self-conscious by design. This is not an
attempt at elitism or exclusiveness, but a natural process which is
generated by specialization. No other sport requires a more rigorous
melding of man to his environment. ... Few people would argue that we do not
live in an intense and frenetic society. Fly fishing is one of the few
sports which offers an escape from urban turbulence, exercise without
competition, mental distraction without tension and catharsis without
confrontation."
- Flyfishing as Survival by Donald Roberts,
March-April 1978 Flyfishing the West.
|
|
Some
fishermen think that any rod they buy and pay for should stand any form of
abuse, and if it does not, the rod-maker is blamed and his work decried. The
makers know this, and that their reputation for skilled and honest work is
as sensitive as that of a woman. ......To such of my readers as wish to buy
and do not care to make, I would say that the maker who has a reputation,
will do his best to maintain it. If he once turned out good work,
competition will force him to do so still. If he has the skill, you may be
sure he will use it. No one knows better than he that one bad rod will do
him more harm than a hundred first class in every respect will benefit
him.....
- Henry
P. Wells, "Fly Rods and Fly Tackle" - 1885
|
|
Mark well the various seasons of
the year, How the succeeding insect race appear, In their revolving moon one
color reigns, Which in the next the fickle trout disdains; Oft have I seen a
skilful angler try The various colors of the treach'rous fly; When he with
fruitless pain hath skimmed the brook, And the coy fish rejects the skipping
hook. He shakes the boughs that on the margin grow, Which o'er the stream a
weaving forest throw; When if an insect fall (his certain guide) He gently
takes him from the whirling tide; Examines well his form with curious eyes,
His gaudy vest, his wings, his horns, his size. Then round his hook the
chosen fur he winds, And on the back a speckled feather binds; So just the
colors shine through every part, That nature seems to live again in art.
- John Gay, in Rural Sports 1720
|
|
It is
only the inexperienced and thoughtless who find pleasure in killing fish for
the mere sake of killing them. No sportsman does this.
- W.C.
Prime, 1888
|
|
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.
- Dr.
George Washington Bethune, 1847
|
|
Go, take
thine angle, and with practiced line, Light as the gossamer, the current
sweep; And if thou failest in the calm still deep In this rough eddy, may a
prize be thine. Say thou'rt unlucky where the sunbeams shine; Beneath the
shadow, where these flowing waters creep, Perchance the monarch of the brook
shall leap. For fate is ever better than design Still persevere: the
giddiest breeze that blows For thee may blow with fame and fortune rife; Be
prosperous, and what care if it arose Out of some pebble with the stream at
strife, Or that the light wind dallied with the leafy boughs? Though art
successful - such is human life!
- Thomas
Doubleday, 1818
|
|
All the
charm of the angler's life would be lost but for these hours of thought and
memory. All along the brook, all day on lake or river, while he takes his
sport, he thinks. All the long evenings in camp, or cottage, or inn, he
tells stories of his own life, hears stories of his friend's lives, and if
alone calls up the magic of memory.
- W.C.
Prime, 1888
|
|
Up i'
the early morning, Sleepy pleasures scorning, Rod in hand and creel on back,
I'm away, away! Not a care to vex me, Nor a fear to perplex me, Blithe as
any bird that pipes in the merry May. Out come reel and tackle, Out come
midge and hackle, Length of gut, like gossamer, on the south wind streaming.
Brace of palmers fine, As ever decked a line, Dubbed with herl and ribbed
with gold, in the sunlight streaming.
-
Westwood, 1886
|
|
And this
our life, exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, and books in
running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not
change it.
-
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene 1 Line 2
|
|
Around
the steel no tortur'd worm shall twine, No blood of living insect stain my
line; Let me, less cruel, cast the feather'd hook, With pliant rod athwart
the pebbled brook, Silent along the mazy margin stray, And with the
fur-wrought fly delude the prey.
- John
Gay, Rural Sports, 1720
|
|
The one
great ingredient in successful fly-fishing is patience. The man whose fly is
always on the water has the best chance. There is always a chance of a fish
or two, no matter how hopeless it looks. You never know what may happen in
fly-fishing.
-
Francis Francis, 1862
|
|
The
charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but
attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
- John
Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir
|
|
But,
remember the back cast is the foundation, and that unless it is solid the
superstructure will be rickety. Remember also that the motion of the rod
through the air should be almost, or quite noiseless. Nothing offends the
angler's ear more than the "swish" of a fly-rod. It is like a false note to
an educated musical ear. It indicates a degree of force about as appropriate
to the end in view, as a burglar's jimmy tong a watch. This should
never be, except possibly when casting directly against the wind or for
distance only.
- Henry
P. Wells, "Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle", 1885
|
|
For the
supreme test of a fisherman is not how many fish he has caught, not even how
he has caught them, but what he has caught when he has caught no fish.
- John
H. Bradley "Farewell Thou Busy World" - 1935
|
|
When you
fish with a flie, if it be possible, let no part of your line touch the
water, but your flie only.
- Isaak
Walton, 1496
|
|
Oh, the
brave fisher's life, It is the best of any, 'T is full of pleasure, void of
strife, And 't is beloved of many: Other Joyes, Are but toyes, Only this
Lawful is, For our skil Breeds no ill, But content and pleasure.
- Isaak
Walton, 1496
|
|
When the
beginner can cast his fly into his hat, eight times out of ten, at forty
feet, he is a fly fisher; and so far as casting is concerned, a good one.
- James
A. Henshall, MD, 1881
|
|
O, sir,
doubt not that Angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a trout with
an artificial fly?
- Isaak
Walton, 1496
|
|
Enjoy
thy stream oh, harmless fish, And when an angler for his dish, Through
gluttony's vile sin, Attempts--a wretch--to pull thee out God give thee
strength, oh, gentle trout, To pull the rascal in.
- Peter
Pindar
|
|
April
1st, 1878 -ng day. Fished Halfway brook from Morgan brook to, and
through the woods; then fished Ogden brook from Van Husen's road to
Gleason's. Banks more than full of roily snow water; weather decidedly cold;
strong wind from the Northwest; cloudy sky. Caught one small trout that I
returned to his native element to grow; discovered from my single specimen
of the Salvelinus fontinalis that they have the same bright spots that they
have always had; look the same, smell the same, feel the same; other
peculiarities lacking. Warm sun and rain required to develop the
characteristics we so much admire in our leaping friend. Managed to fall
into the Ogden brook - in fact went in without the slightest difficulty,
amid applause from the bank; discovered from my involuntary plunge that the
water is just as wet as last year, and if memory serves, a trifle colder.
Reached home in the evening, cold, wet, tired and hungry. Nevertheless, had
a mostglorious time.
- A.
Nelson Cheney, 1878
|
|
At early dawn when the air is crisp
And you're standing knee deep in a beautiful rip
You see a trout rise to an unknown fly
Then your heart starts to thump and you wonder why
You're a neophyte fly fisherman.
You can measure the cast and study the lie
Then lengthen the line to make your first try
As you check the rod to get a good presentation
You hold your breath in solemn anticipation
You must be a fly fisherman!
The fly floats gently on its way to the trout
You know it will "take it" without a doubt.
You're all charged up and ready to strike
But the fly floats by because something's not right
You are still a fly fisherman.
Youyour fly box and select a new fly
Then lengthen the tippet before the next try
Change your position to help with the cast
And hope you have made the right decision
at last
Now you are a doubtful fly fisherman.
- George Harvey A Fly Fisherman (first 20 lines),
in "Fly Fisherman" magazine, December, 2002 [Flyfishing]
|
|
|
You wait a moment to settle your nerves
Then make your cast with a right hand curve
The fly settles down and the float looked good
But the trout refused it and there you stood
A dejected fly fisherman.
You looked things over and were not yet beat
Then changed flies again and were ready to repeat
The next try was poor because you rushed the cast
You hold your breath in solemn anticipation
You must be a fly fisherman!
The fly floats gently on its way to the trout
You know it will "take it" without a doubt.
You're all charged up and ready to strike
But the fly floats by because something's not right
You are still a fly fisherman.
Youyour fly box and select a new fly
Then lengthen the tippet before the next try
Change your position to help with the cast
And hope you have made the right decision
at last
Now you are a doubtful fly fisherman.
- George Harvey A Fly Fisherman (last 20 lines),
in "Fly Fisherman" magazine, December, 2002 [Flyfishing]
|
|
"Fishing books should ooze from a riverbank, not rocket out of publisher's
offices in big cities."
Neil Patterson Chalkstream Chronicles
|
|
"In 1918 I realized that the growing use
of the automobile, with its easy transportation, would soon spoil all public
trout fishing."
Edward R. Hewitt A Trout and Salmon Fisherman for Seventy-Five years [1948]
|
|
"Fishing books, lit by emotion recollected in tranquility, are like poetry.
We do not think of them as books but as people. They are our
companions and not only riverside. Summer and winter they are with us
and what a pleasant company they are."
Arthur Ransome The Fisherman's Library [1959]
|
|
"Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fly fish and
he'll move to Montana."
|
|
"Often,
I've been exhausted on trout streams, uncomfortable, wet, cold,
briar-scarred, sunburned, mosquito-bitten, but never, with a flyrod in my
hand, have I been unhappy."
Charles Kuralt
|
|
"I've always been fascinated
by fly shops. I'm thinking of buying one to go with the used trout stream
that I purchased on Ebay last week."
|
|
"Fishing simply sent me out
of my mind. I could neither think nor talk of anything else, so that mother
was angry and said that she would not let me fish again because I might fall
ill from such excitement."
Sergei Aksarov [1791-1859]
|
|
"You will search far to find
a fisherman who'll admit that a taste for fishing, like a taste for liquor,
must be governed lest it come to possess its possesor."
Sparse Grey Hackle.
|
|
"He slept with his fly rod
standing in the corner next to his bed. He didn't bother taking off his
shirt and pants. His vest on the bed post and his wading boots were placed
where he could swing off the bed, and like a fireman ram his feet into
them. His fishing hat was by his pillow. The only thing difference was
that he didn't have a pole to slide down to the stream."
"ng Day" Jimmy D. Moore
|
|
"I carried my normal fly
fishing stuff, three rods, one each for big water, medium water and one for
small streams with overgrown banks. I took my normal six boxes of flies,
including my steelhead box. Don't know why I did that other than they are
so pleasing to my eyes, for I sure wasn't going to catch steelies in New
Mexico. I carried my old vest, my new Filson chest pack and my belly pack,
my lite weight waders, my wading boots, and my rain jacket with hood. I
had enough fly fishing equipment for three people. But, when it came time
to hit the water, I took only my little flea rod, a six foot 2 wt Gallatin,
one box of trout flies, stuffed in a big pocket of my fishing shirt, some
extra tippet and my gortex rain jacket, and a bottle of spring water and a
energy bar stuck in the hip pockets of my baggy shorts. I did wear my
wading boots, and for the first time in my fishing life, I used a wading
staff. I fished less, but enjoyed it more, pausing often while leaning on my
staff to admire the beauty of the Fall colors that were beginning to make
their way into the trees along the banks. A light breeze with a tinge of
coolness during the heat of the day gave notice that Fall was only a few
days away. I inhaled the sweetness of the clean mountain air while stopping
to watch a squirrel as it scurried to find food to store for winter.
Suddenly, I was brought back to the stream by a light tug on my line, a nice
twelve inch rainbow. Yes, I was in Fly Fishing Heaven!"
Jimmy D. Moore Outdoor Memories
|
|
"The
thing to remember when fishing the Green River in Utah is this: If you can
see your fly on the water, it is too big."
Wes Johnson
|
|
"Lots of people committed crimes during the year who would not have done so
if they had been fishing. The increase of crime is among those deprived of
the regenerations that impregnate the mind and character of the fisherman."
Herbert Hoover
|
|
"Has it ever struck
you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God's critters tempting decent
men."
James Barrie,
author of Peter Pan, 1891
|
|
"I fish all the time when I'm at home; so
when I get a chance to go on vacation, I make sure I get in plenty of
fishing."
Thomas McGuane
|
|
"The reason that all other kinds of fishermen
look up to the dry-fly purist is not that he catches more fish than they; on
the contrary, it is because he catches fewer. His is the sport in its
purist, most impractical, least material form."
William Humphrey
|
|
"His love of streams, of fishing, seemed so
complete and pure and mysterious. He knew something I didn't... I wanted to
learn how to find fish, how to tell a good stream from a bad one, how not to
frighten trout in the water, what fly to use. I wanted to experience that,
too, to love something so utterly you assumed everyone else was as
fascinated with it as you."
from an essay by Gretchen Legler
|
|
"Standing in a cool stream with a mountain range
or a meadow nearby, fly rod in hand and cigar in mouth, is the way God meant
mankind to live."
Jon Margolis and Jeff MacNelly
|
|
"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.'"
Allison Moir, "Love the Man, Love the Fly Rod", in A Different Angle: Fly
Fishing Stories by Women
|
|
"One evening I was awakened from a deep sleep by
a weird noise coming from my husband, only to find out he was dreaming and
he was a Dry Fly. I suspected then, and now realize, his dreams are not
made up of wild crazy women, only episodes of his days of being in the
stream."
Jan Thousand
|
|
"The man who coined the phrase "Money can't
buy happiness", never bought himself a good fly rod!"
Reg Baird, from his video Labrador Trout
|
|
"Some people are under the impression that all
that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily
and without blushing. But that is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is
useless. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of
probability, the general air of scrupulous---almost of pedantic---veracity,
that the experienced angler is seen."
Jerome K. Jerome
|
|
"A fly fishing season does not pass in which I
do not find myself misguided by following one of my favourite precepts. "
Huish Edye The Angler And The Trout [1945]
|
|
"Certainly no aspect of fly fishing is as
enjoyable as those which have a good, firmly based and well established myth
or two for company. "
Conrad Voss Bark A Fly On The Water [1986]
|
|
"The fisherman fishes. It is at once an act of
humility and a small rebellion. And it is something more. To him his
fishing is an island of reality in a world of dreams and shadow. "
Robert Traver Trout Madness [1960]
|
|
"The contentment
which fills the mind of the angler at the close of his day's sport, is one
of the chiefest charms in his life.."
William Cowper
Prime
|
|
"We who go a-fishing are a peculiar people.
Like other men and women in many respects, we are like one another, and like
no others, in other respects. We understand each other's thoughts by an
intuition of which we know nothing. We cast our flies on many waters, where
memories and fancies and facts rise, and we take them and show them to each
other,
and small or large, we are content with our catch. "
W. C. Prime I Go A-Fishing [1873]
|
|
"False casting for practice is
the best way to achieve the feel of the line in the air, but in actual
fishing, false casts should be limited in number to absolute necessity. In
the first place, the more false casts you make, the greater are the chances
for the fish to see your arm waving, or the line in the air. And the
greater are your chances to make a mistake in the cast and lose your
timing. Most anglers, especially tyros, false cast too often. Three
false casts should be sufficient for any throw and two is better. One is
perfect."
Joe Brooks,
Trout Fishing, an Outdoor Life Book [1972]
|
|
"Choose your fly fishing
friends wisely. They can have an effect on how many and the size of the
trout you catch. Fly fishers who spend a lot of time fishing together will
unconciously adopt some of the other's mannerisms, choice of flies and
casting techniques over time. Surrounding yourself with great fly
fishers who catch a lot of trout will help you catch more and larger trout.
However, does that mean that while you as the poorer angler improve
your fishing prowess, the better angler's fishing prowess deteriorates? It
could be that as your fishing improves and your friend's deteriorates, he
reaches a point where his fishing begins to improve by watching you
the better angler. If that is the case, somewhere along the line, both of
you will become great anglers." Now, if both of you are piss poor fly
fishers . . . . . . .
Jimmy D. Moore,
"Character VS Catching" [1998]
|
|
"The sporting
qualities of a fish are dependent neither on its size nor its weight, but on
the effort of concentration, the skill and mastery the fish demands from the
fisherman."
Charles Ritz,
A Fly Fisher's Life [1959]
|
|
"Fishing consists of a series of misadventures interspersed by occasional moments of
glory."
Howard Marshall,
Reflections on a River [1967]
|
|
"Neither
time nor repetition has destroyed the illusion that the rise of a trout to a
dry fly is properly regarded in the light of a miracle."
Harold Blaisdell,
The Philosophical Fisherman [1969]
|
|
My Biggest worry is that my wife (when I'm
dead) will sell my fishing gear for what I said I paid for it.
Koos Brandt
|
|
When a man picks up a fly rod for the first time, he may not know, he has
been born again.
Joseph D. Farris
|
|
Game fish are too valuable to only be caught once.
Lee Wulff
|
|
"He told us about Christ's disciples being fisherman, and we were left to
assume...that all great fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fisherman
and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman."
Norman Maclean-A River Runs Through It
|
|
PURIST: dry flies only, barbless hooks, and releases a great supper for a
baloney sandwich.
|
|
Put backing on your line; even if you never use it. It helps you dream.
|
|
To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and
a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two
lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and
be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have
my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.
- Ernest Hemingway )
|
|
Flyfishing is like sex, everyone thinks there is more than there is, and
that everyone is getting more than their share.
- Henry Kanemoto, on Flyfish@ 1996
|
|
There are trout in my river whose attitudes, Are quite of the blackest
ingratitude; Though I offer them duns, Most superior ones, They maintain a
persistent Black Gnatitude.
- Anonymous
|
|
Testament of a Fisherman
I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found,
which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people
are found, which are invariably ugly; because of all the television
commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape;
because, in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things
they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of
small rebellion; because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be
bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and
humility and endless patience; because I suspect that men are going along
this way for the last time, and I for one don't want to waste the trip;
because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters; because only in
the woods can I find solitude without loneliness; because bourbon out of an
old tin cup always tastes better out there; because maybe one day I will
catch a mermaid; and, finally, not because I regard fishing as being so
terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns
of men are equally unimportant - and not nearly so much fun.
- Robert Traver, 1964 (Judge John Voelker, 1903-1993)
|
|
Fly-fishing is the most fun you can have standing up.
- Arnold Gingrich, 1969
|
|
To him, all good things -- trout as well as eternal salvation-- come by
grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.
- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, 1976
|
|
Some go to church and think about fishing, others go fishing and think about
God.
- Tony Blake, on Flyfish@
|
|
"If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a
shortage of fishing poles."
Doug Larson
|
|
"Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to
contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration."
Izaac Walton
|
|
"If fishing is like religion, then fly fishing is high church."
Tom Browaw
|
|
"I am not against golf, since I cannot suspect it keeps armies of the
unworthy from discovering trout."
Paul O'Neil
|
|
"Calling fly-fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job."
Paul Schullery
|
|
"Blessings upon all that hate contention, and love quietness, and virtue,
and Angling."
Izaak Walton
|
|
"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 less than in a place that was less than beautiful."
Charles Kuralt
|
"The reason that all other kinds of fishermen look up to the dry-fly purist
is not that he catches more fish than they; on the contrary, it is because
he catches fewer. His is the sport in its purist, most impractical, least
material form."
-- William Humphrey
|
"Lots of people committed crimes during the year who would not have done
so if they had been fishing. The increase of crime is among those
deprived of the regenerations that impregnate the mind and character of
the fisherman."
-- Herbert Hoover
|
"If you want to fish, fish."
-- German Proverb
|
"Fishing is fundamentally a game of chance, and at heart we are all
gamblers."
-- Dorothy Noyes Arms
|
"His love of streams, of fishing, seemed so complete and pure and
mysterious. He knew something I didn't... I wanted to learn how to find
fish, how to tell a good stream from a bad one, how not to frighten trout in
the water, what fly to use. I wanted to experience that, too, to love
something so utterly you assumed everyone else was as fascinated with it as
you."
-- from an essay by Gretchen Legler
|
"... standing in a cool stream with a mountain range or a meadow nearby, fly
rod in hand and cigar in mouth, is the way God meant mankind to live."
-- Jon Margolis and Jeff MacNelly
|
|
Fishing provides the angler a
detachment of mind about him, a sense of freedom and length of days, to
which it is less easy to attain in these times of trains, letters, telegrams
and incessant news.
Modified from Fly Fishing by Sir Edward Grey
|
The traveller fancies he has
seen the country. So he has, the outside of it at least; but the angler only
sees the inside. The angler only is brought close, face to face with the
flower and bird and insect life of the rich river banks, the only part of
the landscape where the hand of man has never interfered.
Charles Kingsley, 1890
|
A gray-haired baitfisher is very rare, while the passion for fly-casting,
whether for trout or salmon, grows by what it feeds upon, and continues a
source of the highest pleasure even after the grasshopper becomes a burden.
- George Dawson, 1888
|
|
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 theair, the new lease of life secured
thereby, and the many, many pleasant recollections of all one has seen,
heard and done.
Charles Orvis, 1886
|
|
"Fly fishing, may be a very
pleasant amusement; but angling, or fishing with a float, I can only compare
to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other. "
Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-1784]
|
|
" 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 [1975]
|
|
"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 [1914]
|
|
"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
|
|
"Many men fish all of their lives without
realizing that it's not the fish they are after. "
Henry David Thoreau
|
|
Angling consists as much in a love of the peace
of the country and of Nature as in the taking of fish.
Eric Taverner "Trout Fishing from All Angles"
|
|
"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" [1965]
|
|
"Catching trout is like catching a bad cold,
it's hard to get over. But then who wants to get over catching trout ? "
BIGTROUTMAN, aka JIMMY D,
Jimmy's Fishing Quotes (July 15, 2001)
|
|
“Lo, the fisherman’s wife. All she wants is the
spare bedroom back. It’s covered with rods and reels, flies and vests,
waders, rain gear, hooks and leaders, etc. For a trip six months from now.
Not a safe place to step or sleep or rest! “But honey! I want to be
prepared,” he says. So Lo the fisherman’s wife.”
Jody Moore - April, 2000
|
|
"The fly angler who says they have never,
ever fallen while wading , is either a pathogenic liar, or has never been
fly fishing."
Jimmy Moore
|
|
"It doesn't take long to understand there's a
paradox to all of this. Here you are on a wonderful, shimmering river
casting a fly over the biggest trout you've ever seen in your life when you
realize that the reason it's possible is because there is a dam upstream
from you. It doesn't make sense at first. The river exixts, as you know
it, because upstream there is flat water" A reservoir is making all this
possible? Nonsense!"
Ed Engle in Fly Fishing Tailwaters
|
"A standard saying among fly fishermen is that
trout spend anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of their time feeding below the
water's surface on the immature forms of aquatic insects. Some anglers are
even more precise, but whatever the exact percentage , it's safe to say that
to fully appreciate any tailwater fishery you will have to learn the fine
art of nymphing."
Ed Engle in Fly Fishing the Tailwaters
|
|
"When it comes to cults, fly fishing isn't
much different than most. Simply put, this means that enough is never
enough. With luck you can reach a pleasant level of mellow fanaticism and
maybe even hold down a regular job at the plant. But there is a
trout bum that lurks in every one of us and I think we all secretly know
that a sparse little lean-to under the bridge, say on Henry's Fork of the
Snake River, is never more than a cast away. "
Ed Engle in Fly Fishing the Tailwaters, A Fly Fisher's Life [1959]
|
|
"These brook trout
will strike any fly you present, provided you don't get close enough to
present it."
Dick Blalock
|
|
"In fly fishing,
compromises are often perfectly acceptable; there are few absolutes. I
guess you could say the same thing about marriage."
"Alaska Magazine" Ken Marsh
|
|
My first question
to a newbie nymph fisher is; can you fish worms? Best advice I can give
someone like that is to do that same thing with a nymph. Dry flies, a
different story.
Gert Jensen
|
|
No truer words
have been spoken - We all learn from each other. The youngins keep us old
farts honest, ( well, sort of ) -- your questioning and curious minds bring
on many new innovations and ideas; that gift both young and young at heart
with more enjoyment from the sport.
Bob Haering
|
|
"I shall always
remember that trip and the simple pleasure we had, just knocking about the
countryside, fishing a bit, the humor of coming back to the Inn fishless and
our host grinning from ear to ear without losing his cigar butt, then
bringing out those beautiful little brookies, still full of color and as
shiny as when they were first taken from the beaver pond. Fishless day
indeed! Who could have had a better time?"
"Fishless Days, Angling Nights" Sparse Grey Hackle
|
|
"Could it be that
trout fishing is only an excuse to enjoy God's gift of the great outdoors?"
Jody Moore, 2000
|
|
"Maybe that's
because the waters we fish reflect out moods, whims, or thing within that
run deep and constant. Their isolation promises inspiration without
interruption;one moment you're holding a dripping, sparkling fish, the next
you're look at the water seeing an image of yourself and nobody one else.
For a moment, you know precisely who you are.
"Alaska Magazine" Ken Marsh
|
|
What is Fly
Fishing? "A stick and a string with a fly at one end and a fool at the
other."
Anonymous |
|
"Fly tying is a
disease! It permeates through your entire psyche. You do crazy things, like
stopping your car on the side of the road so you can cut the tail off a dead
squirrel. You steal thread and beads from your wife's sewing stuff. You
study hollow noodles to see if they can be used as a fly body. You buy nail hardner because it works and is cheaper than Fly shop cement. You have
enough hooks to tie a fly every day for the rest of your life. You have
several tying vices, but are always looking for something better. You know
the difference between Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. You know what a
BWO is and can ispell what CDC stands for. You tie more and fish less! Did
you know that some of the greatest fly tyers never wet a line? It's true!
Yes, fly tying is an incurable disease! Aren't you glad? I am!"
Jimmy D. Moore,
December 12, 2002
|
|
" The ability to
cast your flyline seventy feet and flick a gnat off a streamside bush
doesn't make you a great trout fisherman! "
Jimmy D. Moore,
December 11, 2002
|
|
"Now, if all fish
were caught with the fly, there would be no need for other rods than the
Trout and Salmon fly-rods; but as such, unfortunately, is not the case we
are compelled to adopt other rods in accordance with the mode of fishing,
the character of the fish to be caught and the kind of bait to be used."
"Book of The Black Bass" Dr. Hensahall
|
|
"Fisherman spend
a lot of time musing while on the water. to ponder whether a fish you caught
10 or 20 years ago might still swim in the same river, and maybe even the
same riffle where you caught it in an earlier part of your life, is a
pleasant way to pass time between casts."
"Alaska Magazine" Les Gara
|
|
It is not
difficult to learn how to cast; but it is difficult to learn not to snap the
flies off at every throw.
Charles Dudley Warner, 1862 |
|
"I doubt if
rifle, shot-gun, or fowling-piece; ever becomes so dear and near to the
sportsman as the rod to the angler, for the rod really becomes a part of
himself, as it were, thought which he feels every motion of the fish when
hooked, and which, being in a measure under the control of his will, and
responsive to the slightest motion of his wrist, seem to be imbued with an
intelligence almost life-like."
"Book of The Black Bass" Dr. Hensall
|
|
"It must, of
course, be admitterd that large stories of fishing adventure are sometimes
told by fisherman -- and why should this not be so? Beyond all question
there is no sphere of human activity so full of strange and wonderful
incidents as theirs."
Grover Cleveland
|
|
"The heart of
fly-fishing lies in solving problems. Observations leads to knowledge-of
the prey and its prey. If you're playing the game right, your fly becomes a
convincing counterfeit in the food chain."
"Alaska Magazine" Ken Marsh
|
|
For the rich
there's therapy for the rest of us there's Fly Fishing.
Anonymous
|
|
"I watch, out of
casting range,an amateur detective holding nothing more than a fly rod and a
handful of clues."
"Alaska Magazine" Ken Marsh
|
|
But, remember the
back cast is the foundation, and that unless it is solid the superstructure
will be rickety. Remember also that the motion of the rod through the air
should be almost, or quite noiseless. Nothing offends the angler's ear more
than the "swish" of a fly-rod. It is like a false note to an educated
musical ear. It indicates a degree of force about as appropriate to the end
in view, as a burglar's jimmy tong a watch. This should never be,
except possibly when casting directly against the wind or for distance only.
- Henry P. Wells, "Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle", 1885
|
|
In Praise of the
Wet Fly Oh, thrilling the rise to the lure that is dry, When the shy fish
comes up to his slaughter. Yet rather would I, Have the turn to my fly, With
a cunning brown wink under water. The bright little wink under water!,
Mysterious wink under water! Delightful to ply The subaqueous fly, And watch
for the wink under water!
- George Edward MacKenzie Skues, 1904
|
|
"By and large the
reporting is factual, but in a few instances I have claimed the right of
readjusting the facts to which every angler is entitled."
"Fishless Days, Angling Nights" Sparse Grey Hackle
|
|
"Soon after I
embraced the sport of angling I became convinced that I should never be able
to enjoy it if I had to rely on the cooperation of the fish."
"Fishless Days, Angling Nights" Sparse Grey Hackle
|
|
It is well known
that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with
anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to
take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented
waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole object in going
a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste
for the worm. No fly angler however, will use anything but the fly, except
when he happens to be alone.
- Charles Dudley Warner, 1862
|
|
The trout fly
does not resemble any known species of insect. It is a "conventionalized"
creation, as we say of ornamentation. The theory is, that, fly-fishing being
a high art, the fly must not be a tame imitation of nature, but an artistic
suggestion of it. It requires an artist to construct one; and not every
bungler can take a bit of red flannel, a peacocks feather, a flash of tinsel
thread, a cock's plume, a section of hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny object
that will not look like any fly, but will still suggest the universal
conventional fly.
- Charles Dudley Warner, 1862
|
|
In the fly book
the sportsman collects his treasures--the fairy imitations of the tiny
nymphs of the waterside --and it is the source of much delight in
inspecting, replenishing and arranging during the season when the trout are
safe from honorable pursuit.
- R.B. Roosevelt
|
|
You may always know a large trout when feeding in the evening. He rises
continuously, or at small intervals-in a still water almost always in the
same place, and makes little noise--barely elevating his mouth to suck in
the fly, and sometimes showing his back fin and tail. A large circle spreads
around him, but there are seldom any bubbles when he breaks the water, which
usually indicates the coarser fish.
- Sir Humphrey Davy, 1868
|
|
" When the word
began to get out, the idea of tying imitations of aquatic worms was not met
with universal approval in the fly fishing community. It seems that worms
had somehow gotten a bad name. I think a fishing pal of mine hit it on the
head when he said, " It just pisses them off that you can catch trout, I
mean really big trout, on a fly that a five-year old can tie in twenty
seconds! "
Ed Engle,
Fly Fishing The Tailwaters (1991) |
|
"It's not how the
fishing is at any given moment, but he accumulation of a lifetime of
experiences that counts."
"Treasury of Fly Fishing" edited by Tom Paugh
|
|
"What do you
want to do this afternoon, old man?", he asked.
"Fish," I said. "But you can't always fish," he said.
I told him I could and I was right and have proved it for thirty
years and more. "Well, well," he said, "please yourself, but isn't it dull
not catching anything?"And I said, as I've said a thousand times since,
"As if it could be."
Roland Pertwee,
"The River God" [1928]
|
|
"The true
fisherman approaches the first day of fishing season with all the sense of
wonder and awe of a child approaching Christmas."
Robert Traver,
Trout Madness [1960]
|
|
WET OR DRY ?
Halford argued dry and Skues argued wet
and that age old arguement isn't over yet!
Some of us fish both wet and dry and
never bother to understand "why".
Some fish only wet and some only dry and
some don't care as long as it's a pretty little 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
and if I try long enough that I can.
“Why waste your time with that 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, as his fresh hooked brown
rocketed toward the sky!
Alas, be they wet or be they dry.
I'll fish them both til the day I die!
Jimmy D. Moore,
Copyright November 2, 2002
|
|
All good fisherman stay young until they
die, for fishign is teh only dream of youth that doth not grow stale
with age."
J.W. Muller
|
|
"To catch the fish you must be the fish. But, if you are also what you
eat, you must also surely be the fly. What if you try to eat
yourself then you become you all over again. Oh the insanity of becoming
a fly fisherman. The peace is in doing and not thinking so much.
By: Justin W. Felter
|
|
"But remember
this-some of the best fly fishermen I've ever known were merely ordinary
casters, while some of the best casters I've ever seen known were poor
fishermen."
"Trout" Ray Bergman
|
| "A big trout will suck your
fly down. Count one, one thousand, then set the hook." |
|
"Of all the memories that have
clung to the day's events, and of all the sights and sounds to which I was
heir that morning, none so electrified me as did the first wild,
panic-stricken shriek of that tiny, unprepared reel. If ever a thing
inanimate screamed in abject terror it was that ounce or two of delicate and
airy metal."
"The Banshee Shadow Flies" by Gordon Grand.
|
| "Tourist dollars
should not dictate stocking procedures!" |
| "When you fish a
dry fly in the rain, are you really dry fly fishing?" |
|
"My First casts
are accompanied by a sense of mild desperation, fishing's equivalent of buck
fever. I'm forced to remind myself that here is no hurry."
Ken Marsh in "Alaska Magazine
|
|
"At the time in
my angling career when I knew the least I thought I knew everything and did
not hesitate to let others know that I did. Now that the years of hard work
and earnest desire to accomplish something worth while have given me some
knowledge I feel that I know nothing, that I am simply floundering upon a
sea of uncertainty, always looking for the perfect answer but never finding
it."
"Trout" Ray Bergman
|
|
I get all the
truth I need in the newspaper every morning, and every
chance I get, I go fishing, or swap stories with fishermen to get the taste
of it out of my mouth.
Ed Zern 1977
|
|
"The fish is an
animal that grows excessively fast between the moment
when it is taken and the moment when the fisherman describes it to his
friends."
|
|
"Fly-fishing
sometimes comes off (rightly) as a marriage of sport and art. a sensual
melding of action, vision, physics, philosophy. It becomes a kind of
expression, an extension of ourselves as we imitate form, color, movement
and other elements of nature (explaining, perhaps, why there are as many
reasons to stand thigh-deep in ice water waving a stick as there are moods
and fly-fisherman)."
Ken Marsh in Alaska Magazine
|
| "The awkward
fisherman does nothing but disturb the water." |
|
" Drunk fisherman, polluted stream. "
Breton Proverb
|
|
"There's
something about fly fishing a stream or river that grows on
you. It affords more opportunities to meld with nature than other types
of fishing, although each has its own special magnetism. In what other
kinds of fishing can you smell the sweetness of the native flowers
along the banks of the stream, see the eagle as he searches for his next
meal, or the bear fishing for breakfast, watch the different hatches and
try to identify and match them, listen to the sounds of the stream from
the tinkling of a small brook as you wade upstream, to the throaty roar
of a whitewater river as you dart and dip along in your drift boat,
searching for that special "seam" where you know there'll be a big
trout. Yes, there's something about fly fishing a stream that grabs you
and won't let go. I was grabbed a long time ago and I must say that I
won't let go either."
Jimmy D. Moore,
October 29, 2002
|
|
"No sport
affords a greater field for observation and study than fly
fishing, and it is the close attention paid to minor happenings upon the
stream that marks the finished angler. "
(George M. L. La Branche)
|
|
"I've had great
success with the bargain-basement model. Even thought a medium-size trout
will bend the rod into a full curl that would make the proudest ram jealous,
I keep fishing. I continue casting with finesse to avoid a larger fish hat
might beak the rod. I've thought about developing a stronger rod made from
steel like in the old days, but the lighting bolt thing that all true
fishermen must worry about makes it an impractical invention."
Stephen Hann in "Alaska Magazine"
|
|
"All of the other
elements contributing to the pleasures of fly fishing- the beauty and mood
of the lake, stream or saltwater fishing, the mettle of the fish, the artful
handling, the tender flesh or possible releasing the fish unharmed- tend to
be subordinate tot hat electrifying instant when the angller's skills cause
the fish to take."
"Creative Fly Tying and Fly Fishing" Rex Gerlach
|
|
"During your time
on earth, you shouldn't be afraid to do something that's not in the exact
path you originally chose, especially if it includes allot of fishing..."
"Treasury of Fly Fishing" edited by Tom Paugh
|
|
"3. Develop a gentle delicate cast so that
your fly alights softly.
This calls for skill as well as
suitable tackle to bring about
such results.
4. Study the water before fishing it.
Select the most
advantageous spot to fish from.
Remember that the obvious
places in the hard-fished streams are
less likely to produce
than the tough spots which no one
fishes."
|
|
"I think I fish,
in part, because it's an anti-social, bohemian business
that, when gone about properly, puts you forever outside the mainstream
culture without actually landing you in an institution. It's a nice
position. No one considers you to be dangerous, but very little is
expected of you."
John Gierach, "Pike" from "Even Brook Trout Get the Blues"
|
|
"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."
-- Jon Margolis and Jeff MacNelly, How to Fool Fish with Feathers
|
|
"Right here we
have one of the most common reasons for angling failures- intolerance for
things we can't control. Impatience makes us do things carelessly,
heedlessly and by so doing we only aggravate the condition which caused our
irritation in the first place. No one ever accomplished much by letting
impatience upset his judgment."
"Trout" Ray Bergman
|
|
Undoubtedly, our
differences would not have seemed so great if we
had not been such a close family. Painted on one side of our Sunday
school wall were the words, God Is Love. We always assumed that these
three words were spoken directly to the four of us in our family and had
no reference to the world outside, which my brother and I soon
discovered was full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the
farther one gets from Missoula, Montana.
A River Runs Through It
|
|
"A.K.taught me
most of what I know about fly-tying. It turned out to be a classic paradox-
a simple job with endless complications-but the upshot is, tying flies is
like splitting wood neatly or plowing a straight furrow: If there's an art
to it, it's in the work itself rather than in the product."
"Dances With Trout" John Gierach
|
|
"My wife says I'm
hard of hearing. All husbands who have been around the block a time or two,
know it's called "selective hearing". I hear what I want to hear. I can
hear a trout rise. I can hear a spinner hit the water. I can hear the
drumming of a grouse at half a mile, but I danged well can't hear her when
she wants me to make the bed, or paint the house, etc. etc. I secretly had
my hearing tested just to be sure. The doc says it is great, a 7 %
loss in my left ear and a 10% loss in my right. Very typical of anyone who
does a lot of hunting with a shotgun. But I'm not about to tell my wife
that." ;-)
"LAST IN LINE AND OTHER PERSONAL DISCRIMINATIONS" [1995],
Jimmy D. Moore
|
| Nothing makes a
fish bigger, except for "almost" being caught. |
|
"For the most
part, fly-tying is a practical business. You want the flies to work, you
want them to be as durable as the materials will allow, and you want to be
able to tie them quickly and easily enough that you can use them up
thoughtlessly.
Okay, fine, but then sooner or later the elements of style begin to creep
in. You may begin to tie flies that are prettier than they'd have to be
just to fish for reasons that aren't immediately evident. The bodies on your
dry flies become trimmer, and not necessarily because trout like them better
that way. There are hundreds of colors of commercial dubbing on the market,
but non of them are quite right, so you begin to dye and blend your own.
It's great when someone tells you you tie a pretty fly, but that's not
precisely why you do it."
"Dances With Trout" John Gierach
|
|
"I've noticed
that professional fly tiers, like artist, can sometimes get cranky. or
maybe it's the crankiness that comes first, giving them the predisposition
to be meticulous and single-minded. for the most of us, making our own
flies is just a comfortable part of the process of fusing, a way to get
inside of thing in a nonscientific, somewhat intuitive and, okay, maybe even
artistic way."
"Dances With Trout" John Gierach
|
|
"The place for
your lure is in the water and not in the air and yet I see many anglers
expending more energy in casting that they ever do in actually fishing their
fly. I'm inclined to be that way myself and often find it very necessary to
curb the impulse"
"Trout" Ray Bergman
|
|
"After all,
fly-fishing is one small part of American culture where it's still assumed
that experience and a little age naturally bring wisdom."
"Dances with Trout" John Gierach
|
|
"Depend upon it,
brother angler, that there is no dogmatic rule to be laid down for either
maidens or fish. Take the word of one who hath experience of both. You can't
diagram them; you must study their humours as well as you can, and suit your
arts to your customer as near as may be. If that fails try perseverance."
|
|
"There are trout
fisherman who never seem to reach the released tempo of effective trouting.
One sees them hurrying from pool to pool in a rush to cover as much stream
mileage as time will allow Others may stay at one pool and flail the water
for hours without interruption, impatient over the lack of rises. True,
there is a magnetic attraction the the stream ahead, the next riffle. There
is a hungry desire to round the next bend where a bigger trout must be
waiting. This is a part, an important part, of trout fishing, this spirit
to explore, to seek the new. Just as it is an important part to return to
old, treasured spots,. But how much of the in-between flavor we miss if we
overlook the little things? In fact, a man is trout fishing only if each
day's success is not measured by he creel alone."
"Treasury of Fly Fishing" edited by Tom Paugh
|
|
"My wife said I
have so many fly rods and reels that I cannot possibly
use them all. My reply was that I had rods and reels to fish, rods and
reels to tinker with and then my fine crafted rods and reels to "fondle
and admire, while dreaming of trout fishing during the cold winter
months. You can imagine what kind of look she gave me."
Jimmy D. Moore
|
|
"Trout fishing
gives a man time for meditation, a chance to absorb the meaning of a bleu
sky and pines sighing to the breeze. Tiny mosses on a streamside boulder,
just placed right for resting, hold tiny scarlet flags above tier soft
green, in a cluster of forget-me-nots a shimmering green tiger beetle waves
his antannae to a nether world of charm a man need to know."
"Treasure of fly Fishing" Edited by Tom Paugh
|
| "Calling a fly
rod a pole is like calling a rifle a gun." |
| "My fly fishing
is like my wife's cooking. It's always great!" |
|
"When, I wonder,
are folks going to learn that it is a dangerous thing to attempt to lay down
hard and fast rules about fishing? It's been tried man times, always with
embarrassing repercussions. NO sooner does a fellow arrive at a nice, neat
set of common-sense rules of fishing and, still worse, make these rules a
matter of public record, than the fish hold a meeting, conspire, and proceed
to upset the applecart."
"Treasury of fly Fishing" edited by Tom Paugh
|
|
"I
don't want to get into the ethics of fishing for bedding bass, except to say
that I really don't think it's right. However, to be completely truthful, I
have done it a time or two, so I guess that makes me a hypocrite or at least
a "half-o-crit." Whatever. What would you do if you came on to a ten
pound plus momma bass sitting on her bed ? I dare say you'd do the same as I
did. You'd try to catch her, and the heck with ethics, since you were going
to put her back anyway. Right? Right!"
Jimmy D. Moore - Outdoor Memories - "One Stubborn Bass"
|
|
"While dry flies
need to be in fairly good repair: a bedraggled wet fly or streamer will
often do better than a new one. I never discarded a fly that's fished wet
until the hook is almost bare. I've had good fishing with them when only
parts of the body, hackle, and wings remain."
"Fishing with Ray Bergman" edited by Edward C Janes
|
|
"When I was
young, I danced with nymphs. Now I only fish them."
Jimmy D. Moore, Dances With Wulfs, September, 2002
|
|
"It has been said
that the flies we tie mirror the fly tyer. Maybe that explains why my flies
are always so good looking."
Jimmy D. Moore
|
|
"Some of the best
fishing ever done, was done without water, using only the printed word."
|
|
PURIST: dry flies
only, barbless hooks, and releases a great supper for a baloney sandwich.
|
|
The fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is
a kind of vagrant, that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and
the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to
the meandering, soliloquizing stream; he addresses himself to it as a lover
to his mistress; he woos it and stays with it till he knows its hidden
secrets. Where it deepens his purpose deepens; where it is shallow he is
indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its
beauty haunts him for days.
- John Burroughs, 1886
|
|
"Necessarily, fisherman are gregarious.
Otherwise, the mighty deed of the day or a year ago or of ten years ago
would go unsung. No one else will listen to them."
"Treasury of Fly Fishing" edited by Tom
Paugh
|
"It is so easy to pass up intermediate
water when you are pushing to get to a favorite hole, or perhaps tying to
get within casting distance of a fish fishing far out in the stream. Now
I try to remember that he best fishing is often to be found close at
hand. I have learned from experience that it pay to make hast slowly.
Look for fish in the unlikely places-for those are the one that will be
skipped by the boys who concentrate on the holes only."
"Fishing with Ray Bergman" edited by Edward
C Janes
|
"Some anglers consider the carp a fine
fish; others despise it. One fisherman tells you carp are very difficult
to catch; a second man says they're a cinch. I think all of these people
are right. The carp is all of those things, depending on what you think
of it, and how and where you fish"
"Fishing with Ray Bergman" edited by
Edward C Janes
|
"Fortunately panfish are very prolific and
their number should increase in all water that are free from pollution and
where food and cover are provided. These little fish will always prove
excellent substitutes for larger and perhaps more gamey species and we
already know that he are wonderful fill-ins when the black bass are off
color or when the trout stream is not in condition for fly-fishing. The
more we fish for these great little underwater fire-crackers the more we
appreciate their worth."
"Treasury of Fly Fishing" edited by Tom
Paugh
|
"Somehow I feel that the elements and all
life, whether human or otherwise, are directly related, so much so that
anyone who is sincerely enraptured by the wonders of nature stands very
close to the great beyond. to such souls fishing is an outlet to the
feelings, a surcease from life's trials. Being so closely attuned to
natures whims I drifted naturally into our-of-door pursuits and fishing
seemed to be the one sport which best gratified tat innate craving for an
intimacy with those force of which I knew so little."
|
"By nature the several species of panfish
known to American fresh waters are gamey and they posses a handsome dress
which lists them as the 'peacocks' of our finny tribe. In this list we
find the beautiful orange-throated sunfish, bluegill, crappie, calico
bass, rock bass, white bass and yellow perch. All of 'em are worthy foes
when taken with flyrod equipment- and don't think it isn't a sport for
fully matured anglers. a few years ago we might have looked upon the
panfish as something for the kids to play with, but not so in these modern
times. Nix! These little scrappers have finally become recognized for
their spunk and fighting hearts by the fly-fisherman and as time
progresses we feel they will become even more popular with the angling
fraternity."
"Treasury of Fly Fishing" edited by Tom
Paugh
|
"As a group, sunfish should be classed as
game fish. I'm a dedicated trout fisherman, yet I must say that a
bluegill weighing half a pound usually fights more than a freshly stocked
trout of the same weight. when I go to a trout stream and find anlgers
elbow-to-elbow around a pool, I often find it more enjoyable to go to a
lake and see if there are any bluegills in the shallows."
"Fishing with Ray Bergman" edited by
Edward C Janes
|
"In angling, merely catching the fish is
not the game. And the more expert we become the stiffer handicap we
impose on ourselves."
"Treasury of Fly Fishing" edited by Tom
Paugh
|
|
You may always know a large trout when feeding in the evening. He rises
continuously, or at small intervals-in a still water almost always in the
same place, and makes little noise--barely elevating his mouth to suck in
the fly, and sometimes showing his back fin and tail. A large circle spreads
around him, but there are seldom any bubbles when he breaks the water, which
usually indicates the coarser fish.
- Sir Humphrey Davy, 1868
|
|
"THE PURIST"
I fish with a Pflueger Pack Rod. He fishes with a Sage or a Scott.
Doesn't make any difference to the fish that we caught.
Fish don't care what rod we use and faced with a choice
they'd probably not choose.
The "purist" fishes a Betty McNall or other perfect fly.
I fish with a Black Ant or Elk Hair Caddis
cause they're so easy to tie.
"Expand your horizons, that's where it's at",
he says as he ties on a number 16 Claret Gnat.
"Don't be fishing those trash flies, my boy.
Why don't you try a Ferret Faced Rob Roy."
To go along with his game, I say I might try a Chauncey,
or a Colorado King, or maybe a Coachman with the Royal Fan Wing.
He's thinking, "another purist I've found",
when I mention that I love the Royal Blue Crown.
He raises his eyebrows as he ponders all that.
Then he ties on a pretty Brass Hat.
I say a Royal Cubbage is also good,
but sometimes I prefer a Fire Coachman Trude.
He says to himself, "A purist for sure, boy this is great."
But when I tie on a Chernobyl Foam Ant,
we both know he's taken my bait.
"A foam ant! Why would a purist like you stoop to something as trashy as
that?" he says as he removes his tattered old hat.
I say with an evil glint in my eyes, "Gotcha, my Friend. I'm not a
purist. I'll just fish my ants and Little foam flies. You fish your
classics and I'll fish my trash and when the end of the day comes we'll
see who was brash."
Jimmy D. Moore
Woodway, Texas
Copyright October 5, 2001
|
|
"In
my opinion, the bluegill is one the best fighters in the panfish category.
he fights with spirit, speed and vigor right up to the finish. ....
sometimes bluegills will rise to dry flies, but on the whole I find them
more ready to take wet flies, streamers and nymphs."
"Fishing with Ray Bergman" Edited by Edward C Janes
|
|
"The river
flowed smooth and dark beneath the fringing alders. Here and there on the
surface little rings broke the reflections and occasionally a splash
showed white against the bank. A boy was lying prone, peering over the
grass into the clear water. His breath came quickly as he saw a big tail
appear in the center of a ring, waving slowly from side to side before it
quietly sank again. There was life in the air as well; tiny gauze-winged
forms were rising and dipping over the water, sometimes lightly touching
its smooth surface. The boy looked upward to watch them. He raised himself
and grasped an alder branch for support. He felt a delicate touch on his
hand and, turning saw the insect resting there, its wings slowlyng
and closing. It was an exquisite creature. The wings were nearly
transparent, of iridescent pearly color. The up-curved body was shaded
darker on the back, tapering to the slender whisks of a tail long and
curved.The eyes protruded prominently and were colored a wonderful violet.
It held out its long front legs in an almost supplicating attitude,and all
its legs were marked with color, speckled and delicately shaded. What an
incredibly beautiful thing, he thought. No wonder trout rose to it so
avidly. He looked up at the branch again. There were several of those
lovely flies resting there, and one seemed different from the others.The
boy stood up and looked more closely. He saw an insect, darker and duller
in color, its back split down the middle, and from its body was emerging
another, the delicate, bright one he had already seen. With a sudden
movement, it pulled itself clear. The wings were not erect but seemed to
be folded close to the back. As he watched, he saw them begin to The
metamorphosis took place quickly before his eyes,and in a few moments
there was another fly, complete, shining, drying itself in the sun. He
looked away and when his eyes returned again it was gone. The splashes in
the stream continued. It is no wonder that, with the impact of that
introduction, I became a fly fisherman. Surely, I thought, an art based on
imitations of such lovely fragile creatures must offer a great deal,
especially if the angler could create them after his own fashion."
John Atherton, The Fly and The Fish,
1971 |
|
Alfred W.
Miller, known to all as Sparse Grey Hackle, and known for the fine H.L.
Leonard and Garrison split bamboo fly rods he fished, was not a fan of
modern fly rod technology. Sparse, one fellow member joked recently at the
Angler's Club, when are you going to fish fiberglass? The old man took a
thoughtful swallow of straight Laphroaig, a special pot-still whiskey so
strong it numbs the tongue. "I'll fish fiberglass, Sparse muttered
behind his steel rimmed spectacles, the morning after some concertmaster
plays a concerto at Carnegie Hall on a plastic violin!"
- Ernest G. Schwiebert,
"Trout" - 1975 |
|
"A
gray-haired baitfisher is very rare, while the passion for fly-casting,
whether for trout or salmon, grows by what it feeds upon, and continues a
source of the highest pleasure even after the grasshopper becomes a
burden."
- George Dawson, 1888 |
|
"My little
green weenie and the split shot thuded against the back window of the pick
up and I knew I was in trouble because I recognized the pick up as
belonging to the "Grouch of the Neighborhood". As I was running
down the street chasing the pick up and reeling in, trying tosave my line
and little green weenie, Ole Sam hit the brakes so hard that the old pick
up almost stood on its nose. I couldn't stop as quick as he did and
if I hadn't jumped real high, I would have had "GMC" stamped
across my chest. I landed with a "whoomp" in the bed with the
green weenie and slid up to the cab among assorted other stuff lying in
the bed of the truck.
Sam got out and I thought, "He's gonna beat the hell out of me",
but Sam was really quiet as he asked if I was OK. Nervously I
assured him that I was. Then he saw the little green weenie that I
was now holding in my hand. With a big smile, he said, " I use
those on my spinning outfit too, with six pound test mono. Only way
to catch bass in super clear water."
Ole Sam and I became fast friends and and fished together for five years
until lung cancer took him four years ago. When you got to know Sam,
he wasn't a grouch at all - just a big ole teddy bear."
Jimmy D. Moore
Outdoor Memories - "Heathen Converted"
|
|
"We
are finding out that the quantity of game killed is not the proof of
sportsmanship and tha the method of getting them is."
"Treasury of Fly Fishing" edited by Tom Paugh
|
|
"Then, too,
some big fish-usually the big fish- gets away and you dream all winter
long that he is waiting for you at the foot of the rapid or beneath the
great cedar log where he broke away- waiting just for you. Why is he
waiting for you, why some other fellow may not have caught him, you can't
explain, but you believe he is waiting for you- now don't you? Of
course there are certain advantages in fishing a new stream: you see new
country and solve new problems,, but there is nothing quite like fishing
the old stream. It is first love; it is getting back home again-
that's what it is."
"Treasury of fly Fishing" edited by Tom Paugh
March 1906 article
|
|
"Everyone ought
to believe in something; I believe I'll go fishing."
|
|
"It
has been said that one's true character is determined by what they do when
no one is watching them. What would you do if you'd thrown every last fly
in your fly box, including your complete assortment of hoppers, at a big
rainbow to no avail? Then you see a juicy grasshopper jump off the bank,
only to be immediately inhaled by a big bow. Then several more
hoppers land on your arms and began crawling all over you. What would you
do? Stand there like an idiot, while muttering to yourself, "I don't
use live bait", or would you grab one of those naturals and impale it
on a fresh hook from your streamside kit? " No question what I'd do,
and my character would not be impuned, for I'd grab that grasshopper right
off, no matter who was watching me."
By Jimmy D. Moore - "Character vs Catching - 1999
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"Generally
speaking, perch and bluegills are easy to catch, except when it comes to
getting big ones. Because of this, people who fish for them are
often looked upon by trout and bass anglers as lowbrow fisherman.
The odd thing about this is that many of the anglers who don't do well
with trout and bass are the ones who are most likely to act superior to
the panfishermen. An while the may themselves have an urge to catch
some of these plebian fish, they don't give it a try because they're
afraid ob being scorned by the elite, the stars of the trout and bass
world."
"Fishing with Ray Berman" edited by Edward C Janes
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"A trout is a
moment of beauty known only to those who seek it"
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We had held the
world in our hand when we held a four-and-a-half-ounce fishing rod.
Norman McLean,
A River Runs Through It
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"When the word
began to get out, the idea of tying imitations of aquatic worms was not
met with universal approval in the fly fishing community. It seems
that worms had somehow gotten a bad name. I think a fishing pal of
mine hit it on the head when he said, " It just pisses them off that
you can catch trout, I mean really big trout, on a fly that a five-year
old can tie in twenty seconds! "
Ed Engle - talking about
John Gierach's comment on the San Juan Worm
Fly Fishing The Tailwaters (1991)
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"There
ain't no provate property you can't fish if you know how to hunker a
spell with the man what owns it."
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"The two best times to fish is when it's rainin' and when it ain't."
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Give
a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you lose
him for an entire weekend!!!
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"In my opinion
fishing should not be competitive or comparative. Rather, it should
be contemplative-a sport to build up the soul and refresh the mind, so
that after a day or more on the lake or stream a person goes back to the
ob of making a living with renewed vigor and new ideas."
"Fishing with Ray Bergman" edited by Edward C Janes
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"Trout
Don't Live In Ugly Places"
-Alex Hibala, Monument, CO
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. . . In flyfishing
there is the promise of constant improvement but perfection can rarely be
attained. Therein lies the challenge of flyfishing; to improve, to attain
a state of grace. There is also the comradeship with other flyfishers.
There is the sharing, both literally and figuratively, of sustenance. This
shared experience makes our own experiences so much richer. Because of
this comradeship, we are fishing for our friends as well as with our
friends. I fish with the friends who accompany me, but I also fish for my
new friends I have met in this virtual flyshop. So my friends, that is why
I flyfish. Until we meet again in this virtual flyshop, I remain,
- Henry H. Kanemoto, on Flyfish@
1996
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"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
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"The gods do
NOT deduct from man's alloted span the hours spent in fishing"
Herbert Hoover
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"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."
William Humphrey
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"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."
Jon Margolis and Jeff MacNelly, How to Fool Fish with Feathers
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"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
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"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
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I knew there was a
reason why I should be fishing for bluegills, a dumb fish for a dumb
fisherman!
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"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.'"
Allison Moir
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"And
when he struck his first cod, and felt the fish take the hook, a kind of
big slow smile went over his features, and he said, “Gentlemen, this is
solid comfort.”
Stephen Vincent Benet - 1932
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"If our
father had had his say, nobody who did not know how to catch a fish would
be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him."
A River Runs Through It
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"Dix chasseurs
et dix pêcheurs font bien vingt menteurs."
Translated to English it means:
"Ten hunters and ten fishermens makes twenty liars"
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"Rivers and the
inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to
contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration."
Anonymous
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"One reason
Paul caught more fish than anyone else was that he had his flies in the
water more than anyone else. "Brother," he would say,
"there are no flying fish in Montana. Out here, you can't catch fish
with your flies in the air."
A River Runs Through It
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"For
the rich there's therapy for the rest of us there's Fly Fishing."
- Anonymous
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"If the old boy [Izaak
Walton] occasionally stretched the truth, it strikes me that it makes him
an even more appropriate father figure for a cult whose members are often
given to hyperbole".
Robert Diendorfer 1977
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"It has
been said that one's true character is determined by what they do when no
one is watching them. What would you do if you'd thrown every last fly in
your fly box, including your complete assortment of hoppers, at a big Bow
to no avail? Then you see a juicy grasshopper jump off the bank, only to
be immediately inhaled by a big bow. Then several more hoppers land on
your arms and began crawling all over you. What would you do? Stand there
like an idiot, while muttering to yourself, "I don't use live
bait", or would you grab one of those naturals and impale it on one
of your flies? " No question what I'd do, and my character would not
be impuned, for I'd do it, no matter who was watching me."
Character vs Catching
from "Outdoor Memories"
By Jimmy D. Moore
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"To be a
complete and expert angler, you must wear a "Goofy" or at least
a "Ratty" hat. "
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"There
is no more graceful and healthful accomplishment for a lady than
fly-fishing, and there is no reason why a lady should not in every
respect, rival a gentleman in the gentle art."
W.C. Prime, 1888
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It is well
known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout
with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the
trout to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in
unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole
object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in
their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman however, will use
anything but the fly, except when he happens to be alone.
- Charles Dudley Warner,
1862
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"Just as
in cooking there's no such thing as a little garlic, in fishing there's no
such thing as a little drag."
H.G. Tapply The Sportsman's Notebook (1964)
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"Who
ever said "A bad day of fishing is always better than a good day at
work." Never had their boat sink."
Anonymous
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The traveller fancies he has
seen the country. So he has, the outside of it at least; but the angler
only sees the inside. The angler only is brought close, face to face with
the flower and bird and insect life of the rich river banks, the only part
of the landscape where the hand of man has never interfered.
Charles Kingsley, 1890
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A trout is a moment of beauty
known only to those who seek it.
Arnold Gingrich
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To me heaven would be a big
bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside
that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town;
one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love
them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful
mistresses on nine different floors.
Ernest Hemingway )
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If we carry purism to it's
logical conclusion, to do it right you'd have to live naked in a cave, hit
your trout on the head with rocks, and eat them raw. But, so as not to
violate another essential element of the fly-fishing tradition, the rocks
would have to be quarried in England and cost $300 each.
John Gierach
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"Ladies, when you're fly
fishing and nature calls, life is not fair."
Anonymous
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"Just as in cooking
there's no such thing as a little garlic, in fishing
there's no such thing as a little drag."
H.G. Tapply The Sportsman's Notebook (1964)
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Flyfishing is like sex, everyone thinks there is
more than there is, and that everyone is getting more than their share.
Henry Kanemoto
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Final Words
"An old man in his final breaths called in his family and
said "I must apologize to you all. I suppose I haven't been the
perfect father and husband. I shamefully admit that I spent as much of my
life as I could in the woods and on the streams. I was rarely at home
during the fishing seasons and I'll admit that I spent too much time at
the fly shop, and too much money on rods and lines and reels." He
paused here to rest for a minute, then continued. "I've been a
terrible father and I hope you all forgive me." Then he paused again
and looked around. Then he closed his eyes and smiled and said in a half
whisper to himself, "and on the other hand....I have caught a helluva
lot of trout."
Anonymous
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"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 waist in
ice-cold water."
Anonymous
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"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."
James A. Henshall, MD, 1855
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"The trout fly does not resemble any known
species of insect. It is a "conventionalized" creation, as we
say of ornamentation. The theory is, that, fly-fishing being a high art,
the fly must not be a tame imitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion
of it. It requires an artist to construct one; and not every bungler can
take a bit of red flannel, a peacocks feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a
cock's plume, a section of hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny object that
will not look like any fly, but will still suggest the universal
conventional fly. "
- Charles Dudley Warner, 1862
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"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."
- Ernest
Hemingway
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"There's a big difference between a
dry fly dancing through a riffle and a weighted fur ball dragging on the
bottom."
Anonymous
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Some act and talk as though casting were the entire
art of Fly-fishing, and grade an angler solely by the distance he can
cover with his flies. This is a great mistake and pernicious in it's
influence. Casting is but a method of placing a fly before the trout
without alarming it, and within its reach. It is merely placing food
before a guest. The selection of such food as will suit, and so serving it
as to please a fastidious and fickle taste, still remain indispensably
necessary to induce its acceptance.
- Henry P. Wells, "Fly-Rods and
Fly-Tackle", 1885
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Fly fishing is such great fun, I have often felt ,
that it really ought to be done in bed. Not that high frolic is the only
thing the pursuit of fish and the pursuit of females have in common; these
ancient sports have more going for them than just that - as I'll now try
to tell why. First off, just as both diversions are best conducted in
decent privacy, away from distracting crowds, so too the most gratifying
results are best obtained by subtlety rather than by force, by seduction
rather than rape. Again, just as both pastimes quickly pall when the
conquest is too easy, so too the lures used in the wooing, whether jewels
or jassids, must be presented with the utmost skill and grace.
- Robert Traver - Trout Magic, 1974
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"The time must come to all of us, who live
long, when memory is more than prospect. An angler who has reached this
stage and reviews the pleasure of life will be grateful and glad that he
has been an angler, for he will look back on days radiant with happiness,
peaks of enjoyment that are no less bright because they are lit in memory
by the light of a setting sun.'
Viscount Grey of Falloden - 1899
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A gray-haired baitfisher is very rare, while the
passion for fly-casting, whether for trout or salmon, grows by what it
feeds upon, and continues a source of the highest pleasure even after the
grasshopper becomes a burden.
- George Dawson, 1888
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"Smoked carp tastes just as good as smoked
salmon when you ain't got no smoked salmon."
Patrick F. McManus
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You Might be a Fly Fisherman
if -- (by Jimmy D. Moore©)
1) You have one of those large demo
flies dangling from your rear view mirror because you think it makes a
good conversation piece.
2) Your wedding party had to tie tin cans to your drift boat..
3) You call your fly rod "sweetheart" and your wife
"midge".
4) Your local fly shop has your credit card number on file.
5) You keep your wading staff by your favorite chair to change the TV
channels with.
6) You name your black lab "Scott" and your cat
"Sage".
7) Byard has a private line just for you.
8) You have your name painted on a parking space at the launch ramp.
9) You have a photo of your 10 lb. rainbow on your desk at work instead of
your family.
10) You consider vienna sausage and crackers a complete meal.
11) You think MEGABYTES means a great day fishing.
12) You send your kid off to the first day of school with his shoes tied
in a "blood knot".
13) You think there are four seasons--Fly tying & dreaming, Fly tying
and waiting, Fly tying and
getting your equipment ready and Finally, Fishing,
but you have to tie some extra flies, just to be safe.
14) You trade your wife's van for a smaller vehicle so your pontoon boat
and drift boat will fit in the garage.
15) Your kids know it's Saturday---Because both boats and your float tube
are gone.
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The old Cherokee chief sat in
his reservation hut, smoking the ceremonial pipe, eyeing the two US
government officials sent to interview him.
"Chief Two Eagles," one official began, "you have
observed the white man for many generations, you have seen his wars
and his products, you have seen all his progress, and all his
problems."
The chief nodded. The official continued, "Considering recent
events, in Your opinion, where has the white man gone wrong?"
The chief stared at the government officials for over a minute, and
then calmly replied. "When white man found the land, Indians
were running it.
* No taxes.
* No debt.
* Plenty buffalo
* Plenty beaver
* Women did the work
* Medicine man free
* Indian men hunted and fished all the time."
The chief smiled, and added quietly, "White man dumb enough to
think he could improve system like that."
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Put backing on your line;
even if you never use it. It helps you dream.
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" Of all
the memories that have clung to the day's events, and of all the sights
and sounds to which I was heir that morning, none so electrified me as did
the first wild, panic-stricken shriek of that tiny, unprepared reel. If
ever a thing inanimate screamed in abject terror it was that ounce or two
of delicate and airy metal."
"The
Banshee Shadow Flies" by Gordon Grand.
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"Now that Trout are in
my field of study, I much regret that I started life as an idiot."
Christopher Camuto
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"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."
Patrick McManus
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"The difference
between fly fishers and worm dunkers is the quality of their
excuses."
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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 theair, the new lease of life
secured thereby, and the many, many pleasant recollections of all one has
seen, heard and done.
Charles Orvis, 1886
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"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. "
Chuck Clark
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" Catch and Release fishing is a lot like golf. You don't have to
eat the ball to have a good time."
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"I spend most
of my life fishing, the rest I just waste."
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"Three Men And
A Baby" What you get when four men go fishing and one
comes back not catching anything.
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Fishing rule #1: The
least experienced fisherman always catches the biggest fish.
Fishing rule #2: The worse your line is tangled, the better is the fishing
around you.
Fishing rule #3: Fishing will do a lot for a man but it won't make him
truthful.
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"For the
tired and troubled, the fly rod is massage and spiritual therapy. It
works best in serene and beautiful places where life's meaning is
uncluttered by material pursuits."
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"For the
adventurous, the fly rod helps even the match between angler and prey.
The delicate rod, gossamer leader and single hook help tilt the odds in
the fish's favor, making victory all the sweeter.".
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Ours is the
grandest sport. It is an intriguing battle of wits between an angler and a
trout; and in addition to appreciating the tradition and grace of the
game, we play it in the magnificent out-of-doors.
~ Ernest G. Schwiebert,
Jr.
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There's a
fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.
~ Steven Wright
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If people
concentrated on the really important things of life, there'd be a shortage
of fishing poles.
~ Doug Larson
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The
Essentials of a Good Fly-Hook: The temper of an angel and penetration of a
prophet; fine enough to be invisible and strong enough to kill a bull in a
ten-acre field.
~ G.S. Marryat
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The traveler
fancies he has seen the country. So he has, the outside of it at least;
but the angler only sees the inside. The angler only is brought close,
face to face with the flower and bird and insect life of the rich
riverbanks, the only part of the landscape where the hand of man has never
interfered.
~ Charles Kingsley
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To go fishing
is the chance to wash one's soul with pure air, with the rush of the
brook, or with the shimmer of sun on blue water. It brings meekness and
inspiration from the decency of nature, charity toward tackle-makers,
patience toward fish, a mockery of profits and egos, a quieting of hate, a
rejoicing that you do not have to decide a darned thing until next week.
And it is discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before
fish.
~ Herbert Hoover
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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.
~ Paul O'Neil |
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