fishing quotes

Five New Fishing Quotes and Sayings: 4 May 2013 Total Now 1135

Just put up 5 new fishing quotes and sayings: Numbers 1131 -1135

“There is no losing in fishing. You either catch or you learn. Either way, its way better than work.”

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he has to buy rods, reels, lines, waders, vests, fly-boxes, flies, leaders, polarized glasses, nets, floatants…” – Seen on T-Shirt

“When we are on the water, our contemplative impulses range from the intense to the nearly absent.” – Paul Schullery

“It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.” – Hunter S Thompson

“It was a great grin worth a thousand words, a shrug every guide should master, a grin explaining why in the same feeding lane some trout will take a nymph, some a pupae, and others only a #23 spent-wing midge tied on a hook hand forged in Kenya just after sunrise on a winter solstice.” – Dave Ames in ‘Ju Ju Travel’

See all 1135 quotes here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Five More Fishing Quotes and Sayings: 13 Mar 2013

More marvellous musings on the pleasurable pursuit of fish.

“Whether we tie a fly or choose a pattern from a bin at the shop, we enlist it in a story of our own making.” – Ted Leeson 

“Fish eat worms and salmon eggs and marshmallows. I mean if it’s just about catching fish, you wouldn’t be sitting here watching this video — it’s about tying nice flies.”
– Charlie Craven

"A beautiful pattern poorly tied does not make for a beautiful fly.  But an ugly pattern brilliantly tied might, because it embodies hope.” – Erin Block

“Overtime, hatchery fish tend to show signs of domestication and these traits adapted to the hatchery environment can make it more difficult to survive in the wild.” – Norm Dicks

“Reading the features you would get the impression that this year’s crop of rods will allow you to cast from here to eternity, with a rod so light you need to tie it to your wrist to stop it blowing away.” – Tony Bishop

Yes, I know the quote above is from one of my articles on the blog, but more than several people have suggested it for the quotes page. You will judge the quote’s merit, or otherwise.

1130 more quotes here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Five New Fishing Quotes and Sayings: 15 Feb 2013

Five more perfectly presented pensive postulations on the pleasure of piscine pursuits – enjoy!

“Do not blindly accept statements about 95 and 98 percent knots. Even if a claim is the product of rigorous testing, it indicates what a knot can achieve rather than what it will always achieve.” – Art Scheck

“To insist that fly fishing is all about catching fish is like saying the only reason for sex is procreation. In essence, yes, it is true, but how much we would be missing out on if that was all there was.” – Derek Grzelewski

“Fly fishing is the rip-cord for escape.” – Mike Delph

“…any old bit of carpet wrapped round a hook will catch a trout. It is how it behaves in the water that counts.” – Arthur Cove

“Who cares about finding a unified theory of the universe? What we need is a unified theory of fly-fishing.” – Graig Spolek

These quotes are numbers 1121 – 1125 on the fishing quotes page, where you can find another 1120 quotes.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Five More Fishing Quotes and Sayings: 10 Jan 2013

“Water, in short, is all. More than anything it is that glinting, tantalising horizontal veil, the surface of water, dividing so absolutely one realm from another, which gives angling its mystery, its magic, its endless speculation”
– The Magic Wheel: An Anthology of Fishing Literature . Editor, with Graham Swift, London, Picador, 1985

“I see too many folks using a pretty repetitive 16-inch pull.  And though this still catches plenty of fish, many are the times where something more akin to puppetry of the fly makes the larger and smarter fish come out of the woodwork”
– Frank Smethhurst

“I always fish with better anglers than myself. That way I get to see nice fish being caught”
– Unaccomplished Angler (Blog)

“I want to learn something new every day. And this river gives me a chance to do that. Isn’t it true that you want to learn as much as you can about things you love?”
– Denny Breer

“Traveling is my form of self-education. Every stream I fish now is not as good as it used to be. If you keep your eyes open as you travel around, you realize we are destroying this planet.”
– Yvon Chouinard

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Five More Fishing Quotes and Sayings: 29 Dec 2012

Up now, five new quotes from the fishing world – numbers 1111 – 1115.

“Somewhere in the wide range of activity between the hard physical effort of wading for long hours against a swift current in a rocky stream, casting steadily, and the indolence of lying quietly in the sun waiting for a bobber to go under there is a type of angling to suit everyone’s mood and everyone’s pocketbook. Fishing is fishing wherever it is found… Angling’s problems are never solved.”
– Lee Wulfe 1939

“It would be a miracle of God if it happened. I know it… If God wills it, the summer rains will fill the wadis… and the salmon will run the river. And then my countrymen… all classes and manner of men-will stand side by side and fish for the salmon. And their natures, too, will be changed. They will feel the enchantment of this silver fish… and then when talk turns to what this tribe said or that tribe did… then someone will say, "Let us arise, and go fishing."
– Paul Torday: ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’

“I must have looked like a beady-eyed nutso, as she gave me a pitying look and stared out the window. I am a beady-eyed nutso. After all, I spend hours tying flies that match sea-run food, gauging tides, and casting my arm off — even with no guarantee of catching a fish.”
– Chester Allen

“There are also many days when I have searched for big trout without so much as a spooked fish. Through countless cups of coffee, driving all night, and storms that were so bad that I wondered if it was even possible to cast in these conditions…Nothing in fishing is predictable. Maybe you’ll be rewarded sooner than you imagine. On slow days I make a point to run through all the little circumstances of the day, determining if something is different from years past. This has been a learning tool to better understand trout behaviour, migrating patterns, and areas where they may be holding. If I didn’t take the time to pay my dues and continue to learn, I would not fully understand when or where to catch fish”
– Landon Mayer

“Many of the most highly publicized events of my presidency are not nearly as memorable or significant in my life as fishing with my daddy.”
– Jimmy Carter

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Five More Fishing Quotes and Sayings: Now 1110

Up now, five more quotes, quips a quriosities, bring the total to 1110. The New quotes are numbers 1106 – 1110 on the quotes page.

“Marriage is like deep-sea fishing. You never know what you’ve got until you get it in the boat.” 
– Dick Bothwell

“To paraphrase a deceased patriot, I regret that I have only one life to give to my fly-fishing.”
– Robert Traver

“The trouble with fishing is it was better before you got there, and after you left.”
– Un Noin

“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.”
– Ernest Hemingway

“You see, I’m not a grip ‘n grin man.  I prefer to fish from the shadows, and stay in the shadows, even after I land something big.  I have a face that’s made for radio, and a passion for fly fishing that’s rooted somewhere that can’t be captured, no matter how many megapixels are devoted to it.”
– Kirk Deeter

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Five More Fishing Quotes and Sayings, now 1105: 17 Nov 2012

Five more fishing quotes and sayings, hooked out of the trillions of words circulating the planet; numbers 1101 – 1105

“A fly pattern is, in theory at least, an engineered solution to a problem, and in the past three decades or so these solutions have multiplied at a rate somewhere between impressive and staggering.”
– Ted Leeson

“In the future, I mean to be a fine streamside entomologist. I’m going to start on that when I am much too old to do any of the two thousand  things I can think of that are more fun than screening insects in cold running water.”
– Thomas McGuane

“In big water we often find ourselves lost in awe. But in small streams and rivers we are able to see ourselves.”
– Matt Smythe

“I had 13 weeks off and I would pack up the family and drive to some mountain retreat where we could be together and fish all day. I loved it. I needed it.”
– Perry Como

“Often, fishing and hunting are solitary activities but I have learned to see my time through other’s eyes and yearn to share the places where fish, deer and game birds live.”
– NA…Help?

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Five New Fishing Quotes and Sayings; 31 Oct 2012

Total number of quotes now 1100, these quote’s numbers 1096 – 1100

“Sure we have faster rods and better mono, but I like the fact you can’t buy your cast.”

– Chico Fernandez

“I’m not much of a fly tier. I can do it—my friend calls it ‘ham and eggs tying’—and I tie some cool flies that I can’t buy in a fly shop, but other than that, I would no more sit down and tie a dozen hopper patterns than I would do something absolutely insane, like build a rod.”

– Jack Ohman

“No day spent teaching a child to fish is wasted”

– Louis Bignami

“Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jewelled belt around the middle of the planet. There’s still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.”

– Sylvia Earle

“I do fish. I think there is a connection between thinking and fishing mostly because you spend a lot of time up to your waist in water without a whole lot to keep your mind busy.”

– Anthony Doerr

See all quotes here

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

New Fishing Quotes and Sayings: Sep 19 2012 Now 1095

Five more quick quips for you to peruse: Numbers 1091 – 1095

“It’s all right to drink like a fish — if you drink what a fish drinks.”
– Mary Pettibone Poole

“I wouldn’t say it’s cold, but every year Winnipeg’s athlete of the year is an ice fisherman.”
– Dale Tallon

“Presidents have only two moments of personal seclusion. One is prayer; the other fishing — and they cannot pray all the time!”
– Herbert Hoover

“Man can learn a lot from fishing — when the fish are biting no problem in the world is big enough to be remembered.”
– Orlando A. Battista

“So, when I say ‘match the hatch’, if the fish are taking the nymph, and you’re actually producing a replica of a flying insect, you’ll catch fresh air.”
– Rex Hunt

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes

Five New Fishing Quotes: Sep 1 2012 Now 1090

Five new fishing quotes and bit of  a John Gierach benefit, quote numbers 1086 – 1090.

“Accurately recalling an entire day of fishing is like trying to push smoke back down a chimney, so you settle on these specific moments.”

– John Gierach ‘No Shortage of Good Days’ (1086)

“We do have to think seriously about conservation now, although it is chilling to realize there are catch-and-release fishermen alive today who don’t know how to clean and fry a fish.”

– John Gierach ‘No Shortage of Good Days’ (1087)

“It’s an odd fact of life that whichever side of the stream you’re on, two-thirds of the best water is out of reach on the other side.”

– John Gierach ‘No Shortage of Good Days’ (1088)

“When the river is high, fish eat the ant; when the river is low, ants eat the fish.”

– Chinese proverb, quoted in ‘No Shortage of Good Days’ (1089)

“The fact is, there’s a great deal of hair-splitting fussiness when it comes to fly-fishing, most of it as silly as a top hat.”

– Justin Cronin ‘The Summer Guest’ 2003 – quoted in ‘No Shortage of Good Days’ (1090)

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes, fly fishing