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... 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

A good gamefish is too valuable to be caught only once.
-- Lee Wulff

All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.
-- John Steinbeck

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

Being able to read trout streams is just as valuable to a fly fisherman as the ability to read a defense is to a Quarterback.
-- Jimmy D. Moore

By the time I had turned thirty, I'd realized two important things. One, I had to fish. Two, I had to work for a living.
-- Mallory Burton

Calling Fly Fishing a hobby is like calling Brain Surgery a job.
-- Paul Schullery

Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
-- Mark Twain

Fishing is fundamentally a game of chance, and at heart we are all gamblers.
-- Dorothy Noyes Arms

Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.
-- Jimmy Cannon

Fly fishers find it next to impossible to be at the water with a fly rod without taking just a few casts to see what happens.
-- Jon Margolis and Jeff MacNelly

Fly-fishing is the most fun you can have standing up.
-- Arnold Gingrich

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

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

Heaven seems a little closer in a house beside the water.
-- Unknown

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

I always give myself three days to catch a fish: one for weather, one to get to know the water, and one for luck.
-- Kay Kolt

I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout.
-- Paul O'Neil

I differentiate between fishermen and anglers. All anglers are fishermen, but not all fishermen are anglers. The fisherman hopes to lure fish, while the angler seeks an intangible catch.
-- O. W. Smith

I fell in love with a fly fisherman... I can't believe my competition is a fish, and not other women.
-- Allison Moir

I never aim right at 'em. Just over the top of 'em. And sometimes, I don't have to shoot at all.
-- George Laycock
(Kentucky outdoors writer Laycock wrote about his solution to the nuisance of water skiers on his favorite fishing lake - a .38 caliber revolver stored in his tackle box.)

I really fished mainly because I wanted to be alone on the middle of a lake.
-- Susan A. Toth

I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except we like it and it makes us think and feel.
-- Roderick L. Haig-Brown

If fishing is a religion, fly fishing is the high church.
-- Tom Brokaw

If I'm not going to catch anything, then I 'd rather not catch anything on flies.
-- Bob Lawless

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
-- Doug Larson

If World War II destroyers had the technology available in today's average bass boat, the German submarine fleet would not have stood a chance.
-- Robert H. Soldwedel

If you want to fish, fish.
-- German Proverb

It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.
-- John Steinbeck

It is not a fish until it is on the bank.
-- Irish Proverb

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

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

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

Many men go fishing their entire lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Men and fish are alike. They both get into trouble when they open their mouths.
-- Jimmy D. Moore

My biggest worry is that when I'm dead and gone, my wife will sell my fishing gear for what I said I paid for it.
-- Koos Brandt

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

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

On the Firehole I caught thirty-six inches worth of trout - in six installments.
-- Arnold Gingrich

Some go to church and think about fishing, others go fishing and think about God.
-- Tony Blake

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

That one does not fish for trout with spinning lures or live bait is taken for granted, along with toilet training.
-- William Humphrey

The best fisherman in the world can't catch them if they aren't there.
-- Anthony Acerrano

The best time to go fishing is when you can get away.
-- Robert Traver

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

The fish is not so much your quarry as your partner.
-- Arnold Gingrich

The great charm of fly-fishing is that we are always learning.
-- Theodore Gordon

The man who coined the phrase "Money can't buy happiness", never bought himself a good fly rod!
-- Reg Baird

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

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

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

"The way a good rod first flexes and then extends its muscles as the line quickens, tightens, rises off the water and does figure eights in mid-air is one of the miracles of humanly applied dynamics."
-- John Hillaby

There ain't but one time to go fishin', and that's whenever you can.
-- Diron Talbert

There are some people I don't make any effort to fish with, although I like them well enough. They won't laugh when a fish strikes; they don't see that fish have very funny faces.
-- M. R. Montgomery

There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.
-- Washington Irving

There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm.
-- Patrick McManus

There was a code, and though it was mostly unspoken, I absorbed it early on. You always put all the trout back in the water alive except for a few to eat. You didn't count your trout or call attention to their size or weight. You took time to watch and enjoy seeing your partners catch trout.
-- Howard Frank Mosher

There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.
-- Steven Wright

These brook trout will strike any fly you present, provided you don't get close enough to present it.
-- Dick Blalock

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

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 fly fishing.
-- Theodore Gordon

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

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

What a tourist terms a plague of insects, the fly fisher calls a great hatch.
-- Patrick McManus

When you bait the hook with your heart, the fish always bite.
-- John Burroughs

Why are you obsessed with fighting? Stick to fishing from now on.
-- Tim Rice, lyric from Jesus Christ Superstar

Why does a salmon rise? Why does a small boy cross the street just to kick a tin can?
-- Lee Wulff

In Wales, it is considered unlucky for a woman to be on board a fishing boat.
-- Fishing Superstition