I taught Brad Pitt how to fly-fish in my swimming pool!
Fishing from a boat seems like dilettante bullshit - like hunting wild boar with a can of spray paint from the safety of a pick-up truck
The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world's books. Only the trouble is that the world doesn't read its books, it borrows a detective story instead.
If you want to catch trout, don't fish in a herring barrel.
There is a lot of amiable fantasy written about trout fishing, but the truth is that few men know much if anything about the habits of trout and little more about the manner of taking them.
Good fishermen know that in talking about fishing, nothing is more interesting than the truth.
One of the first rules in fishing is that there are few rules in fishing that resourceful trout do not manage to break.
Fishing is not like billiards, in which it is possible to attain a disgusting perfection.
Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface.
If you ever wondered why fishing is probably the most popular sport in this country, watch that boy beside on the water and you will learn. If you are really perceptive you will. For he already knows that fishing is only one part fish.
Next to prayer, Fishing is the most personal relationship of man.
Or whipping its rough surface for a trout.
See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.
Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice
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.
The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
Fishing books , lit by emotion recollected in tranquility, are like poetry. .. . We do not think of them as books but as men. They are our companions and not only riverside. Summer and winter they are with us and what a pleasant company they are.
Angling is an art, and an art worth your learning.
For me, the life of the angler is an almost flawless example of how not to have a good time.
I enjoy hunting, but if I had my choice to go deer hunting or bass fishing, I'd take bass fishing any day of the week. I enjoy both of them, but yeah, I'm a very outdoorsy guy.
Angling is extremely time consuming. That's sort of the whole point.
There is no subsititue for fishing sense, and if a man doesn't have it, verily, he may cast like an angel and still use his creel largely to transport sandwiches and beer
I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there.
Fishing largely consists of not catching fish; failure is as much a part of the sport as knee injuries are of football.
I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing.
