your favourite flyfishing quotes

or however that dang word is written! : ) Use this forum to discuss those things that are related to, directly, or indirectly, fly fishing, i.e., tackle, catalogs, single malt scotch, cigar preferences, pipes, camera gear, etc. This is sort of an off topic area but one related to bamboo and fly fishing.

Moderators: czkid, Whitefish Press

Post Reply
User avatar
maruoff
Master Guide
Posts: 773
Joined: 01/11/04 19:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#1

Post by maruoff »

what are your favourite flyfishing quotes from books, articles, friends etc.?
and why?

You can read a few real good ones here in the forum under members posts so I'd be interested to hear/read more.

User avatar
enigma309
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1204
Joined: 01/09/08 19:00
Location: Great Britain
Contact:

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#2

Post by enigma309 »

I've put some of my favourite ones on my profile, just scroll down the Left side . . all reveal a little . .

User avatar
wefishcane
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1329
Joined: 03/24/04 19:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#3

Post by wefishcane »

"When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him.
In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one." -- Karl. A. Menninger
Last edited by wefishcane on 06/23/08 15:09, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
creakycane
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 3878
Joined: 06/20/06 18:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#4

Post by creakycane »

"Few of us shoot ourselves during an evening hatch."

Jim Harrison

User avatar
uniphasian
Global Moderator
Posts: 751
Joined: 12/20/04 19:00
Location: Denver, CO

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#5

Post by uniphasian »

"Just shut-up and go fishing..."

Pink Panther
- Uni

User avatar
greendrake ll
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1214
Joined: 02/06/07 19:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#6

Post by greendrake ll »

"You can't catch fish if your lines in the air!"

User avatar
quashnet
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 5205
Joined: 03/22/04 19:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#7

Post by quashnet »

PISCATOR: And now I have a bite at another. Oh me! he has broke all: there's half a line and a good hook lost. VENATOR: Ay, and a good trout too. PISCATOR: Nay, the trout is not lost; for pray take notice, no man can lose what he never had.

---- Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1676, 5th edition)


Littleton is a large and flourishing community, composed chiefly of ephemeral stage drivers, black-legs, and acute landlords, who play poker with unsuspecting travelers over night, to whom they lend money in the morning to pay their tavern-bills. We did not abide in Littleton.

---- Thaddeus Norris, "Trouting in Northern New Hampshire," The American Angler's Book (1865, 2nd edition)


Let's get acquainted, fisherman friends... From the bent pin and "carpet warp" line, I went to real fish hooks, at the age of four. My first one, I broke off in my lip, and still have the mark. From that day on, fishing interfered with everything I attempted to do, except taxidermy. Fishing kept me from being a good student, then from being a good school teacher, then interfered with my operation of a rice farm; also from being a good employee in taxidermy shops owned by others. The result was automatic. I operate my own taxidermy shop, import and manufacture fine fly tackle, and have many of America's best fishermen as friends and customers... I have not missed an opportunity to go fishing in 39 years, and 20 of those years have been devoted to fly fishing.

---- Paul H. Young, from the introduction to his 1933 catalog


We lose money on every transaction, but we try to make it up in volume.

---- the late Warren Duncan, explaining the business plan of the professional fly tier, circa 1990
Please visit and bookmark the Paul H. Young Rod Database
Image
Other rod databases: Dickerson , Orvis , Powell

User avatar
gt05254
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 2167
Joined: 11/16/07 19:00
Location: Bennington, VT
Contact:

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#8

Post by gt05254 »

From the entrance panel to the Anglers All exhibition:

Anglers All: Humanity in Midstream, an exhibition produced by the American Museum of Fly Fishing, celebrates and explores all that is fly fishing: arts, crafts, sciences, and most important, people and the relationships to their natural world and to each other that they develop through the sport.

John Voelker (a.k.a. Robert Traver, author of Anatomy of a Murder) wrote, "I fish because I love to: because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful...and...not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important, but because I suspect so many other concerns of men are equally unimportant-and not nearly so much fun."

Anglers All was created with Voelker's perspective in mind. We hope "beauty" and "fun" are two words that come to mind often as you enjoy the exhibition and again any time you might go fishing or are just out enjoying nature-when you are "Humanity in Midstream."

-Gary Tanner
(former) Executive Director, American Museum of Fly Fishing

User avatar
Catch 22
Guide
Posts: 328
Joined: 12/20/04 19:00
Location: The Eastern part of Western CT

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#9

Post by Catch 22 »

A good start:

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

"If the trout are lost, smash the state" - Thomas McGuane



Jeff


Armchair Angler
Guide
Posts: 221
Joined: 09/12/07 18:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#10

Post by Armchair Angler »

This is from my favorite story:

…The river is placid, calm now. No fish are rising. The drama is over; the actors have retired to the wings. I have been caught for two hours in an intensely sensual music, and I want to stop, perhaps for the day - to smoke the pipe now, watch that squirrel in the oak, look for deer tracks and chipmonk holes. The city has become a bad dream, a B movie I once saw that violates my imagination by returning at odd moments.
Most of the world would be board by these past two hours. Most of the world? Most of the world is polluting the rivers, making the worse appear the better cause, peacocking, grating on each other's ears, gouging, putting their fingures on others' souls or their hands in the wrong pockets, scheming, honking, pretending, politicking, small-talking, criticizing. "Is that all you hear?" I hear the Scholar ask me. "Nope, but there's a damned lot of it." "You're a misanthrope, a hater of cities", he says. You claim to love gentleness but…" I don't especially want to answer his questions now so I look back at the river. We invented the non sequitur for just such occasions. Yes, we have made a day of it. Two, three hours sandwiched in. Little enough. But deep. And durable. And more than a day's worth. We've earned memories - full and textured - that live now in our very marrowbones, that make us more alive. Our thoughts will be greener, our judgements perhaps sharper, our eyes a bit brighter. We live day to day with little change in our perceptions, but I never go to a river that I do not see newly and freshly, that I do not learn, that I do not find a story… …It was not the ultimate river, the ultimate afternoon; it was not so exquisite as a Keatsian moment frozen and anguished because it would not last. There will be others - never equal, always discretely, sharply different…. Nick Lyons "Gray Streets, Bright Rivers" - 1977
Last edited by Armchair Angler on 06/23/08 17:13, edited 1 time in total.

bluejayee
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1161
Joined: 03/16/06 19:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#11

Post by bluejayee »

Hi Guys, This is my latest favorite paraphrase. "There's nothing there, there's nothing there, there's nothing there. There's nothing there anymore that I'd like to make." The Lost World of Mr. Hardy

User avatar
Silver
Sport
Posts: 61
Joined: 09/24/08 18:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#12

Post by Silver »

"I don't know exactly what fly-fishing teaches us, but I think it's something we need to know."

John Gierach - Sex, Death and Fly Fishing

User avatar
thegubster
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 4658
Joined: 08/29/05 18:00
Location: Minnesota!

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#13

Post by thegubster »

Marcuss,

Just a couple...."The two best times to go fishin' are....when it's rainin' and when it ain't!" Patrick McMannus.

And a friend of mine...."Jeremy, there's so much BULLSH!T in fly fishing!"

Jeremy.
I love clean, clear waters...

recane1
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1097
Joined: 01/07/07 19:00
Location: Asheville NC

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#14

Post by recane1 »

"Boy's, I come to fish"

Phil Southworth and Jim Beam

BobB
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 3100
Joined: 08/06/07 18:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#15

Post by BobB »

"The best time to go fishing is when you can."

An oldie but a goodie.

Bob

User avatar
lstshkr
Master Guide
Posts: 373
Joined: 09/29/07 18:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#16

Post by lstshkr »

I think my favorite is the one flyfishingpastor uses for his signature:

"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

Dean

pigumm
Member
Posts: 8
Joined: 04/16/07 18:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#17

Post by pigumm »

One of many good quotes from Robert Hughes' "A Jerk On One End": Assume that any gun you touch is loaded. Never point it at anything you don't intend to shoot at. Never shoot anything alive unless you mean to eat it. And never, under any circumstances, fish for trout with anything but a fly."

billems
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1620
Joined: 05/11/06 18:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#18

Post by billems »

"Why should an angler travel, when he can be just as unsuccessful close to home?" --Mark Twain

User avatar
Berry Point
Master Guide
Posts: 606
Joined: 05/08/06 18:00
Location: Here, there, and in between

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#19

Post by Berry Point »

Last December Black Hills Bill pointed us to this final paragraph from Cormack McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road.

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

Not only is it hauntingly beautiful, and you must read it in context to truly understand its relevance to the book, but the past tense reminds us that absent a world-wide life ending cataclysm the long term viability of trout may indeed depend on us. Let us not forget.

letort
Guide
Posts: 118
Joined: 12/24/04 19:00

your favourite flyfishing quotes

#20

Post by letort »

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
Henry David Thoreau

Post Reply

Return to “Ephemera, empherma and Ephemerella.....”