Boat Quotes - Page 29

• As much as anything, the anglers will clue you in to the midge hatch. You will see them hunched over in concentration like herons. The better ones will be in as close as they can get to the dimpling trout. What you'll notice is the rythmic flicking of casts toward a porpoising trout and the lack of any other motions. The only exception will be the gentle tug that sets a very small hook attached to the leader by a very delicate tippet. The playing of the trout, if it is a good one, will be a cat-and-mouse sort of ecstacy.

  Ed Engle

  Cat, Lakes, Sea

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• We have reached the time in the life of the planet, and humanity's demand upon it, when every fisherman will have to be a river-keeper, a steward of marine shallows, a watchman on the high seas. We are beyond having to put back what we have taken out. We must put back more than we take out.

  Thomas McGuane

  Taken, Marine, Lakes

  Thomas McGuane (1999). “The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing”, Knopf

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• Despite all the variables and advise, like love and marriage it seemed to me that learning to cast ought to be a lot easier than it was.

  Jessica Maxwell

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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• . . . . spending more time with my fly firmly attached to the branches of trees and almost none of it attached to the lips of a trout.

  Tom Sutcliffe

  Sea, Fishing, Rivers

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• A trout fisherman is something that defieth understanding.

  Corey Ford

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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• Fishing is a quest for knowledge and wonder as much as a pursuit of fish; it is as much an acquaintance with beavers, dippers, and other fishermen as it is the challenge of catching trout.

  Paul Schullery

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

  Paul Schullery, Marsha Karle (2013). “The Fishing Life: An Angler's Tales of Wild Rivers and Other Restless Metaphors”, p.35, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Allowing the fly to sink to the fish's level, the angler makes a retrieve. The fly comes directly at the fish, which suddenly sees its approach. As the small fly get nearer, the fish moves forward to strike, but the tiny fly doesn't flee at the sight of the predator. Instead it continues to come directly toward the fish. Suddenly the fish realizes intuitively that something is wrong(its never happened before), so it flees until it can assess the situation. An opportunity for the angler has been lost.

  Lefty Kreh

  Moving, Opportunity, Rivers

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• Fish in the water represent pure potential. If the water is not clear, we do not know if they exist at all. To get them to bite something connected to a line and pull them into our world is managing a birth that brings these creatures from the realm of mysytery into the world of reality. It is a kind of creation.

  Howell Raines

  Reality, Lakes, Our World

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• I personally feel that parachute files give a more realistic impression of an insect to the fish that views the fly, since the hackles are in the same position as the insect's legs, and when tied with brightly colored hackles, these flies are easier to see on the float. A final advantage is that in rough water, a parachute-hackled dry fly will float longer and better than a conventional one

  Lefty Kreh

  Rivers, Lakes, Views

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• It is not a good idea, either, to attach material such as Krystal Flash or Flashabou, then trim all strands at one spot. This gives most of the reflectiveness at one location - where the strands were severed. Instead, clip off the strands at different lengths along the entire body - that way you'll see little sparkles of light throughout the pattern

  Lefty Kreh

  Lakes, Light, Sea

  Lefty Kreh (1992). “Advanced Fly Fishing Techniques: Secrets of an Avid Fisherman”, Delacorte Press

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• Finally from the crease of the ravine I am following, there begins to come the trickling and splashing of water. There is a great restfulness in the sounds these small streams make; they are going down as fast as they can, but their sound seem leisurely and idle, as if produced like gemstones with the greatest patience and care.

  Wendell Berry

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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• There are times when salmon play no part in the proceedings of a day that is obstensibly spent in their pursuit.

  Dale Rex Coman

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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• I don't really know how to tie a fly until I've tied a hundred dozen of them.

  John Gierach

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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• I like to do every operation the same way on each fly. In the course of tying a batch of flies, I might get an idea on how to do something differently, but try to save it to try out later rather than break my comfortable rhythm. I don't worry about forgetting it. In my experience good ideas stay with you, while bad ones go back to where they came from, and good riddance.

  John Gierach

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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• Fish slowly and thoroughly. Haste never paid dividends. Never wory about the fellow ahead of you. If you start racing to get ahaead of him, he'll probably try to beat you, and from then on it will be nothing but a foot-race instead of a contemplative and inspiring recreation.

  Ray Bergman

  Lakes, Race, Sea

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• The trouble is, you can't properly present something you don't believe in.

  Thomas McGuane

  Believe, Lakes, Sea

  Thomas McGuane (2014). “The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing”, p.69, Vintage

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• These poor rich men, we anglers pity them perfectly.

  Izaak Walton

  Men, Lakes, Sea

  Izaak Walton, Charles Cotton, Sir John Hawkins (1775). “The Complete Angler: Or, Contemplative Man's Recreation...: Prefixed, the Lives of the Author and Notes ...”, p.5

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• I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Men, Lakes

  Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.165, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition.

  John Ashbery

  Morning, Sex, Boys

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

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• I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

  Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.219, Modern Library

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• When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over the water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait.

  Tess Gallagher

  Girl, Song, Father

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• Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Lakes, Race

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• Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterranean splashes of color, crowded steep-pitched roofs, fishing piers and fishing boats whose stench of mackerel and gasoline is as aphrodisiac to the sensuous nose as the clean bar-whisky smell of a nightclub where call girls congregate.

  Norman Mailer

  Girl, Running, Fishing

  Norman Mailer (1992). “Advertisements for Myself”, p.519, Harvard University Press

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• I truly believe fishing is like a washing machine for your brain

  Henry Winkler

  Believe, Lakes, Sea

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• Trout aren't naturally as selective as they've become in crowded tailwaters - they've been trained to be like that by too much fishing pressure. I've seen tailwater fish that are so hysterical they'll refuse naturals. You wonder how they get enough to eat.

  John Gierach

  Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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