“There is no activity so conducive to the health and happiness of a civilized man as angling with an artificial fly. As for the uncivilized, who would care to contemplate what writhing creatures their inchoate consciences allow them to skewer upon a hook?” ― David James Duncan, The River Why
“Try to capture a trout stream with a dam and you get a lake. Try to catch it in a bucket and you get a bucket of water. Put some under a microscope and you get a close-up look at some writhing micro cooties. But a trout stream is only a trout stream when it’s flowing between its own banks.” from The River Why by David James Duncan
For many of us, the complex pastime of fly fishing is — as John Voelker once wrote — “an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion.”
“Wild trout, unlike men, will not — indeed cannot — live except where beauty dwells.” — John Voelker
If you’ve got short, stubby fingers and wear reading glasses, any relaxation you would normally derive from fly fishing is completely eliminated when you try to tie on a fly. - Jack Ohman
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
A man cannot step into the same river twice; for neither is it the same river nor is it the same man. – Heraclitus, c. 540-480 B.C.E.
The fisherman has a harmless, preoccupied look; he is a kind of vagrant, that nothing fears. He blends himself with the trees and the shadows. All his approaches are gentle and indirect. He times himself to the meandering, soliloquizing stream; he addresses himself to it as a lover to his mistress; he woos it and stays with it till he knows its hidden secrets. Where it deepens his purpose deepens; where it is shallow he is indifferent. He knows how to interpret its every glance and dimple; its beauty haunts him for days. - John Burroughs, 1886
Snazzy coffee joints are popping up in some strange places here in Colorado as well as in Montana, and although I’m a old caffeine addict from way back and dearly love the good stuff, I know that gourmet coffee is one of the first two signs that a place is about to go in the crapper. The other sign is a fly shop. - John Gierach, Standing in a River, Waving a Stick
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
Fishing seems to me to be divided, like sex, into three most unequal parts, the two larger of which, by far, are anticipation and recollection, and in between, by far the smallest of the three, actual performance. - Arnold Ginrich
In reference to hatching mayflies: “For a year [they] have crawled around the stream bottom. Today is the day they will sprout wings, fly into the warm air, make love for the first and last time, and then die. How I would like to sprout wings and make love on my last day on earth.” - Peter Kaminsky, The Fly Fisherman’s Guide to the Meaning of Life, Rodale, 2002.
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, get rid of him for the weekend. – Unknown
Give a person a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks. – FFF ClubWire
Give a man a fish and he will have dinner. Teach a man to fish and he will be late for dinner. – Unknown
"Anyone who has ever tried successfully to roll-cast a dry fly under any circumstances, let alone cross-stream in a wide river with conflicting currents and before two big dining trout, knows that baby sitting for colicky triplets is much easier.”- Robert Traver, “Trout Madness”
“It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty, that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade, or that the waters were profoundly deep; but that over all, rocks, wood and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.”- Thomas Cole