Angler Quotes & Sayings

In a clear brook
With joyful haste
The whimsical trout
Shot past me like an arrow
I play the line of the song, I play the leaps and plunges of the right hand of the piano, I am the trout, the angler, the brook, the observer. — Vikram Seth

Could an angler go fishing without a fishing rod, line and hook? It depends what they're fishing for. — Fennel Hudson

Catching fish is not a mental game between fish and angler. A 'smart' trout is only smarter than other trout, not smarter than a fisherman. An angler must take the puzzle of the day's conditions, and matching those conditions and his knowledge of the fish come up with a good catch. He competes with a concept, not with a fish's brain. — Lee Wulff

The indications which tell your dry fly angler when to strike are clear and unmistakable, but those which bid a wet fly man raise his rod-point and draw in the steel are frequently so subtle, so evanescent and impalpable to the senses, that, when the bending rod assures him that he has divined aright, he feels an ecstacy as though he had performed a miracle each time. — G. E. M. Skues

A friend of ours, who is an admirer of Isaac Walton, was struck, just as we were, with the likeness of the old angler's face to a fish. — Leigh Hunt

There was never an angler who lived but that there was a fish capable of taking the conceit out of him. — Zane Grey

And if ye angler take fysshe; surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte. — Juliana Berners

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. — Stephen Leacock

No life is so happy and so pleasant as the life of the well-govern'd angler. — Izaak Walton

I went to see every angler on the bank to see how they were doing, to try to give them a few tips or whatever. But yeah, we had a lot of fun. It was definitely a good time and we're definitely going to do it again next year. — Tom Felton

She wasn't the sort of catch one could take home and show off to people; she was the sort of catch that drags the angler off the end of the pier and pulls him out to sea before tearing him to pieces as he's drowning. He shouldn't have been fishing at all, not when he was so ill-equipped. — Nick Hornby

All the charm of the angler's life would be lost but for these hours of thought and memory. All along the brook, all day on lake or river, while he takes his sport, he thinks. All the long evenings in camp, or cottage, or inn, he tells stories of his own life, hears stories of his friend's lives, and if alone calls up the magic of memory. — William Cowper Prime

The measure of an enthusiasm must be taken between interesting events. It is between bites that the lukewarm angler loses heart. — Edwin Way Teale

In an age of infinite digital documentation, paper was the last safe place for secrets. — Evan Angler

He stared fixedly at the opposite bank where an angler was fishing, his line perfectly still. All of a sudden the man jerked out of the water a little sliver fish which wriggled at the end of his line. Twisting and turning it this way and that he tried to extract his hook, but in vain. Losing patience he started pulling and, as he did so, tore out the entire bloody gullet of the fish with parts of its intestines attached. Paul shuddered, feeling himself equally torn apart. It seemed to him that the hook was like his own love and that if he were to tear it out he too would be gutted by a piece of curved wire hooked deep into his essential self at the end of a line held by Madeleine. — Guy De Maupassant

There's nothing sweeter than a real friend:
Not only is he prompt to lend
An angler delicate, he fishes
The very deepest of your wishes,
And spares your modesty the task
His friendly aid to ask.
A dream, a shadow, wakes his fear,
When pointing at the object dear. — Jean De La Fontaine

An excellent angler, and now with God. — Izaak Walton

For me, the life of the angler is an almost flawless example of how not to have a good time. — Christopher Hitchens

The fly angler who says they have never, ever fallen while wading , is either a pathogenic liar, or has never been fly-fishing. — Jimmy Moore

Yet compared with the serious things of life, fishing is after all rather trivial. The thoughtful angler must frankly confess this. — Harold Russell

No life, my honest scholar, no life so happyand so pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silver streams, which we now see glide so quietly by us. — William Walton

As an angler and a gardener, I cherish each drop of rain that falls. — Fennel Hudson

Satan, that great angler, hath his sundry baits for sundry tempers of men, which they all catch greedily at, but few perceive the hook till it be too late. — Anne Bradstreet

Fishes do not roar; they cannot express any sound of suffering; and therefore the angler chooses to think they do not suffer, more than it is convenient for him to fancy. Now it is a poor sport that depends for its existence on the want of a voice in the sufferer, and of imagination in the sportsman. — Leigh Hunt

Take a kid fishing. You'll capture their imagination. — Max Hawthorne

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

The meditative angler is not exempt from sensational periods. There are times when all the uncertainty of his chosen pursuit seems to condense itself into one big chance, and stand out before him like a salmon on the top wave of a rapid. He sees his luck hangs by a single strand of gut, and he cannot tell whether it will hold or break. This is the thrilling moment and he never forgets it. — Henry Van Dyke

I am an old fashioned angler seeking to fish in a peaceful and relaxing way in traditional surroundings. Other anglers are too noisy, too busy, and catch fish that might break my landing net. — Fennel Hudson

The time must come to all of us, who live long, when memory is more than prospect. An angler who has reached this stage and reviews the pleasure of life will be grateful and glad that he has been an angler, for he will look back on days radiant with happiness, peaks of enjoyment that are no less bright because they are lit in memory by the light of a setting sun. — Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey Of Fallodon

In the cause of self-advancement, we are urged to sacrifice our leisure, our pleasures and our time with partners and children, to climb over the bodies of our rivals and to set ourselves against the common interests of humankind. And then? We discover that we have achieved no greater satisfaction than that with which we began. In 1653, Izaak Walton described in the Compleat Angler the fate of "poor-rich men", who "spend all their time first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busie or discontented". Today this fate is confused with salvation. — Anonymous

The true angler is generally a modest man..... — Thaddeus Norris

It is the goings-on between bites that excites the traditional angler as much as when the float goes under. — Fennel Hudson

When our Lord said to the disciples, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19), His reference was not to the skilled angler, but to those who use the drag-net
something which requires practically no skill; the point being that you do not have to watch your "fish," but you have to do the simple thing and God will do the rest. The pseudo-evangelical line is that you must be on the watch all the time and lose no oportunity of speaking to people, and this attitude is apt to produce the superior person. It may be a noble enough point of view, but it produces the wrong kind of character. It does not produce a disciple of Jesus, but too often it produces the kind of person who smells of gunpowder and people are afraid of meeting him. According to Jesus Christ, what we have to do is to watch the source and He will look after the outflow: "He that believeth on me, ... out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38). — Oswald Chambers

The traveler fancies he has seen the country. So he has, the outside of it at least; but the angler only sees the inside. The angler only is brought close, face to face with the flower and bird and insect life of the rich riverbanks, the only part of the landscape where the hand of man has never interfered. — Charles Kingsley

For the true angler, fishing produces a deep,unspoken joy, born of longing for that which is quiet and peaceful, and fostered by an inbred love of communing with nature — Thaddeus Norris

We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. — Henry David Thoreau

As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler. — Izaak Walton

Enjoy thy stream, O harmless fish; And when an angler for his dish, Through gluttony's vile sin, Attempts, the wretch, to pull thee out, God give thee strength, O gentle trout, To pull the rascal in! — John Wolcot

THE ANGLER "I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture." Byron. — Charles Barker Bradford

The International Express man couldn't understand it. I mean, in the old days, and it wasn't that long ago really, there had been an angler every dozen yards along the bank; children had played there; courting couples had come to listen to the splish and gurgle of the river, and to hold hands, and to get all lovey-dovey in the Sussex sunset. He'd done that with Maud, his missus, before they were married. They'd come here to spoon and, on one memorable occasion, fork."
From "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman. — Terry Pratchett

A Rod: An attractively painted length of fiberglass that keeps an angler from ever getting too close to a fish. — Robbie Keane