Quotes & Sayings About Rivers And Fishing

The river is of the earth and it is free. It is rigorously embanked and bound, and yet it is free. To hell with restraint, it says, I have got to be going. It will grind out its dams. It will go over or around them. They will become pieces. — Wendell Berry

Catch and release fishing may be cruelty masquerading as political correctness — John McPhee

Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time. — Ivan Turgenev

Yes, I actually have a portable fly-tying kit in my vest. I spent hours putting it all together, with a special emphasis on midge materials as well as enough fur and feathers to whip out a half dozen of virtually every conceivable dry pattern nature can throw at me. I have used it once, in 1993. — Jack Ohman

Datin'is a lot like fishin'. Sometimes catch and release is the best method. — Granger Smith

If all the theories were correct, there wouldn't be a fish left in all of our lakes and rivers and streams. — Izaak Walton

Fishing should be a ceremony that reaffirms our place in the natural world and helps us resist further estrangement from our origins. — Thomas McGuane

I walked to the lake and sat on the shore for a few minutes, just staring at the moonlight on the water. Moonlight never gets old. — Bill Barich

There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea. — Herman Melville

They used to have a fish on the menu that was smoked, grilled and peppered They did everything to this fish but pistol-whip it and dress it in Bermuda shorts. — Bill Geist

God quickened in the Sea and in the Rivers, So many fishes of so many features, That in the waters we may see all Creatures; Even all that on the earth is to be found,! As if the world were in deep waters drowned. — Guillaume De Salluste Du Bartas

Although the United States has made tremendous progress cleaning up its water by removing billions of pounds of pollutants and doubling the number of waterways safe for fishing and swimming, a majority of Americans live within 10 miles of a polluted lake, river, stream or coastal area. — Carol Browner

Fishing is taking a huge toll on the planet's ecosystem. We are emptying the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers as we fish them dry. — Sharon Gannon

A river is water is its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart — Roderick Haig-Brown

And connected I had been. When the fish changed directions, I felt it. when it slowed or sped up, I felt that too. It's such a raw thing, this shared existence with a piece of bucking biomass. — Jessica Maxwell

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

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

The issue of imitation has always occupied fly fishers, and part of its endless attraction has been the imponderable uncertainty of how much it matters to the fish in the first place. — Paul Schullery

It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care. — William Butler Yeats

Fish sense, applied in the field, is what the old Zen masters would call enlightenment: simply the ability to see what's right there in front of you without having to sift through a lot of thoughts and theories and, yes, expensive fishing tackle. — John Gierach

Fish slowly and thoroughly. Haste never pays dividends. Don't whip the stream to a froth. Make fewer cast, make them to places which count an fish each cast out instead of lifting it prematurely — Ray Bergman

I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing. — Izaak Walton

Fishing, by its very nature, nourishes the imagination, feeding it with a potent fuel of hope and desire. — Tony Bishop

Make all approaches to the stream with care and caution. Remember that once you are seen you are a great disadvantage if not completely defeated — Ray Bergman

Oh yeah - you have to write every day. Or every weekday. Because writing is a job. It's not eureka moments over and over. It's grueling work, panning for gold. You just keep at it and eventually you get a few grains. Or flakes. Or whatever gold looks like in rivers. Or maybe it's like fishing. Who cares? You just have to do it every day because you never know which day is going to be your productive day. — Tim Schafer

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

The world of water has a way of perpetuating myths and shrouding lakes in mystery. — Fennel Hudson

It is easy to tell tourists from tarpon. Tarpon have a narrow, bony plate inside the mouth of their lower jaw. Tourists have both upper and lower plates. — Ed Zern

Had I a river I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, but where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'free fishing' spells no fishing at all. — Andrew Lang

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

It is utterly soothing to fly fish for trout. All other considerations or worries drift away and you couldn't keep them close if you wanted. Perhaps it's standing thigh deep in a river with the water passing at the exact but varying speed of life. You easily recognize this mortality and it dissipates into the landscape. — Jim Harrison

To this day I would rather see a fish, creep up to him and watch his rise to my fly than catch half a dozen fish unseen until they take. — Roderick Haig-Brown

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

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

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

Angling is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of England — Washington Irving

{W}hy did she go into the field? A twinge of pleasure, of knowledge. Her dad would pull over to the side of a bridge, and they would watch from above, before he slipped down the bank to catch them. She was charmed by the motions of trout. How they take their forms from the pressures of another world, the cold forge of water. Their drift, their mystery, the way they turn and let the current take them, take them, with passive grace. They turn again, tumbling like leaves, then straighten with mouths pointing upstream, to better sip a mayfly, to root up nymphs, to watch for the flash of a heron's bill. The current always trues them, like compass needles. When she watches them, she feels wise. — Matthew Neill Null

Fish and visitors smell in three days. — Benjamin Franklin

At the end of the day, no amount of investing, no amount of clean electrons, no amount of energy efficiency will save the natural world if we are not paying attention to it - if we are not paying attention to all the things that nature give us for free: clean air, clean water, breathtaking vistas, mountains for skiing, rivers for fishing, oceans for sailing, sunsets for poets, and landscapes for painters. What good is it to have wind-powered lights to brighten the night if you can't see anything green during the day? Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value. — Thomas L. Friedman

He looked at a picture on the wall and saw everything that existed outside the room he was sitting in and the one he was trying to write about. It was a picture of fishing nets stowed in canvas baskets and it had sex, memories, cravings, names of old friends, principal rivers of the world. Writing was bad for the soul when you got right down to it. It protected your worst tendencies. Narrowed everything to failure and its devastations. Gave your cunning an edge of treachery and your jellyfish heart a reason to fall deeper into silence. — Don DeLillo

It's just that the longer I fish, the more I long for simplification and lightness. — Tom Sutcliffe

I look at it this way ... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers ... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse. — George Carlin

Anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought. — Leigh Hunt

The matter of flies, lines and other equipment of the right sort is not absolutely necessary in the rising of fish but they are very important in that they make it easier to do the things which bring success and in some cases are essential to success. — Ray Bergman

Love is as varied and unpredictable as the rain is: it comes in constant summer drizzles, or sudden, unforseen storms that make rivers burst their banks and Cornish fishing boats rock and spill and lose their crew in the Atlantic. — Susan Fletcher

Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration. — Izaak Walton

Every last cast is actually a first cast. The first cast and first chance to catch the next fish. The next time you anguish about whether to make that last cast, forget it - the anguish that is - and cast away. The next fish caught on a last cast will not be the first. — Tony Bishop

He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,
He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,
Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,
Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,
Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,
Of tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.
Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,
Of a dignified flock of pelicans above the bay,
Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,
Of his having composed his words always against death
And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness. — Czeslaw Milosz

I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to the narrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as if I were entering a department store. I caught three trout in the lost and found department. — Richard Brautigan