Quotes & Sayings About Trout Fishing

Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip. — John Gierach

It's a tricky balancing act, finding that point between safety and danger where you can feel both secure and adventurous. I used to read books about fishing by people who had given up jobs and careers to show up every day at a trout stream. What made them do it? They realized, after years of fortifying the walls, of making life safe and secure, that they also needed what was on the other side. — John Zeaman

Wherever the trout are, it's beautiful. — Tomas Garrigue Masaryk

I wind about, and in and out, - With here a blossom sailing, - And here and there a lusty trout, - And here and there a grayling ... — Alfred Lord Tennyson

The pool was but a stone's throw from the house, and I arrived there in a few minutes, only to find a boy disturbing the water by dredging it with a worm. Him I lured away with a cake of chocolate ... Every day I see the head of the largest trout I ever hooked, but did not land. — Theodore Gordon

The finest gift you can give to any fisherman is to put a good fish back, and who knows if the fish that you caught isn't someone else's gift to you? — Lee Wulff

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method. — Charles Dudley Warner

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

Trout fishing is like any other sport. It is waste of words to try to give anyone who has never tried it any idea of what it means to land a five-pound trout on a gossamer leader. — Cornelia Parker

'Mustanging' was like trout fishing. It is always the big ones that get away. When you did get a bunch of them into a corral, you found they did not look half so large and handsome as when they were first sighted on the prairie. — Will C. Barnes

When if or chance or hunger's powerful sway Directs the roving trout this fatal way, He greedily sucks in the twining bait, And tugs and nibbles the fallacious meat. Now, happy fisherman; now twitch the line! How thy rod bends! behold, the prize is thine! — John Gay

Such a nice day - out all day up in the Carter Notch direction, trout-fishing, with the long drive there and the long drive home again in time for supper. It was a lovely brook and I caught seven good trout and one small one - which eight trout-persons you should have for your breakfast if only you were near enough. It was not alone the fishing, but the delightful loneliness and being out of doors. — Sarah Orne Jewett

USED TROUT STREAM FOR SALE.
MUST BE SEEN TO BE APPRECIATED. — Richard Brautigan

Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any farther today. He — Ernest Hemingway,

I go fishing not to find myself but to lose myself. — Joseph Monninger

Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface. — Edward Abbey

Write. Remember, people may keep you (or me) from being a published author but no one can stop you from being a writer. All you have to do is write. And keep writing. While you're working at a career, while you're raising children, while you're trout fishing
keep writing! No one can stop you but you. — Katherine Neville

They say you forget your troubles on a trout stream, but that's not quite it. What happens is that you begin to see where your troubles fit into the grand scheme of things, and suddenly they're just not such a big deal anymore. — John Gierach

This Henry lived in Edinburgh, making him inaccessible and giving her something to do on the weekends - 'Oh, just flying up to Scotland, Henry's taking me fishing,' which is the kind of thing she imagined people doing in Scotland - she always thought of the Queen Mother, incongruous in mackintosh and waders, standing in the middle of a shallow brown river (somewhere on the outskirts of Brigadoon, no doubt) and casting a line for trout. — Kate Atkinson

The old drunk told me about trout fishing. When he could talk, he had a way of describing trout as if they were a precious and intelligent metal. — Richard Brautigan

It is a very good quality in a man to have a trout-stream. — George Eliot

There is an immense trout in Loch Awe in Scotland, which is so voracious, and swallows his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained the name 'Salmo Ferox'. I pull about this unnatural monster till he is tired, land him, and administer the coup de grace. Is this cruel? Cruelty should be made of sterner stuff. — Arnold Gingrich

There was a code, and though it was mostly unspoken, I absorbed it early on. You always put all the trout back in the water alive except for a few to eat. You didn't count your trout or call attention to their size or weight. You took time to watch and enjoy seeing your partners catch trout. — Howard Frank Mosher

What are more delightful than one's emotions when approaching a trout stream for the initial cast? — Nash Buckingham

And angling too, that solitary vice, What Izaak Walton sings or says: The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it. — Lord Byron

I go to Alaska and fish salmon. I do some halibut fishing, lake fishing, trout fishing, fly fishing. I look quite good in waders. I love my waders. I don't think there is anything sexier than just standing in waders with a fly rod. I just love it. — Linda Hamilton

Fly-fishing for wild trout on quiet waters must be one of the toughest and craziest ways to catch fish ever invented by man, as well as among the most frustrating and humiliating. — John D. Voelker

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

Has it ever struck you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God's critters tempting decent men. — James M. Barrie

The trout in yonder wimpling burn - That glides, a silver dart, - And, safe beneath the shady thorn, - Defies the anglers art ... — Robert Burns

And he relished a day at Lake George in the Adirondacks on his trip through the north with James Madison in 1791.26,27,28 "An abundance of speckled trout, salmon trout, bass and other fish with which it is stored, have added to our other amusements the sport of taking them," Jefferson had written Patsy. He had been as unhappy with Lake Champlain as he had been happy with Lake George, noting that the larger Champlain was "a far less pleasant water.29 It is muddy, turbulent, and yields little game" - all things Jefferson disliked in fishing as in life. — Jon Meacham

The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be. — John Gierach

Trout fisherman often give away their presence to the fish by the equipment they are wearing. The yo-yo hanging on the fly fishing vest that attaches to the hemostats or line clippers is often plated with chrome, giving off flashes of light. Some fly boxes that you wear on the chest are also bright aluminum-not a good idea. I recently fished with a fellow who wore a bright yellow hat on a meadow stream in Pennsylvania. From 100 yards away you could see his every movement,-I'm sure that trout near him could, too. — Lefty Kreh

During my addled career as a trout fisherman I have gone on a lot of wild-goose chases, and I ruefully expect to go on a lot more before I hang up my waders — John D. Voelker

There is a lot of amiable fantasy written about trout fishing, but the truth is that few men know much if anything about the habits of trout and little more about the manner of taking them. — John D. Voelker

She looked again at Fitz Alan. He was bent over with his hands in the water as if to wash them, but he looked stuck in the awkward position and did not move so much as a muscle. Curiosity finally loosened her tongue. "What are you doing?"
"Fishing," he whispered.
Kenric gave a snort of laughter. "Ian Duncan is the only man I know who can catch fish that way."
"What way?" Claudia asked.
"With his hands," Kenric answered. "Fitz Alan thinks his face irresistible, even to fish. See how he smiles down at them? He thinks to seduce a fat trout into his arms."
Claudia giggled. Even Fitz Alan's smile grew broader. — Elizabeth Elliott

In this ever changing world, there are few things that have remained constant for me. The chance of hooking a nice trout still excites and thrills me to this day ... just as it did when I was a kid. I like that! — M.A. Bookout

Successful trout fishing isn't a matter of brute force or even persistence, but something more like infiltration. — John Gierach

Or whipping its rough surface for a trout ... — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dalton gaped at something in the stream.
"Did you see that trout? Where's my fishing pole when I need it?" He was leaning so far over she feared he might fall in headfirst. She grasped his arm and pulled him back.
"You made that up," she laughed. "You didn't see a fish. Trout don't swim at night."
"What makes you think that? They don't have a little house to go home to when the sun goes down, with a small woodstove and comfortable bed. — Caroline Fyffe

On the Firehole I caught thirty-six inches worth of trout - in six installments. — Arnold Gingrich

A trout fisherman is something that defieth understanding. — Corey Ford

Far away Tongariro! Green - white thundering Athabasca river of New Zealand! I vowed I would come again down across the Pacific to fish in the swift cold waters of this most beautiful and famous of trout streams. It is something to have striven. It is much to have kept your word. — Zane Grey

I doubt if I shall ever outgrow the excitement bordering on panic which I feel the instant I know I have a strong, unmanageable fish, be it brook trout, brown trout, cutthroat, rainbow, steelhead or salmon on my line. — Ed Weeks

Once, while cleaning the trout before I went home in the almost night, I had a vision of going over to the poor graveyard and gathering up grass and fruit jars and tin cans and markers and wilted flowers and bugs and weeds and clods and going home and putting a hook in the vise and tying a fly with all that stuff and then going outside and casting it up into the sky, watching it float over clouds and then into the evening star.
(from Trout Fishing on the Bevel, page 21) — Richard Brautigan

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

Angling is extremely time consuming. That's sort of the whole point. — Thomas McGuane

{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

A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it. — Arnold Gingrich

Water that isn't fit for trout won't much longer be fit for us. — Arnold Gingrich

If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago. — Zane Grey

When the word began to get out, the idea of tying imitations of aquatic worms was not met with universal approval in the fly-fishing community. It seems that worms had somehow gotten a bad name. I think a fishing pal of mine hit it on the head when he said, It just pisses them off that you can catch trout, I mean really big trout, on a fly that a five-year old can tie in twenty seconds! — Ed Engle

O, sir, doubt not that Angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? — Izaak Walton

What pretty bright trout there are in this bold rock creek! It would full be called a river in England, and so it is! — Thaddeus Norris

The things fishermen know about trout aren't facts but articles of faith. — John Gierach

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

The other day Aks and I went up to your ranch for a day's fishing. I cannot remember any day when we have had more fun on a stream. We had along with us three newspaper men and a few secret service people, many of whom had never seen a trout stream, so we did the thing up right by borrowing frying pans, bacon and corn meal from the wife of your rancher - and we cooked an outdoor meal for the crowd. It was really quite a day. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Often I have been exhausted on trout streams, uncomfortable, wet, cold, briar scarred, sunburned, mosquito bitten, but never, with a fly rod in my hand have I been less than in a place that was less than beautiful. — Charles Kuralt

(with trout) we are touching something unrestricted, wild and arcane, beyond the reach of those who carefully maintain one-dimensional lives. There is, I tell myself, someone in the city nearby whose one contact today with unreconstructed nature will be to step into a diminutive pile of poodle excrement — Russell Chatham

One of the first rules in fishing is that there are few rules in fishing that resourceful trout do not manage to break. — John D. Voelker

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

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

My youngest brother and I went on a ten-day canoe trip in Bowron Provincial Park in British Columbia years ago. Believe it or not, we took only granola, thinking we'd be eating a lot of lake trout. Well, we neglected to bring along a net, and our fishing line was only 8-lb. test. — Will Hobbs

Well, a funny thing, there are three that I like all for the same reason, golf, fishing, and shooting, and I do because first, they take you into the fields. There is mild exercise, the kind that an older individual probably should have. And on top of it, it induces you to take at any one time 2 or 3 hours, if you can, where you are thinking of the bird or that ball or the wily trout. Now, to my mind it is a very healthful, beneficial kind of thing, and I do it whenever I get a chance, as you well know. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The great charm of fly-fishing is that we are always learning. — Theodore Gordon

And yet there are many times when it does not make any difference what pattern one uses. One thing is certain. The more bedraggled the fly gets the better the trout like it. I think there is a reason for this. I think the bedraggled half worn out wet fly more closely imitates a nymph than a new one does. Most commercial flies are tied too bushy and full. A little trimming of wings and thinning out of hackles will often work wonders. — Ray Bergman

There are few things deader than a dead brown trout stream. — Ed Zern

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

Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once. — Lee Wulff

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

A standard saying among fly fishermen is that trout spend anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of their time feeding below the water's surface on the immature forms of aquatic insects. Some anglers are even more precise, but whatever the exact percentage , it's safe to say that to fully appreciate any tailwater fishery you will have to learn the fine art of nymphing. — Ed Engle