Trout Fishing Quotes

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.

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.

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

If fishing is a religion, fly fishing is the high church.

I frankly don't make much of a living, but I make a hell of a life.

I go fishing not to find myself but to lose myself.

You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don't want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.

I fish because I love to . . . because I love the environs where trout are found . . . because I suspect that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don’t want to waste the trip . . . and, finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant––and not nearly so much fun.

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

It is impossible to grow weary of a sport that is never the same on any two days of the year.

If we carry purism to it's logical conclusion, to do it right {fishing} you'd have to live naked in a cave, hit your trout on the head with rocks, and eat them raw. But, so as not to violate another essential element of the fly-fishing tradition, the rocks would have to be quarried in England and cost $300 each.

Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once.

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

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.

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

Never leave fish to find fish.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned.

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

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

You must lose a fly to catch a trout.

I think I fish, in part, because it's an anti-social, bohemian business that, when gone about properly, puts you forever outside the mainstream culture without actually landing you in an institution.

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.

To go fishing is the chance to wash one's soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook, or with the shimmer of sun on blue water. It brings meekness and inspiration from the decency of nature, charity toward tackle-makers, patience toward fish, a mockery of profits and egos, a quieting of hate, a rejoicing that you do not have to decide a darned thing until next week. And it is discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before fish.

Fishing is a... discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before fish.

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

All men are equal before fish.

All good things come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.

My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things-trout as well as eternal salvation-come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.

There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

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.

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

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

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.