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The Sports Den's Fishing Quotations
Through the years anglers and angling have been the subject of a number of great observations. We've collected a few of our favorites from such great authors as Ernest Hemingway, Henry David Thoreau, Pat McManus. We hope you enjoy these.
The two
best times to fish is when it's rainin'
and when it ain't.
- Patrick F. McManus
To me heaven would
be a big bull ring with me holding two
barrera seats and a trout stream outside
that no one else was allowed to fish in
and two lovely houses in the town; one
where I would have my wife and children
and be monogamous and love them truly and
well and the other where I would have my
nine beautiful mistresses on nine different
floors.
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Bass Fishermen
vs Trout Fishermen
"Bass fishermen watch Monday
night football, drink beer, drive pickup
trucks and prefer noisy women with big
breasts. Trout fishermen watch MacNeil-Lehrer,
drink white wine, drive foreign cars with
passenger-side air bags and hardly think
about women at all. This last characteristic
may have something to do with the fact
that trout fishermen spend most of the
time immersed up to the thighs in ice-cold
water."
- New Yorker Magazine, June 13, 1994
Rest in
Peace
This past fall I was fishing "The
Pool" on a small river in Cape Breton,
Nova Scotia for Atlantic Salmon. I need
not say where, as we all know "The
Pool", and its reputation. A number
of bright, large salmon had moved in overnight
and the fishing promised to be memorable.
When I arrived, I noticed only one other
person. He was an older gentleman, in
his seventies I speculated, and he had
just started down the pool. His casts
were long and graceful with so little
effort. The rhythm of his movements and
the beauty of the scene were hypnotic.
His experience and dedication to the art
were obvious and I was moved to sit quietly
on the bank and just watch. After five
or six casts, and on his last retrieve,
there was a huge swirl of water and we
both saw the dorsal fin of what was surely
a 20 lb. Atlantic Salmon.
I knew from previous experience that this was a taking fish, likely to be hooked on the next cast. Just then however, a funeral procession started across the bridge about seventy yards downstream. The elderly gentleman reeled in his line and stepped out of the water. He stood at military attention with his rod smartly at his side and doffed his cap waiting there until the slow procession passed across the bridge and out of sight. He quickly replaced his cap and began stripping line as he made his way back into the water.
I was moved by this
display and yet curious. I approached the
gentleman and remarked that he must have
known the deceased quite well to have possibly
lost the opportunity to hook and land the
large fish he had raised. He replied "Yes,
and if she had lived until next Tuesday,
we would have been married 53 years".
- Bob Boudreau, Flyfish@ 1995
Many go fishing
all their lives without knowing that it
is not fish they are after.
- Henry David Thoreau
April 1st, 1878 -
Opening day. Fished Halfway brook from
Morgan brook to, and through the woods;
then fished Ogden brook from Van Husen's
road to Gleason's. Banks more than full
of roily snow water; weather decidedly
cold; strong wind from the Northwest; cloudy
sky. Caught one small trout that I returned
to his native element to grow; discovered
from my single specimen of the Salvelinus
fontinalis that they have the same bright
spots that they have always had; look the
same, smell the same, feel the same; other
peculiarities lacking. Warm sun and rain
required to develop the characteristics
we so much admire in our leaping friend.
Managed to fall into the Ogden brook -
in fact went in without the slightest difficulty,
amid applause from the bank; discovered
from my involuntary plunge that the water
is just as wet as last year, and if memory
serves, a trifle colder. Reached home in
the evening, cold, wet, tired and hungry.
Nevertheless, had a most glorious time.
- A. Nelson Cheney, 1878
Flyfishing is like
sex, everyone thinks there is more than
there is, and that everyone is getting
more than their share.
- Henry Kanemoto, on Flyfish@ 1996
There are trout in
my river whose attitudes,
Are quite of the blackest ingratitude;
Though I offer them duns,
Most superior ones,
They maintain a persistent Black Gnatitude.
- Anonymous
If fishing is interfering
with your business, give up your business.
- Sparse Grey Hackle (Alfred W. Miller)
Final Words
An old man in his final breaths called in his
family and said "I must apologize to
you all. I suppose I haven't been the perfect
father and husband. I shamefully admit that
I spent as much of my life as I could in
the woods and on the streams. I was rarely
at home during the fishing seasons and I'll
admit that I spent too much time at the
fly shop, and too much money on rods and
lines and reels." He paused here to
rest for a minute, then continued. "I've
been a terrible father and I hope you all
forgive me." Then he paused again and
looked around. Then he closed his eyes and
smiled and said in a half whisper to himself, "and
on the other hand....I have caught a helluva
lot of trout."
- Anonymous
Enjoy thy stream oh,
harmless fish,
And when an angler for his dish,
Through gluttony's vile sin,
Attempts--a wretch--to pull thee out
God give thee strength, oh, gentle trout,
To pull the rascal in.
- Peter Pindar
Testament of a
Fisherman
I fish because I love to; because I love the
environs where trout are found, which are invariably
beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds
of people are found, which are invariably ugly;
because of all the television commercials, cocktail
parties, and assorted social posturing I thus
escape; because, in a world where most men seem
to spend their lives doing things they hate,
my fishing is at once an endless source of delight
and an act of small rebellion; because trout
do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or
bribed or impressed by power, but respond only
to quietude and humility and endless patience;
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; because mercifully there
are no telephones on trout waters; because only
in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness;
because bourbon out of an old tin cup always
tastes better out there; because maybe one day
I will catch a mermaid; 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.
- Robert Traver, 1964 (Judge John Voelker, 1903-1993)
Fly-fishing is the
most fun you can have standing up.
- Arnold Gingrich, 1969
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.
- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, 1976
Some go to church and
think about fishing, others go fishing
and think about God.
- Tony Blake, on Flyfishing
"Although
I know that it is heresy to suggest such
an idea in the midst of an age of progress,
it may be that ultimate truth lies in
the spiritual attitude of the southerners
who are always going fishing. A person
who has achieved an immunity from the
everlasting inner demand that he improve
upon his earthly position must possess
an unusual degree of cosmic equilibrium.
He must have learned in some way that
composure of the human spirit is all
that actually matters. He has attained,
without conscious effort, the serenity
for which all men strive."
