Fly Fishing Quotes

Somebody might say that they always wanted to be a fly-fishing guide in Montana and maybe they'll never get to do that but just by the virtue of having said it out loud, I think there's some power in that. ~ John Lee Hancock

He had never seen fly-fishing like this before. There were wet flies, and there were dry flies, but this fly augured into the water with a saw-toothed whine and dragged the fish out backwards. ~ Terry Pratchett

Time flies so fast after youth is past that we cannot accomplish one half the many things we have in mind or indeed one half our duties. The only safe and sensible plan is to make other things give way to the essentials, and the first of these is fly fishing. ~ Theodore Gordon

What a tourist terms a plague of insects, the fly fisher calls a great hatch. ~ Patrick F. McManus

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

Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It's not even clear if catching fish is actually the point. ~ John Gierach

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish. ~ Mark Twain

He belonged to the new breed of male epicureans who viewed cooking as a competitive sport, and pursued it with the same avidity that others had for fly-fishing or golf, with the attendant fetishization of the associated gadgetry and equipment. He ~ Jay McInerney

Fishing: a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes. ~ Don Marquis

Other CEOs were shown fly-fishing in Scottish rivers or piloting their own Learjets into Helsinki. Mr. Hosokawa was photographed at home in the leather chair he sat in when he listened, a Nansei EX-12 stereo system behind him. ~ Ann Patchett

The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad. ~ A. Best

People who are in politics to be right all the time would be better off taking up fly-fishing. It's less dangerous. Politics that is not applied in the real world and doesn't address the real challenges and paradoxes and agonies is a hobby. ~ Neil Kinnock

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

If you've got short, stubby fingers and wear reading glasses, any relaxation you would normally derive from fly fishing is completely eliminated when you try to tie on a fly. ~ Jack Ohman

I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there. ~ Robert Altman

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

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

There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing. ~ Herbert Hoover

I imagine that no art has ever been learned from books. fly-fishing is no exception. ~ G. E. M. Skues

If fishing is a religion, fly fishing is high church. ~ Tom Brokaw

It was afternoon as we made our way down to the river, accompanied by a running commentary by Early about whether or not the Lord had actually been fly-fishing.
Jesus did have lots of friends who were fishermen, said Early. Maybe after Peter fell into the Sea of Galilee, he decided to give up deep-sea fishing and take up fly-fishing in the river Jordan. Jesus and Peter were friends, so they have gone together. And besides, Jesus wouldn't have even needed waders, because he could walk on water ... ~ Clare Vanderpool

About the only certainty, other than uncertainty, in fly fishing is that a fly won't catch fish if it stays in its box. ~ Arnold Gingrich

Whether it's fly-fishing, taking your camper to the Everglades, or just traveling, everyone has got a little retirement dream. ~ Jean Chatzky

And for winter fly-fishing it is as useful as an almanac out of date. ~ Izaak Walton

Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect ~ Norman Maclean

The best time to go fishing is when you can ~ Ed Zern

Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Fly-fishing is the most fun you can have standing up. ~ Arnold Gingrich

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 not fly fishing if you are not looking for answers to questions. ~ Norman Maclean

But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in' proud to use the title. I won't touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

The doctor didn't want me to play golf anymore and was worried about me fly-fishing. Golf is something I enjoy, but fly-fishing is a different thing: That's religion. Hunting is religion for me. I didn't want to give those up. ~ Tom Brokaw

There's more B.S. in fly fishing than there is in a Kansas feedlot. ~ Lefty Kreh

Fly fishing is not about catching the fish. It is about enjoying the water, the breeze, the fish swimming all around. If you catch one, good. If you don't ... that is even better. That mean you come out and get to try all over again. ~ Clare Vanderpool

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

One great thing about fly fishing is that after a while nothing exists of the world but thoughts about fly fishing ~ Norman Maclean

I fished a little while ago with a man, not in his first youth, who had wasted the flower of his life on business and golf and gardening and motoring and marriage, and had in this way postponed his initiation (to fly fishing) far too long. ~ Arthur Ransome

But when I saw the cursive grace of Guido Rahr's fly line writing prayers I couldn't read to the river gods of Outer Mongolia, I knew my name was written there too. Fly fishing was going to be my version of my father's sport, my nod to my Scottish ancestors and to my self, and to the fish crazed part of America I had claimed as my own. ~ Jessica Maxwell

Finally, Gunner spoke, his voice so fluid and moving, it could have come from the river itself. I once hear a poem about angling. It say when you send out your line, it is like you cast out your troubles to let the current carry them away. I keep casting. ~ Clare Vanderpool

All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight. ~ John Steinbeck

There is no more graceful and healthful accomplishment for a lady than fly-fishing, and there is no reason why a lady should not in every respect, rival a gentleman in the gentle art. ~ William Cowper Prime

[A]ngling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other. ~ Samuel Johnson

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

Buying a fly rod in the average city store, that is, joining it up and safely waggling it a bit, is much like seeing a woman's arm protruding from a car window: all one can readily be sure of is that the window is open. ~ John D. Voelker

There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm. ~ Patrick F. McManus

People fish because they are searching for something. Often it is not for a fish. ~ Fennel Hudson

As we've seen the rise of cultural, environmental and educational tourism in adventure travel, we've also seen the rise of female participation. Part of that is due to changes in women's attitudes about their own abilities. As more women participate in such things as fly-fishing, whitewater kayaking and bicycling, we're also seeing concurrent growth in those areas in adventure travel. ~ Christopher Doyle

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

It's difficult for people to come to the understanding that only a small minority of the people ever really get the word about life, about living abundantly and successfully. Success in the important departments of life seldom comes naturally, no more naturally than success at anything-a musical instrument, sports, fly-fishing, tennis, golf, business, marriage, parenthood, landscape gardening. But somehow people wait passively for success to come to them, living as other people are living in the unspoken, tacit assumption that other people know how to live successfully. ~ Earl Nightingale

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish. ~ Steven Wright

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

When I get back to my dorm room, there it is, staring at me from above my bed. The Vladimir Putin calendar. Ha! I guess Katerina got a copy of it for me after my drunken rant at the secret supper club about how I had to ironically have one.
This is a girl after my own heart.
You have to see this calendar.
July: Vladimir Putin fly-fishing topless. March: Vladimir Putin smelling a flower. November: Vladimir Putin holding a puppy. I'm not kidding. Holding a puppy!
I laugh to myself. Katerina sure has my number. Maybe she will be my BFF even after I go back to the States. ~ Andrea Portes

I took another punch for the parrots. It's like boxing with the sun. Just watch the sparks FLY!!! ~ Jes Fuhrmann

Physically it is impossible for a bee to fly, but because it believes it can then it can. ~ Stephen Richards

If, sir, men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas could afford any security. ~ Samuel Johnson

Take the emptiness you hold in your arms
And scatter it into the open spaces we breathe.
Maybe the birds will feel how the air is thinner,
And fly with more affection. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Today, she is standing at the top of a mountain and appreciating the majestic panoramic view of mesmerizing Himalaya. As a kid, she used to look up in the sky and wish for wings to fly up to the mountains. And now after a long wait of many years, she is standing here and living her dream. It's the moment when she can't believe her eyes because what she always dreamed of has come alive. She looks with amazement as if she's witnessing a miracle. It is the moment of her life. She just wants to feel it. There are beautiful clouds below her and there are snow clad mountain peaks emerging from those clouds. The white peaks shining in blue sky among white clouds look like glittering diamonds to her. The view of the large lush green meadow surrounded by mountains under blue sky with a rainbow circling the horizon has put her in a state of tranquility. As the sun starts drowning in the horizon, the sky begins to boast his mystical colours. The beautiful mix of pink, orange and red looks like creating a twilight saga. She opens her both arm and takes a deep breath to entwine with the nature. The glimmering rays of the moon are paying tribute to her by kissing her warm cheeks and her eyes twinkle in bright moon light. She raises her face towards the moon and senses the flood of memories which she wants to unleash. The cool breeze lifts her ruffled hair and blows her skirt up. She closes her eyes and breathes deep as if she wants to let her know that she is finally here and then she open ~ Ashish Bhardwaj

Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away. ~ Winston Groom

The most adventurous thing I've done is learn how to fly a helicopter in the Philippines. One night we landed on a beach and slept on it. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

My heart, I think, turned tender in the untouched dark. I'm full of small, gathered hopes that, if I let them, will fly away from me, as fragile as dandelion seeds. The ~ Alexis Hall

Kings and governors that do exult in strength and beauty and lustihood and rich apparel, showing themselves for awhile upon the stage of the world and open dominion of high heaven, what are they but the gilded summer fly that decayeth with the dying day? ~ E.R. Eddison

He damaged her wings and demanded her to fly. ~ Noor Shirazie

Immerse yourself in the outdoor experience. It will cleanse your soul and make your a better person. ~ Fred Bear

The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting shapes and colors until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone… His fear infected Harry too, even though he knew that he could not be harmed, and he looked over his shoulder, wondering what it was that Snape was waiting for -
Then a blinding, jagged jet of white light flew through the air. Harry thought of lightning, but Snape had dropped to his knees and his wand had flown out of his hand.
"Don't kill me!"
"That was not my intention."
Any sound of Dumbledore Apparating had been drowned by the sound of the wind in the branches. He stood before Snape with his robes whipping around him, and his face was illuminated from below in the light cast by his wand.
"Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?"
"No - no message - I'm here on my own account!"
Snape was wringing his hands. He looked a little mad, with his straggling black hair flying around him.
"I - I come with a warning - no, a request - please - "
Dumbledore flicked his wand. Though leaves and branches still flew through the night air around them, silence fell on the spot where he and Snape faced eac ~ J.K. Rowling

Tell them to send everything that can fly. ~ Richard M. Nixon

But we have not understood the world; how its way
is to destroy without destroying, the way air
levels a mountain; things fly apart in a vacuum...
It wears us to the hard thing we cannot help being;
and if the only hard thing is our determination
not to be hard, it wears us down to that. ~ Alan Williamson

I never lost a little fish - Yes, I'm free to say. It always was the biggest fish I caught, that got away. ~ Eugene Field

Birds that cannot fly high into the sky rejoice exceedingly and sing sweet melodies when they get to the top of the tallest tree on the highest mountain! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The bravest thing I've ever done is fly to New York. I'm simply terrified of aeroplanes - I am the woman you see weeping at the airport. ~ Samantha Bond

Good morning on the 7th of July.
while still in bed my thoughts turn towards you my Immortal Beloved, now and then happy, then sad again, waiting whether Fate might answer us. – I can only live either wholly with you or not at all, yes, I have resolved to stray about far away until I can fly into your arms, and feel at home with you, and send my soul embraced by you into the realm of the Spirits. – Yes, unfortunately it must be. – You will compose yourself, all the more since you know my faithfulness to you, never can another own my heart, never – never. – Oh God why do I have to separate from someone whom I love so much, and yet my life in V[ienna] as it is now is a miserable life. – Your love makes me at once most happy and most unhappy. – At my age, I would now need some conformity regularity in my life – can this exist in our relationship? – Angel, I just learned that the post goes every day – and I must therefore conclude so that you get the l[etter] straightway – be patient, only through quiet contemplation of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together – be calm – love me – today – yesterday. – What yearning with tears for you – you – you – my life – my everything – farewell – oh continue to love me – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your Beloved
L.
Forever thine
forever mine
forever us. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

I call intuition cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you've got to hook the fish. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Where do they go, these dreams of mine? Do they live? Do they die? Do they fall? Do they fly? ~ F.K. Preston

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least 45 minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your 90 minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. ~ Arnold Bennett

I notice that Andy is watching our exchange with the still, silent fascination of a fly on the wall that is canny enough to be aware of the existence of swatters. ~ Charles Stross

There will be a new industry, and we are just now in the beginning. I will predict that in twelve or fifteen years there will be tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people, that fly and see that black sky. ~ Burt Rutan

There's a superstition among falconers that a hawk's ability is inversely proportional to the ferocity of its name. Call a hawk Tiddles and it will be a formidable hunter; call it Spitfire or Slayer and it will probably refuse to fly at all. ~ Helen Macdonald

My soul will not sleep
For want of my sister
The river runs between us
And I am sick with loss.
My pool is broken
By ripples unending,
For the wind has blown her far away,
The wind has blown her far away.

Oh, sister, your perfume
Is like honey dropped in water.
Like spices and pomegranates,
You stain my mouth with longing.
My pool is broken
By ripples unending;
The wind has blown your odor far away,
The wind has blown your odor far away.

The gods have made your love
Like the advance of flames on straw,
My longing like the downward stoop
Of the falcon in bright flight.
My pool is broken
By ripples unending.
I will fly to you on wind far away,
I will fly to you on wind far away.

I am a hunted goose, a hunted one;
The beauty of your shining hair
Is a bait to trap me in your net;
Your eyes, a snare of meryu-wood.
Gratefully I fall
Into ripples unending.
Hunt me, sister, far away.
Hunt me, sister, far away. ~ L.M. Ironside

I don't remember the exact words, but the ending went something like this: Your wings already existed; now you must learn to fly. ~ Penelope Ward

I get nervous when I fly; I'm used to walking with my feet. ~ Jack Johnson

And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either.
We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly: ~ Sherman Alexie

The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do [with great artists]; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star. ~ Marcel Proust

If you're thinking of flying, Sparrow, know that I will catch you. There is no escape. Fly until your wings fall off, until there's no more sky, but I will find you. I will always find you. ~ Leighton Del Mia

My granny always says Women are like angels, when someone breaks our wings we continue to fly around on our broomsticks because we're flexible like that ~ Sophie Monroe

Daughters of the Moon,
children of the Night,
rise like dew together
until the morning's light.
The owl's cry is our anthem,
our altar is the sky.
The Great Mystery is our Mother
to whom now, sisters, fly. ~ Louise Hawes

Orin's special conscious horror, besides heights and the early morning, is roaches. There'd been parts of metro Boston near the Bay he'd refused to go to, as a child. Roaches give him the howling fantods. The parishes around N.O. had been having a spate or outbreak of a certain Latin-origin breed of sinister tropical flying roaches, that were small and timid but could fucking fly, and that kept being found swarming on New Orleans infants, at night, in their cribs, especially infants in like tenements or squalor, and that reportedly fed on the mucus in the babies' eyes, some special sort of optical-mucus - the stuff of fucking nightmares, mobile flying roaches that wanted to get at your eyes, as an infant - and were reportedly blinding them; parents'd come in in the ghastly A.M.-tenement light and find their infants blind, like a dozen blinded infants that last summer; and it was during this spate or nightmarish outbreak, plus July flooding that sent over a dozen nightmarish dead bodies from a hilltop graveyard sliding all gray-blue down the incline Orin and two teammates had their townhouse on, in suburban Chalmette, shedding limbs and innards all the way down the hillside's mud and one even one morning coming to rest against the post of their roadside mailbox, when Orin came out for the morning paper, that Orin had had his agent put out the trade feelers. ~ David Foster Wallace

What are you looking at?"
"A beautiful woman who makes me think I can fly. ~ Elle Casey

My favorite memories growing up in North Carolina were hunting and fishing with my father and brothers. There, I developed a deep appreciation for protecting land and waterways. There, I learned outdoorsmanship. ~ Louis Bacon

what is made to fly will not do well trapped on the ground, ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you choose to crawl, so be it. If you choose to stroll, so be it. If you choose to fly, so be it. ~ Abhishek Kumar

We would have known nothing of the nature and reach of her sorrow if she had come back. But she left us and broke the family and the sorrow was released and we saw its wings and saw it fly a thousand ways into the hills, and sometimes I think sorrow is a predatory thing because birds scream at dawn with a marvelous terror, and there is, as I have said before, a deathly bitterness in the smell of ponds and ditches. When we were children and frightened of the dark, my grandmother used to say if we kept our eyes closed we would not see it. That was when I noticed the correspondence between the space within the circle of my skull and the space around me. I saw just the same figure against the lid of my eye or the wall of my room, or in the trees beyond my window. Even the illusion of perimeters fails when families are separated. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Being a display pilot is probably the thing I've been most proud of in my life. Don't really fly anymore now though. I have three small children and as most of my friends were killed in different accidents, I realised that it was probably just a matter of time before I went that way. ~ Gary Numan

A few minutes ago, I felt as if I was back in Paris,
sitting in a park.
It is funny how our mind sometimes wanders
back to times past.

When each of my parents was dying,
floating in a sea of pain medication,
their minds drifted back to their early twenties
when they were newly in love.
They both talked as if they were lost,
and they had to find each other.

In one corner of my house,
I display some things that my parents cherished:
my mother's china
and my father's fishing gear.
I don't know if there is an afterlife,
but if their ghosts visit me someday,
then their cherished things will be waiting for them.
I also display photographs of my late parents,
not when they were old,
but when they were a newlywed couple,
young, happy, smiling
and full of hope
and love. ~ Jeffrey A. White

I, on the other hand, interrupt people because my thoughts fly out of my mouth. My handbag's full of rubbish. And I want to do something that matters with my life. Right now I'd like to write plays, sing in musicals, and/or rid the world of poverty, violence, cruelty, and right-wing conservative politics. ~ Alison Larkin