If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
--Doug Larson

Angling may be said to be so like mathematics that it can never be fully learned  --Izaak Walton

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains." -- Thoreau

We eat fish and fish eat us.
--Dana Scully

The man who coined the phrase "Money can't buy happiness", never bought
himself a good fly rod!
-- Reg Baird - video Labrador Trout.

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

"Even a fish wouldn't get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut." Unknown

"Listen to the sound of the river and you will get a trout." -Irish proverb

To catch the fish you must be the fish.  But, if you are also what you eat, you must also surly be the fly.  What if you try to eat yourself then you become you all over again. Oh the insanity of becoming a fly fisherman.  The peace is in doing and not thinking so much.  -- Justin W. Felter

"Fly-Fishing helps you understand just how unimportant 
your big real life problems really aren't." --The Little Trout Fly-Fishing Book (Wisdom Handed Down Through the Ages) 
by Keith Myers

"It is not a fish until it is on the bank." -Irish Proverb

No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. John Ruskin

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

I used to love to come to the ballpark. Now I hate it. Every day becomes a little tougher because of all this. Writers, tape recorders, microphones, cameras, questions and more questions. Roger Maris lost his hair the season he hit sixty-one. I still have all my hair, but when it's over, I'm going home to Mobile and fish for a long time.
--Hank Aaron as he closed in on Babe Ruth's career home run record

"There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot." -- Steven Wright

"Calling Fly Fishing a hobby is like calling Brain Surgery a job." -- Paul Schullery

Fishing seems to be the favorite form of loafing Edgar Watson Howe

"Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration." -- Izaac Walton: 

 "Fishing is such great fun, I have often felt, that it really ought to be done in bed." -- John Voelker

"Some go to church and think about fishing, others go fishing and think about God." --Tony Blake

"The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing." -- Babylonian Proverb

"I am not against golf, since I cannot suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout." -- Paul O'Neil

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

"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 rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs."-- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It:   

"It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming." -- John Steinbeck:

"Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers.  Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary." -- Patrick F. McManus: 

"Of all the liars among mankind, the fisherman is the most trustworthy." -- William Sherwood Fox

"Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." -- Henry David Thoreau

Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake.  Mere bald fabrication is useless, the veriest tyro can manage that.  It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulousalmost of pedanticveracity that the experienced angler is seen  -- Jerome K. Jerome

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

"Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught."

"Three-fourths of the Earth's surface is water, and one-fourth is land.  It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn." -- Chuck Clark: 

"Work is for those who do not fly fish."

"There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process." -- Paul O'Neil

"All fishermen are liars except you and me and to tell you the truth, I'm not so sure about you!"

 "My wife said I have so many fly rods and reels that I cannot possibly use them all.  My reply was that I had rods and reels to fish, rods and reels to tinker with and then my fine crafted rods and reels to "fondle and admire, while dreaming of trout fishing during the cold winter months.  You can imagine what kind of look she gave me."-- Jimmy D. Moore

 "When a man picks up a fly rod for the first time, he may not know, he has been born again." -- Joseph D. Farris

"Blessings upon all that hate contention, and love quietness, and virtue, and Angling." -- Izaak Walton

Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.  -- Don Marquis 

"He told us about Christ's disciples being fisherman, and we were left to assume...that all great fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fisherman and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman." -- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

"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

"Catch and Release fishing is a lot like golf.  You don't have to eat the ball to have a good time."

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains. -- Henry David Thoreau

"We ask a simple question and that is all we wish; Are fishermen all liars?; or, do only liars fish?" -- William Sherwood Fox

"Everyone ought to believe in something;  I believe I'll go fishing."

"Fishing is worth any amount of effort and any amount of expense to people who love it, because in the end, you get such a large number of dreams per fish."
---Fan Frazier

" The true fisherman approaches the first day of fishing season with all the sense of wonder and awe of a child approaching Christmas."-- Robert Traver

"My wife says I'm hard of hearing.  All husbands who have been around the block a time or two, know it's called "selective hearing".  I hear what I want to hear. I can hear a trout rise. I can hear a spinner hit the water. I can hear the drumming of a grouse at half a mile, but I danged well can't hear her when she wants me to make the bed, or paint the house, etc. etc.  I secretly  had my hearing tested just to be sure.  The doc says it is great, a 7 % loss in my left ear and a 10% loss in my right.  Very typical of anyone who does a lot of hunting with a shotgun.   But I'm not about to tell my wife that." -- Jimmy D. Moore

"Who ever said  A bad day of fishing is always better than a good day at work. Never had their boat sink."

If you want happiness for an hour take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing.
If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else (go fishing).
-- Chinese Proverb