Lakes Quotes - Page 14

• The dream is everything in the sport of fishing. You dream with every cast of your fly that the shadowy form will finally rise to your fly. You dream as you drop off to sleep at night about the lunker that got loose just as you were about to net it.

  Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

  Sports, Dream, Sleep

  4 Copy quote

• I learned to look up suddenly from a hatch or feeding frenzy and find myself momentarily removed from solid earth. I go fishing not to find myself but to lose myself

  Joseph Monninger

  Fishing, Rivers, Sea

  4 Copy quote

• Fishing from a boat seems like dilettante bullshit - like hunting wild boar with a can of spray paint from the safety of a pick-up truck

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Hunting, Rivers, Sea

  6 Copy quote

• ...in rebellion against the typical British-type dry flies, I created the Wulff series.

  Lee Wulff

  Rivers, Sea, Fishing

  Lee Wulff (1986). “Trout on a fly”, Lyons Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• An errant May-fly swerved unsteadily athwart the current in the intoxicated fashion affected by young bloods of May-flies seeing life. A swirl of water and a 'cloop!' and the May-fly was visible no more

  Kenneth Grahame

  Fashion, Blood, Sea

  Paul Brody, Kenneth Grahame (2015). “The Life and Works of Kenneth Grahame: A Biography and Collection of Grahame’s Work”, p.332, BookCaps Study Guides

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Art, Sea, Fishing

  Ed Engle (1991). “Fly Fishing the Tailwaters”, p.65, Stackpole Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Flyfishing, which has a vaguely mystical aura, is a lot like work. I'm a frenetic flyfisherman. I wade up and down streams, looking for good spots, usually falling and breaking some piece of equipment. Or I stand still and work myself into a frenzy about what fly I should use. I love fishing, but it has never given me a moments peace.

  James P. Gorman

  Fall, Sea, Fishing

  9 Copy quote

• I am almost certain fishermen posess a peculiar bend to their makeup. Fisherman are optimists, and the fish in the future is always preferable to the fish at hand. Even the best fishermen catch fish only a small percentage of the time, which means we persevere in a sport that features failure as its main ingredient. Truly great days, when the fish hammer the fly as soon as it lands on the water are rare.

  Joseph Monninger

  Sports, Mean, Makeup

  7 Copy quote

• If your rod weighs six ounces, your reel nine, and your line another ounce or two, it means that you are holding a pound of weight in your casting hand - much of the time at arm's length - all the time you fish. Try carrying a pound of butter around that way for four or five hours.

  Ted Trueblood

  Mean, Sea, Fishing

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Sea, Fishing

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Sea, Fishing, Rivers

  7 Copy quote

• I have learned that I am also a person who has to be able to go fishing whenever I can and for as long as I want to go. It is a silly thing, but there it is.

  Howell Raines

  Silly, Rivers, Sea

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Boys, Sea, Fishing

  4 Copy quote

• Contrary to common belief, it is not true that if you cut a worm-fisherman in half, each half will grow into a complete fisherman. For which we should all be eternally grateful.

  Ed Zern

  Grateful, Cutting, Sea

  7 Copy quote

• Before exulatation had vanished, I felt as if I had been granted a marvellous privilege. Out of the inscrutable waters a beautiful fish had somehow leaped to show me fleetingly the life and spirit of his element.

  Zane Grey

  Beautiful, Sea, Fishing

  16 Copy quote

• Fish sense, applied in the field, is what the old Zen masters would call enlightenment: simply the ability to see what's right there in front of you without having to sift through a lot of thoughts and theories and, yes, expensive fishing tackle.

  John Gierach

  Sea, Fishing, Rivers

  John Gierach (2013). “Trout Bum”, p.24, Graphic Arts Books

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Flower, Golf, Men

  7 Copy quote

• The indications which tell your dry fly angler when to strike are clear and unmistakable, but those which bid a wet fly man raise his rod-point and draw in the steel are frequently so subtle, so evanescent and impalpable to the senses, that, when the bending rod assures him that he has divined aright, he feels an ecstacy as though he had performed a miracle each time.

  G. E. M. Skues

  Men, Sea, Fishing

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Sea, Fishing

  4 Copy quote

• As the old fisherman remarked after explaining the various ways to attach a frog to a hook, it's all the same to the frog.

  Paul Schullery

  Sea, Fishing, Rivers

  Paul Schullery (2008). “Mountain Time: A Yellowstone Memoir”, p.4, UNM Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fly fishing or any other sport fishing, is an end in itself and not a game or competition among fishermen. . . .

  Ed Zern

  Sports, Sea, Fishing

  4 Copy quote

• And if ye angler take fysshe; surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte.

  Juliana Berners

  Men, Sea, Fishing

  6 Copy quote

• Over the years, whenever I've felt that little twinkle in the hairs on the back of my neck., as I encountered an original thought or observation in a fishing book, I've turned the corner of the page down.

  Arnold Gingrich

  Book, Hair, Years

  7 Copy quote

• Generally, we are united in the belief that all rod design has been progressive and that the ideas about fly rods in the past were so bad as to make it amazing that people were able to fish at all.

  Thomas McGuane

  Past, Sea, Fishing

  Thomas McGuane (2014). “The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing”, p.237, Vintage

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Sports, Prayer, Father

  4 Copy quote