1.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.
Norman Maclean
Ultimately, all entities coalesce into one, and a stream traverses it.
2.
The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
Henry David Thoreau
The utmost disappointment in life is to spend your entire existence angling just to realize it was never a catch that you were pursuing.
3.
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.
John Gierach
4.
The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be.
John Gierach
The remedy to any hardship -occupation, romance, finance, whatever -is to take a fishing trip, and the more difficult the issue, the longer the expedition should be.
5.
Fishing makes us less the hostages to the horrors of making a living.
Jim Harrison
6.
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.
John Gierach
7.
It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersections, no fish and no ducks. OK?
Molly Ivins
8.
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
9.
Hell, if I'd jumped on all the dames I'm supposed to have jumped on, I'd have had no time to go fishing.
Clark Gable
10.
Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.
Wendell Berry
11.
Maybe your stature as a fly fisherman isn't determined by how big a trout you can catch, but by how small a trout you can catch without being disappointed.
John Gierach
12.
God buries our sins in the depths of the sea and then puts up a sign that reads, "No fishing."
Corrie Ten Boom
14.
All good things come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.
Norman Maclean
16.
There will be days when the fishing is better than one's most optimistic forecast, others when it is far worse. Either is a gain over just staying home.
Roderick Haig-Brown
18.
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
19.
Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know," Harry told Ron as they crossed the lawn. "Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes," said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, "like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods.
J. K. Rowling
20.
A couple of months ago I went fishing with a buddy of mine, we pulled his boat into the dock, I lifted up this big 'ol stringer of bass and this idiot on the dock goes, Hey, y'all catch all them fish? Nope - Talked 'em into giving up. Here's your sign.
Bill Engvall
21.
Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime
Jimmy Cannon
22.
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
23.
If people don't occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you're doing something wrong.
John Gierach
24.
Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not, and cared naught about them.
John James Audubon
25.
A river is water is its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart
Roderick Haig-Brown
26.
If Satch (Paige) and I were pitching on the same team, we would clinch the pennant by July fourth and go fishing until World Series time.
Dizzy Dean
27.
I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.
John Ford
28.
Smoked carp tastes just as good as smoked salmon when you ain't got no smoked salmon.
Patrick F. McManus
29.
Angling is extremely time consuming. That's sort of the whole point.
Thomas McGuane
30.
If you ask the fish whether they'd rather have an oil spill or a season of fishing, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd vote for another blowout.
Carl Safina
31.
If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago.
Zane Grey
32.
Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.
Bill Drayton
33.
Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.
Ted Hughes
34.
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.
John Gierach
35.
God has cast our confessed sins into the depths of the sea, and He's even put a 'No Fishing' sign over the spot.
Dwight L. Moody
36.
Poets talk about "spots of time", but it is really the fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.
Norman Maclean
37.
I'm an outdoors girl - I like to go fishing, riding four-wheelers, hunting.
Miranda Lambert
38.
I continue to be a photographer; I have enjoyed fishing and hunting with a close friend; and have owned two ranches, first in northern California and then in the state of Washington.
Douglass North
39.
Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.
John Gierach
40.
It is impossible to grow weary of a sport that is never the same on any two days of the year.
Theodore Gordon
41.
Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once.
Lee Wulff
42.
The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad.
A. Best
43.
I'm fishing for men with a certain kind of bait, and the bait that I am offering is not a candy; it's a very specific thing that I'm offering, which is a deep gospel and a deep conversion.
Larry Norman
44.
Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream,
but I have found that for some strange reason,
fish prefer worms.
So when I went fishing,
I didn’t think about what I wanted.
I thought about what they wanted.
I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream.
Rather,
I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?" Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?
Dale Carnegie
45.
Most fishermen swiftly learn that it's a pretty good rule never to show a favorite spot to any fisherman you wouldn't trust with your wife.
John D. Voelker
46.
There are two distinct visits to tackle-shops, the visit to buy tackle and the visit which may be described as Platonic when, being for some reason unable to fish, we look for an excuse to go in, and waste the tackle dealer's time.
Arthur Ransome
47.
Like they say, you can learn more from a guide in one day than you can in three months fishing alone.
Mario Lopez
48.
I've gone fishing thousands of times in my life, and I have never once felt unlucky or poorly paid for those hours on the water.
William G. Tapply
49.
I frankly don't make much of a living, but I make a hell of a life.
Jack Gartside
50.
When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.
Norman MacCaig