The chief difference between big-game fishing and weightlifting is that weightlifters never clutter up their library walls with stuffed barbells

Most fishing rods work better if you grasp them at the thick end. If you grasp a fisherman at the thick end, you may get a thumb bit off.

I don't mind my hand shaking so much; it improves my S cast.

I don't regard nature as a spectator sport.

... it takes several years of serious fishing before a man learns enough to go through a whole season with an unblemished record of physical and spiritual anguish.

I make it a rule never to weigh or measure a fish I've caught, but simply to estimate its dimensions as accurately as possible, and then, when telling about it, to improve these figures by roughly a fifth, or twenty percent. I do this mainly because most people believe all fishermen exaggerate by at least twenty percent, and so I allow for the discounting my audience is almost certain to apply.

...there are few things deader than a dead brown trout stream.