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

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

It is easy to tell tourists from tarpon. Tarpon have a narrow, bony plate inside the mouth of their lower jaw. Tourists have both upper and lower plates.

I don't regard nature as a spectator sport.

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.

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

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