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 don't regard nature as a spectator sport.

The truth is, fish have very little sex life. If you have ever tried to make love under water, you will know why.

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.

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