Fly fishing is the most beautiful way of trying to catch a fish; not the most efficient, just as ballet is the most beautiful way of moving the body between between two points, not the most direct. Fly fishing is to fishing as ballet is to walking.

All genius is simple. It involves close observation and a momentous act of self trust.

It's a lovely tribute and fun to read.

When I am home alone I like to scatter my tackle across the floor and play with it. I may pretend I am working on it, performing preventative maintenance, but really it is playing.

I stepped on a land mine named Jayson Blair.

For me, fishing and journalism touched the same places in my head. In comparison with that of poets, the fly fishers' and the journalists' experiences are probably pale flavors, but they carry nonetheless a hint of ambrosia.

And believe me, to have been in the city of Tuscaloosa in October when you were young and full of Early Times and had a shining Alabama girl by your side--to have had all that and then to have seen those red shirts pour onto the field, and, then, coming behind them, with that inexorable big cat walk of his, the man himself, The Bear--that was very good indeed.