Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.

Successful trout fishing isn't a matter of brute force or even persistence, but something more like infiltration.

I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it's the one thing I can think of that probably doesn't.

Cell phones have changed us from a nation of self-reliant pioneer types into a bunch of men standing alone in supermarkets saying, ‘Okay, I’m in the tampon aisle, but I don’t see it.'

I like to do every operation the same way on each fly. In the course of tying a batch of flies, I might get an idea on how to do something differently, but try to save it to try out later rather than break my comfortable rhythm. I don't worry about forgetting it. In my experience good ideas stay with you, while bad ones go back to where they came from, and good riddance.

The best fisherman I know try not to make the same mistakes over and over again; instead they strive to make new and interesting mistakes and to remember what they learned from them.

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.