Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It's not even clear if catching fish is actually the point.

Okay, I'm in the tampon aisle, but I don't see it.

Maybe your stature as a fly fisherman isn't determined by how big a trout you can catch, but by how small a trout you can catch without being disappointed.

Fly tackle has improved considerably since 1676, when Charles Cotton advised anglers to 'fish fine and far off,' but no one has ever improved on that statement.

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

I think I fish, in part, because it's an anti-social, bohemian business that, when gone about properly, puts you forever outside the mainstream culture without actually landing you in an institution.

Fishing in rainy conditions may make fisherman seem crazy to the great mass of unimaginative people, but then few fishermen care what they think