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.

Luckily, though, there are still a few guys around who will look you straight in the eye and say, eloquently and to the point, ‘It’s been too goddamned hot for too long and the river has gone off.’

I know I'm a long way from greatness, but I am beginning to come at it in my own way. I can go through the basic motions pretty well, don't rely quite as religiously on specific fly patterns as I once did, have worked out ways of compensating for some of my most egregious weaknesses and have come to count heavily on timing because it's a hell of a lot easier to catch fish when the fish are biting.

The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be.

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.'

Something to think about: If you fish the wrong fly long and hard enough, it will sooner or later become the right fly.

It's an odd fact of life that whichever side of the stream you're on, two-thirds of the best water is out of reach on the other side.