From my own experience I can say that a bad back makes you hike slower, stove-up knees keep you from wading confidently, tendinitis of the elbows buggers your casting, and a dose of giardia can send you dashing to the bushes fifteen times in an afternoon, but although none of this is fun, it's discernibly better than not fishing.

If we carry purism to it's logical conclusion, to do it right {fishing} you'd have to live naked in a cave, hit your trout on the head with rocks, and eat them raw. But, so as not to violate another essential element of the fly-fishing tradition, the rocks would have to be quarried in England and cost $300 each.

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.

I don't really know how to tie a fly until I've tied a hundred dozen of them.

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.'

If people don't occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you're doing something wrong.

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.