If you aren't a fisher you'll see many things, but the river, except where it is ridden by waterfowl or waded by moose, will rarely enter your thoughts, much less stimulate your spirit. It's different if you fish. The surface of the water tells a story.

Fishing is a quest for knowledge and wonder as much as a pursuit of fish; it is as much an acquaintance with beavers, dippers, and other fishermen as it is the challenge of catching trout.

I don't suppose I ever entirely release a fish. I may not eat it, but that does not mean I take nothing from it before I let it go.

Calling fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job.

As the old fisherman remarked after explaining the various ways to attach a frog to a hook, it's all the same to the frog.

If you keep at it long enough, one day you may witness some greater disturbance, some rushing breach of the water's surface so startling and violent and exhilarating that you too will suddenly, and always thereafter, believe in monsters.

The issue of imitation has always occupied fly fishers, and part of its endless attraction has been the imponderable uncertainty of how much it matters to the fish in the first place.