I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel.

A fisherman is always hopeful -- nearly always more hopeful than he has any right to be.

I have two hopes for the future. The first and lesser one is that game commissions will one day have sense enough to set limits that measurably reflect the sport safely available. The second and deeply urgent one is that we shall grow a race of sportsmen no one of whom will ever consider it a matter of pride to have killed a limit.

... To this day I would rather see a fish, creep up to him and watch his rise to my fly than catch half a dozen fish unseen until they take.

I remember the good evenings I have fished, even the ones that realised material hopes not by the fish that came to the fly, but by the colour and movement of the water and sky, by the sounds and scents and gentle stirrings that were all about me.

It is quite easy to debase the sport, change its values, dilute its ethics and destroy its traditional associations with quietness, relaxation and the opportunity to think. Angling is not a competitive sport. The fisherman'- s only real competition is with his quarry and his only real challenge is the challenge to himself. Nothing can add to this, but the blight of interhuman competition can certainly detract from it.

I have fished through fishless days that I remember happily without regret.