There will be days when the fishing is better than one's most optimistic forecast, others when it is far worse. Either is a gain over just staying home.

Our tradition is that of the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish.

Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers.

I have been, all my life, what is known as a conservationist. It seems clear beyond possibility of argument that any given generation of men can have only a lease, not ownership, of the earth; and one essential term of the lease is that the earth be handed down on to the next generation with unimpaired potentialities. This is the conservationist's concern.

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.

Wherever we go in the world we find other men speaking the same language, planning the same plans, dreaming the same dreams. And one of the big four - brownie, or brookie, cutthroat or rainbow - is the cause of it all

Anglers...exaggerate grossly and make gentle and inoffensive creatures sound like wounded buffalo and man-eating tigers.