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

I have never seen a river that I could not love. Moving water... has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and associations. It has a thousand colors and a thousand shapes, yet it follows laws so definite that the tiniest streamlet is an exact replica of a great river.

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

A river is water is its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart

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

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

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