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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.