fly fishing

26
Dec
2021

Five New Fishy Quotes and Sayings

More mind fertiliser from the pens of the true tellers of fishing tales.

“How to become a millionaire by fishing? Start out as a billionaire.” #1336

“Chris Yates is an angling legend who presented A Passion for Angling, which celebrates its 20th anniversary next month. It is still considered the best-ever television programme about fishing. Part of the problem with extreme fishing shows is the nature of modern television, thinks Yates. “They are tearing apart whatever the beauty of the subject is and showing one populist image,” he says. His series took four-and-a-half years to film. “No one in their right mind would make a TV film about fishing. I was insane to agree to do it. Fishing doesn’t translate into TV, unless you can somehow convey the sense of tranquility and mystery, as [A Passion for Angling’s filmmaker] Hugh Miles managed to do. There’s this mystery about why you are doing it and there’s this unknown world happening below the surface of the water, and your line is connecting you to it.” #1337

“There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.” #1338

“Because fly lines are wild snakes that need to be tamed…” #1339

“People get the Politicians and fishing tackle they deserve.” #1340

See all the quotes on fishing here

Posted by Tony Bishop
28
Nov
2019

Five New Fishing Quotes and Sayings

And each day, month and year the bottle waste grows at an increasing rate.

“Bottled water companies don’t produce water: they produce plastic bottles.” #1331

“If, as I suspect, trout fishing is something of a disease, then it is also something of a therapy in itself.” #1332

“Fishing Tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls.” #1333

“The biggest lie I tell myself is I am just going to run into the tackle shop and grab one thing! ” #1334

“How to become a millionaire by fishing … start out as a billionaire.” #1335

See more details on the new quotes and all 1335 quotes here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes, fly fishing
05
Nov
2018

5 More Fishing Quotes and Sayings

5 more quotations, aphorisms, and sayings about fishing and things fishy rolled from the pens of some pretty smart chaps and chapesses.

“Fish too much? Can’t be done.”  #1311

“I’ve found the best way to help fish grow is to practise catch and release. Whenever I release A fish it always doubles in size by the time I get home and tell my friends.” $1312

“It is a magical moment when a trout perceives a floating mayfly on the surface, whether a natural or an imitation. All of its lifelong learning experiences with ambushing prey and watching its biological world unfold daily will all boil down to just a few seconds as it decides to accept or reject a fly. The selectivity phases in this book will better help you understand what is going through the trout’s mind in these breathtaking moments.”  #1313

“As the angler looks back, he thinks less of individual captures and days than of the scenes in which he fished”  #1314

“Small fish, in the hands of someone with small hands, are relatively large”  #1315

See all the quotations here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing humour, fishing quotes, fly fishing
29
Aug
2018

5 New Fishing Quotes and Sayings

Just posted 5 more fishy and pithy quotations and sayings – total now 1295. (New numbers 1291 – 1295)

“To say that it was all just a matter of catching fish would be like saying that astronomy is nothing more than noticing the stars.” #1291

“If, as I suspect, trout fishing is something of a disease, then it is also something of a therapy in itself.” #1292

“There’s only one thing wrong with a fishing day–its staggering brevity.” #1293

“Perhaps it’s true, as Ecclesiastes claims, that nothing is new under the sun, but as the year turns toward another century, here’s hoping the pleasures and gifts that angling brings never end.” #1294

“The line between religion and fly fishing is barely there anyway, and this is most obvious when it comes to proselytizing. I don’t ever start a conversation with the intent of making a convert, but it happens before I know it” #1295

See all the quotes here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in Articles and stories on fishing in general, fishing quotes, fly fishing
06
Mar
2018

5 New Fishing Quotes and Sayings

These five new quotes are numbered 1286 – 1289

“I distrust experts in general and fishing experts in particular.” #1286

“Anticipating drag and dealing with it before the fact is one of the factors that distinguishes those people who always seem to catch more trout than the rest of us.” #1287

“Sometimes, concentrating on some deeply undercut bank, if you were lucky, you could catch a glimpse of something dark and larger than anything your imagination could conjure.” #1288

“The first and last object of the fly-fisher is to show as much of the fly to the fish as possible, and as little of everything else.” #1289

“Fly fishing is a healthy antisocial sport, and many of us have an emotional investment in being misunderstood because it makes us feel strange and brilliant, like Van Gogh.” “#1290

All quotes with more info about them can be found here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing humour, fishing quotes, fly fishing
29
Jul
2017

5 New Fishing Quotes and Sayings

These five new quotes are numbers 1281 – 1285. 

“A fish story needs no apology.  And no affidavit or string of affidavits can add anything to its credibility.”  #1281

“It is perfectly true that good fishing is not all luck.  But it is just as true that there is no good fishing without some luck.”  #1282

“There don’t have to be a thousand fish in a river; let me locate a good one and I’ll get a thousand dreams out of him before I catch him–and if I catch him, I’ll turn him loose.” #1283

“Fishing, for many, is an indispensable connection to earth and life, and it matters little that the multitude that practices it is incapable of translating its ambiguities to another idiom.”  #1284

“Fish quietly. The silence of wilderness is too beautiful to miss.” #1285

All quotes can be found here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes, fly fishing
06
Jan
2016

Fishing Quotations and Sayings

Kicking the New Year off with five more fishing quotations; total now 1260.

Fly fishing for trout is a sport that depends not so much on catching the fish as their mere presence and on the fact that you do, now and again, catch some. #1256

It’s a fact that trout can be awfully ignorant of fly fishing’s rich didactic history and all the rules we’ve invented to corroborate our theories of fish behavior. #1257

You can spend an hour or more working on a single trout. I do this regularly. If I catch him, I feel unnaturally elated. If I fail, I tip my cap to him. But it nags at me. I’ve got to believe I’m the one with the bigger brain. #1258

The shadow of sharks is the shadow of death, and they call forth dim ultimate fears. Yet there is something holy in their silence. #1259

The balance of probability, I think, leans to the theory that the trout is so obsessed by the pressure of appetite the he only sees what he wants to see – his supposed insect prey – and ignores the hook as an irrelevant detail, all of which goes to prove that the wily trout of the poets and journalists is – may Providence be devoutly thanked for it – really rather a stupid person.  #1260

See all quotes here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes, fly fishing
13
Sep
2015

Doubters Strike Back at ‘Grip and Kill’ Article

Trout dying to get a good photo?

My Grip and Kill (GAK) article received a huge amount of support from the fishing community. Links to the article reached many hundreds and is still growing. Many outtakes from the article were, and are still, being published by a large number of sites, big and small. The article has been published, (by permission), in a great many fishing club newsletters, etc.

The GAK page blew my site bandwidth cap out the window, and if it were not for a friend in the business mirroring the page, I would have had to shut the site down for a while. Even today, the page receives over 200 – 250 unique visits, every day.

But of course, being on the Internet, GAK attracted a significant group of nay-sayers and doubters.

So, I have written answers to the more rational doubts, and this is in the sidebar of the original article.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fly fishing how-to, Fresh water how-to, trout information
23
May
2015

Five New Fishing Quotations And Sayings – 23 May 2015

Five more fishing quotations and sayings hooked out of the river of words devoted to the sport we love. Total quotes now 1245, see them all here.

“Everybody should be quiet near a little stream and listen.” (1241)

“Everyone gets hung up in trees or stream-side brush.  Everyone.  Fly fishers who tell you different are either lying or never fish in those tricky places where the best fish lurk.” – Tom Rosenbauer (1242)

“I’d still consider them my favorite angling destinations. Elements contributing to a quality location are highly personal but, for me, mountains and wildness are essential. I like areas where humans vie with wolves and grizzlies for apex predator status. Places where logging hasn’t beaten back nature, where urbanity is nonexistent, and where rivers flow only through rocks, not concrete dams.” – Photographer Adam Tavender (1243)

“Even if you can’t cast very far, you can still catch a lot of fish, writes Chad Shmukler. “The anglers on the stream that aren’t throwing line farther than they need to are often the ones catching the most fish.”” – Chad Shmukler In a recent article on Hatch Magazine (1244)

“It is just as well to remember that angling is only a recreation, not a profession.  We usually find that men of the greatest experience are the most liberal and least dogmatic.” – Theodore Gordon (1245)

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes, fly fishing, Life & Stuff
10
Apr
2015

Five New Fishing Quotations and Sayings: 15 April 2015

More musings on the world of fishing and our place in it.

“I personally don’t happen to care a whoop for bass fishing or bass; in fact I loathe it and them; but I have no quarrel with the queer people who do, only a sort of bewildered pity.”

– Robert Travers (Num 1236)

“It is all about having a deep respect for nature, and then tricking nature into eating a plastic frog.” (Num 1237)

“There is no greater symbol of hope than an oversized fishing net.” (Num 2138)

“If we become conceited through great success, some day the trout will take us down a peg.”

– Theodore Gordon (Num 1239)

“Any time a professional fishing writer complains about his job, the world is rightfully licensed to kick his butt until he shuts up and realizes he isn’t exactly leading a life of quiet desperation out there on the Deschutes or the Tay or the Golfo Dulce.”

– James Babb (Num 1240)

See all 1240 quotes here.

Posted by Tony Bishop in fishing quotes, fly fishing, Life & Stuff