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Good old angling quotes

8K views 133 replies 71 participants last post by  BriGuy 
#1 ·
I'll start.




“No life, my honest Scholar, no life so happy and so pleasant as the life of a well governed Angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams, which we now see glide so quietly by us.”

--Izaak Walton, 1653





And Angling too, that solitary Vice
Whatever Isaac Walton sings or says –
The Quaint, old, cruel Coxcomb in his gullet
Should have a hook, and small trout to pull it.

--Lord Byron, 1823
 
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#100 ·
A couple from Gierach's Good Flies:

"I've decided that many of the fine points of fly tying are lost on the fish."

"Lots of different flies began to look like insurance policies against getting skunked, but then there were still those guys with white hair sticking out from beneath dented cowboy hats who could fish a Size 12 Rio Grande King through a hatch of No. 22 Blue-Winged Olives and catch trout. They reminded me of mountain lions: I didn't see them often, but when I did they made a big impression."
 
#117 ·
Overheard on the Dean. Two older anglers were fishing across the river from me when one hooked a fish that was putting up an epic battle. After a bit of time one says "that looks like a pretty good one. How big is he?" The immediate answer, "I don't know, I haven't lost him yet."
 
#118 ·
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit” W. C. Fields

“The sun was warm but the wind was chill. / You know how it is with an April day. / When the sun is out and the wind is still, / You’re one month on in the middle of May. /But if you so much as dare to speak, / a cloud comes over the sunlit arch, /And wind comes off a frozen peak, /And you’re two months back in the middle of March.” Robert Frost
 
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