Fishing Quotes

[Snakeman_BK]

They say a fish should swim thrice...first it should swim in the sea, then in butter and at last it should swim in a good claret.
Jonathan Swift

No fisherman ever fishes as much as he wants...this is the first great rule of fishing, and it explains a world of otherwise inexplicable behavior.
Geoffrey Norman

The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men's lives the hours spent in fishing
Assyrian Tablet 2000 B.C.

Fishing is such great fun, I have often felt, that it really ought to be done in bed.
John Voelker 1974


You must remember that there's plenty of salt in the sea to take with the tales your fellow fishermen tell.
John Hersey 1987

I get all the truth I need in the newspaper every morning, and every chance I get I go fishing, or swap stories with fishermen to get the taste of it out of my mouth.
Ed Zern 1977

Trout thrive best in water with a high mineral content, while this is the very sort of water that is worst for making Tennessee whiskey. This is why one never finds a trout in a fifth of Jack Daniel's. Or vice versa.
Milford Stanley Poltroon 1977

There were lots of people who committed crimes during the year who would not have done so if they had been fishing, and I assure you that the increase in crime is due to a lack of those qualities of mind and character which impregnate the soul of every fisherman except those who get no bites.
Herbert Hoover 1930


Fishing is a chance to wash one’s soul with pure air, with the rush of a brook, or with the shimmer of the sun on the blue water…. And it is discipline in the equality of man- for all men are equal before fish.
Herbert Hoover 1963



Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, we also go with thee.
They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.
John 21:3


All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit to a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother‑love and hating moonlight.
John Steinbeck 1954


If a little madness be a necessary requisite to obtain the ultimate in the pleasure of angling then, O Lord, give me insanity!
John Alden Knight 1936
If the old boy [Izaak Walton] occasionally stretched the truth, it strikes me that it makes him an even more appropriate father figure for a cult whose members are often given to hyperbole.
Robert Diendorfer 1977

And when he struck his first cod, and felt the fish take the hook, a kind of big slow smile went over his features, and he said, Gentlemen, this is solid comfort.
Stephen Vincent Benet 1932


If you ever wondered why fishing is probably the most popular sport in this country, watch that boy beside the brook and you will learn. If you are really perceptive you will. For he already knows that fishing is only one part fish.
Hal Borland 1954



Now I am . . . like anyone with a strong preference for the fly rod, totally indifferent to how large a fish I catch by comparison with other fishermen. So when a fifteen‑year‑old called Fred, fishing deep in midsummer with a hideous plastic worm, caught a four and a half pounder . . . I naturally felt no resentment beyond wanting to break the kid's thumbs.
Vance Bourjaily 1981






With nary one fish to show for his day with rod and reel, an amateur fisherman stopped at a market on his way home and thoughtfully bought a dozen trout. He then ordered the fish man to throw them to him one at a time. When I tell my wife, he explained to the mystified fish man, that I catch fish ‑‑ I catch them!
Bennett Cerf 1965


It is just possible that nice guys don't catch the most fish. But they find far more pleasure in those they do get.
Roderick Haig‑Brown 1960


Whenever I find myself growing green about the mouth; whenever it is a damp drizzley November in my soul; and especially whenever it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from methodically knocking peoples hats off ‑‑ then, I account it high time to get to sea. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but know it, almost all men in their degree cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.
Mark Twain





Around the steel no torturd worm shall twine,
No blood of living insect stain my line;
Let me, less cruel, cast featherd hook,
With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook,
Silent along the mazy margin stray,
And with fur wrought fly delude the prey.

John Gay


You can always tell a fisherman, but you can’t tell him much.
Corey Ford



Of all the world's enjoyments that ever were, there's none of our employments with fishing can compare.
Thomas D’Urfrey

Perhaps the greatest satisfaction on the first day of the season is the knowledge in the evening that the whole of the rest of the season is to come."
Arthur Ransome 1929

A Fly fisherman is a guy standing in cold water up to his liver throwing the world's most expensive clothesline at trees”
P.J. O'Rourke

"I object to fishing tournaments less for what they do to the fish than what they do to fishermen."
Ted Williams 1984

"Nothing is more trying to the patience of fishermen than the remark so often made to them by the profane: " I had not patience enough for fishing!" "
Arthur Ransome 1929

"The love of angling increases with the lapse of years, for its love grows by what it feeds on."
James Henshall, 1881

"Like the fish that haunts the angler's dreams, he was forever gaining size."
Harry Middleton, 1989

…the fisherman fishes. It is at once an act of humility and a small rebellion. And it is something more. To him his fishing is an island in a world of dream and shadow."
Robert Traver, 1960