Quotables

It's a slow Friday, which means I have less than a dozen conference calls on the calendar. Thus I actually can take a civilized break for lunch. Which means eating and web surfing and maybe even a bit more of midgapalooza -- epic midge fly tying.

Over on Fishpond's Facebook page they're running a twelve days of Christmas promotion where each day they ask a different questions. Yesterday's question was above favorite fishing quotes from either literature or movies. A few of my favorites are below.

The winner

"All the romance of trout fishing exists in the mind of the angler and is no way shared by the fish." Harold F. Blaisdell, The Philosophical Fisherman

Other notable entries

There’s a fine line in between fishing and just standing about the shore like an idiot. – Steven Wright

"I'm not gonna lie. He's a world champion peckerwood. Bait fisherman? He didn't say. Good Lord! George. He's going to show up with a coffee can full of worms. Red can. Hills Brothers. I'll lay a bet on it." - A River Runs through it ( Norman Maclean

"A friend tells this story about a fly fisher's wife: Before they were married, the man told her, truthfully, "I don't drink, take drugs, gamble of chase women, but I do fly fish." Two years later the woman was heard to say," It sounded good at first, but now I wish he did some of those other things instead."- John Gierach from "Even Brook Trout Get the Blues: Trout Candy" , 1992

"I've gone fishing thousands of times in my life, and I have never once felt unlucky or poorly paid for those hours on the water." William Tapply "A Fly-Fishing Life"

"I look into ... my fly box, and think about all the elements I should consider in choosing the perfect fly: water temperature, what stage of development the bugs are in, what the fish are eating right now. Then I remember what a guide told me: 'Ninety percent of what a trout eats is brown and fuzzy and about five-eighths
of an inch long.'"
~by Allison Moir, "Love the Man, Love the Fly Rod", in A Different Angle: Fly Fishing Stories by Women~

"There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process.
-Paul O'Neil --1965