"Life is like a tackle box. Just when you think you have everything you could possibly need in your arsenal of lures, baits, and other assorted odds and ends, you find yourself in a situation where you have to run out and get something else. So it is with life. Just when you think you've seen it all, done it all, and heard it all, something new happens. And afterwards, you store it away in the appropriate compartment, where it may or may not be used again."

~ Bill Cari

"He's not the sharpest hook in the tackle box."

~ Anonymous

"There's a reason they call it fishing and not catching."

~ Anonymous

"Fishing not a matter of life and death - it's much more important than that!"

~ Anonymous

"Even a bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work."

~ Anonymous

"I spend most of my life fishing, the rest I just waste."

~ Anonymous

"Nothing grows faster than a fish from when it bites until it gets away."

~ Anonymous

"The difference between fly fishers and worm dunkers is the quality of their excuses."

~ Anonymous

"Work is for people who don't know how to fish."

~ Anonymous

"Only an extraordinary person would purposely risk being outsmarted by a creature often less than twelve inches long, over and over again."

~ Janna Bialek

"For the supreme test of a fisherman is not how many fish he has caught, not even how he has caught them, but what he has caught when he has caught no fish."

~ John H. Bradley

"If fishing is like religion, then fly-fishing is high church."

~ Tom Brokaw

"There's no taking trout with dry breeches."

~ Miguel de Cervantes

"Three-fourths of the Earth's surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn."

~ Chuck Clark

"Fly-fishing may well be considered the most beautiful of all rural sports."

~ Frank Forester

"Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip."

~ John Gierach

"A trout is a moment of beauty known only to those who seek it."

~ Arnold Gingrich

"Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl."

~ Ernest Hemingway

"To go fishing is the chance to wash one's soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook, or with the shimmer of sun on blue water. It brings meekness and inspiration from the decency of nature, charity toward tackle-makers, patience toward fish, a mockery of profits and egos, a quieting of hate, a rejoicing that you do not have to decide a darned thing until next week. And it is discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before fish."

~ Herbert Hoover

"The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing."

~ Herber Hoover

"Fishing is the chance to wash one's soul with pure air. It brings meekness and inspiration, reduces our egoism, soothes our troubles and shames our wickedness. It is discipline in the equality of men--for all men are equal before fish."

~ Herber Hoover

"There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of mind."

~ Washington Irving

"Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other."

~ Samuel Johnson

"The traveler fancies he has seen the country. So he has, the outside of it at least; but the angler only sees the inside. The angler only is brought close, face to face with the flower and bird and insect life of the rich riverbanks, the only part of the landscape where the hand of man has never interfered."

~ Charles Kingsley

"I have many loves and Fly-Fishing is one of them; it brings peace and harmony to my being, which I can then pass on to others."

~ Sue Kreutzer

"If people concentrated on the really important things of life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles."

~ Doug Larson

"To him, all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation- come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy."

~ Norman Maclean from the book "A River Runs Through It"

"The Essentials of a Good Fly-Hook: The temper of an angel and penetration of a prophet; fine enough to be invisible and strong enough to kill a bull in a ten-acre field."

~ G.S. Marryat

"The two best times to fish is when it's rainin' and when it ain't."

~ Patrick F. McManus

"Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary."

~ Patrick F. McManus

"If fishing is interfering with your business, give up your business."

~ Alfred W. Miller

"I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout."

~ Paul O'Neil

"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

"Calling Fly-Fishing a hobby is like calling Brain Surgery a job."

~ Paul Schullery

"Ours is the grandest sport. It is an intriguing battle of wits between an angler and a trout; and in addition to appreciating the tradition and grace of the game, we play it in the magnificent out-of-doors."

~ Ernest G. Schwiebert, Jr.

"Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."

~ Henry David Thoreau

"The best time to go fishing is when you can get away."

~ Robert Traver

"There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot."

~ Steven Wright

"O, sir, doubt not that Angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly?"

~ Isaak Walton

"And finally, I fish not because I regard fishing as being terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant, and not nearly so much fun."

~ John Volker

"Lo the angler. He riseth in the morning and upsetteth the whole household.
Mighty are his preparations.
He goeth forth with great hope in his heart – and when the day is far spent he returneth, smelling of strong drink, and the truth is not in him. "

~ Anonymous