Fishing Sea Quotes

#1. There's magic in the water that draws all men away form the land, that leads them over hills, down creeks and streams and rivers to the sea.

Herman Melville

#2. There may be questions still unanswered, but that means that we need science, not that science is useless [...] There are fish in the sea as yet uncaught, but that does not mean that fishing nets have failed and should be thrown aside.

Frances Hardinge

#3. We suggest that in the next decades fisheries management will have to emphasize the rebuilding of fish populations embedded within functional food webs, within large 'no-take' marine protected areas.

Daniel Pauly

#4. Make all approaches to the stream with care and caution. Remember that once you are seen you are a great disadvantage if not completely defeated

Ray Bergman

#5. About the only certainty, other than uncertainty, in fly fishing is that a fly won't catch fish if it stays in its box.

Arnold Gingrich

#6. It is easy to tell tourists from tarpon. Tarpon have a narrow, bony plate inside the mouth of their lower jaw. Tourists have both upper and lower plates.

Ed Zern

#7. To this day I would rather see a fish, creep up to him and watch his rise to my fly than catch half a dozen fish unseen until they take.

Roderick Haig-Brown

#8. I simply feel that the frontier of angling is no longer either ethical or geographical. The Bible tells us to watch and listen. Something like this suggests what fishing ought to be about: using the ceremony of our sport and passion to arouse greater reverberations within ourselves.

Thomas McGuane

#9. You won't find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains.

Robert Benchley

#10. Don't talk anybody, don't come near! Can't you see the fish might hear? He thinks I'm playing with a piece of string; He thinks I'm another sort of funny thing, But he doesn't know I'm fishing - He doesn't know I'm fishing. That's what I'm doing - Fishing.

A.A. Milne

#11. Successful trout fishing isn't a matter of brute force or even persistence, but something more like infiltration.

John Gierach

#12. The river is of the earth and it is free. It is rigorously embanked and bound, and yet it is free. To hell with restraint, it says, I have got to be going. It will grind out its dams. It will go over or around them. They will become pieces.

Wendell Berry

#13. Spending more time with my fly firmly attached to the branches of trees and almost none of it attached to the lips of a trout.

Tom Sutcliffe

#14. 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

#15. I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to the narrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as if I were entering a department store. I caught three trout in the lost and found department.

Richard Brautigan

#16. If little fish get eaten by bigger fish, and bigger fish get eaten by bigger fish ... what happens when there are no little fish? The world's populations of little fish are being harvested to make catfood!? This nonsense has to stop. Feed a fish a cat a day!

Tony Bishop

#17. Use the longest leader you can handle. Usually you can handle one much longer than you imagine. Remember that the purpose of the leader is to conceal artificiality. If you believe a leader is at all necessary then you must admit that the longer the leader the better chances you have for success

Ray Bergman

#18. Fishing should be a ceremony that reaffirms our place in the natural world and helps us resist further estrangement from our origins.

Thomas McGuane

#19. It is you and clean, flowing water. It is you, inquisitive, in a wild world that is older than man, seeking greater understanding and finding not only an endless interest but a tranquility that comes, most of the time, to all nature?s wild creatures ...

Lee Wulff

#20. The matter of flies, lines and other equipment of the right sort is not absolutely necessary in the rising of fish but they are very important in that they make it easier to do the things which bring success and in some cases are essential to success.

Ray Bergman

#21. Why is it that the destruction of something created by humans is called vandalism, yet the destruction of something created by God is called development?

Edward Abbey

#22. The chief difference between big-game fishing and weightlifting is that weightlifters never clutter up their library walls with stuffed barbells

Ed Zern

#23. Fishing is taking a huge toll on the planet's ecosystem. We are emptying the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers as we fish them dry.

Sharon Gannon

#24. All my clear-eyed fish, Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish, Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze ... My charming rod, my potent river spells ...

John Keats

#25. The fly angler who says they have never, ever fallen while wading , is either a pathogenic liar, or has never been fly-fishing.

Jimmy Moore

#26. The trout in yonder wimpling burn - That glides, a silver dart, - And, safe beneath the shady thorn, - Defies the anglers art ...

Robert Burns

#27. The lightly-jumping, glowrin' trouts, That thro' my waters play ...

Robert Burns

#28. One fifth of human kind depend on fish to live. Today now 70 percent of the fish stock are over-exploited. According to FAO if we don't change our system of fishing the main sea resources will be gone in 2050. We don't want to believe what we know.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

#29. Icelandic people are inbred. And they have a sense of themselves as genetically special, and a history of risk-taking because they make their living on the high seas fishing. Assets generally rose in value during this period, and so it looked like they actually knew what they were doing.

Michael Lewis

#30. Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat.

Robert Lowell

#31. It's an odd fact of life that whichever side of the stream you're on, two-thirds of the best water is out of reach on the other side.

John Gierach

#32. It was a time of dark dreams. They washed in like flotsam on the night tide, slipping beneath doorways and window latches, rising through the streets and hills; and the little fishing-town of Scarlock foundered deep.

J.A. Clement

#33. It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care.

William Butler Yeats

#34. Despite all the variables and advise, like love and marriage it seemed to me that learning to cast ought to be a lot easier than it was.

Jessica Maxwell

#35. There are times when salmon play no part in the proceedings of a day that is obstensibly spent in their pursuit.

Dale Rex Coman

#36. I don't mind my hand shaking so much; it improves my S cast.

Ed Zern

#37. trange things began to happen in the sea.
Anchor buoys marking the dorymen's fishing trawl sank and then shot back to the surface.

Barbara Walsh

#38. Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface.

Edward Abbey

#39. We know of fishing vessels that carry up to twelve different flags on board, and they re-flag their ship at sea,.

Claude Martin

#40. But ah, to fish with a worm, and then not catch your fish! To fail with a fly is no disgrace: your art may have been impeccable, your patience faultless to the end. But the philosophy of worm-fishing is that of results, of having something tangible in your basket when the day's work is done.

Bliss Perry

#41. I don't think acting should be all-encompassing. So, when I'm not shooting, I'll go down to Mexico on a spear-fishing trip for a couple of weeks, or I'll go to the Coral Sea, or I'll go to Panama, or wherever.

Tanc Sade

#42. Anglers may be divided into almost as many genera and species as the fish they catch, and engage in the sport from as many impulses.

Thaddeus Norris

#43. Fly fishing is the most beautiful way of trying to catch a fish; not the most efficient, just as ballet is the most beautiful way of moving the body between between two points, not the most direct. Fly fishing is to fishing as ballet is to walking.

Howell Raines

#44. The fact is, there's a great deal of hair-splitting fussiness when it comes to fly-fishing, most of it as silly as a top hat.

Justin Cronin

#45. Though everyone I knew seemed to be either settling down or looking to settle down, I was never on a deep-sea fishing expedition to find a boyfriend. And a "great catch," well, that seemed to be begging for heartache.

Julie Buxbaum

#46. I imagine that no art has ever been learned from books. fly-fishing is no exception.

G. E. M. Skues

#47. He sped on, down one corridor after another, his only thoughts of escape - to make his way back to the longboat, onto the fishing hulk, and out to sea.

Micky Neilson

#48. Before exulatation had vanished, I felt as if I had been granted a marvellous privilege. Out of the inscrutable waters a beautiful fish had somehow leaped to show me fleetingly the life and spirit of his element.

Zane Grey

#49. What is peddled about nowadays as philosophy, especially that of N.S., but has nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of that movement is nothing but fishing in that troubled sea of values and totalities.

Martin Heidegger

#50. Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.

Ivan Turgenev

#51. Fish sense, applied in the field, is what the old Zen masters would call enlightenment: simply the ability to see what's right there in front of you without having to sift through a lot of thoughts and theories and, yes, expensive fishing tackle.

John Gierach

#52. Fishing is more than fish; it is the vitalizing lure to outdoor life.

Herbert Hoover

#53. There is a lot of amiable fantasy written about trout fishing, but the truth is that few men know much if anything about the habits of trout and little more about the manner of taking them.

John D. Voelker

#54. Anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought.

Leigh Hunt

#55. 'Twas merry when You wagered on your angling, when your diver Did hang a salt fish on his hook, which he With fervency drew up.

William Shakespeare

#56. I don't really know how to tie a fly until I've tied a hundred dozen of them.

John Gierach

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

John D. Voelker

#58. If you keep at it long enough, one day you may witness some greater disturbance, some rushing breach of the water's surface so startling and violent and exhilarating that you too will suddenly, and always thereafter, believe in monsters.

Paul Schullery

#59. What pretty bright trout there are in this bold rock creek! It would full be called a river in England, and so it is!

Thaddeus Norris

#60. A Rod: An attractively painted length of fiberglass that keeps an angler from ever getting too close to a fish.

Robbie Keane

#61. Of all nature's animated kingdoms, fish are the most unchristian, inhospitable, heartless, and cold-blooded of creatures.

Herman Melville

#62. Ah me son, we don't be takin' nothin' from the sea. We has to sneak up on what we wants and wiggle it away

Farley Mowat

#63. Give me mine angle, we'll to th' river: there, My music playing far off, I will betray Tawny-finned fishes. My bended hook shall pierce Their slimy jaws; and as I draw them up, I'll think them every one an Antony, And say, 'Ah, ha! are caught!'

William Shakespeare

#64. I doubt if I shall ever outgrow the excitement bordering on panic which I feel the instant I know I have a strong, unmanageable fish, be it brook trout, brown trout, cutthroat, rainbow, steelhead or salmon on my line.

Ed Weeks

#65. I truly believe fishing is like a washing machine for your brain

Henry Winkler

#66. 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

#67. Fish and visitors smell in three days.

Benjamin Franklin

#68. If you aren't a fisher you'll see many things, but the river, except where it is ridden by waterfowl or waded by moose, will rarely enter your thoughts, much less stimulate your spirit. It's different if you fish. The surface of the water tells a story ...

Paul Schullery

#69. A river is water is its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the lifeblood returns to the heart

Roderick Haig-Brown

#70. The long hour and a half walk-in to the secret pool , only to find four anglers filling it. Secret pools? The only secret about these pools is the name of the one person on the planet who does not know their location!

Tony Bishop

#71. Place gifts of silver in our hands. Give us this day our daily fish.

Pablo Neruda

#72. I go to Alaska and fish salmon. I do some halibut fishing, lake fishing, trout fishing, fly fishing. I look quite good in waders. I love my waders. I don't think there is anything sexier than just standing in waders with a fly rod. I just love it.

Linda Hamilton

#73. The issue of imitation has always occupied fly fishers, and part of its endless attraction has been the imponderable uncertainty of how much it matters to the fish in the first place.

Paul Schullery

#74. I do fish, and as a matter of fact, I used to do a lot of deep sea fishing, but as far as going into the water, I don't go out deep into the water.

Ving Rhames

#75. There's fish in the sea, no doubt of it, As good as ever came out of it.

W.S. Gilbert

#76. And connected I had been. When the fish changed directions, I felt it. when it slowed or sped up, I felt that too. It's such a raw thing, this shared existence with a piece of bucking biomass.

Jessica Maxwell

#77. In rebellion against the typical British-type dry flies, I created the Wulff series.

Lee Wulff

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

John Gay

#79. We do have to think seriously about conservation now, although it is chilling to realize there are catch-and-release fishermen alive today who don't know how to clean and fry a fish.

John Gierach

#80. One of the first rules in fishing is that there are few rules in fishing that resourceful trout do not manage to break.

John D. Voelker

#81. Today she met me at the door, said I would have to choose, if I picked up that fishing rod today, she'd be packing all her things and she'd be gone by noon ... well I'm gonna miss her when I get home tonight.

Brad Paisley

#82. I remember the good evenings I have fished, even the ones that realised material hopes not by the fish that came to the fly, but by the colour and movement of the water and sky, by the sounds and scents and gentle stirrings that were all about me.

Roderick Haig-Brown

#83. Take my friends and my home - as an outcast I'll roam: Take the money I have in the bank: It is just what I wish, but deprive me of fish, And my life would indeed be blank.

Lewis Carroll

#84. You can't say enough about fishing. Though the sport of kings, it's just what the deadbeat ordered.

Thomas McGuane

#85. Trout aren't naturally as selective as they've become in crowded tailwaters - they've been trained to be like that by too much fishing pressure. I've seen tailwater fish that are so hysterical they'll refuse naturals. You wonder how they get enough to eat.

John Gierach

#86. I love fishing. It's transcendental meditation with a punchline.

Billy Connolly

#87. Fish slowly and thoroughly. Haste never pays dividends. Don't whip the stream to a froth. Make fewer cast, make them to places which count an fish each cast out instead of lifting it prematurely

Ray Bergman

#88. Catch and release fishing may be cruelty masquerading as political correctness

John McPhee

#89. If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod ... But it has among its predators - man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.

Mark Kurlansky

#90. There are two distinct visits to tackle-shops, the visit to buy tackle and the visit which may be described as Platonic when, being for some reason unable to fish, we look for an excuse to go in, and waste the tackle dealer's time.

Arthur Ransome

#91. The river , corrected the Rat, It's my world ... What it hasn't got is not worth having ...

Kenneth Grahame

#92. I don't suppose I ever entirely release a fish. I may not eat it, but that does not mean I take nothing from it before I let it go.

Paul Schullery

#93. Fly fishing or any other sport fishing, is an end in itself and not a game or competition among fishermen ...

Ed Zern

#94. As far as I can ascertain the reasons for missing a rising fish come from faulty reactions. When we miss a fish we are either too fast or too slow

Ray Bergman

#95. Fishing from a boat seems like dilettante bullshit - like hunting wild boar with a can of spray paint from the safety of a pick-up truck

Hunter S. Thompson

#96. There are few things deader than a dead brown trout stream.

Ed Zern

#97. Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.

Baruch Spinoza

#98. Or whipping its rough surface for a trout ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#99. Accurately recalling an entire day of fishing is like trying to push smoke back down a chimney, so you settle on these specific moments.

John Gierach

#100. Had I a river I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, but where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'free fishing' spells no fishing at all.

Andrew Lang