A Quote by Aldo Leopold

I shall now confess to you that none of those three trout had to be beheaded, or folded double, to fit their casket. What was big was not the trout, but the chance. What was full was not my creel, but my memory.
The trout that seem to stick in my memory the finest aren't the big ones, and maybe it's because I have't visited all the corners of the globe, but my most unforgettable trout all lived close to home. In fact, when I take out my pouch of trout memories and spill them all on the table, it seems that the smaller ones shine the brightest.
It's certain there are trout somewhere - And maybe I shall take a trout - but I do not seem to care.
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.
There was a code, and though it was mostly unspoken, I absorbed it early on. You always put all the trout back in the water alive except for a few to eat. You didn't count your trout or call attention to their size or weight. You took time to watch and enjoy seeing your partners catch trout.
Hatchery trout are like New Yorkers who live crowded together. Eventually the hatchery trout shove the wild trout out. They aren't used to congregating together and eventually they go crazy and disappear.
Maybe your stature as a fly fisherman isn't determined by how big a trout you can catch, but by how small a trout you can catch without being disappointed.
A street thug and a paid killer are professionals - beasts of prey, if you will, who have dissociated themselves from the rest of humanity and can now see human beings in the same way that trout fishermen see trout.
I told a lie the other day. I said that I'd caught a 'bunch' of trout. What I should have said is that I caught a little trout that I named Bunch. There, I?ve confessed and now I feel much better.
Sure, I could retire anytime. I don't need to work for money. But retire to what? Sitting around the pool reading? Or even trout fishing. I love trout fishing, and I go every time I get a chance. But a man with pride in his profession need to work.
It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method.
Such a nice day - out all day up in the Carter Notch direction, trout-fishing, with the long drive there and the long drive home again in time for supper. It was a lovely brook and I caught seven good trout and one small one - which eight trout-persons you should have for your breakfast if only you were near enough. It was not alone the fishing, but the delightful loneliness and being out of doors.
It's so silly isn't it? how we grown men take up trout angling not simply to pursue trout but to find some place, some special place, where we feel at ease. a place to belong. Forces, not forms, persist: energy is spent and endures; time does not tick, it flows. God loves a man that smells of trout water and mountain meadows. Which way's heaven, you suppose? Follow the trail and keep close to the stream.
When the word began to get out, the idea of tying imitations of aquatic worms was not met with universal approval in the fly-fishing community. It seems that worms had somehow gotten a bad name. I think a fishing pal of mine hit it on the head when he said, It just pisses them off that you can catch trout, I mean really big trout, on a fly that a five-year old can tie in twenty seconds!
It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman however, will use anything but the fly, except when he happens to be alone.
Trout fishing is like any other sport. It is waste of words to try to give anyone who has never tried it any idea of what it means to land a five-pound trout on a gossamer leader.
...water that isn't fit for trout won't much longer be fit for us.
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