A Quote by Ed Engle
A standard saying among fly fishermen is that trout spend anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of their time feeding below the water's surface on the immature forms of aquatic insects. Some anglers are even more precise, but whatever the exact percentage , it's safe to say that to fully appreciate any tailwater fishery you will have to learn the fine art of nymphing.
Related Quotes
Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.
We scientists can argue forever about important topics like slightly different flavors of vanilla ice cream. Consider the silliness of this debate: one group of scientists found a 90% decline of big fish and criticized fishery management. Some other scientists found an 80% decline and started a big argument with the 90% people. Who cares if it's 80% or 90%? The real question is whether it's OK to let fishermen take most of the big fish out of our oceans.
Using any reasonable definition of a scientist, we can say that 80 to 90 percent of all the scientists that have ever lived are alive now. Alternatively, any young scientist, starting now and looking back at the end of his career upon a normal life span, will find that 80 to 90 percent of all scientific work achieved by the end of the period will have taken place before his very eyes, and that only 10 to 20 percent will antedate his experience.
They always say baseball is 90 percent mental, 10 percent physical, whatever that saying is. I don't even think I know it. But this game is already a game of failure. Going into it not feeling good, battling whatever injuries, tests you even more.
I am almost certain fishermen posess a peculiar bend to their makeup. Fisherman are optimists, and the fish in the future is always preferable to the fish at hand. Even the best fishermen catch fish only a small percentage of the time, which means we persevere in a sport that features failure as its main ingredient. Truly great days, when the fish hammer the fly as soon as it lands on the water are rare.
All over East Africa-indeed, all over Africa-it is normal for people to walk a kilometer or two or six for water. In more arid areas, people walk even greater distances, and sometimes all they find at the end is a pond slimy with overuse. More than 90 percent of Africans still dig for their water, and waterborne diseases such as typhoid, dysentery, bilharzia, and cholera are common. The bodies of many Africans are a stew of parasites. In some areas the wells are so far below the earth's surface that chains of people are required to pass up the water.
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.
The trout in yonder wimpling burn - That glides, a silver dart, - And, safe beneath the shady thorn, - Defies the anglers art.
If I go out in the open ocean environment, virtually anywhere in the world, and I drag a net from 3,000 feet to the surface, most of the animals - in fact, in many places, 80 to 90 percent of the animals that I bring up in that net - make light. This makes for some pretty spectacular light shows.
There is plenty of room left for exact experiment in art, and the gate has been opened for some time. What had been accomplished in music by the end of the eighteenth century has only begun in the fine arts. Mathematics and physics have given us a clue in the form of rules to be strictly observed or departed from, as the case may be. Here salutary discipline is come to grips first of all with the function of forms, and not with form as the final result … in this way we learn how to look beyond the surface and get to the root of things.
As much as anything, the anglers will clue you in to the midge hatch. You will see them hunched over in concentration like herons. The better ones will be in as close as they can get to the dimpling trout. What you'll notice is the rythmic flicking of casts toward a porpoising trout and the lack of any other motions. The only exception will be the gentle tug that sets a very small hook attached to the leader by a very delicate tippet. The playing of the trout, if it is a good one, will be a cat-and-mouse sort of ecstacy.
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.
I kind of dread any kind of critical response, just because it's always painful in some way. Even if it's 80 percent good, it's the 20 percent that's bad that you remember - and that's a higher number than I usually get, 80 percent would be amazing.
Because this exact leaf had to grow in that exact way, in that exact place, so that precise wind could tear it from that precise branch and make it fly into this exact face at that exact moment. And, if just one of those tiny little things had never had happened, I'd never have met ya. Which makes this leaf the most important leaf in human history
In life, never spend more than 10 percent of your time on the problem, and spend at least 90 percent of your time on the solution.
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!
