A Quote by Jim Harrison

It is utterly soothing to fly fish for trout. All other considerations or worries drift away and you couldn't keep them close if you wanted. Perhaps it's standing thigh deep in a river with the water passing at the exact but varying speed of life. You easily recognize this mortality and it dissipates into the landscape.

Jim Harrison

Quote Topics

Away Close Deep Drift Easily Exact Fish Fly Keep Landscape Life Mortality Other Passing Perhaps Recognize River Soothing Speed Standing Them Trout Utterly Wanted Water Worries

Quote Author

Jim Harrison
American - Novelist
December 11, 1937 - March 26, 2016

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.

Charles Dudley Warner

Trout fisherman often give away their presence to the fish by the equipment they are wearing. The yo-yo hanging on the fly fishing vest that attaches to the hemostats or line clippers is often plated with chrome, giving off flashes of light. Some fly boxes that you wear on the chest are also bright aluminum-not a good idea. I recently fished with a fellow who wore a bright yellow hat on a meadow stream in Pennsylvania. From 100 yards away you could see his every movement,-I'm sure that trout near him could, too.

Lefty Kreh

The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes - fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it.

William O. Douglas

Catching fish is not a mental game between fish and angler. A 'smart' trout is only smarter than other trout, not smarter than a fisherman. An angler must take the puzzle of the day's conditions, and matching those conditions and his knowledge of the fish come up with a good catch. He competes with a concept, not with a fish's brain.

Lee Wulff

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

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.

Carey Mulligan

I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.

Kazuo Ishiguro

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes 'What the hell is water?'

David Foster Wallace

My soul lives in Montana. It's where I fly-fish for trout.

Henry Winkler

Normally, you want the river when the water is low and not when it's flooded. For example, there are parts of the Amazon where the water goes up to 15 meters high. This floods the forest, so a lot of the fish that normally stay close together are suddenly very hard to find.

Jeremy Wade

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.

William G. Tapply

A stone lies in a river; a piece of wood is jammed against it; dead leaves, drifting logs, and branches caked with mud collect; weeds settle there, and soon birds have made a nest and are feeding their young among the blossoming water plants. Then the river rises and the earth is washed away. The birds depart, the flowers wither, the branches are dislodged and drift downward; no trace is left of the floating island but a stone submerged by the water; - such is our personality.

Cyril Connolly

I don't mean to say that you shouldn't take care of your body, or want to keep it from dying. But it doesn't have the same hold as when you totally identify yourself as the body. To recognize the tenderness of mortality, the fragility of your life form and all life forms, including cosmic life forms, is to be humbled in a deep way that is actually enlivening.

Gangaji

Far away Tongariro! Green - white thundering Athabasca river of New Zealand! I vowed I would come again down across the Pacific to fish in the swift cold waters of this most beautiful and famous of trout streams. It is something to have striven. It is much to have kept your word.

Zane Grey

Allowing the fly to sink to the fish's level, the angler makes a retrieve. The fly comes directly at the fish, which suddenly sees its approach. As the small fly get nearer, the fish moves forward to strike, but the tiny fly doesn't flee at the sight of the predator. Instead it continues to come directly toward the fish. Suddenly the fish realizes intuitively that something is wrong(its never happened before), so it flees until it can assess the situation. An opportunity for the angler has been lost.

Lefty Kreh

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.