Quotations about Fishing

There are two types of fisherman - those who fish for sport and those who fish for fish. ~Author Unknown


Fishing is the sport of drowning worms. ~Author Unknown


[T]his planet is covered with sordid men who demand that he who spends time fishing shall show returns in fish. ~Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.


A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work. ~Author Unknown


May the holes in your net be no larger than the fish in it. ~Irish Blessing


I fish better with a lit cigar; some people fish better with talent. ~Nick Lyons, Bright Rivers, 1977


All the romance of trout fishing exists in the mind of the angler and is in no way shared by the fish. ~Harold F. Blaisdell, The Philosophical Fisherman, 1969


There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind. ~Washington Irving


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


The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad. ~A.K. Best


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


It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming. ~John Steinbeck


Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. ~Author Unknown


Bragging may not bring happiness, but no man having caught a large fish goes home through an alley. ~Author Unknown


Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~Henry David Thoreau


All fishermen are liars; it's an occupational disease with them like housemaid's knee or editor's ulcers. ~Beatrice Cook, Till Fish Do Us Part, 1949


An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won't let him do it at home. ~Author Unknown


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


We ask a simple question
And that is all we wish:
Are fishermen all liars?
Or do only liars fish?
~William Sherwood Fox, Silken Lines and Silver Hooks, 1954


Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting. ~Dave Barry


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, 1965


The best way to a fisherman's heart is through his fly. ~Author Unknown


I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there. ~Robert Altman



Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him for the entire weekend. ~Zenna Schaffer


There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot. ~Steven Wright


The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. ~John Buchan


Fishing is a... discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before fish. ~Herbert Hoover


Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish. ~Steven Wright


Calling fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job. ~Paul Schullery


As the evening sky faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint. ~Jack Handey


...of all the liars among mankind, the fisherman is the most trustworthy. ~William Sherwood Fox, Silken Lines and Silver Hooks, 1954


...trout that doesn't think two jumps and several runs ahead of the average fisherman is mighty apt to get fried. ~Beatrice Cook, Till Fish Do Us Part, 1949


Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. But teach a man how to fish, and he'll be dead of mercury poisoning inside of three years. ~Charles Haas


I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout... ~Paul O'Neil


Even if you've been fishing for three hours and haven't gotten anything except poison ivy and sunburn, you're still better off than the worm. ~Author Unknown


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


Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls... ~Jim Harrison, Just Before Dark, 1991


There's no taking trout with dry breeches. ~Miguel de Cervantes


Reading about baseball is a lot more interesting than reading about chess, but you have to wonder: Don't any of these guys ever go fishing? ~Dave Shiflett, quoted in Houston Chronicle, 29 April 1990


There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm. ~Patrick F. McManus, Never Sniff a Gift Fish, 1979


People who fish for food, and sport be damned, are called pot-fishermen. The more expert ones are called crack pot-fishermen. All other fishermen are called crackpot fishermen. This is confusing. ~Ed Zern, 1947


Enjoy thy stream, O harmless fish;
And when an angler for his dish,
Through gluttony's vile sin,
Attempts, the wretch, to pull thee out,
God give thee strength, O gentle trout,
To pull the rascal in!
~John Wolcot


Our tradition is that of the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish. ~Roderick Haig-Brown, about modern fishing, A River Never Sleeps, 1946


Even eminent chartered accountants are known, in their capacity as fishermen, blissfully to ignore differences between seven and ten inches, half a pound and two pounds, three fish and a dozen fish. ~William Sherwood Fox, Silken Lines and Silver Hooks, 1954


Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers. ~Herbert Hoover


Good things come to those who bait. ~Author Unknown


"Carpe Diem" does not mean "fish of the day." ~Author Unknown


Gone fishin', be back at dark-thirty! ~Author Unknown


You must lose a fly to catch a trout. ~George Herbert


If you've got short, stubby fingers and wear reading glasses, any relaxation you would normally derive from fly fishing is completely eliminated when you try to tie on a fly. ~Jack Ohman, Fear of Fly Fishing, 1988


Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. ~Author Unknown


Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught. ~Author Unknown


My biggest worry is that my wife (when I'm dead) will sell my fishing gear for what I said I paid for it. ~Koos Brandt


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


Bass fishermen watch Monday night football, drink beer, drive pickup trucks and prefer noisy women with big breasts. Trout fishermen watch MacNeil-Lehrer, drink white wine, drive foreign cars with passenger-side air bags and hardly think about women at all. This last characteristic may have something to do with the fact that trout fishermen spend most of the time immersed up to the thighs in ice-cold water. ~Author Unknown


Men and fish are alike. They both get into trouble when they open their mouths. ~Author Unknown


There will be days when the fishing is better than one's most optimistic forecast, others when it is far worse. Either is a gain over just staying home. ~Roderick Haig-Brown, Fisherman's Spring, 1951