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 whic….

I have been, all my life, what is known as a conservationist. It seems clear beyond possibility of argument that any given generation of men can have….

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 ho….

I have two hopes for the future. The first and lesser one is that game commissions will one day have sense enough to set limits that measurably refle….

I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel..

Wherever we go in the world we find other men speaking the same language, planning the same plans, dreaming the same dreams. And one of the big four ….

Anglers...exaggerate grossly and make gentle and inoffensive creatures sound like wounded buffalo and man-eating tigers..

I have never seen a river that I could not love. Moving water... has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and associations. It has a thousa….

I have fished through fishless days that I remember happily without regret..

It is quite easy to debase the sport, change its values, dilute its ethics and destroy its traditional associations with quietness, relaxation and th….

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 mo….

A man should think when he fishing of all manner and shape of things, flowing as easily through the mind as the light stream among the rocks.

... 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..

Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers..

A fisherman is always hopeful -- nearly always more hopeful than he has any right to be..

Our tradition is that of the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish..