Fishing

"One of the other reasons for the popularity of fishing is that the mute animals have a silent agony. To reassure one's conscience, it is said that they are cold-blooded and don't feel pain. Of course such beliefs are totally without foundation."

"A rod twelve feet long and a ring of wire, A winder and barrel, will help thy desire In killing a Pike; but the forked stick, With a slit and a bladder,—and that other fine trick, Which our artists call snap, with a goose or a duck,— Will kill two for one, if you have any luck; The gentry of Shropshire do merrily smile, To see a goose and a belt the fish to beguile; When a Pike suns himselfe and a-frogging doth go, The two-inched hook is better, I know, Than the ord'nary snaring: but still I must cry, When the Pike is at home, minde the cookery."

"I often read of people who say that when they retire they will go fishing. They say this with an understanding that from then on they won't do any damage to anybody. An epoch of charity and tranquility will begin in their life. It never occurs to them for a moment that innocent beings will suffer and die from this innocent little sport."

"I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn't think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?" Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?"

"For angling-rod he took a sturdy oak; For line, a cable that in storm ne'er broke; His hook was such as heads the end of pole To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole; This hook was bated with a dragon's tail,— And then on rock he stood to bob for whale."

"Roberto Clemente wasn't much of a fisherman. When he was a kid, he was working when he wasn't playing baseball, and when he wasn't doing either, he was sleeping, with time out somewhere along the line for eating. After he became a star, he continued to be too busy to do much fishing even though the waters around his native Puerto Rico are teeming with game fish. Winter ball, his business on the Island, and other and varied activities gave him little time for leisure. Among the latter were his interest in kids, particularly underprivileged kids. And he knew that kids like to go fishing. Last summer Roberto beamed, his dark eyes sparkling, when he discussed with this writer a project underway at his home in Puerto Rico. "We are building a pond and we will stock it with fish so that the kids can come there to fish and have fun. It goes down to a big rock and then makes a sharp turn. It is 330 feet down to the rock and almost that much after the turn." The pond, he said, would be stocked with several species of fresh-water fish indigenous to Puerto Rico, "and trout, too," he added. He didn't say how the kids would get out into the country to the pond to fish. He didn't say where they would get the fishing tackle and bait if they didn't have any of their own. He didn't have to. Knowing Roberto Clemente we knew that he'd get them there, furnish the bait and tackle, and probably throw in a picnic, too. He'll be missed by a lot more people than baseball fans."

"Right now a disproportionate bite out of the ocean is being taken by a relatively small number of countries doing industrial fishing. We’ve got to get over this idea that wildlife from the ocean is essential for our food security. What we now are beginning to understand is the high cost of eating fish. What does it take to make a pound of tuna? A lot of halibut or cod. What makes the halibut? Smaller fish. What do they eat? Krill. Krill eat phytoplankton, zooplankton. Over the years thousands of pounds of phytoplankton make a single pound of tuna. So that tuna is expensive in terms of the carbon that it has captured. The more fish we take out of the sea, the more carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere."

"Northamptonshire Police said that although there are no laws against magnet fishing, they would ask fishers to exercise "due care" when handling objects, such as unexploded World War Two bombs. "[They] can be extremely dangerous, as well as resource-intensive for our response officers.""

"Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."

"Much is actually known about and much more is suspected. The serious 's knowledge of these fish draws heavily on science, especially the easygoing, slightly bemused, of the , but it periodically leaves the bare facts behind to take long voyages into and sheer poetry."

"Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. It would seem to be enough advantage to the angler that the fish has the hook in his mouth rather than the angler."

"You must lose a fly to catch a trout."

"When they've got two weeks vacation, they hurry to vacation ground... They swim and they fish, but that's what I do all year round."

"In genial spring, beneath the quivering shade, Where cooling vapors breathe along the mead, The patient fisher takes his silent stand, Intent, his angle trembling in his hand; With looks unmov'd, he hopes the scaly breed, And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed."

"I have twice gone fishing with rod and line just because other boys asked me to, but this sport was soon made impossible for me by the treatment of the worms that were put on the hook for bait, and the wrenching of the mouths of the fishes that were caught. I gave it up, and even found courage enough to dissuade other boys from going."

"Give me mine angle, we'll to the river; there, My music playing far off, I will betray Tawny-finn'd fishes; my bended hook shall pierce Their slimy jaws."

"The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, And greedily devour the treacherous bait."

"Fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool-gudgeon, this opinion."

"A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm."

"Bait the hook well: this fish will bite."

"A fisherman who wasn’t a born pessimist hadn’t been going to sea long enough."

"Fishing villages might have appeared on the coasts of Indonesian islands as early as 45,000 years ago."

"When if or chance or hunger's powerful sway Directs the roving trout this fatal way, He greedily sucks in the twining bait, And tugs and nibbles the fallacious meat."

"To fish in troubled waters."

"Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?"

"A fishing-rod was a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other."

"Fly fishing is a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing, I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other."

"La ligne, avec sa canne, est un long instrument, Dont le plus mince bout tient un petit reptile, Et dont l'autre est tenu par un grand imbecile."

"His angle-rod made of a sturdy oak; His line, a cable which in storms ne'er broke; His hook he baited with a dragon's tail,— And sat upon a rock, and bobb'd for whale."

"Down and back at day dawn, Tramp from lake to lake, Washing brain and heart clean Every step we take. Leave to Robert Browning Beggars, fleas, and vines; Leave to mournful Ruskin Popish Apennines, Dirty stones of Venice, And his gas lamps seven, We've the stones of Snowdon And the lamps of heaven."

"In a bowl to sea went wise men three, On a brilliant night in June: They carried a net, and their hearts were set On fishing up the moon."

"Aqua turbida piscosior est."

"Shrimps and the delicate periwinkle Such are the sea-fruits lasses love: Ho! to your nets till the blue stars twinkle, And the shutterless cottages gleam above!"

"But should you lure From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots Of pendent trees, the Monarch of the brook, Behoves you then to ply your finest art."

"Two honest and good-natured anglers have never met each other by the way without crying out, "What luck?""

"'Tis an affair of luck."

"Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt."

"As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler."

"I shall stay him no longer than to wish * * * that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a fishing."

"Angling is somewhat like Poetry, men are to be born so."

"Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself."

"I am, Sir, a brother of the angle."

"It [angling] deserves commendations; * * * it is an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man."

"An excellent angler, and now with God."

"We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did"; and so, (if I might be judge,) God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling."

"Thus use your frog: * * * put your hook, I mean the arming wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk sow the upper part of his leg with only one stitch to the arming wire of your hook, or tie the frog's leg above the upper joint to the armed wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him."

"O! the gallant fisher's life, It is the best of any: 'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife, And 'tis beloved by many. Other joys Are but toys; Only this, Lawful is: For our skill Breeds no ill, But content and pleasure."

"And upon all that are lovers of virtue; and dare trust in his providence; and be quiet; and go a-angling."

"Of recreation there is none So free as fishing is, alone; All other pastimes do not less Than mind and body, both possess: My hand alone my work can do; So I can fish and study too."

"The first men that our Saviour dear Did choose to wait upon Him here, Blest fishers were; and fish the last Food was, that He on earth did taste: I therefore strive to follow those, Whom He to follow Him hath chose."