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Angling Quotations


Guest Chris Plumb

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Bruno Broughton:

I've got a whole book of quotations, and it comes in very useful from time to time.

the book is ' The Magic Wheel' (an anthology of fishing in literature), edited by David Profumo & Graham Swift. Mine is a paperback version, published by Picador (1985), which cost £4.95 for 460 pages. The ISBN is: 0-330-29072-X.

 

 

 

I got this book today for me birthday. Jaq picked it up for less than a fiver second-hand and it's an absolute gem of a book - a veritable treasure trove of angling writing down the ages....

 

I loved this piece of advice from Sheringham to the Edwardian Carp Angler...

 

"You cannot, of course, fish for big carp in half a day. It takes a month. So subtle are these fishes that you have to proceed with the utmost precautions. In the first week, having made ready your tackle and plumbed the depth, you build yourself a wattled screen, behind which you may take cover. By the second week the fish should have grown accustomed to this, and you begin to throw in ground-bait composed of bread, bran, biscuits, peas, beans, strawberries, rice, pearl barley, aniseed cake, worms, gentles, banana and potato. This ground-baiting must not be overdone. Half a pint on alternate evenings is as much as can be employed in this second week. With the third week less caution is necessary, because by now the carp will be less mindful of the adage concerning those who come bearing gifts. You may bear gifts daily, and the carp will, it is to be hoped, in a manner of speaking, look these gifts in the mouth - as a carp should. Now in the fourth week comes the critical time. All is very soon to be put to the touch.

On Monday you lean your rod (it is ready put up, you remember) on the wattled fence so that its top projects eighteen inches over the water. On Tuesday you creep up and push it gently, so that the eighteen inches are become four feet. The carp, we hope, simply think that it is a piece of the screen growing well, and take no alarm. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday you employ the final and great ruse. This is to place your line (the depth has already been plumbed, of course) gently in the water, the bullet just touching the bottom so that the float cocks, and the two feet of gut which lie on the bottom beyond it terminating with a bait in which is no fraudful hook. This is so that the carp may imagine that it is just such a whim of the lavish person behind the screen (be sure they know you are there all the time) to tie food to some fibrous yet innocuous substance. And at last, on Saturday, the thirty-first day of the month, you fall to angling, while the morning mists are still disputing the shades of night. Now there is a hook within the honey paste, and woe betide any carp which loses his head. But no carp does lose its head until the shades of night are disputing with the mists of evening. Then, from your post of observation (fifty yards behind the screen, you hear a click, click, which tells you that your reels revolve. A carp has made off with the bait, drawn out the five yards of line coiled carefully on the ground and may now be struck. So you hasten up and strike. There is a monstrous pull at the rod-point, something persues a headlong course into unknown depths, and after a few thrilling seconds there is a jar, a slackness of line, and you wind up sorrowfully. You are broken, and so home."

 

H. T. Sheringham (1/7/1911 from an article in The Field)

 

 

Chris

"Study to be quiet." ><((º> My Blog

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found this

there is a great deal to be said for wanderings in angling,whether raound this Britain of ours or in lands across the sea.strange waters cause interesting and variable mental reactions in the mind of the angler,no matter how similar the behaviour of the fish.

Eric Horsfall Turner,Angler's Cavalcade (1966)

nursejudy

nurse.gif

 

AKA Nurse Jugsy ( especially for newt)

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  • 4 years later...

Worth bringing back to the top?

 

Den

"When through the woods and forest glades I wanderAnd hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,And hear the brook, and feel the breeze;and see the waves crash on the shore,Then sings my soul..................

for all you Spodders. https://youtu.be/XYxsY-FbSic

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I am not blowing my own trumpet, but has anyone looked at my signature?

 

I wrote it!

 

 

Very similar to this one I stumbled across the other day on some psychology site....

 

For the rich, there is therapy. For the rest of us, there is FISHING! --Anon

 

 

C.

"Study to be quiet." ><((º> My Blog

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"It gets me away from the wife" - Elton Mu.....errrr, Anon ;)

 

"Ooooh, I think I've caught one!" - Rosie Barham, after landing a 34lb. carp from my swim.

 

"That's funny, I'm wearing EXACTLY the same shoes, trousers, shirt, t-shirt and fleece that I wore when I broke my arm." - Me, last Friday, setting off for my first trip to my syndicate since breaking my left arm. Within a few hours - I'd broken my right arm.

 

"But NOBODY breaks arms going fishing, son!" - My mother.

 

"I knew you'd rather be fishing, mate, so I put out a rod in your honour last night. You blanked, but I caught a 28lb. common on MY rod!" - Barry Hearn, father of Terry and great mate...I think. :)

 

Roll on the end of physio (again) :rolleyes: .

 

Terry

 

All of those are classics :D I've lived with you through each of them, in a way, but even without that, they'd be great :)

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I was struck by the Neitzsche quote I have in my signature in relation to fishing. Whever I hear it I imagine a lowly soul huddled under a brolly on a fierce winter's day on the banks of a bitter river, and what he must look like to the 'normal' people driving past in their nice warm cars :)

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music

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A few from old Izaak:

 

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

 

- And for winter fly-fishing it is as useful as an almanac out of date.

 

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

 

- Sir Henry Wotton…was also a most dear lover, and a frequent practiser of the art of angling; of which he would say, ‘it was an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent…a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness; and that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it.’

 

- No man can lose what he never had.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music

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