Angling Quotations

[Alan Stubbs]

I've just spent a happy hour or so reading this thread from start to finish....

These are some of my favourites:

 

It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming. John Steinbeck (I can relate to this, totally!)

 

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

 

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

 

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

Edited January 23, 2009 by Alan Stubbs

[smudger]

Alway's turn your back on the wind....when taking a leak

 

 

smudger 2009A.D.

[smudger]

There's no such thing as bad weather...just inappropriate clothing

 

An old Scandinavian saying

[wellyphant]

Some 20 years ago I was taken to a poetry recital by my then girlfriend - (the things you do for love - eh?). The poet was none other than Ted Hughes (later poet laureate) but who at the time I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of. Hughes was famous for his images of nature and I sat transfixed for 2 hours at the sound of his voice. The next day I dashed out a bought a collection of his works. One of my favourites from that day was Pike...Here are the opening 2 verses...

 

Pike,three inches long, perfect

Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.

Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin,

They dance on the surface among the flies.

 

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,

Over a bed of emerald, silhouette

Of submarine delicacy and horror.

A hundred feet long in their world.

 

Ted Hughes (1960)

 

 

Chris

 

------------------

"Study to be quiet."

 

[This message has been edited by Chris Plumb (edited 22 July 2001).]

And here it is Edited January 24, 2009 by wellyphant

[wellyphant]

"if we all walked in the same direction we'd never meet anyone"...Tim Paisley,,possibly not his own words but very good ones.

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"Your'e not getting in them reeds you little b4574rd"...My girlfriend on her very first fishing trip before succesfully playing and landing a 4lb+tench

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"Yibbadda yibbada,thank your mother for the rabbit"...some Australian bloke

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My favorite though was not so much a quotation just a very funny answer to a question.I was fishing a local lake about 20 years ago and whilst watching my float was visited by three locally well known anglers,Jim Holgate,Goeff Parkinson and the late Dave Standing.After the usual questions of what was i fishing for/what had i caught etc,Dave started talking about a recent catfishing session he'd had on the lake in the very same swim i was fishing.He described how he'd cast out a deadbait intended for catfish only for it to be taken by a swooping heron upon impact with the water.Now me thinking that a heron is a wading/stalking predator couldn't get my head round one catching a fish mid-flight and asked him "what,it caught it on the wing?".."NO" said Dave "In its beak".. his answer was met with deafening laughter from his mates and eventually by me..To this day i don't know if his answer was serious or not(i expect it was)but very funny and one i'll never forget...It was one of those'you had to be there at the time' moments..

Edited January 24, 2009 by wellyphant

[Chris Plumb]

And here it is

 

Did you mean to post this - the full poem?

 

Pike

 

Pike, three inches long, perfect

Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.

Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.

They dance on the surface among the flies.

 

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,

Over a bed of emerald, silhouette

Of submarine delicacy and horror.

A hundred feet long in their world.

 

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads -

Gloom of their stillness:

Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.

Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

 

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs

Not to be changed at this date;

A life subdued to its instrument;

The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

 

Three we kept behind glass,

Jungled in weed: three inches, four,

And four and a half: fed fry to them

Suddenly there were two. Finally one

 

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.

And indeed they spare nobody.

Two, six pounds each, over two feet long

High and dry and dead in the willow-herb -

 

One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:

The outside eye stared: as a vice locks

The same iron in this eye

Though its film shrank in death.

 

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,

Whose lilies and muscular tench

Had outlasted every visible stone

Of the monastery that planted them -

 

Stilled legendary depth:

It was as deep as England. It held

Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old

That past nightfall I dared not cast

 

But silently cast and fished

With the hair frozen on my head

For what might move for what eye might move.

The still splashes on the dark pond,

 

Owls hushing the floating woods

Frail on my ear against the dream

Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,

That rose slowly towards me, watching.

 

 

C.

[chesters1]

Alway's turn your back on the wind....when taking a leak

 

 

smudger 2009A.D.

na thats a Confucius saying.

 

"he who pisses into wind gets his own back"

[Dave Lumb]

"what,it caught it on the wing?".."NO" said Dave "In its beak"..

 

Typical Stanny!

[Chris Plumb]

A couple more.....

 

"There is only one theory about angling in which I have perfect confidence, and this is the two words, least appropriate to any statement about it, 'always' and 'never'."

 

Lord Grey of Fallodon

 

"Fly rods are like women; they won't play if they're maltreated!"

 

Charles Ritz

 

 

C.

[Janet]

Thanks for resurrecting this old thread!

 

Following recommendations, I ordered "The Magic Wheel - An Anthology of Fishing in Literature" on Saturday morning...it arrived today. It cost me 68p! (plus postage it only came to just over £3.00....)

 

I've only flicked through it as yet, but I can see I'm going to lose most of the rest of the day....

 

Janet