Fishing

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

"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 ordnary 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 wont 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."

"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."

"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, Weve the stones of Snowdon And the lamps of heaven."

"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 frogs leg above the upper joint to the armed wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him."

"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 worlds 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."

"When theyve got two weeks vacation, they hurry to vacation ground... They swim and they fish, but thats what I do all year round."

"One of the other reasons for the popularity of fishing is that the mute animals have a silent agony. To reassure ones conscience, it is said that they are cold-blooded and dont feel pain. Of course such beliefs are totally without foundation."

"For angling-rod he took a sturdy oak; For line, a cable that in storm neer 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 dragons tail,— And then on rock he stood to bob for whale."

"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."