Check out this thorough list of fishing quotes for inspiration to get out on the river, lake, pond or ocean and catch a beast.
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“Fly fishing is a contemplative experience that embodies the truth of nature and the nature of life”
Michael Vincent Stagnitta
“If I have all of the gear but I can’t bait the hook, the fish have nothing to worry about.”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“It doesn’t matter if the rod is or isn’t bent. Time spent fishing is time well spent.”
Justin Morgan
“The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be.”
John Gierach
“To fish for one’s food is meditation.”
Jessica Marie Baumgartner, The Magic of Nature: Meditations & Spells to Find Your Inner Voice
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.“
Anne Ritchie
“The best time to go fishing is when you can get away”
Robert Traver
“…if catching fish is your only objective, you are either new to the game or too narrowly focused on measurable results.”
David Stuver, Familiar Waters: A lifetime of fly fishing Montana
“When one looks at the horizon above any body of water for long enough, they often find self-reflection in the distance.”
Kenton Geer, Vicious Cycle: Whiskey, Women, and Water
“Some go to church and think about fishing, others go fishing and think about God.”
Tony Blake
“People fish because they are searching for something. Often it is not for a fish.”
Fennel Hudson, Fly Fishing – Fennel’s Journal – No. 5
“Without the fisherman, there is no fish.”
Lailah Gifty Akita
“One thing becomes clearer as one gets older and one’s fishing experience increases, and that is the paramount importance of one’s fishing companions”
John Ashley Cooper
“Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life.”
Carl Safina
“The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her.”
Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
“Be patient and calm—for no one can catch fish in anger.”
Herbert Hoover
“Do not tell fish stories where the people know you. Particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.”
Mark Twain
“The trout is still with me, as are my memories. The future is somewhere between these two forces, but it lives in mystery. The river records to trail behind or before me, and covers everything as it flows. This mountain and this river are old, yet as I wade alone, they both appear young and new to me.”
Daniel J. Rice, The UnPeopled Season: Journal from a North Country Wilderness
“Life, to me, is like fishing: you won’t catch anything until you start, and every year you get older is another year the fish might slip through the net.”
Alex Staniforth, Icefall: The True Story of a Teenager on a Mission to the Top of the World
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.”
George Carlin
“Asking an angler why he or she needs so many fishing rods is like asking a woman why she has so many pairs of shoes.”
Fennel Hudson, Fly Fishing – Fennel’s Journal – No. 5
“Sharing the fun of fishing turns strangers into friends in a few hours. Whether you sit with native fishermen in their boat and fish with nets and lines or dive under the sea with them – they will lead you to the haunts of the specimens you desire and you could not find yourself in safer and more enjoyable company.”
Eugenie Clark, Lady with a Spear
“Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers”
Herbert Hoover
“The act of fishing – for fish, dreams or whatever magic is available – is enough. It transports us to a special world, and a state of mind, where we are free.”
Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life – Fennel’s Journal – No. 1
“If all politicians fished, instead of spoke publicly, we would be at peace with the world”
Will Rogers
“Three-fourths of the Earth’s surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn.”
Chuck Clark
“Fishing is marvelous… there is the irresistible urge to tangle with the mysterious and unknown, to rely on intuition and hunches.”
Katharine Weber
“If you are trying to look clean, neat and avoid casting your nets in trouble waters, you will catch no fish.”
Israelmore Ayivor, Become a Better You
“Fishing is much less about the fishing, and much more about the time alone with your kid, away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday.”
Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
“Fly fishermen are born honest, but they get over it.”
Ed Zern
“My Biggest worry is that when I’m dead and gone, my wife will sell my fishing gear for what I said I paid for it.”
Koos Brandt
“If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles”
Doug Larson
“I’m homeless, and I’m an alcoholic. But I have a dream.’
Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York
‘What’s that?‘
‘I wanna go fishing.”
“I’ve gone fishing thousands of times in my life, and I have never once felt unlucky or poorly paid for those hours on the water”
William Tapply
“In this ever changing world, there are few things that have remained constant for me. The chance of hooking a nice trout still excites and thrills me to this day….just as it did when I was a kid. I like that!”
M.A. Bookout
“I suspect, on some level, all of us who consider ourselves “outdoors-people” — whether we fish or hunt or birdwatch or gather mushrooms or hike or photograph — are romantics at the core. We experience something transcendent in those environs, something we idealize in our hearts and minds, something that illumines a spark of the divinity within us.”
Joe Webb The Poet’s Sword
“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
“Those who fish get to know and understand a river in a way few others can.”
W.D. Wetherell
“The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad”
A.K. Best
“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Fishing is not an escape from life, but often a deeper immersion into it.”
Harry Middleton
“Calling fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job.”
Paul Schullery
“When we fish, we are awake. We are attuned to the environment, to the world, to the reverence and wonder of life.”
Dan Baughman
“If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago”
Zane Grey
“The angling fever is a very real disease and can only be cured by the application of cold water and fresh, untainted air”
Theodore Gordon
“The two best times to fish is when it’s raining and when it ain’t.”
Patrick F McManus
If this list of fishing quotes doesn’t have you itching to get out on the water…read it again!
Be sure to check out our full list of outdoor hobbies for more ways to spend your free time outdoors!
