Black_Ghost
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As promised here is a thread in which you can place your favorite fly fishing literature quotes. I will start it off and add to it continually.
This one is from the book "The Year of the Trout" Steve Raymond from the section Winter - Upstream Journey. Page 9 -10.
Of course it is about our favorite fish. Its several paragraphs but worth the read.
"It was a classic sea fresh winter fish, slim and bright steel gray on its back and gleaming nickel on its sides. I judged it was easily 8 pounds. Carefully I twisted the fly free from its jaw, then held the fish gently in the shallow water. The decision to release it had long ago been made, but I found myself holding it for a long time, admiring its beauty and graceful shape as I eased it back and forth to restore rhythym to the movement of its gills. Slowly its movements grew stronger and at last I let it go; it swam slowly outward and down along the sloping cobble bottom.
I watched it go and thought of the path it had followed to reach this place. Like the log behind me on the beach, the stream had borne it down from the hills, yet unlike the log the fish had come willingly with purpose. It had reached the sea and gone about its life's clear and uncomplicated mission: to forage in the rich ocean pastures, to survive and grow, and finally to return to its native river and spawn. I had briefly interrupted its progress toward this goal, but now it was free to resume its journey and complete its purpose. And if it did, it could then die peacefully with whatever dim sense of accomplishment a trout may have.
I thought of my own life in comparison with the steelheads and of the course that had brought me to this cold and quiet beach on a winter morning. It was a course infinitely more complicated than the trout's, filled with unexpected twists and sudden turns, false starts and fitful purposes, satisfying advances and sorry retreats. It also was a course without a clear and certain purpose, for unlike the steelhead a man has no familiar river to which one day he knows he will return. A steelhead always knows where he is going, but a man seldom does. "
 
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
Edited by Black_Ghost (09/16/03 07:45 AM)
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Black_Ghost
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Here is another favorite:
Source:
The Complete Schwiebert - Ernest Schwiebert - 1979 - Where Flows the Umpqua.
"The North Umpqua is a quality of spirit that cannot be fully understood or captured. Its shining length is scarred with volcanic outcroppings and ledges, its folded bed rock and igneious serrations polished in centuries of snowmelt and spates. Its gorge is still cloaked in dense forests, their cathedral choirs carpeted in lichens and pine needles and fiddelbacks. The river paths are ankle deep in leaves when the October fish are running, and other leaves drift in the current or circle lazily in the still backwaters, turning scarlet and gold in their depths.
Steelhead are lying in the silken flow, elusive shadows as brightly polished as a wedding spoon. Its summer run fish are like rare jewels in its velvet pools, drifting like ghosts in its currents, hovering in shafts of sunlight and spume.
Their restless liturgies are a half remembered whisper on the wind . We are coming home, seeking the swift riffles of our birth - catch us if you can! "
NU is high on the to do list, when Mr. Evans has sufficient experience he can be indian guide. Nothing like steelhead, in the autumn, on the NU, with the spey rod and fly and good FF colleagues.
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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BobK
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Hal, you are a hopeless, incurable romantic.
It doesn't make the fishing any better, just more enjoyable.
How can you fish streams like the St. Joe???
I would suggest a shory story - read author John Gierach's "Folk Art", which is Chapter 3, Page 39, in his book, "Another Lousy Day in Paradise". It is "recommended reading" by me to put fishing in the right perspective.
BobK 
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oldman
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What are you doing in Oregon. Before you go there you better clear it with Fred.
If you have all of this time to read you should not waste it and get out and do a little fishing  . Besides all this quoting is starting to hurt my brain. 
You would think that I have nothing to do except sit in front of this computer all day any be a smart arse. Well I don't have anything to do but rest my foot for the up coming fishing thing 
Jim
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Black_Ghost
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The St Joe is a fish factory thats why, and I know it and it is close to me.
More to come, lots more. LOL
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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Black_Ghost
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Source: A River Runs Through It" - Norman Maclean - University of Chicago Press - 1976
"One great thing about fly fishing is that after a while nothing exists of the world but thoughts about fly fishing"
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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BobK
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That "River Runs Through It" quote is "out to lunch", Hal!
I usually keep wondering when I am going to get a hit, and keeping my attention on the task at hand.... "Catching Fish"!
MY favorite quotes come from Patrick McManus - examples are:
"There's two good times for fishin' - when it's rainin', and when it ain't!"
"Smoked carp tastes just like smoked salmon - when you ain't got no smoked salmon!"
Now, that's more LIKE it.
BobK 
Edited by BobK (09/21/03 05:37 AM)
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robA
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A river seen right by Micheal Baughman
well I just read the chapter I wanted a quote out of. So i will just quote the name of the chapter.. thoes familiar with the book ( the best words written about the umpqua in my opinion) will know exactly what I mean.
"Dynamite Works"
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Black_Ghost
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Source: The Compleat Angler or The Contemplative Man's Recreation, Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton, 1653
"And before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back, and the sun if it shines, to be before you, and to fish down the stream; and carry the point or top of your rod downward, by which means the shadow of yourself, and rod too, will be the least offensive to the fish; for the sight of any shade amazes the fish, and spoils your sport, of which you must take a great care"
Ever see what a trout does in small stream when it sees a shadow pass over them ? They scatter for cover fleeing a potential predator (man, bird, etc...)
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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Black_Ghost
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Source:
The American Angler - June 1882
Advertizement
C. F. Orvis, Manchester Vermont
Fine Articial Flies A Specialty
Trout Flies, ordinary sizes - 1.50/dozen
Trout Hackles - $ 1.00
Pennell Hackles - $ 1.00
Bass Flies - $ 3.00/dozen
Lake Flies - $ 2.50/dozen
All flies packed in neat boxes on cards, which can readily be placed in pockets of Fly Book or flies easily removed while fishing. Names attached to flies.
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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BobK
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Man - they were expensive! You could buy a very good double barrel shotgun for 9 bucks back then! (Source: Sears Catalog reprint)
BobK
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Black_Ghost
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Come on not $ 9 for a shotgun in the late 1800s ?
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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BobK
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YUP! I have my granddad's old hammer double - still in very good shape, a few small "badges of honor" (dings and scratches), and the barrel has some minor pitting from black powder. It still has very nice case hardening on the action, nice bluing on the barrels, and the stock is still in very nice shape and finish. Barrels show no looseness, either.
He paid $8 or 9 for it in the mid '90s (he couldn't remember which).
I use it once in a while for skeet shooting (both barrels are cylinder bore) with black powder handloads, and cut-down shotgun shells (it is made to the old standard 2 9/16" chamber length.) Everyone kind of chuckles when I bring it out, and look on in awe from the smoke, but it breaks birds well. Sort of goes with the "old fart" image. But they usually ask to try it.
So, proportionally, flies from Orvis were expensive. (Must have been the beginning of the "Orvis tradition"!)
BobK
Edited by BobK (09/22/03 10:22 AM)
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Steelheader69
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I'll have a few quotes for all of you shortly. Been running through my books, and have found some great stuff.
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TEAM JACKSON BALDWIN
Project Healing Waters
CampChef Prostaffer
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Black_Ghost
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Great, need more help here, I cannot row the boat all by myself (but if I have to I will)
Here is a short one. We probably all have a steelhead river we long to go back to, or eventually get to, which these passages describe:
"The wilderness area includes certain unnamed river that flows through an enchanted valley and whispers softly as it carries snow cold water in graceful curves toward the sea. In the spring it welcomes home bright steelhead that hold nervously in its deepest pools, and in the fall the salmon return to it and leave their bones to bleach in its golden sand.
It is a river I may never see again, but it will always flow through my memory, through my dreams -- perhaps even through my soul"
Source: The Year of the Trout - Fishing the Misty Fjords, Steve Raymond, 1985 - Simon Schuster
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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Black_Ghost
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Source : The Complete Schwiebert - Author - Ernest Schwiebert, Copyright - 1990
A Portrait of the Pere Marquette
""PM, the fisherman call it these days. "Were going up for steelhead in the PM. "I've heard these words often in recent years when visiting Chicago-area fisherman or those around Cleveland or Detroit. Michigan's Pere Marquette has become so famous for its steelhead fishing that its the only river I know that's recognized all over America just by its initials.
I smile too when I hear the "PM" thinking of any absurdly cold winter morning on the Clay Banks stretch when the line guides on my fly rod kept clogging up with ice as I stood shivering in a riffle. The broad green back and pink side of an immense steelhead erased all thoughts of cold when the fish chased a fly almost to my feet. It was a fish I never did catch, but the memory is so vivid that I can to this day count the fish's spots."
Mr Schwiebert grew up in Chicago and learned to fly fish on Michigans rivers with his father including the PM. Actually the route I drive to the PM from Chicago is the same one he took as a boy. Highways are not a lot better though. My first steelhead was caught in 1981 at the Clay Banks on the PM on the fly, and many more wild steelhead have been lost there by me over the last twenty years. Last spring I lost a 15+lber big wild male that came out in a head shaking purposing jump throwing my nymph back at me. So like Mr.Schwiebert the PM and the Clay Banks are a special fishing location for me with great memories. It still remains one of the prime fly fishing areas of the river and is in the no kill fly fish only section.
If you ever get to fish Michigan a visit to the PM which is a wild and scenic river is highly recommended. All steelhead and salmon in the PM are wild.
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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Black_Ghost
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Another:
Source; A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean , 1976, University of Chicago
"The air was filled with dead leaves and green berries from the osiers, but their branches held. As the big browm went up the bush, he tied a different knot on every branch he passed. He wove that bush into a basket with square knots, bowlines, and double half hitches.
The body and spirit suffer no more sudden visitation than that of losing a big fish, since, after all, there must be some slight transition between life and death. But, with a big fish , one moment the world is nuclear and the next it has disappeared, Thats all. It has gone. The fish has gone and you are extinct, except for four and half ounces of stick to which is tied some line and semitransparent thread of catgut to which is tied a part of a feather from a chicken's neck.
Poets talk about "spots of time" but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone. I shall remember that son of a Bxxxh for ever."
Oh yes I have my memories of these, too many to be honest !
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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workin4fishin
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This is simply getting too cerebral, all this talk of piscine existentialism. Now I'm simply going to have to hit the library. The last time I checked all they had was 'The Complete Idiots Guide to Fly-Fishing' which turns out to be quite appropos.
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O________
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j~ >')))><|
My grandfather's RAF unit in WWII
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Black_Ghost
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There is no such book to my knowledge but check it out.
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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workin4fishin
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Chromer - I wonder what one looks like up close
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LOL That's funny! Hey, wait a minute Bub, you sayin' I should be getting the 'Complete Idiot's Guide to Fly-Fishing'? Whatcha tryin to say HUH? HUH? 
Wanna step outside? (While I run out the other side of the building and head for the hills)
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O________
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j~ >')))><|
My grandfather's RAF unit in WWII
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gstrand
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From "Spey Flies and Dee Flies" by Shewey - the very last section of the text in the book on "The Confidence Factor." The whole section is good, here are a couple paragraphs...
"Steelhead fly-anglers are a decidedly twisted lot. We have little choice in the matter because our chosen pastime assures that we spend far more time fishing than actually catching. We operate on faith; on the assumption that if we just keep fishing, sooner or later we'll hook a steelhead.
"Your faith must never falter. You must always believe that fish are in the river, in your favorite pools, and in a mood to chase your flies. In fact, confidence may well constitute the single most important attribute of a successful steelhead angler.
"Confidence transcends technique and strategy. More than that, confidence elevates your angling skills because it instills the belief that there exists no doubt about the fact that you will hook a steelhead. Not burdened by doubt, you come to decide that casting, wading and reading water are skills at which you will tirelessly try to better yourself."
-Gus
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Black_Ghost
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I bought the Shewey book last winter but not read it yet just parts on spey and dee fly history. Want to tie some of those Reeach style spey flies. They should work here to imitate the large hexigenia limbata nymphs that are in many GLs rivers and the steelhead and salmon key on.
Yes confidence is key, never give up. But I have had my ofer streaks where my confidence was shot and I was ready to go back to golf full time. LOL.
Here is another favorite of mine:
Source: The Ultimate Fishing Book - Lee Eisenberg and Decourcy Taylor.
Chapter: Natural Limits - The Once and Future Atlantic Salmon by Ted Williams.
"To admit that one fishes is one thing. To admit that one lives to fish-- that one feels suddenly at peace with himself and at one with the earth when he takes up his :fish pole"-- is quite another. When the angler feels the first surge of a wild fish in clean water, he is suddenly more alive than he has ever been. But even he calls the thing that makes him feel this way a sport. Bowling is a sport; fishing when undertaken seriously, is much, much more.
Robert Traver, author of Anatomy of a Murder, says it best in his superior work, Anatomy of a Fisherman. He happens to be speaking of trout fishing, but rare, if not nonexistent, who is the atlantic salmon angler who was not or is not also devoted to trout. And a trout, although not quite a salmon, is at least a salmonid-- about as closely related as it can be without being a subspecies. But Traver's philosophy applies equally well to any and all wild game fish and their followers.
"I fish," he writes, because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly; because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape; because, in a world wher most men seen to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion; because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience, because I suspect that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don't want to waste the trip; because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters; because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness; because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there; because one day I will catch a mermaid; and finally, not because I regard fishing as being terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant-- and not nearly so much fun".
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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Black_Ghost
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"I never string up a trout rod without wild anticipation. Often, I've been exhausted on trout streams, uncomfortable, wet, cold, briar-scarred, sunburned, mosquito-bitten, but never, with a fly rod in my hand, have I been unhappy."
Charles Kuralt
BG
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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fredaevans
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True But Twisted Life Lessons
Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
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The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.
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Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
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There are two kinds of pedestrians -- the quick and the dead.
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Life is sexually transmitted.
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An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
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If quitters never win, and winners never quit, then who is the fool who
said, "Quit while you're ahead?"
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Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
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The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
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Get the last word in: Apologize.
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Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
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Some people are like Slinkies . . . not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.
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Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
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Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs like they use to?
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Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
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All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
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Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents?
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In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
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Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
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How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
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...AND THE THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
You read about all these terrorists -- most of them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas, some for as long as 10 -15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster; you are two days late with a video and those people are all over you. Let's put Blockbuster in charge of immigration.
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Fred A. Evans
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Black_Ghost
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"Calling fly-fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job."
Paul Schullery
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"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Jane Wagner
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Black_Ghost
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