32 Quotes by John Gierach

Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.

A couple of hundred dollars for a fishing pole!?¨ You'll hear that all the time if you don't keep your mouth shut in certain company. You can talk about the aesthetics and even mention a cane rod will appreciate in value while a new graphite rod will depreciate, but the best thing to do is turn around and say, ¨$9,000.00 for a car? I only paid $500.00 for mine.

Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It’s not even clear if catching fish is actually the point.

If people don’t occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you’re doing something wrong.

The best fisherman I know try not to make the same mistakes over and over again; instead they strive to make new and interesting mistakes and to remember what they learned from them.

Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. By all rights they shouldn’t exist, but if some people have them, then you’d better have one, too, just in case.

The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be.

Accurately recalling an entire day of fishing is like trying to push smoke back down a chimney, so you settle on these specific moments.

Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.