| Sayings |
| Fishing is Life - the rest is just details |
| Nova Scotia sayings I have heard all of of these sayings at one time or another. Ain't it ........................ Added to the end of any sentence. Bluenoser ....................... A Nova Scotian. Come a daisy .................... Pull, push, hit hard. Either fish or cut bait ......... One thing at a time. Ever ............................ As in 'Was it ever cold.' Fart in a windstorm ............. A fuss over nothing. Finest kind ........... As in 'Nova Scotians are the finest kind.' Holy liftin' or Holy mackerel ... An exclamation. Poor mans fertilizer ............ A late snow. Upalong ......................... Up the shore or inland. Right some .............. As in 'That pie was right some good.' Poetry Patrick Conners epitaph, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1909 .... When I am dead and in my grave, Please mark this spot with a marble stave, So folks will say there he lies, Poor Pat who made the rods and flies. And a prayer .... God grant that I may live, To fish until my dying day And when it comes to my last cast I then most humbly pray, When in the Lord's safe landing net, I'm peacefully asleep. That in his mercy I be judged, As good enough to keep. I searched for my soul, my soul I could not see. I searched for God, but God eluded me. I searched for a trout and I found all three. Sleeping we image what awake we wish; Dogs dream of bones, and fishermen of fish. Theocrites Betcha' goin' fishin' all o' da' time Baby goin' fishin' too. Bet yo' life, yo' sweet wife She gonna catch mo' fish than you. Taj Mahal It's nice to sit and think and fish, And fish and sit and think, And think and fish and sit and wish That you could get a drink. Come live with me and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks. John Donne And still the fair conceit I'd hold That fishermen never grow old, That with the daffodil's gold, That, with the cowslip's plenty, And with the loud and building rooks The man of rods and lines and hooks Is always one-and-twenty. Patrick R. Chalmers I want to ask a favour, though - Ye'll grant it, I'm not doubting - 'Tis 'bout the Twenty-fourth of May, I want to go a-trouting. Don Carroll Fishing sayings Some of these sayings have been encountered in books. Others have been quoted to me whilst on the river and others have been found on the web. The most oft spoken words I hear on the river are ..... Heeeeere fishyfishy, heeeeere fishyfishy. Sayings in blue denote recent additions. Big fly, big fish. I fish, therefore I lie. Bright day, bright fly. The rod's arc is an old friend's smile. You can't catch a fish with a dry line. Fishing is Life. The rest is just details. Good things happen to he who wades. I never lost a little fish ... Eugene Field Fly-fishing is like a dance ... Mel Krieger 'Carpe Diem' does not mean 'fish of the day.' Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? ... Thoreau To Fish or Not to Fish? What a silly question! I take my flies and my Martinis dry...Unknown So much water, so little time! ... Bob VanAmburg Much of fly fishing is in the mind ... Wayne Curtis Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in ... Thoreau Fishing is itself a pause for breath ... John D. Robins Everyone is a child in the eyes of a river ... Herb Curtis Fishermen are born honest, but they get over it ... Ed Zern Fly fishing is a way of hooking into the world ... Ailm Travler Trout fishing is a pilgrimage of the spirit ... Gordon MacQuarrie There's no taking trout with dry breeches...Miguel de Cervantes Flytying is a school from which we never graduate ... Bill Blades Every man has a fish in his life that haunts him ... Negley Farson To fish is to live, To die is to smell like dead fish ... Walt Whitman My hook is baited with a dream, I fish for Peace ... Robert Service There's always a bigger fish ... Qui-Gon Jinn (Star Wars Episode 1) The lyin seasun is upon us ... Jack Pine Joe to Gordon MacQuarrie Trout fishing is so enjoyable it should be done in bed...John Voelker Never spoil a good fish story by telling the truth ... Doris Ewart 1973 The secret to fishing is being silly ... Grandma Hatch, Missouri, 2001 Put backing on your line: even if you never use it. It helps you dream Fly-fishing is the most fun you can have standing up ... Arnold Gingrich Not many of us shoot ourselves during the evening hatch ... Jim Harrison From now on, nothin' for me but fishin'! And no more wabbits! ... E. Fudd I spent the entire dream fishing a single Griffith's Gnat ... Harry Middleton Fishing is about talking and laughing and nothing at all .... Roy MacGregor Any time a man ain't fishin' he's frittering his life away ... Patrick F. McManus An old fisherman lives here - With the best catch of his life ... sign over a door Wind from the East, the fish bite least. Wind from the West, the fish bite best. I have always maintained that salmon don't like flush toilets ... Dr. Dick TeLinde For the well-seasoned angler, the river is no longer a place for killing ... Wayne Curtis Angling is extremely time consuming. That's sort of the whole point ... Tom McGuane A trout fisherman is something that defieth understanding ... Corey Ford Do fishermen eat avocados? This is a question no one ever thinks to ask ... Russell Chatham If I knew all erbout fishin' fer trout, I wu'd give it up and tackle sunthin' more int'resting ... Dud Dean via Arthur R. MacDougall Jr Fly-fishing is that kind of thing. It takes you to places that are beautiful ... Billy Labonte The outdoor life pleased these old men because they believed any properly obsessed fly fishermen carried rivers and trout inside him ... Harry Middleton Early to bed, Early to rise, Fish like hell, And make up lies Fish grow on trees ... W.A. MacDonald (his observation on the effects of clearcutting) Although prequalified by virtue of their brain size, trout have no politics ... J.A.Kissane Nothing grows faster than a fish between the time he nibbles and the time he gets away. The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men's lives the hours spent on fishing. A dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream ... WC Fields A fishing rod is a stick with a hook on one end and a fool on the other ... Samuel Johnson We can angle or otherwise enjoy a fish in the field without eating it ... Prof. Joseph S. Nelson Question. When does fishing season open? Answer. When the President throws out the first trout. My biggest worry when I'm dead is that my wife will sell my fishing gear for what I said I paid for it. It's not the fish you catch, it's the peace of mind you take home at the end of the day ... Hinzelmann in Neil Gaiman's book American Gods Experts ... spend 98, rather than 99, percent of their time catching nothing ... Paul Schullery Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you're rid of him for the weekend. The last point of all the inward gifts that doth belong to an angler is memory ... The Arte of Angling, 1577 Fishes have the right to share the earth with us; they are not here on sufferance ... Dr. J.R. Dymond Atlantic salmon fishing is about 98% boredom. When you hook that one big fish, it's 2% terror ... John Hart |
Yet fish there be that neither hook nor line nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine ... John Bunyan If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles ... Doug Larson The man who coined the phrase "money can't buy happiness" never bought himself a good fly rod ... Reg Baird There is a fine line between fishing and standing on the side of a pond looking like a fool .... Stephen Wright Dad reckoned that fishing was ten percent brains and ninety-five percent muscle, and the rest was just good luck ... Dale Kerrigan, from the Australian movie The Castle I have no objection to men on fishing trips, as long as they don't get in my way when I'm casting ... Katie Cooke Good fishing never stops. There are only times when in some places it is better than others ... George Fichter I have had many moments on trout streams during which the entire world seemed transformed ... Larry Dossey, M.D. It is not difficult to learn how to cast; but it is difficult to learn not to snap the flies off at every throw ... Charles Dudley Warner 1862 I lost the second fly and my cool about the same time. "Quick" I screamed, "Give me another bisexual!" ... Judy Muller Here's a guy standing in the cold water up to his liver throwing the worlds most expensive clothesline at trees ... P.J. O'Rourke The man who knows all about trout does not exist, although you have probably met him ..... Samuel G. Camp 1911 A man was once accused by his wife of loving fly-fishing more than he loved her. Without hesitation he replied "Wet fly or dry fly?" East wind no good, South wind worse, West wind blows the bait right into their mouths, North wind they bite best .... Joe Lavalley I can tell by the smell in the air I am going trout fishing tomorrow .... The President of the Old Duck Hunters' Association When a man becomes a confirmed poacher, the only way to cure him is to put him underwater for twenty-four hours .... Charles Kingsley If a trout will, he will; if he won't, he won't, and that's all about it, except he may or will take this when he won't take that ... C.B. Burnham It's todays obsession - tomorrow it'll be fly-fishing ... Rita, of Coronation Street, in reference to Norris's newfound interest in the paranormal If you love fishing as it should be loved, you also have in you the enjoyment of peace by running waters, and of all the wonders and beauties of Nature ....Sir George Aston 1926 Most anglers spend their lives in making rules for trout, and trout spend theirs in breaking them ... Sir George Aston 1926 Well, then and there we settled the first question, for Bert hooked two salmon but lost both, and to my infinite disgust I got two five-pound sea trout, which we had for dinner ... E.J. Myers fishing the Codroy River in Newfoundland, 1893. And all through the night I dreamed that Paradise was filled not with angelic women, but with perfect trout streams ... C.H. Palmer 1928 It's like fishing. You have to let some get away otherwise you'll have nothing to catch the next time ... Detective Inspector Bliss on losing a criminal case Only when the last tree has been felled, the last river poisoned and the last fish caught, man will know, that he cannot eat money ... Old Indian chief Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. ... Ishmael (in Moby Dick by Herman Melville) Beck: "I love this sport but sometimes I think it is the greatest waste of time anyone ever invented." Detective Chief Inspector Foyle: "You know, you're right. Pint?" Beck: "A pint, the fishing, the evening light." ... From Foyle's War, a BBC production. I believe that 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 In my experience, there appears to be six stages or plateaus of desire in the life of a fisher: 1) to catch a fish 2) to catch a lot of fish 3) to catch big fish 4) to catch difficult fish under difficult conditions 5) refinement of tackle and method 6) to catch a fish ... Charlie Kroll His fishing was not a sport, nor soley a means of subsistence, but a sort of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world, just as the aged read their Bibles ... Thoreau Our tradition is that of the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish ... Roderick Haig-Brown Bragging may not bring happiness, but no man having caught a large fish goes home through an alley ... Annonymous I chose my cast, a march brown and a dun, And ran down the river, chasing hope ... Wilfred S. Blunt Quit wishing, go flyfishing!...sign on Sheriff Jack Kolb's desk from the movie Blind Horizon. If you throw trash along the highways or foul our rivers, I'm sorry to say you are not my friend ... Willie Nelson Life and water are inseparable ... Willie Nelson I found myself thinking back over the years and thanking heaven I'd come to be where I was, knee-deep in a trout stream with a fly rod in my hand ... Bill Barich There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm ... Patrick McManus Fish are, of course, indispensable to the angler. They give him an excuse for fishing and justify the flyrod without which he would be a mere vagrant ... Sparse Grey Hackle Listen to the sound of the river and you will get a trout ... Irish proverb Fishing is my religion and the trout stream is my temple ... James Proser Chasing trout is no less wearing and barely less complicated than chasing women ... Robert Traver All the romance of trout fishing exists in the mind of the angler and is in no way shared by the fish ... Harold Blaisdell Flies should be tied by fly-tiers. Just tell me what's working and I'll buy a dozen ... Mike Clark To acheive mastery is to rise above the need to catch fish ... Howell Raines 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 They are the most beautiful fish that God ever put on this earth ... Dick Blalock on brook trout A river is water in its loveliest form ... Roderick Haig-Brown Fly-fishing is this great adventure we have in a thousand little episodes ... Paul Schullery Fish come and go, but it is the memory of afternoons on the stream that endure ... E. Donnall Thomas Because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness ... Mel Krieger Your headiest success as an angler begins when you start caring more about fishing than the fish ... Arnold Gingrich Some anglers catch their best fish by the tale ... Fisherman's saying Never give up listening to the sounds of birds ... John Audubon Every country boy is entitled to a creek ... Havilah Babcock We can never have enough of Nature ... Thoreau If you can't stand the flies then don't go fishing ... Harold Biggin (in reference to a swarm of blackflies). Adopt the pace of Nature; her secret is patience ... Ralph Waldo Emerson Cross, "Do you fish Lieutenant?" Lieutenant Delillo, "No." Detective Harrison, "The one that got away." Cross nodded, "The one you never forget ... no one forgets." ... From the fictional novel Never Fear by Scott Frost Relationships end for all sorts of reasons. The best thing to do is go fishing ... Danny Crane (Boston Legal, season 1) The main thing is to get out fishing ... David Suzuki to his daughter Sarika Just give us one taut line a session and we are fulfilled ... Jeff Prest The trick with a man like Golly is to lure him in, just like you do a trout. And I think we've got the perfect fly for him ... From Bottled Spider by John Gardner He had been dreaming about trying to land a thirty-inch Snake River rainbow ... but he suspected that landing a trout that size would always be a dream ... From The Devil's Hatband by Robert Greer. You don't catch 'em all. They're trout, after all. Grant 'em plenty of free will ... Bob Lamm ...they are no answer to my basic fishing need which, above all else, is to fish as frequently as the mood strikes ... Harold F. Blaisdell So what if we didn't catch anything? Fishing was never a waste of time ... William G. Tapply The best fishing is usually done with no motive other than curiousity ... John Gierach Fishing is a therapeutic blessing ... Harold F. Blaisdell Fishing is one field in which fact and fancy mingle graciously ... Harold F. Blaisdell I mean, if you're really serious you tie your own flies...people say you can buy flies at the store. The point is, there's a certain art to the process...Frank (the principal barber) to Ed (the second chair barber) ... From The Man Who Wasn't There, a Coen brothers movie. George Gently, "What are you doing?" John Bacchus, "I'm doing it. I'm fishing. Why do I have to stand in the water? Why can't we just stand on the side and fish? Shall we go find a nice cafe and have egg and chips? I've got water in my boot now! I'm not happy. This is rubbish!" ... From "The Burning Man," episode 1 of George Gently. |
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