“The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.”
“Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.”
“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.”
“Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous -- almost of pedantic -- veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.”