The Contented Angler
Be sure to pause and relax as you wander through this
contented forest. You will pass some old quotes and even
some poetry devoted to the "gentle art".  Find something
here and take it with you on your next angling adventure.
Where the wandering water
gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the worlds more full of
weeping
than you can understand.
excerpt from " The Stolen Child"
W.B. Yeats
from The Collected Poems of
W.B. Yeats
"It has been said that the angler, like the poet, is born, not made.  This is a
self-evident fact.  Few men have risen to the dignity of anglers who did not in
early youth feel the unconquerable impulse to go a fishing.  There are, of
course, noteworthy exceptions, but the rule holds good.  It might be added,
too, that the genuine angler is almost invariably a poet, although he may not
be a jingler of ryhmes- a ballad monger.  Though, perhaps, lacking the art of
vessification, his whole life is in istself, a well-rounded poem, and he never
misses the opportunity to "cast his line in pleasant places."
F. E. Pond
"Fishing with the Fly"
Orvis & Cheney
Photos in this forest used by permission of Daniel P. Drake
The charm of fishing is that it is the
pursuit of something that is elusive, but
attainable a perpetual series of
occasions for hope
John Buchan


Only those become weary of angling
that bring nothing to it but the idea of
catching fish.
Rafael Sabatini


Angling is tightly woven in a fabric of
moral, social, and philosophical threads
which are not easily rent by the violent
climate of our times.
A.J. McClane
Angling is somewhat like Poetry, men
are to be born so...
Izaak Walton


...fisherman constitute a seperate class or
subrace among the inhabitants of the
earth.
Grover Cleveland


The true angler is generally a modest
man.
Thaddeus Norris


If, as I suspect trout fishing is somewhat
of a disease, then it is also somewhat of
a therapy in itself.
Tom Sutcliffe M.D.