#fishing prose
“The stream keeps me from getting lost, and anytime I feel like being a fisherman again, the trout are there, sages themselves, the wise roshithat caught me by the way and taught me to love wildness.”
Christopher Camuto, from “Caught by the Way,” In Praise of Wild Trout, ed. Nick Lyons (Lyons Press, 1998)
“The little rod wore tenaciously on the rainbow, growing stronger, bending less, drawing easier. After what seemed an interminable period there in this foot-deep water, the battle ended abruptly with the bend off the rod drawing the fish head-on to the wet sand.
Certainly I had never seen anything so beautiful in color, so magnificent in contour. It was mother-of-pearl tinged with exquisite pink. The dots were scarcely discernible, and the fullness of swelling graceful curve seemed to outdo nature itself. How the small thoroughbred salmon-like head contrasted with the huge iron-jawed fierce-eyed head of the male I had caught first! It was strange to see the broader tail of the female, the thicker mass of muscled body, the larger fins. Nature had endowed this progenitor of the species, at least for the spawning season, with greater strength, speed, endurance, spirit and life.”
Zane Grey, from “The Dreadnaught Pool,” The Best of Zane Grey, Outdoorsman: Hunting and Fishing Tales, ed. George Reiger (Stackpole Books, 1992)
“The fish jumped, a foot of gleaming silver, arched for a long moment in the soft, summery air, hit the surface hard in an effort to shake the feathered Judas lodged in its jaw. Quickly it drummed upstream, reaching for the fast water washing below a stone dam, where it jumped again, slim and perfect, a brown trout with an I-say-there English accent.
The brownie stunting in the picture river was not the biggest I have ever hooked, precise specifications of which I refuse to divulge for fear my career trophy might not sound as epic as it ought to, but it was not the smallest either […] Besides, the game was far from up. After all, I was fishing fairly fine, with a number 16 Cockwing Dun knotted to a twelve-foot 5x leader, which can add a shiver of suspense playing even small fish due to my boyish tendency to overreact before things have reached a proper boil.”
Robert Deindorfer, opening lines to “Fishing Walton’s Favorite Rivers,” from The Armchair Angler, ed. Terry Brykczynski and David Reuther (Scribner, 1986)
“When we’re discouraged by the madness of the world and need to involve ourselves in something elemental, we turn to water. This is a significant and perhaps universal urge, I think, and makes an excellent excuse to go fishing. Last night, more discouraged than usual, I set the alarm for early, almost the middle of the night. I wanted to be in the water before daylight.”
Jerry Dennis, from “Wide Margins,” in A Place on the Water: An Angler’s Reflections on Home (St. Martin’s Press, 1993)
“We stand motionless, waiting. The cold water numbs my legs, even through insulated waders, wool pants, and polypropylene underwear. This is fishing that requires patience. I usually prefer more active versions of the sport. I like to move, to cast to feeding fish or search for inviting places where fish might be hiding. This has more in common with bait fishing for catfish than most forms of trout fishing.
But in certain moods it is satisfying. I once stood near a fisherman at the mouth of another river who remained still for so long that a sparrow fluttered to a landing on the top of his head, apparently mistaking him for a wooden piling. It’s possible to become so serene you turn inanimate.”
Jerry Dennis, from “Wide Margins,” in A Place on the Water: An Angler’s Reflections on Home (St. Martin’s Press, 1993)
“Fly fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It is not even clear if catching fish is actually the point.”
John Gierach, fromDances with Trout (Simon and Schuster, 1994)
