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Fishing

activity of trying to catch fish

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish which ar shy animals. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping. Fishing with an "angle" (fish hook) attached to a fishing line, usually attached to a fishing rod and reel, as called angling.

Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. ~ E. Hemingway.
John George Brown: Waiting for a Bite, Central Park

Quotes

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  • One of the other reasons for the popularity of fishing is that the mute animals have a silent agony. To reassure one's conscience, it is said that they are cold-blooded and don't feel pain. Of course such beliefs are totally without foundation.
    • Cousteau, Jacques (1985). The Ocean World. New York: Harry N. Abrams. p. 383. 
  • A rod twelve feet long and a ring of wire,
    A winder and barrel, will help thy desire
    In killing a Pike; but the forked stick,
    With a slit and a bladder,—and that other fine trick,
    Which our artists call snap, with a goose or a duck,—
    Will kill two for one, if you have any luck;
    The gentry of Shropshire do merrily smile,
    To see a goose and a belt the fish to beguile;
    When a Pike suns himselfe and a-frogging doth go,
    The two-inched hook is better, I know,
    Than the ord'nary snaring: but still I must cry,
    When the Pike is at home, minde the cookery.
    • Thomas Barker, The Art of Angling (1820 reprint of the 1657 edition); Barker was a chef for Lord Montague who wrote various poems instructing the reader how to catch and cook fish.
  • I often read of people who say that when they retire they will go fishing. They say this with an understanding that from then on they won't do any damage to anybody. An epoch of charity and tranquility will begin in their life. It never occurs to them for a moment that innocent beings will suffer and die from this innocent little sport.
  • I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn't think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?"
    Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?
  • For angling-rod he took a sturdy oak;
    For line, a cable that in storm ne'er broke;
    His hook was such as heads the end of pole
    To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole;
    This hook was bated with a dragon's tail,—
    And then on rock he stood to bob for whale.
    • Sir William Davenant, Brittania Triumphans, p. 15. Variations of same in The Mock Romance, Hero and Leander. London, 1653, 1677. Chamber's Book of Days, Volume I, p. 173. William Barker Daniel, Supplement to Rural Sports (1813), p. 57.
  • Roberto Clemente wasn't much of a fisherman. When he was a kid, he was working when he wasn't playing baseball, and when he wasn't doing either, he was sleeping, with time out somewhere along the line for eating. After he became a star, he continued to be too busy to do much fishing even though the waters around his native Puerto Rico are teeming with game fish. Winter ball, his business on the Island, and other and varied activities gave him little time for leisure. Among the latter were his interest in kids, particularly underprivileged kids. And he knew that kids like to go fishing. Last summer Roberto beamed, his dark eyes sparkling, when he discussed with this writer a project underway at his home in Puerto Rico. "We are building a pond and we will stock it with fish so that the kids can come there to fish and have fun. It goes down to a big rock and then makes a sharp turn. It is 330 feet down to the rock and almost that much after the turn." The pond, he said, would be stocked with several species of fresh-water fish indigenous to Puerto Rico, "and trout, too," he added. He didn't say how the kids would get out into the country to the pond to fish. He didn't say where they would get the fishing tackle and bait if they didn't have any of their own. He didn't have to. Knowing Roberto Clemente we knew that he'd get them there, furnish the bait and tackle, and probably throw in a picnic, too. He'll be missed by a lot more people than baseball fans.
    • Roberto Clemente, circa summer 1972, as paraphrased and quoted in "Fishing Well: Clemente & the Kids' Fish Pond" by Jimmy Jordan, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, January 2, 1973), p. 17
  • Right now a disproportionate bite out of the ocean is being taken by a relatively small number of countries doing industrial fishing. We’ve got to get over this idea that wildlife from the ocean is essential for our food security. What we now are beginning to understand is the high cost of eating fish. What does it take to make a pound of tuna? A lot of halibut or cod. What makes the halibut? Smaller fish. What do they eat? Krill. Krill eat phytoplankton, zooplankton. Over the years thousands of pounds of phytoplankton make a single pound of tuna. So that tuna is expensive in terms of the carbon that it has captured. The more fish we take out of the sea, the more carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere.
  • Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish and of forgetting that the fish has a hook in his mouth, his gullet, or his belly and that his gameness is really an extreme of panic in which he runs, leaps, and pulls to get away until he dies. It would seem to be enough advantage to the angler that the fish has the hook in his mouth rather than the angler.
    • Ernest Hemingway, introduction to S. Kip Farrington Jr., Atlantic Game Fishing (1937).
  • You must lose a fly to catch a trout.
  • In genial spring, beneath the quivering shade,
    Where cooling vapors breathe along the mead,
    The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
    Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
    With looks unmov'd, he hopes the scaly breed,
    And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed.
  • I have twice gone fishing with rod and line just because other boys asked me to, but this sport was soon made impossible for me by the treatment of the worms that were put on the hook for bait, and the wrenching of the mouths of the fishes that were caught. I gave it up, and even found courage enough to dissuade other boys from going.
    • Albert Schweitzer, Memoirs of Childhood and Youth; in Reverence for Life: An Anthology of Selected Writings, edited by Thomas Kiernan, New York: Philosophical Library, 1965, p. 4.
  • Give me mine angle, we'll to the river; there,
    My music playing far off, I will betray
    Tawny-finn'd fishes; my bended hook shall pierce
    Their slimy jaws.
  • The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish
    Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
    And greedily devour the treacherous bait.
  • A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 28-30.
  • When if or chance or hunger's powerful sway
    Directs the roving trout this fatal way,
    He greedily sucks in the twining bait,
    And tugs and nibbles the fallacious meat.
    • John Gay, Rural Sports (1713), Canto I, line 150.
  • To fish in troubled waters.
  • Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?
    • Job. XLI. 1.
  • A fishing-rod was a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
    • Samuel Johnson, according to Hazlitt, Essay on Egotism, The Plain Speaker.
  • Fly fishing is 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.
    • Attributed to Johnson by Hawker, On Worm Fishing (not found in his works); see Notes and Queries (Dec. 11, 1915).
  • La ligne, avec sa canne, est un long instrument,
    Dont le plus mince bout tient un petit reptile,
    Et dont l'autre est tenu par un grand imbecile.
    • A French version of lines attributed to Johnson; claimed for Guyet, who lived about 100 years earlier.
  • His angle-rod made of a sturdy oak;
    His line, a cable which in storms ne'er broke;
    His hook he baited with a dragon's tail,—
    And sat upon a rock, and bobb'd for whale.
    • William King, Upon a Giant's Angling. (In Chalmers's British Poets).
  • Down and back at day dawn,
    Tramp from lake to lake,
    Washing brain and heart clean
    Every step we take.
    Leave to Robert Browning
    Beggars, fleas, and vines;
    Leave to mournful Ruskin
    Popish Apennines,
    Dirty stones of Venice,
    And his gas lamps seven,
    We've the stones of Snowdon
    And the lamps of heaven.
  • In a bowl to sea went wise men three,
    On a brilliant night in June:
    They carried a net, and their hearts were set
    On fishing up the moon.
  • Aqua turbida piscosior est.
    • It's good fishing in troubled waters.
    • Peter of Blois Letter 50, to Henry, Bishop of Bayeux, 1170, in J. A. Giles (ed.) Petri blesensis bathoniensis archidiaconi opera omnia (Oxonii: J. H. Parker, 1846-7) vol. 1, p. 155; translation from Provérbios Latinos.
  • Shrimps and the delicate periwinkle
    Such are the sea-fruits lasses love:
    Ho! to your nets till the blue stars twinkle,
    And the shutterless cottages gleam above!
  • But should you lure
    From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
    Of pendent trees, the Monarch of the brook,
    Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
  • Two honest and good-natured anglers have never met each other by the way without crying out, "What luck?"

The Compleat Angler (1653-55)

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Quotes from Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653-55).
  • Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.
    • Author's Preface.
  • As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.
    • Author's Preface.
  • I shall stay him no longer than to wish * * * that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a fishing.
    • Author's Preface.
  • Angling is somewhat like Poetry, men are to be born so.
    • Part I, Chapter I.
  • Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.
    • Part I, Chapter I.
  • I am, Sir, a brother of the angle.
    • Part I, Chapter I.
  • It [angling] deserves commendations; * * * it is an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.
    • Part I, Chapter I.
  • An excellent angler, and now with God.
    • Part I, Chapter IV.
  • 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.
    • Part I, Chapter V. (Boteler was Dr. William Butler. See Fuller's—Worthies. Also Roger Williams—Key into the Language of America, p. 98).
  • Thus use your frog: * * * put your hook, I mean the arming wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk sow the upper part of his leg with only one stitch to the arming wire of your hook, or tie the frog's leg above the upper joint to the armed wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him.
    • Part I, Chapter VIII.
  • O! the gallant fisher's life,
    It is the best of any:
    'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,
    And 'tis beloved by many.
    Other joys
    Are but toys;
    Only this,
    Lawful is:
    For our skill
    Breeds no ill,
    But content and pleasure.
    • Chapter XVI.
  • And upon all that are lovers of virtue; and dare trust in his providence; and be quiet; and go a-angling.
    • Part I, Chapter XXI.
  • Of recreation there is none
    So free as fishing is, alone;
    All other pastimes do not less
    Than mind and body, both possess:
    My hand alone my work can do;
    So I can fish and study too.
    • The Angler's Song.
  • The first men that our Saviour dear
    Did choose to wait upon Him here,
    Blest fishers were; and fish the last
    Food was, that He on earth did taste:
    I therefore strive to follow those,
    Whom He to follow Him hath chose.
    • The Angler's Song.

See also

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