John Gierach Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

Successful trout fishing isn't a matter of brute force or even persistence, but something more like infiltration.

John Gierach
Accurately recalling an entire day of fishing is like trying to push smoke back down a chimney, so you settle on these specific moments.

John Gierach
I know I'm a long way from greatness, but I am beginning to come at it in my own way. I can go through the basic motions pretty well, don't rely quite as religiously on specific fly patterns as I once did, have worked out ways of compensating for some of my most egregious weaknesses and have come to count heavily on timing because it's a hell of a lot easier to catch fish when the fish are biting.

John Gierach
From my own experience I can say that a bad back makes you hike slower, stove-up knees keep you from wading confidently, tendinitis of the elbows buggers your casting, and a dose of giardia can send you dashing to the bushes fifteen times in an afternoon, but although none of this is fun, it's discernibly better than not fishing.

John Gierach
The things fishermen know about trout aren't facts but articles of faith.

John Gierach
We do have to think seriously about conservation now, although it is chilling to realize there are catch-and-release fishermen alive today who don't know how to clean and fry a fish.

John Gierach
Fish sense, applied in the field, is what the old Zen masters would call enlightenment: simply the ability to see what's right there in front of you without having to sift through a lot of thoughts and theories and, yes, expensive fishing tackle.

John Gierach
Maybe your stature as a fly fisherman isn't determined by how big a trout you can catch, but by how small a trout you can catch without being disappointed.

John Gierach
It's an odd fact of life that whichever side of the stream you're on, two-thirds of the best water is out of reach on the other side.

John Gierach
If people don't occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you're doing something wrong.

John Gierach
Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. By all rights they shouldn't exist, but if some people have them, then you'd better have one, too, just in case.

John Gierach
Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.

John Gierach
I necessarily fear change except that it's so seldom for the better. It's just that I can live with any number of things going straight to hell as long as these streams continue to hold up. If this amounts to living in a fool's paradise, don't waste your time trying to explain that to the fool.

John Gierach
I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it's the one thing I can think of that probably doesn't.

John Gierach
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
Luckily, though, there are still a few guys around who will look you straight in the eye and say, eloquently and to the point, 'It's been too goddamned hot for too long and the river has gone off.'

John Gierach
Cell phones have changed us from a nation of self-reliant pioneer types into a bunch of men standing alone in supermarkets saying, 'Okay, I'm in the tampon aisle, but I don't see it.'

John Gierach
Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.

John Gierach