Trout Quotes

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“We tossed the bag into the pool. I resisted the urge to jump in after it.
"There you go, Andvari," I said. "Enjoy."
Or maybe Andvari was gone. In which case we'd just made a family of trout billionaires.”
― Rick Riordan, MAGNUS CHASE AND THE SHIP OF THE DEAD

“USED TROUT STREAM FOR SALE.
MUST BE SEEN TO BE APPRECIATED.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“I remember mistaking an old woman for a trout stream in Vermont, and I had to beg her pardon.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“Flaxfield died on a Friday which was a shame, because he always ate a trout for dinner on Friday, and it was his favourite.”
― Toby Forward, Dragonborn

“Troutie, my bonnie little fellow, am not I the most beautiful woman in all the world?”
― Kenneth MacLeod, Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree: The Scottish 'Snow White' Fairytale

“I threw both my phones in, one after the other. The splashing sounds they made in the dark were like two trout rising for stoneflies. Trout that sleep in the eddies behind round river boulders. Trout that wake up at dawn and hide all day by pretending to be shadows.”
― Steve S. Saroff, Paper Targets: Art Can Be Murder

“The late American golfing coach and writer, Harvey Penick, held that any who played golf was his friend – in the politer sense of Arcades ambo, I gather. … I myself hold with Honest Izaak that there is – and that I am a member of – a communion of, if not saints, at least anglers and very honest men, some now with God and others of us yet upon the quiet waters. … The man is a mere brute, and no true angler, whose sport is measured only in fish caught and boasted of. For what purpose do we impose on ourselves limits and conventions if not to make sport of a mere mechanical harvest of protein? The true angler can welcome even a low river and a dry year, and learn of it, and be the better for it, in mind and in spirit. So, No: the hatch is not all that it might be, for if it is warm enough and early with it, it is also in a time of drought; and, No: I don’t get to the river as often as I should wish. But these things do not make this a poor year: they are an unlooked-for opportunity to delve yet deeper into the secrets of the river, and grow wise. … Rejoice, then, in all seasons, ye fishers. The world the river is; both you and I, And all mankind, are either fish or fry. We must view it with judicious looks, and get wisdom whilst we may. And to all honest anglers, then, I wish, as our master Izaak wished us long ago, ‘a rainy evening to read this following Discourse; and that if he be an honest Angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.”
― G.M.W. Wemyss

“A terrible silence fell in the room. Bill Ireton looked suddenly sober as a trout.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Blunderer

“The trout is still with me, as are my memories. The future is somewhere between these two forces, but it lives in mystery. The river records to trail behind or before me, and covers everything as it flows. This mountain and this river are old, yet as I wade alone, they both appear young and new to me.”
― Daniel J. Rice, The UnPeopled Season: Journal from a North Country Wilderness

“My bare foot sounded like a sad trout flapping against the marble floor.”
― Kevin Hearne, Hunted

“The fish was a twelve-inch rainbow trout with a huge hump on its back. A hunchback trout.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“{W}hy did she go into the field? A twinge of pleasure, of knowledge. Her dad would pull over to the side of a bridge, and they would watch from above, before he slipped down the bank to catch them. She was charmed by the motions of trout. How they take their forms from the pressures of another world, the cold forge of water. Their drift, their mystery, the way they turn and let the current take them, take them, with passive grace. They turn again, tumbling like leaves, then straighten with mouths pointing upstream, to better sip a mayfly, to root up nymphs, to watch for the flash of a heron's bill. The current always trues them, like compass needles. When she watches them, she feels wise.”
― Matthew Neill Null, Allegheny Front

“But the delight of wading that clear mountain water, scrambling over rocks, or sitting on a boulder in the sunshine and gazing with dreaming eyes into the brown pebbled pools below, was enough joy without feeling the tug of a trout on the end of the line. Often we could see them in the sun-flecked depths below, quiet as shadows except for the occasional waving of a fin.”
― Carol Ryrie Brink, Four Girls on a Homestead

“It was a good-sized trout, opened out, salted, pressed, floured and fried. The entrails had been cooked with some vinegar and mint, mashed up and spooned onto the plate as a sort of afterthought. It was delicious: simple and honest. I ate it all, and didn't give a single thought for what it might do to my humors. I sucked every bone, washed it down with some thick, spicy red wine- peasants' wine- from the hills above the town. I knew that I was tasting the place itself: the fish from the river I had crossed on my way into the town, the pig that had rooted in the woods I had ridden through, olives grown a short walk away. The pig had snuffled under the pine trees whose nuts had adorned its sausages. I had eaten the land. The town itself will always be nameless in my memory, but even now I can assemble it from its flavors, because I have never forgotten any of them. A meal of pigs' liver and fish, served with apologies.”
― Philip Kazan, Appetite

“Finally, our arms simply became too tired to fish any longer, but all good things eventually come to an end, and quitting because of exhausted arms is not a bad way to end a day of trout fishing.”
― David Stuver, Familiar Waters: A lifetime of fly fishing Montana

“…if catching fish is your only objective, you are either new to the game or too narrowly focused on measurable results.”
― David Stuver, Familiar Waters: A lifetime of fly fishing Montana

“Eli returned to the river and paused for a moment midstream. His feet were balanced upon uneven stones. The current tumbled around him. The canyon walls were steep and jagged and solid. The colors beneath the surface stirred and glittered. He wanted to hold his face under water and breathe in their beauty. He dipped his fingers into the snow-cold transient texture and felt a tingle. He closed his eyes to see this sensation clearly. He breathed. He put his hand up to his face and felt the freshness enter his soul. Water droplets dripped from his skin and returned to the river. He opened his eyes as if they were separate from his body, separate from the tension of life, distant from any distraction. He breathed.”
― Daniel J. Rice, This Side of a Wilderness

“By leaving the organization of his concerts to others, Liszt sometimes fell victim to amusing errors. He once played in Marseille and included in the programme his arrangement of Schubert’s “La Truite” (“The Trout”). Owing to a printing error the piece appeared as “La Trinité,” and the unsuspecting audience sat through this bubbling music with quasi-religious reverence. When Liszt realized the mistake he got up from the piano and made an impromptu speech, asking the audience not to confuse the mysterious idea of the Trinity with Schubert’s trout, a helpful interjection which caused great hilarity.”
― Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811-1847

“Brook trout brocade lakes with a vermiculation
of colors that extend till their dorsal fin.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Ghost Tracks

“I noticed the ice cream machine----scallop ice cream? No, that sounded revolting (though Hiroyuki Sakai's trout ice cream from Iron Chef America would remain forever #iconic).”
― Amanda Elliot, Sadie on a Plate

“Jimmy gave a startled yelp. She had put cute little candy cane striped glass cocktail stirrers in everyone's drinks and Jimmy had thought they were real candy canes and bitten his in half. "Goodness. I feel dreadful", Jane said to everyone while Jimmy was in the bathroom, spitting out blood and shards of glass. "Should we take him to the ER?" "Oh, he'll be fine," Duncan assured her. "He didn't go to the ER that time he accidentally locked himself into the finishing room and inhaled fumes all night."
That didn't seem like the soundest piece of logic to Jane, but Jimmy came back into the room at that moment and said, "I'm OK, really Jane. I'll just keep this napkin in there to stop the bleeding." So Jimmy spent spent the rest of the evening with a white cloth napkin poking out of his mouth and looked vaguely like a trout.”
― Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser

“tattooed

a rainbow
tattooed itself
to a trout”
― Daniel Ladinsky, Darling, I Love You: Poems from the Hearts of Our Glorious Mutts and All Our Animal Friends

“Fly fishing is not a braggers game. There’s no glory to win. No competition or comparison between humans. It’s not about growing ego, but removing it. No fish will provide this lesson. It must come from the conscience of the angler. In the most simple explanation, fly fishing is an introspective quest to tame one’s own mind. This can be shared with others, but only discovered alone.”
― Daniel J. Rice, Familiar Waters: A lifetime of fly fishing Montana