Simple Fly Fishing Quotes

“Why is a worm so effective? Because it is always moving.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel

“For faster or deeper water, use a big fly tied on a size 8 to 12 hook, and weight it heavily with tungsten bead heads and/ or nontoxic wire. For slower or shallower water, use a small fly tied on a size 12 to 16 hook and weighted only with a bead head or only with wire.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel

“For a dark stream bottom, use a dark fly; for a light stream bottom, use a light fly.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel

“Brook trout are easy to fool, and are found in places on most rivers and streams that are easily reached: big pools, soft riffles, along undercuts, and under overhanging trees. Mostly though, they are found in soft, deep water, tend to feed lower down on the water column, and are less likely to take surface flies.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel

“Cutthroat trout display behavior more like brook trout than their rainbow trout cousins. They are most often found in quiet current tongues along undercut banks, under rock ledges and deadfalls, and in slow, deep pools. The cutthroat is often easily fooled, and its curiosity about big, bushy flies with bright colors and tinsel is legendary. They like to chase their prey and are suckers for large, rubber-legged dry flies slapped on the water and twitched.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel

“In high water, fish migrate to the banks to stay out of the fast currents and to take advantage of the worms, beetles, ants, and other terrestrials being swept into the river by the floodwaters. If the water is very dirty, they position themselves right next to the bank, a rock, or the bottom in order to keep their equilibrium. In warm water, they move to the deeper cooler waters or place themselves near a cool spring or tributary. Alternately, they could be under the fastest turbulent cascades where there is more dissolved oxygen.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel

“Rainbow trout live in the fastest currents, cutthroat trout in quiet eddies behind snags, brook trout in the pools at the inner bends of streams.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel

“There are some conservationists who are opposed to fishing and hunting, but I’m sorry, they are not thinking it through. In order to transpose mere interest into passionate love requires proactive behavior. The road is an uphill one because today’s youth of the digital world are raised with offers of passive, instant gratification. Can a person raised in that environment ever fish all day without a bite? Maybe it should be mandatory for schools to provide environmental study from grade one in which there is no computer involved, or any other electronic visual aide, only calm, analytical conversation mixed in with visits to if not wild places at least rural ones.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel