How to Think Like a Fish Quotes

“It's necessary to experience some failure, to calibrate our appreciation of success.”
― Jeremy Wade, How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling

“Most big freshwater fish, in most parts of the world, have all but disappeared from most places where they used to live. As with arapaima, the main reason is over-harvesting, but there are other factors too. Dams block the migration routes of many fish, so they disappear from the water above the dam — or even altogether, if breeding grounds are cut off. Draining of floodplains, cutting off backwaters, competition from invasive species and pollution also play a part. And sometimes it's just willful slaughter, as was the case with the North American alligator gar in the early 1900s, thanks to the incorrect assumption that killing these predators would boost populations of ‘game’ fish.”
― Jeremy Wade, How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling

“Jungle Hooks India series. I’d previously hooked a very big one but”
― Jeremy Wade, How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling

“if just one crucial factor had been ignored. In this case the alternative story is summarized in just four words: No stealth no fish.”
― Jeremy Wade, How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling

“To this end there are three levels of on-site information I am after. The first is actually seeing fish. Sometimes you can’t miss them: they jump or break the surface, or they’re right there in front of you. But normally you have to look. Looking into water takes practice. The surface acts as a partial mirror, which means a lot of interference from reflected light. So I wear polarizing sunglasses to block the worst of this surface glare. Blocking out the sky from my field of view also helps, either with a hand or a peaked hat. This lets my pupils open up, which allows more light, and hence more information, to reach the light-sensitive cells in my retina. I can now see much more detail in the water. But still, in places, the surface is a psychological barrier. This is because our eyes automatically focus on what is most obvious, which may be surface debris or whatever is reflected in the surface. But it’s possible to train our eyes to override this tendency. One of my many short-term jobs was unloading stuff from delivery trucks for a big auto accessories shop. At the back of the shop, there was a two-way mirror, behind which was the manager’s office. This mirror was the old-fashioned type, with vertical strips of clear glass punctuating the silver. Looking at it from the brightly lit shop, customers would see themselves reflected. But if you made your eyes defocus, you would suddenly see into the darker office behind. And once your focus had latched on to something at this deeper level, it was easy to keep it there. (Modern half-silvered mirrors are more difficult.”
― Jeremy Wade, How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling

“Angling, in essence, is about converting something very insignificant (the bait, with negligible or even zero food value, maybe a worm that has been dug up or a few colorful but inedible fibers) into something very substantial: a fish big enough to feed a family. It could even be expressed as a mathematical equation: energy input (measured in calories or joules) + x = energy output. And the magic catalyst x that makes this apparent alchemy possible, this creation of something from nothing, is… human inventiveness and ingenuity. This is something we all have, baked into our DNA and yearning for expression, and it’s the part of our nature that should always be engaged when we are on the water, constantly interrogating the particular problem that we are trying to solve. Even”
― Jeremy Wade, How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling

“Then came an invention to target fish with better accuracy. Some years after my visit to the Luangwa River I was in the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. One of my tasks here was to shoot a mullet with a bow and arrow, up one of the mangrove-fringed creeks. I already had some experience with a bow, having shot a couple of peacock bass in the Amazon.”
― Jeremy Wade, How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling