The Literary Fly Fisher

With many persons, fishing is a mere recreation, a pleasant way of killing time. To the true angler, however, the sensation it produces is a deep unspoken joy, born of a longing for that which is quiet and peaceful, and fostered by an inbred love of communing wiht nature, as he walks through grassy meads, or listens to the music of a mountain torrent. This is why he loves occassionally — whatever may be his social propensity indoors — to shun the habitations and usual haunts of men, and wander alone bythe stream, casting his flies over its bright waters: or in his lone canoe to skim the unrufflled surface of the inland lake, where no sound comes to his ear but the wild, flute-like cry of the loon, and where no human form is seen but his own, mirrored in the glassy water.

Thaddeus Norris, American Angler’s Book, 1864.