As spring gets closer to arriving we start to anticipate another season of trout fishing. Quotes like this one make me anxious to wet a line.
(Note: this stanza was the inspiration for the name of this blog many years ago)
No blood of living insect stain my line;
Let me, less cruel, cast feather'd hook,
With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook,
Silent along the mazy margin stray,
And with fur-wrought fly delude the prey."
-Jon Gay, Rural Sports, 1713