The Fishing River is a 39.0-mile-long (62.8 km) tributary of the Missouri River in western Missouri in the United States. It rises in the northeastern extremity of Kansas City in Clay County and flows generally eastward and southeastward through Clay and southeastern Ray counties, past the town of Mosby. It joins the Missouri River about 3 miles (5 km) south of the town of Orrick.
Downstream of Mosby, it collects the East Fork Fishing River, which rises at the town of Lawson and flows 20.6 miles (33.2 km) generally southward through Ray and Clay counties, past the town of Excelsior Springs.
In 1808, William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition established Fort Osage along the Missouri near the mouth of the Fishing River. The fort became a center of trade among European settlers and Native Americans in the region.
Famous quotes containing the words fishing and/or river:
“I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)