Big D.

A couple of weeks ago when I was up in Ohio, I stopped in to see my friends Rick and Kathryn. We spent some time catching up and then, as with most of my conversations with Rick, we started reminiscing about some of our favorite moments on our fishing trips to Canada.

We had a lot of great times on those trips and the memories will last forever. If they don’t, something has seriously gone awry.

We gradually worked our way through a six-pack of PBR and found ourselves talking a lot this time about Dale, or as we called him, Big D. He was quite a character and it just wouldn’t be right if he wasn’t mentioned at least once on this blog.

Dale was first invited on our trips by Rick’s grandfather, Brad. He was about 40 years our senior, but he fit in just fine, mostly because he was even more immature than we were. He was a retired truck driver who couldn’t fish that well, but he kept us entertained and he always volunteered to cook.

Big D got his nickname, not because of his physical size, but mostly because he needed a nickname. He always seemed to have one for all of us so it was only fair we gave him one. To him we were: Pudge (that was me), Ricky Tick Cowboy (Rick), Lee Wong (Lee), Cookie (Colin), and Smackdown (John).

It was always a sight to see Dale on the water. A lot of our time was spent going after walleye (He called them Wally Burgers) and that meant drifting a worm on the bottom. For some reason Dale could never quite figure out when his lure hit a rock or when he actually got a bite, so whenever he felt the slightest tick on his line he would rear back and set the hook.

More often than not he was left with nothing more than a little backlash in his reel and would end up yelling, “Ah! You Dirty Ernie!” at the fish. Of course, he couldn’t fish with his reel that way, so he would pass it off and say, “Rick, fix the Hog. I’ll use your pole.” In short order the process would be repeated, but this time with Rick’s gear.

Dale would catch fish occasionally, and it never seemed to matter if it was small enough it slipped through the net, or even if it had open sores on its body, to him it was a keeper. Because of that, we would end up throwing a lot of his fish back…when he wasn’t looking.

He is definitely one of the most interesting characters I have ever met. I’ll never forget the shouts of, “My Lasix are kicking in boys, pull the boat over so I can drain Luther,” the seemingly infinite supply of stories about the goings on at truck stops, or the look on his face as John and I circled his boat singing our new song, “Dale Went Down to Georgia.” He acted like he was annoyed by that last one, but we knew he loved it.

Sadly though, Dale passed on four years ago this spring. He loved to fish and even though he sometimes acted otherwise, we knew those invitations meant a lot to him, even more so after Brad passed away. He’ll always live on in the stories we tell, and being Dale, in a fairly unique way as well.

From the Blue Heron Resort on the Spanish River in Ontario, point your boat upstream along the north bank of the river. After about a quarter of a mile the weeds will thin out and you’ll see the giant rock jutting out of the shoreline that marks Dale’s favorite fishing hole.

With a little help from the owner of the Blue Heron, that rock was officially named "Dale's Rock" by the Canadian Goverment. If you stop to fish, I’m sure he’ll leave a few down there for you.