That thread — fishing — is tied to his earliest memory. “I was fishing with my dad, and I can remember looking over the side of the boat and seeing what looked like a carpet of green and gold,” Small said. “It was a school of yellow perch.”
That outing on Lake Erie sparked a lifelong passion. Throughout his youth, Small angled for bluegills and rock bass in a quarry near Clarence, N.Y., where he grew up, and for brook trout on family camping trips to the Adirondacks.
Even a year in France while studying at Hamilton couldn’t disrupt this through-line. His penchant for fishing led him to the Roya River near Nice, where he fly-fished for brown trout. “Talk about fussy,” Small said of the French browns. “They were survivors of the Ice Age and in that clear water as tough to catch as any fish you’ll find.”
His move to Texas for a doctorate in French literature at Rice University didn’t curtail his fishing either. In Texas, he caught redfish, flounder, and sea trout near Galveston, largemouth bass in Houston-area ponds, and trout in the Guadalupe River, where stocked rainbows “were suckers for corn or tiny marshmallows on a hook,” he said.
Small’s fishing pursuits truly flourished when he moved to Wisconsin in 1972 to teach French and English at Northland College in Ashland, on the south shore of Lake Superior. The area’s inland waters and proximity to a Great Lake gave him access to musky, smallmouth bass, walleye, trout, salmon, and more.
This setting jumpstarted a new career. Small began writing articles on fishing for magazines and newspapers, authored books on the subject, and eventually transitioned into television. From 1984 to 2020, he hosted Outdoor Wisconsin, a Milwaukee PBS show that highlighted fishing across the Badger State.
In March, Small was inducted into the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame. His induction plaque honors his lifetime contributions, including more than 1,000 articles, his role as editor of Wisconsin Outdoor News from 1993 to 1998, 36 years as host of Outdoor Wisconsin, and his ongoing role since 2006 as host of Outdoors Radio, a weekly regional program.
Reflecting on his life, Small is humbled by the honor. “It’s hard to believe how fast the time has gone,” he said. “Fishing has been a joy. It’s led to so many great experiences and relationships. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Excerpted, with permission, from the March 6, 2024, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article “A lifetime of angling from New York to Europe to deep South to Wisconsin lands Dan Small in Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame” by Paul A. Smith
