About Dennis Whiteside
For as long as I can remember, I've loved to fish. My grandma would take me fishing on creeks and ponds on our family farm back in the fifties and my love for moving water has never slowed. I can remember hooking my very first Smallmouth on our old farm at the sandgate eddy on Little Black River in about 1958. My Uncle Bill Whitley, who just turned 90, also allowed me to go with him on guided float trips in the early sixties on Missouri's Current River near Doniphan. I can easily recall specific fish that we caught from some of those float trips with our guide, Barry Price, one of several guides there at the time in the Price family. While in college at the University of Missouri in the late 60's I got to know the Dablemont family and spent many great float trips fishing and float hunting with Larry Dablemont and his dad, Farrel, on the Big Piney River near Houston, Missouri. Later, Farrel Dablemont made me my first wooden John Boat, I took it with me to Arkansas after returning from a year in Vietnam and have spent the rest of my life exploring near every clear, float stream in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma while wearing out a dozen canoes doing it. Lord willing, I'll keep going a few more years and hope to share a good many river miles on more fine Ozark streams with fine folks that hopefully value the Smallmouth bass as much as I do.