Pondering life and the art of fishing with Don Dubin

Don Dubin is a born salesman.

That goes back to being a top salesman at Order from Horder.

But he’s a salesman with an artist’s heart.

Dubin was a violinist and concert master, much pursued by colleges, at the old Austin High School.

“I can do anything I see in my mind,” he said in his suburban house, as we toured his taxidermy, fish carvings, paintings, tackle collections and binders of photos and stories.

He’s not kidding. He had me do my signature on a yellow pad, then immediately copied it perfectly, down to the trailing a and n in Bowman.

Now Dubin works on the sale of his life.

“I am going to be 86 and I’m not going to live forever,” he said. “When I kick the bucket, everything goes to my wife. She doesn’t care about this stuff.”

So while alive he is trying to sell some carvings and make some money.

“If I sell my wood carvings, what can I do with my taxidermy, my rods and lures?” he wondered.

For years, I hoped his collection would anchor a Chicago Fishing Museum. In my dream, I see the fishing museum at Northerly Island Visitor Center or South Shore Cultural Center/Fieldhouse.

Back to reality.

His fish carvings range from straightforward artistically detailed to serious, such as human litter marring a natural setting, to my favorite, a whimsical muskie looking like a fat cat.

“Everyone looks at this guy, here is a fisherman, a muskie, on a log with a big belly,” Dubin said. “He’s holding his catch and he’s got his tongue sticking out. These are skeletons. It’s the good life and you know, perks.”

Dale Bowman

Dubin has been in discussions with Guyette and Deeter, leading decoy auction firm, and some of his work should be auctioned this year.

“Nobody does carvings like this,” he said. “These are my own ideas.”

Fish are embedded in his psyche, from growing up on the West Side, walking to fish Garfield and Douglas parks with a piece of bread and a hook.

“I saw the fish in the water and tried to catch them, then one day I caught a minnow,” he said.

He put it in cup and took it home.

“I watched it for hours,” he said. “I was so fascinated with fish.”

When Dubin was 16, his grandfather bought him a car. The first places he went fishing were the Kankakee River and the old strip mines around Coal City.

Dale Bowman

When asked his favorite piece of taxidermy, he said, “I love them all, some just mean more than others.”

Dubin has too many ribbons and awards to count from carving competitions, including the World Fish Carving Championship.

“It was all self taught,” Dubin said.

That began with taxidermy.

Mel Hansen ran a shop on Williams Bay on Geneva Lake in Wisconsin. When he caught a trout, he would cut the head off and fasten it on the building. It fascinated Dubin, who took Hansen’s advice and went fishing for trout on a “really windy, lousy, cloudy, rainy day,” and caught two.

He rushed home, so fast that a policeman stopped Dubin. He was let go when the officer heard Dubin’s fish story.

“I chopped the heads off and let them dry out,” Dubin said.

That started his life in taxidermy, something he learned on his own. Back then, taxidermists didn’t share much. Straw was often used to bulk mounts, but Dubin found a better material.

He fished all over the world to catch specific species he wanted to mount, growing skilled at taxidermy.

When a friend showed him a wood carver, Dubin said, “I can do that stuff. Taxidermy to wood carving, that is where I went.”

And into collecting.

Dubin has rows of organized photo albums. As he showed one, photos dramatically changed from black-and-white to color. He kept detailed records of his catches on his boat “Don’s Pride,” back to the beginning of the salmon fishery on Lake Michigan. He had a sheet of tallies from the early years: 1968, 16 salmon, 1969, 121 salmon and trout, 1970 144 salmon and trout.

Dale Bowman

He has two books he pulled together on the history of Illinois’ muskie fishery, which he was active in from the beginning, and on Lake Michigan fishing.

Dubin has a photo with Bob Feller, which I love even more than the photos of Dubin with Howard Tanner, Ph.D., the brains behind stocking salmon into Lake Michigan to balance alewives.

“This is history,” Dubin said. “If you have any idea what I can do with this, let me know.”

Dale Bowman