One of the people I always look forward to seeing at our annual Inside Outfitters men’s fishing weekend is big Don Steele. Don is originally from Jamaica and still has his delightful, lilting accent to go along with being one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. His, “Heeey, Brudder John!” greeting is one of the things that keeps me coming back. Next to God and his own wife and family, Don’s passion is fishing and he appears to have a special gifting for finding and catching messes of crappe. This year was no exception as he caught 20 crappe Friday night, then went out with a fresh stringer Saturday morning and came back with another haul (see photo).

I met Don seven or eight years ago at one of our outings. The first time I saw him he was hauling a long fat stringer full of crappes from the dock to his cabin, looking more than a bit like a Jamaican-piscatorial version of Santa Claus. It later turned out that his cabin was also my cabin, which we were sharing with three or four other guys. I took the couch in the main room/kitchen of the cabin to sleep on, while Don bedded his crappes down — still alive — in several rubber tubs of water in the refrigerator.

I was used to the sounds of snoring, but it was hard for me to tune out the near-constant crappe-flapping coming from the frig 10 feet away. I opened one eye when I heard the slapping sound of Don’s bare feet on the tile floor, in time to see him illuminated in the refrigerator light as he opened the door and leaned in. St. Nick-like he raised his finger to his face, placing it on his lips rather than the side of his nose. “Shhhhh,” he whispered. “Peeple be sleepin’!”

My belly still shakes like a bowl full of jelly when I think of this, in part because of the absurdity of the scene, but also because his admonishment worked!

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