DUBUQUE AUDUBON

Denny Weiss grew up in Burlington, Iowa, spending a great deal of his time on the Mississippi River.  He graduated from Iowa State University with a B.S. degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology in 1978.  He worked 35 years for the Iowa DNR in fisheries research on the Mississippi River at the Fairport and Bellevue fisheries stations.  While employed with the DNR, Denny would often present 80-100 talks about fish, turtles, furbearers, and other topics to a wide range of audiences each year.  He would volunteer to give presentations both weekends in the DNR building at the Iowa State Fair every year.

Now that Denny has retired, he has more time for his favorite hobbies in life: hunting, fishing, commercial fishing, and fur trapping.  Retirement has allowed him to spend more time with his wife, daughters, and four granddaughters.  Denny loves to be called a “Mississippi River Rat” because the river has always been in his blood.  Denny is usually on the river 2-3 days/week in the spring, summer, and fall months, catching catfish in the hoop nets that he makes himself, and he sells his fish.  From November through February, Denny is fur trapping almost every day for all of the various furbearing species that live in Iowa.  Denny and his wife (Theresa) have also enjoyed traveling to many places for the big game hunting that Denny enjoys.  Denny’s hunts have taken them to some neat places in British Columbia, Kodiak Island, Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Ontario, New Zealand, and Australia.  For the past 10 years since his retirement, Denny normally does 20 or more presentations each year to a wide range of audiences to share his knowledge and hands-on experience about the unique and interesting fish, turtles, and animals that call the Mississippi River their home.