herring

[big J]

been doing fish taxidermy for about 28 years now but never done a great lake herring is there any thing special i should do to this fish before skinning the customer tells me its a state record here in michigan.should i turn him on to a replacia, i heard the scales pop off easy.any enfo would help.

[Jknuth]

OH GOD! do a replica!!! Its a state record fish and the scales will fly off it!!!
they are very loose scaled fish, and oily. even a replica can be a bit tricky. a skin mount is VERY risky.

Since it is a Record fish I would not want to take that risk.

[JTM]

They don't pop off very easy. They pop of VERY, VERY easy!!!

They are an exceptional candidate for molding. You will even lose scales during the molding/bedding process. I have molded shad, which are very similar, and wouldn't want to even imagine skinning one. Aside from panfish, probably the easiest fish to mold. With this species, molding will probably result in a better end product.


Good luck,
JTM