I want to mount a rainbow trout for a competition. In the past i had a problem with scales comming off while skinning and fleshing. Is there any way to help prevent this and is it better to use artifical head and fins for competition.
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Hey James. I have mounted gods knows how many trout and I have found that the secret is to leave the slime on the fish while fleshing. It also helps to put a nice wadding of newprint down and put the slime covered fish right on the newspaper and go to work. The newspaper will stick to the slime side and basically stay there to you are done, thereby protecting the scales from popping. As for artificial heads in comp, from what i hear it is a must, but do not quote me. it seems comps are getting to be all fake crap, and less real taxidermy in my opinion.Fake fins, fake adipose, fake heads, replacement fins, why not just replace the fish and use fiberglass? It gets pretty frustarting. Good luck!
Tom
I can answer some questions and give you solutions that will lock
in those scales. However I will need to explain in detail and that
requires far to much typing. You can give me a call at (717-834-6501) if interested.
In Competition the goal is to make the fish look as lifelike as possible. In my shop customer and competition work are very close to the same. If you feel you can rebuild fins and heads to lifelike proportions with all the wrinkles and textures that they exhibit than use the real parts. The correct way is to make the mounted fish look like the living fish. It is that simple.