The Week in Fish Pictures~ Year 2# Week#17

Tyler M ....You cannot get a much better Striper guy than Mike! I love his SBs! Actually all his fish are beautiful! I'm jealous...Mike's too young to do this level of work!

 

That sockeye looks great Terry

Kind of in a picture posting mood this week. Heres a 22" Smallmouth Replica- wholesale piece




Detail

 

Hey guys and gals. Alot of nice looking fish mounts this week and last. To many to single out so I will just say congrats to all, nice work and thanks for posting your pics. This week I thought I would do something different and post a coldwater fish.
Its a trout wood carving finished several days ago with a few pics of the carving process.
Enjoy, Dan

 

HOLY CRAP Dan, that is flat out amazing!!!!!!!!! I've never seen a wood carving process before and I'm really amazed at how real it looks. I and a heck of a lot of other people wouldn't be able to tell it from the real thing. I'm truly impressed great work!!!!!!!!

 

Dan, I love the Brown! Taking a blank piece of wood and creating that work of art is quite a statement. You truly have a gift. Just beautiful!

Terry, You really captured the essence of a red. Nice!

Aaron, Another nice fish! The detail shot is cool.

 

WOW Great Work this Week!

Terry Nice Sockeye!! Great Colors and a beautiful fish. I really ant to catch a Sockeye some day.

Aaron Nice Smallmouth, Clean Colors, great barring.

And Dan Very Nice work!. That makes me want to finish the cutthroat carving I have going. How de you do your scales? carved, burned, or dented. I am really stupmed on that part of mine.

Coolness. Man I need to get to Work!

 

Boy, some incredible stuff again this week _ I'm AFRAID to post any of my junk!!! Incredible wood craving - my personal fav. Too many beautiful things to comment on individually, but I had to comment about Dan's wood carving!!!

Josh - just checked out your website and noticed in the "drawing and painting" section a pic of either a nuke plant worker OR is that one of the Stehling's in their grinding area for their fiberglass replicas??? LOL!!!

 

LOL you mean this one.



LOL

Its actually a self portrait of me in my old "Uniform" at school.
We had a Great Bronze foundry, and I spent a lot of time in that suit. Man I love the smell of it and the heat during the pours!
Aghhhh Heaven ;D

I am glad you posted this. I need t get off my Bum and get the other sections of my Website up and running.

 

You mean this one Marty ? Your really full of it this week LOL

 

Another very inspiring week. Dan B. ....watching you turn that hunk of wood into a work of art is so cool. Even that "driftwood" looks like the real deal. Something I want to get into more of just for the heck of it. Oh well, 4 more months and I retire from teaching. Then I will get some real work done along the carving lines. I wish we could get more companies like Sugar Pine to revive their line of roughed out carvings. Starting from scratch like that with a band saw must be very time consuming. How long do you estimate, from start to finish, that brown trout took you? How about some of you guys out there that do this offer "semi-finished" blanks to lazy, tool less guys like me so I can just do the fine detailing and painting? Could be a market out there!!!

 

Now Aaron, why would this week be any different than any other??? Yes, I'm FULL OF IT - lol!

Josh, is that an oil? Very nice. Weird, but nice - lol!

 

Aaron- A very nice looking smallmouth!

DanB- Man, I am speechless! That was a fascinating set of photos to share and walk us through. Simply amazing! If you would have shared the final photo first and said it started out as a block of wood, I probably wouldn't have believed you. Thanks for taking the time to share that.

Josh- sockeyes and "catching" don't always go together, but they certainly are an interesting fish, especially when they are schooled up SO heavily... you need to get up here to AK sometime.

 

Its acrylic. Painted on Panel about 4 feet high. It was a fun one to do.

 

DanB - Holy friggin crap!!! That is awesome. Great job!!!

 

Recently finished this Lake Lanier striper so thought I should join the fishing boat this week and post it. Skin mount with cast head:


For the 'gills' on this one I inserted an appropriately shaped(half circle, sort of stair stepped)/sized piece of blue foam, covered it with Apoxie Sculpt and used a #11 Xacto blade to cut filaments into the epoxy. Still not ideal but seems to be workable in this situation where there was not a great opeing under the gill cover.

 

Travis, Harum, Josh, Marty, Den, Terry, Cole, Thanks for the kind words guys. I just thought some people might be interested in some of the process a fish carving goes through, obviously there is more to it but that will give some people the general idea for those that have no idea. Anyways Thanks.

Josh- For that piece I pressed in the scales or rolled them on I should say. For trout I take a big metal bolt or huge nail and round off the ends smooth and take my diamond bits and cut in scales on the metal. Also I take a large metal washer 1/8 inch wide or so and cut scales in that just for trout. Pressing them in like that is pretty fast for that amount of scales and looks pretty convincing up close. Burning them in for a comm. piece takes way to long, I would only burn them in if I was to compete. After painting you can't even tell how the scales were made. Bigger scaled fish are done differently, I carve them in most of the time, and looks pretty good.

Den- How about Blackstone wood blanks for sale, LOL. The carving took less than a week. I even checked my hours on this and it took 35 hours, give or take a few minutes. Thats one thing I'm starting to develope is speed on these. I can get done pretty fast now, (thats if you call 35 hours fast). The painting is where I kinda take my time. Its weird because on my fiberglass replicas and skin mount fish its hard for me to develope a little speed. :-\

 

unreal!!!!!!!!I love this site.I am going to go nuts!!!!!!.OK, my boyfreind Brad who mates on charters boats said his mounts are done by Kent Island Taxidermy. He does alot of Rockfish I understand. Brad gave me these photos of Rockfish he has had mounted by the same guy. Also, the new Virginia Rockfish record was just broken. The same guy is doing the fish. I am very happy with my Christmas preasent!!!!!!! have a wonderful evening all.fishy

 

another of Brads fish.The taxidermist sent us these pictures. Mine was 51lbs. caught on a live EEL. Brad's were 45lbs. and 53bs. this site is great. fishy

 

NEW Virginia State record Rockfish. 73lbs.