Largemouth Bass Skin mount

Hard to tell anatomy but the fish looks good from what I can see, BUT the placement on the driftwood I think is way off,, I would not have the fish hanging off the back end of the base,, unless your placing another fish in the front of him, just a thought,

 

Looks like he is going after a Worm way on the left hand side . I am guessing that is why the fish is off to the right side . 8)

 

Early Bird gets the worm ,,, OR in this case a Fish gets the worm LOL

 

First off, let me say its a nice fish! Great job.

I do think however that you used a commercial form. Which is meant for, and designed for an open mouth bass. Your distance between the bottom of the fish and the top of the fish where the throat latch meets the scales is too deep/tall. It just looks super deep and much too heavy. Esp for a closed mouth fish in that range. (there are exceptions of course)

When bass close their mouths, fish in general actually are pretty well smooth and start small and get larger. Hydrodynamics and what not. If you look at your fish, it looks like you have the bottom jaw brought up too high, in order to keep that top profile looking good, and head not drooping. that brings everything out of alignment.

Look at your gill flap end, or "ear" . You can see if you draw a line off of it, instead of running near dead center mass (which most closed mouth bass should and do) it goes catycorner down the side. This is a dead give away that your head is cranked too high. It should run flush/straight from back of eye, to ear, to lateral line right above that collar bone joint.

This is a common mistake when people either carve a body for an open mouth fish, but mount it closed, or try closing the mouth on a commercial body . It can be done, but you need to cut and reposition the throat latch area, and also rasp and bring down the top profile of the body as well.

 

here, maybe this will show you what I mean. This fish is slight open mouth. So the line is still even a bit canted or high. When its closed , its a pretty continuous line. The barring from behind the back corner of the eye runs onto the ear, and then blends nearly flawlessly into the barring on the sides once that flap is closed on a closed mouth fish. Pointing straight back towards the tail.

Kenneth Bauman showed me this in some really good reference of a closed mouth fish, but It wasn't my picture so I couldn't post that particular image.

I hope this helps. great job though, and keep it up.

 

here's a fish in a tank off my cellphone in bass pro.... it shows it better. I hope im making sense .

 

Makes a nice change to see a LMB mount with closed mouth. Im not qualified to critique it, but I like the look , would be cool to see more like that .

 

Jimmy,
Great post with the reference pictures....

 

That head isn't as bad as you guys think it is, almost to technical. The real problem that I see is on the 13th scale row. There you will see a couple of scales that... nah, just kidding! Nice fish

 

The reason i went into such depth in my reply or critique is because I think you have serious talent . Thats also why I backed up all of my opinions or words with reference of live fish. To illustrate what I was saying and mean, so that you, and everyone else can see it . I've done it my self. And one of my best friends has a painting tutorial on here where he did the same thing, and made the same mistakes.

You are carving, which puts you way ahead of many people. Its rewarding when you can carve a nice body. Something I struggle with a lot.

I hope you take what I said as a learning post, and not a put down. As it was meant to help, and not hurt you, or the work posted in any way. And maybe you will look at that next time, and see things in that way.

Keep up the good work, and I look forward to seeing more fish.

And btw, no customer is gonna know , im 99% sure of that too, same as you are.

and that 12, and 13th row will get you every time.

 

Your fin junctions on both fish, especially the tail area needs a better, smoother transition. And the barring on your face on the open mouth fish seems a little off to me placement wise .

But I think they are both nice. I like the softness of the paint work on the open mouth fish. I'd hang both of them in my house.

Jimmy

 

I think the eye is to red!

 

Nothing like the real thing.