Dead River

the prespawn feedbag isn't on like I'd hoped, but did manage to get this 5 lb 8 oz piglet on Monday.

since I live in the south, I'd day anything over 10 lbs. but not everyone in the south is going to catch a ten pounder. it's all about location. if you want to catch trophy bass you have to have access where they live, in my case that was access to primo farm ponds which overproduced boggling amounts of big fish for their size and of course low density trophy pfa. the private slough fish came off as did another from one of my favorite public lakes. I think the 8 lb mark is reasonable for someone in the south, esp. for tourney fishermen who don't target big fish. beyond that whatever makes you happy. 5 lb shoalie, 5 lb spot, 5 lb smallie.. by the end of this month I will have six largemouth, three fx lms, and two f1s (positive on one of the f1s, very likely on the others), I have one shoal bass. for me, I love replica mounts, if money was no object I'd have replicas of all my double digit fish done. hey, if I can outshine them in the near future, that's a good problem to have

that's cheap. a good replica will cost you more than that. it all depends how much detail you want. bass pro will do a fish for that money but it won't have the individual scale tipping. for top notch work you are looking at spending 5 or 600 bones.

and yes I must admit that captain crunch is a bit of a delicacy. it's spring break, so I'm looking to get bit today!

taxidermy has a lot of scope and variation in it.$15-20 and inch usually. the taxidermist I use gets $21 an inch. this includes the blank itself of course. It all depends on what caliber of a paint job you want. if you want high def scale tipping then it's going to be in the vicinity of $21 an inch. It may not be quite competition grade but it's heading that direction. If you have the coin there are people who can paint stuff that looks like its alive. there are many artists around the country that do museum quality work. there are also people that paint fish like maco paints cars. high volume taxidermy shops, but each scale won't get the detail it deserves. not good for conservation in the immediate sense, but some taxidermists will give you discount for providing them a specimen.

Glad y'all like it

Thank you sir

yep until you break one of those supports that's riveted to the middle bench. I definitely need to get that thing fixed....getting the bottom patched this week.

bear in mind the interior mouth and gill detail is cast from a real fish hence all the texture. note how you can see through the gills into the mouth and out the opening like a real fish, the gills are snot shrunken or dehydrated like a skinmount..

really, where?

I will post them shortly, it has full interior gill and mouth detail. very realistic

Not interested in a melee here but I did want to share these better photos of my shoalie replica. the fish is a lot darker than the original pics let on, which is very much to my liking. we worked off of my personal best reference and then another better photo for detail. but I have to confess this fish favors a giant I lost on the Ocmulgee last year the most. This year I will have my revenge.

Xmas in March, two replicas arrived today, this boss F1 Tiger Bass and the shoalie. Clocked out a little early today to do some Vanna White salesmanship on this toad. This blank has been worked on a lot. Originally a gift, beheaded, reheaded, repainted and now it's done. Looks marvelous. And remember, that if you want a fish to look truly big, you have to showcase it in the kitchen. this is by far and away the crowning jewel of my collection thus far.

those are pigs. all caught on jigs?

I've seen a lot of nice teener bass coming from Oklahoma over the past few years. good looking fish there.

well that big fish is a arp3d blank, the paintjob looks good on it but it doesn't have any shiny scale tipping. when you look inside the mouth the taxidermist did not epoxy the area where the gills/rakers attach to the tongue. That fish has nice color on it but it needs to have more scale tipping and powders put on it to make it look more like a competition grade work of art. the other fish I showed are all very nice and lifelike but don't have the scale tipping which takes time and costs money.

there are not very many shoal bass blanks available, not very many spotted bass blanks available. we had to make due with what was out there. we did use multiple references for markings and such, so it did not turn out exactly like my first reference photos, but the blank is also a bit different due to the limitations of what we are talking about. I've caught a lot of shoal bass, I've caught fish that look like that. I'm very happy with it. my point in saying that comment earlier is that through my experience and acquisition of these replicas I've learned a lot about the process and what to expect and so forth. I think your expectations for your replica to be pristine an contain every nuance on your reference photo might be a bit too high. if you're that particular, maybe wait it out until the 3d printing catches up. no offense.

meant to include, the three fish above are commercial blanks that are marketed by companies that specialize in this with lines so to speak. imho, the best blanks are the ones which are cast by individual taxidermists around the country. Also, while the three fish pictured above look good, none of them have competition grade paintjobs, the fish laying in the grass has a quasi competition grade paint job, like I said where every scale is individually painted. it's all according to how much coin you want to spend, there are people that do museum quality work for a price

if you skinmount a bass, it will never have the gaping bucketmouth it did when you hoisted it in your hand for the first time, and I'm not talking about jacking the jaw too far open - I'm talking about shrinkage and decomposition from soaking in denatured alcohol and other substances- this can occure elsewhere on the fish's body as well. I've seen some good skin mounts, but if you want a perfect specimen and money is no object, you kill your fish and have someone cast a custom replica of your fish which will have virtually the same dimensions and all the detail. if you insist on interior mouth and gill detail that can be done in a two step process. I for one opt to let the bass go and select an existing blank with comparable dimensions to my fish and have someone paint it. note the three fish above are all nice blanks, two of them are dennis arp 3ds which have excellent interior mouth and gill detail, these are two of the better specimens from that line. the fattest fish is a starfish blank, it lacks some of the interior mouth and gill detail and is cast in one piece with fins attached but it is still very lifelike and natural. in short the fish you see with the dd22 in the side of its mouth - that's what I looked like when it was cast. I wish I had a dollar for every tattered skinmount I've seen on a restaurant wall, grease bleeds and discolored.