Awesome crappie taxidermist

[GRIZZ]

I went to a sportsman's show in Buffalo a couple weeks ago and saw a crappie mount there that was the best painted mount of the colors of a fresh crappie I have ever seen. I did a little research and found it was done by these guys. Take a look. The white they have on the website could use some improvement, but the black at the show was astounding. It was very similar to the crappie on the right of those first 2.

http://www.artisticanglers.com/Pan%20Fish.htm

[Wichita]

http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/i...ppie-twins.jpg

http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/i...appiemount.jpg

[whackmaster]

those guys really know what they're doing! Always enjoy reading your posts Grizz...keep up the good work and tight lines to ya !

[CrappiePappy]

I went to a sportsman's show in Buffalo a couple weeks ago and saw a crappie mount there that was the best painted mount of the colors of a fresh crappie I have ever seen. I did a little research and found it was done by these guys. Take a look. The white they have on the website could use some improvement, but the black at the show was astounding. It was very similar to the crappie on the right of those first 2.
http://www.artisticanglers.com/Pan%20Fish.htm

... that the White Crappie paint job is a little "too perfect" in its conformity of pattern. Real, in the wild, White Crappie don't have such uniform stripes and blotches. It does look a little too much like a "artistic rendering", and not enough of a individualistic fish. May just be the picture, but it also doesn't seem to have the blue/green coloration along the back (top 1/3 of the fish) that I'm used to seeing on White Crappie.
Still, all in all, they do seem to be quite good at capturing the "alive" look, that most people prefer in their mounted fish.

... cp

[GRIZZ]

Your right, its strange they would do such an outstanding job on the black crappies and then paint such a mediocre white, and frankly the pics of the blacks don't do them justice if they are as good as the one I saw in Buffalo, which they look to be. Up close that mount was by far the best recreation of a live crappie I have ever seen. It captured the beauty of a live fish, the subtle colors that go away quickly after a fish is live welled or killed. BTW, the fish was a recreation of the NYS record. 3lb 13oz.

[joejv4]

That NYS record came from about 10 minutes from my house. I keep hoping to get into a huge slab there. One of these days......

I wonder if that mount was the same one they had at the state fair in the DEC building. they had a replica of the 3lb 12 oz crappie there this past summer too - HUGE!

[MO fisherman]

All the mounts look to have too many extra bright clolors and no fading of one color to another. You couldn't pay me to take my fish to those guys. They don't look realistic at all. I know it's a hard job. A really good taxidermisit is really hard to find, but I've seen a lot better than that. these guys try to hard to make their fish look "Pretty".

[TnRidge]

I thought they looked decent . I have seen alot worse .

[GRIZZ]

All the mounts look to have too many extra bright clolors and no fading of one color to another. You couldn't pay me to take my fish to those guys. They don't look realistic at all. I know it's a hard job. A really good taxidermisit is really hard to find, but I've seen a lot better than that. these guys try to hard to make their fish look "Pretty".

I need to clarify that those pics don't do the one I saw justice. The close up detail and colors of the one I saw was hands down the best crappie mount I've ever seen. I also don't think the pictured mounts show the quality of the artwork of those either. Frankly, most all mounts I have seen of crappie have been just awful and basically look like kids did them. This one was as close to lifelike as I've seen.

If you have pics of better done mounts I'd like to see them. Something else to keep in mind is that crappie colors vary significantly from region to region, and many NY crappies have colors just like those in the mounts. I've seen crappies that are nearly pure white and then nearly pure black and others as yellow as a crayon with green on their backs as green as a wet maple leaf. Its one of the reasons I like crappies so much. They are so dang beautiful when fresh out of the water.

[skiptomylu]

They look really good. I should have had my wife's crappie a few years back mounted and am still kicking my self in the rear. At the time I was just starting to break away from mostly bass fishing and didn't realize how hard it was going to be to get another
19" Crappie. That thing was huge!

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