Frank Garrard's crappie. You'll need to go to Roscoe's Bait and Tackle at Hwy. 98 and US 1 in Wake forest, NC to see him mounted.

This is why you freeze a fish in plastic and "NOT" newspaper. See the slime? It's almost impossible to get newspaper off before the fish thaws.

He's in a slime removal bath before I can work on him. This is one of the reasons I "never" give the meat back to the customer.

Yep! The eyes are the first to go. Inside this area is a lot of "cheek meat" that has to be gotten out.

Frank wants this one mounted to the left. So, the incision is made to the back left.

Now, cut through that hard collar bone.

This is the beginning of skinning the fish. Got to be careful. A crappie will easily loose it's scales.

The body is removed. The skull and brains are then removed.

This is called "fleshing". Just like a deer's cape, a fish also has to be fleshed. Again, gotta be careful with those scales.

After the fleshing, in he goes into the tanning bath.

This is how he looks after the tanning. I like to tan my fish for about 2-3 days. It doesn't take that long, but that's just me. See how clean?

After I've fleshed him a bit more I get the manikin ready. A bit of clay where the fin butts go.

(I can't show you all my secrets). After he has been mounted and his fins pinned and matted, he's ready to dry again.

Well, this looks terrible doesn't it? No, he's turned out really nice. Even his split tail fin turned out really nice.

After he dries I start putting on the fin-backing material. Now, he dries again.

OK. The fins have been cut and shaped. The eyes, mandable, and forehead have been sculpted. Now he dries and we start painting.

Everything's dried. Let's try and make this look like a fish. Yep, we're going to use all these lacquer colors.

First goes the white. Then the different blues, greens, gold's, pearls, reds, etc, etc....

Does Frank's winner look like a crappie? By the way, there are four size stumps. Small, medium, large, and X-large. Frank's crappie took a LARGE!!!!

Hope you enjoyed and learned a bit from this collage.