Randy LaPrairie
Taxidermist and Painter
Bayou Pigeon, La.

Inspecting the Fish

Okay they have commercial forms, that you can buy, that fits most of these fish. Now I've tried them but I don't like them. It limits your freedom of what you can do with your fish. Now over the years I'm sure the fish forms have gotten better, but I'm stuck with this, the way I do it. What I do, I'll take the skin, once I have it, I'll open the skin up, to where you usually have a flat piece of skin, when you open it completely up. This comes a loose all the way up to here and bottom piece flops and it lays flat. This top piece, it'll lay over flat up to about this point and start curving back around because you have a hard gill plate up here. I take that, it's laid out, I got some, esperf, its a preservative, but it is more like a moth proofer, it's more a borax, than anything else. Borax is what you put in washing powder to keep the bugs away. It is also a whitener too. I put the borax on it, I mix up the amount of paper I need. On the skin I spread my paper mache about 1/2 inch thick, something else I learned once I do that, I when start sewing it up, before I start sewing him up, I'll put piece of plastic wrap on top of that. What I do is, as I start sewing it up I stuff him with sawdust. So what it does is creates a hollow core. I'll fill him full of saw dust. As I am filling him, I'll keep stuffing him and working him all the way back toward the skull.