Dean wrote me and said “
I started spearing with my grandpa over in WI for sturgeon as a kid. I kind of got separated from it when he passed. I was reintroduced to spearing by a few college buddies who where big into spearing pike. After fishing with them a few times and being absolutely bored with watching a pike minnow do nothing I decided that I’d give the decoy carving a try.
The first half dozen decoys were pretty much junk. They kind-of run, but not as good as they should. Got a few tips from other spear anglers and from the MDAA website.Having a background in fisheries certainly makes me notice each subtle difference in each species of fish I carve. That has certainly helped my decoys look somewhat lifelike. The recent technique I have used to finish a decoy is to coat them with epoxy. I picked this up from a lure maker and applied it to spearing decoys. It took a few decoys to get to buoyancy correct as epoxy makes them lighter than normal.”
He is a member of MDAA.
Photo courtesy of Dean Burdis.