Cermele: Art Projects for Anglers

If you live in an area where winter generally means slow fishing, there’s a good chance you assuage your cabin fever by dreaming up plans for next season. Some may be as simple as new lures you intend to try. Others might be as complex as new rigging styles you think will work on your home waters. You may even try building a boat. By this time of year, I’ve got a laundry list of schemes ready for spring, but some of them aren’t exactly tactical.

As an example, I recently ran across the video below on making gyotaku fish prints. The process is nothing new. It’s actually a form of ancient Japanese folkart. I’ve seen such prints hanging in foo-foo galleries where pieces are mostly afforded by people named Muffy or Biff. What I did not know is that making one of these prints is actually pretty easy…at least it looks that way. So the wheels started cranking.

All of my mounted fish are shut up in one room. Frankly, my wife hates them. Perhaps yours does, too. But gyotaku prints are pure art. Fine art at that. At least that should be your approach when you make one and want to hang it in the dining room instead of the garage next to the Miller High Life poster. If she won’t hang yours, have the kids make one. They’ll totally dig it, and the lady of the house may not be able to refuse display in a prominent location. I’m going to give this a shot come spring. I figure it’s perfect for those fish that you wouldn’t pay hundreds to have mounted, but are nice enough to commemorate with more than a photo. I would also guess that you could safely rinse of non-toxic water-based paints after rolling the print and still cook the catch. – JC