By Joe Cermele

The gentleman in the photo below is Skeeter Scoville, a fishing guide who I just met two nights ago in Pulaski, New York. Skeeter has been chasing salmon and steelhead on the Salmon River for almost 40 years, and though he ties an unholy amount of flies every season, he hand paints an even more unholy amount of trout beads. Last season he painted tiny intricate dot patterns on more than 10,000. Skeeter believes consistently catching steelhead means dialing in the colors they want with pin-point accuracy, and the flat hues beads come in from the factory just don't cut it in his mind.

The word around town is that no beads outfish Skeet's beads. So where can you buy them? You can't. Every bead he paints is strictly for personal use or for his clients to use. The photo does little justice to the overall number of patterns he creates. Some beads glow. Some are only for specific months and water temperatures. The dots of some beads have three rings like a bull's eye. And each dot, Skeeter pointed out, is strategically placed. "You can't just put them anywhere," he told me. Skeeter, I learned, can talk beads for hours, as each pattern has a unique name and story.

While Skeeter may not have painted 10,000 beads at one sitting, I don't think I could paint more than 50 at a clip with his level of attention without getting completely squirrely and losing focus. How many beads could you paint before going off the deep end?

Comments (7)

from Big Country wrote 28 weeks 1 day ago

1. 2 Maybe. That's dedication.

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from rob wrote 28 weeks 23 hours ago

What's the biggest bottle of Maker's Mark they make? Cause I'd need ALL of it to paint 10.

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from kyka1865 wrote 28 weeks 23 hours ago

Several years ago my boss requested that we hand paint several hundred clear beads with different shades of nail polish for his upcoming trip to alaska with clients. We ended up painting nearly 1000.It is mind numbing.

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from rpm13 wrote 28 weeks 18 hours ago

Bead fishing should be illegal..........fishing with a bare hook, ridiculous......let my feelings know to NYS DEC they are considering making this type of "fishing" illegal......

But the painting part looks intriguing, I paint jig heads all the time......

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from Chinook627 wrote 28 weeks 14 hours ago

rpm13, why should bead fishing be illegal? The fish eat the beads like they would an egg sack. If anything, the DEC should be more concerned with the guys on the salmon river roping every single steelhead out of every hole then leaving with stringers full of trout even though the limit is one per day.

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from senkoman12 wrote 28 weeks 14 hours ago

i was just up at the slamon river sunday fishing beads. got nothing unfortunantly

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from Grub H0 wrote 4 weeks 6 days ago

So, does the bead alone just go on the hook like an egg? Or are these for use in home mad trout spinners? Or???

Also, if on a hook, can it be used on a flyrig?

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from Chinook627 wrote 28 weeks 14 hours ago

rpm13, why should bead fishing be illegal? The fish eat the beads like they would an egg sack. If anything, the DEC should be more concerned with the guys on the salmon river roping every single steelhead out of every hole then leaving with stringers full of trout even though the limit is one per day.

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from Big Country wrote 28 weeks 1 day ago

1. 2 Maybe. That's dedication.

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from rob wrote 28 weeks 23 hours ago

What's the biggest bottle of Maker's Mark they make? Cause I'd need ALL of it to paint 10.

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from kyka1865 wrote 28 weeks 23 hours ago

Several years ago my boss requested that we hand paint several hundred clear beads with different shades of nail polish for his upcoming trip to alaska with clients. We ended up painting nearly 1000.It is mind numbing.

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from rpm13 wrote 28 weeks 18 hours ago

Bead fishing should be illegal..........fishing with a bare hook, ridiculous......let my feelings know to NYS DEC they are considering making this type of "fishing" illegal......

But the painting part looks intriguing, I paint jig heads all the time......

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from senkoman12 wrote 28 weeks 14 hours ago

i was just up at the slamon river sunday fishing beads. got nothing unfortunantly

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from Grub H0 wrote 4 weeks 6 days ago

So, does the bead alone just go on the hook like an egg? Or are these for use in home mad trout spinners? Or???

Also, if on a hook, can it be used on a flyrig?

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