Fish Mount

Hey guys, I'd like to do my own fish skull mount this year - my kids are dying to see a lingcod skull, they've already started making me pull out big teeth for them.

Does anyone have a set of good instructions that you have personally used and gotten good results with?  Doing teeth is easy, but a whole head could be a bit of a project, and I want it to come out right.  Thanks!

I'd think that finding an anthill to put the head on would probably work pretty well, so long as you could keep dogs/cats/etc from taking it before the ants had cleaned it up. 

We did fish skulls in ichthyology class in grad school.  Everyone in the science building hated us that week.  Basically this was the process.
1.) cut off as much flesh as we could with a scalpel.
2.) what I like to call "fish head hot pot".  We had a pot of simmering water that we would use to cook the flesh a bit which helps loosen it.
3.) see step 1

After most of the flesh was removed we started to take the bones apart which we identified and labelled (it was an ichthyology class after all).  A bit more boiling and cleaning followed by a short soak in bleach.

Finally we reassembled everything.  Glue was the primary method of getting things back together but for big bones we would drill tiny holes and wire things back together.

Ant hills will also work if you can keep the skull protected like sumpnz mentioned.  The problem with the ant hill method is that you don't get to see how things went together first.

I'll dig up my old ichthyology lab manual and scan skull prep section for you.  I also have a rare copy of William Gregory's "Fish Skulls: A study of the evolution of natural mechanisms" from the 1930's.   It has figures for most of the fish families and I think it even has a lingcod figure which labels the various bones.

Make a 'bug box'.
An old cooler/slightly open with screened top to allow air circulation.
Carolina Biological Supply has the 'bugs' one uses.
They list 'em under skeletal preparation.
And stinking is the deal!
They send a few bugs one throws in the cooler and they multiply quickly on the flesh.
Boiling will be part of the process too but the bugs do a great service.
I like the ant hill approach. If one allows the ants into the box...cool.
Around here the yellow jackets in August would do a number on flesh.
Interesting activity!!
Grant

The bugs rbchar mentions are dermestid beetles.  The nice thing about the beetles is that they do a great job.  The down side is that you have fairly expensive bugs you'll need to keep fed between projects.   They'd be great if you wanted to do many skull preps each year.

 

I'm thinking ants and bees might do the trick.  Linglady reminded me that we have a very old cat kennel that could go in the side yard.  (it's nice to have your woman on board with stuff like this)

Cool.  You guys did the research for me.  I saved the head of my last ling just for this reason.  Thanks.

Stick it in a shrimp pot for bait.  I'm amazed at the skeletal quality of the bones that come back. I hear bear hunters do it with their bear skulls.  I understand its the sand fleas and not so much the shrimp that cleans them out so well.



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I wonder if one could use a room temp water bath with meat tenderizer (papain)?  It's a protein so don't use in hot water.

Meat tenderizer might help, but a better enzematic option would be trypsin or pancreatin.   However, I think both are probably too dangerous to be sold to the general public.