DF52 Spotted Gar. I like gar. Cool lookin’ and they bite big, flossy streamers pretty nicely, too (if they are in the mood). The gar was Jeff’s idea this week, and we’ve both veered away from the mainline lately. Liking some of this “alternate species” stuff, but I get to choose next week, so perhaps [...]

DF52 Pacific lamprey. Perhaps not exactly what you expected? Think “koi” for now, and I’ll fill in the details (and why this image is so rough) later… Update: Okay, I’m back with some more info. I had a piece going last night, got 20+ minutes in and decided I really didn’t like it all—so much [...]

  Drawing Fish 52 Atlantic salmon. I love Atlantics. Perhaps my favorite cold-water gamefish in terms of the “game” aspect. When they are hot, right out of the ocean, they fight precisely like what they are: ocean fish in a river. Love that. If you go to a place where are still a lot of them [...]

  Drawing Fish 52 tigerfish. Been a bizarre week for me, so yeah, this is a Friday DF52 fish fry. Went back to a digital flag/poster for this one. Tigerfish remind me of a striped bass circa, say, 60 million years B.C. They are not pretty, noble, or jewel-like, they don’t rise gently to mayflies or [...]

Drawing Fish 52 brown trout. I have long been a bit smitten with brown trout. The first truly large trout that I ever caught was a brown (from Wyoming’s Green River). Outside of Alaska, perhaps the largest trout that I have ever lost was also a brown (from a surprisingly small spring creek in New Zealand). And the largest [...]

  Drawing Fish 52 silver salmon. We’ve already done a silver (coho) in the 2011 DF52 project, but we decided to re-visit after Jeff’s recent Alaska trip. Silvers are my favorite salmon on a fly rod. I had a day fishing for silvers on Alaska’s famed Kanektok many years ago that still burns bright in my memory. It [...]

This post is way late, I’m off fishing, and I’ll have to fill in the rest later! For now, you have this week’s Rio Grande Cutthroat—a special fish with which I have a very long history. At least a few readers of this blog have been to the location that this image is based on. [...]

Drawing Fish 52 Dolly Varden. Well, Jeff is back from Alaska with stories and photos. Sounds like he had a great trip, indeed. He emailed me as soon as he was back and said that he wanted to do a Dolly Varden. That sounded good to me. I have a pile of Dolly pix here from [...]

Click to make bigger. This week of the Drawing Fish 52 project was deemed “anything goes.” Jeff is off in Alaska catching giant fish left and right (and painting, to keep up appearances). So, I decided to go with a study of a Deschutes Redside. This is a smaller piece in prep for one or [...]

Drawing Fish 52 chum salmon. While I like silvers (coho salmon) the best of the Pacific salmon on a fly rod, I think that chums are one of the most underrated gamefish out there. They often take solidly, if not aggressively, and pull like they have an angry (and strong) point to prove. Indeed, a big [...]

Another all-digital “flag fish” as with the striped bass and the Yellowstone cutthroat. Feeling more comfortable with the process to create this style of illustration in a few minutes, so had more time to add some extra visual texture. I didn’t go so much for conservation symbolism with this one as I did an image [...]

Drawing Fish 52 muskellunge. The “official” fish of my home state, Wisconsin. I decided to honor both the fish and the state by integrating each into the other. Muskellunge, if you have never caught one on a fly, are a fierce quarry worth the time and effort (think freshwater barracuda). Like moose, “muskellunge” works for [...]

Yes, late, and it’s a long story, but here it is. Not what you were expecting, perhaps? This is along the lines of the Yellowstone cutthroat “flag” that I did. I figure that the striped bass also deserves a conservation flag, just like the cutthroat. This is perhaps less flag than pure image, but the [...]

Drawing Fish 52 sockeye salmon. One of my absolute favorite fish to paint. The gnarled shape and brilliant colors of this fish make it a natural for a portrait. Notes: Like the grayling and leopard rainbow before, this sockeye started as a photo, but the process I used was different than the prior two fish. [...]