Fish Decoy Transcript
- Hi, I'm Mark Greening. Welcome to "Fish Decoys: Folk Art Beneath the Ice". We're about to embark on a journey that goes back hundreds of years. You'll see firsthand the mystique of fish carving, spearing, and how that fish decoy has been elevated from a tool of sustenance to the folk art that it is today. Let our journey begin. I spearfished most of my life, and it's only in the past few years that I've become interested in the art of creating fish decoys. After making my first one, I was hooked. And a lot of people wonder, well where did this all start? And it certainly wasn't started by the white man. And a lot of research has been done as to where this began. And it's a very, very old form of obtaining food for people to live. During the long North American winners, many Native American tribes depended on using decoys to spearfish for their very survival. This was a skill that went back thousands of years, most likely dating back to Asia, long before the Ice Age migration to North America. To spearfish in the dead of winter first a decoy needed to be carved, usually from bone or wood. This is what would be used to lure fish within striking distance of a spear. After adding weight to the fish so it would sink, the hunter would attach it to a line and drop the decoy through a hole cut into the lake. They're the ones that basically taught the white man how to spear, and we need to be grateful for that. And they did it back then. They would lay literally on the ice and they would take a animal hide or something that like we're doing here, would shut out the light. The idea behind shutting out the light is so you can see down there. And they would lay on that ice cold as it was and work that spearing decoy and work it and work it until something came in that they could harvest for their family to eat with. Even though spear fishing itself isn't as popular as it once was, fish decoys are still alive and well, propelled highly in part by collectors and others who just love the art. People today now scour garage sales and flea markets, searching for rare gems. And let's not forget about the internet, with homepages devoted to fish decoy collecting and websites like eBay making it possible to buy and sell people's crafts from anywhere in the world, fish decoy collecting has become that much easier and popular. The internet can't replace the real deal though. So when springtime arrives in Minnesota, where do fish decoy enthusiasts go? They head over to the John Jensen Sporting and Collectible Show in Perham, Minnesota. Okay. Anxious to meet others who love fish decoys as much as me, there was no question whether I would head over to this annual gathering. As you can see, we finally arrived at the Perham Community Center in Perham, Minnesota. I'm at the John Jensen Millennium Show. We have many different types of decoy carvers, decoy spears, anything you want to know, this is the place to be at. I'm gonna get started looking at some stuff. Is that area carver Dewey Johnston? Getting into here these are John Jensen decoys, extremely collectible.
- These are Jay McEvers' decoys, but he calls them the totem fish, totem decoys.
- [Mark] Because of the paint?
- [Seller] Because of the paint.
- Here's one here, Bethel. You can tell the Bethel, there's always a B in the bottom. This would've been painted by his wife who has left us a number of years ago.
- [Seller] That's Leech Lake, it's on the backside, you'll see Leech Lake, and then it's dated from '47.
- [Mark] And it was the American Indian-
- [Seller] Correct.
- [Mark] That was using this?
- [Mark] You know, the history, if these things could talk, can you imagine the stories they could tell?
- [Seller] I'd like to see the fish that it brought in.
- [Mark] Yeah, it's amazing.
- The boxes were brand new, still sitting there. And then in there was two brand new head and spearing decoys in the box, one plastic spook, and one four point in the correct boxes, brand new, never fished.
- [Mark] Yeah, yeah?
- And I bought 'em all and I sold the two for $4,600.
- [Mark] So two of them for 4,600 bucks.
- And these were happened to be in there.
- Yep. We need to go over and see Otis. He is just a really, I mean imaginative carver. He used his recycled pieces and makes all these wonderful decoys. And here's an old centennial license plate that he put on. I understand you do a lot of recycling with some pieces that you use on your fish.
- [Otis] That's copper tubing.
- [Mark] And you got some metal right there too.
- [Otis] This is all dog food cans.
- [Mark] Dog food cans?
- [Otis] I buy a specific kind of dog food because I like the cans.
- You like the cans. While in Perham that day, I was lucky enough to run into the namesake of the show, John Jensen. Even luckier, he invited me out to his shop in Frazee, Minnesota to take a look at some of the decoys he's been working on. I couldn't pass up on a chance like that. Here's a guy who's a real legend. He's been making decoys most his life. His old decoys are highly priced and collectors and fishermen who want a new one of his have to get on a three year waiting list. Now, the market for your decoys, where are you selling, marketing most of your decoys right now?
- Well, the first market was Eastern States. There's a lot of traveling decoy dealers that would travel to Minnesota. And they found about me and they'd buy my decoys. And of course they went out east and they sold them to antique shops and stuff but now I can't get them out of the state of Minnesota.
- Yeah. Now talking with John got me thinking about other famous carvers in Minnesota. I was right in the middle of a hotbed of fish decoy talent. I had to meet some of these guys, see what I could learn. For starters, I'd figure I'd go visit Dewey Johnston in New York Mills, Minnesota. He has a reputation for making great decoys. I'm sure there's more than a few things I could learn from him. Dewey, how you doing?
- Hey Mark. Good to see you.
- I see by the door, fish tremble at the sign of your name, huh?
- Yeah, that'd be me.
- Wow, we got a whole table of decoys over here. What is this, they're spectacular.
- Well, this would be this year's production.
- So in other words, every decoy here will be available on the market is what you're saying.
- [Dewey] Right.
- [Mark] Oh, this is wonderful.
- [Dewey] We'll start selling in September.
- Now this seems to, from what I've seen, this seems to be the classic design that you make. I understand the spears, they really think this is the one that works.
- We make two perchs. The other one here is a little more of an economy perch. And this is our classic perch. This one has an extra deep rattle in it and she'll rattle pretty good.
- Oh, I can hear that, yeah.
- And then it has an orange tint on the fins, which really shows up in the water.
- Beautiful decoy.
- Fisherman have done quite well with that one.
- Now, on a decoy like this, why don't you explain to us how do we go about making something like this?
- Okay, I'd be glad to. So you first, you cut it out and you stay at least two inches away from any knot. Then we go over to the drill press first and you'll see here this is what's called the lead slot. So then we're going over to the bandsaw and we're gonna cut the slot for the tail and then we're going to cut off all the excess that we can. So anyway, I do mine on a very coarse, large sander-
- [Mark] Sanding bell.
- [Dewey] Yeah, 60 grit.
- [Mark] 60, very coarse.
- [Dewey] And I can carve 'em out on that in 60 to 90 seconds, I can rough 'em out.
- So you've got this down to a process. I'm guessing You're really efficient at it. What do we have here?
- Well, this would be last week's work right here.
- One week's work?
- 102.
- Look at the decoys.
- I missed three over there, see, in one place. But otherwise I would've had my normal 105 or 106.
- Okay, and then all these eventually are gonna be packaged and sold to major distributors.
- [Dewey] Yep.
- We need to get to your work table now and explain how to put the fins and everything else. So let's head over there.
- [Dewey] Okay.
- This is where you do a lot of work, I'm guessing, right, Dewey?
- Yep, okay.
- Now we're gonna talk about fins.
- First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna stick the hook ups in.
- [Mark] All right.
- Well, my dad had a little truck line and he got a lot of excess lumber free. So he had a whole workshop set up something similar like we got in another room here now. And he let me have free roam down there. So I had just started experimenting and I'd make a couple of 'em take 'em out to fish house. Never, never took a lesson from anybody. And finally I got 'em to work. And then my brother and I both, we started spearing. We were probably only 13 years old. It took us a week to get a northern.
- [Mark] But after that first fish-
- [Dewey] We couldn't get a northern, but we got two or three whitefish early part of the week. And finally on a Friday or so, we got a northern and we opened up the fish house door, and we let out a great big yell and pretty soon all the other doors start coming over and they thought our fish house was on fire or something.
- [Mark] And you're just excited 'cause you got a fish.
- We were so happy to get that first fish. We wipe them and see if we can get them all yellow. So there we are and we're ready to pour them in.
- [Mark] And that would be it.
- Another carver on my must visit list was a guy by the name of Jay McEvers. This man makes incredible decoys, eye popping decoys you wouldn't want near the mouth of a hungry northern, let alone allow it to get wet. We're at Jay McEvers' decoy shop and I'm really excited to go see Jay and talk about his decoys. Let's go see what he's got to offer us.
- Hey Mark.
- Jay, how you doing?
- [Jay] Good.
- I see you're working on one of your ones here, this sunfish.
- Yeah, that's a little special order piece for a fellow up in Detroit Lakes.
- So let's get started on and how did you get into this? Evidently you worked for a company out west. Is that where it all began for you?
- Yeah, I've been actually carving full-time now for about 11 years. I worked for Big Sky Carvers out of Bozeman, Montana, mainly duck decoys. They're the largest duck decoy manufacturer in the world. Finally, I did so much of it that I blew my shoulders and wrists out.
- [Mark] Okay, so now you're making your own fish now, aren't you?
- [Jay] Yeah, just a little slower pace than what I was used to out there, you know.
- Why don't you explain a little bit about the wood you use and the finish and certainly this is really your trademark right here. And that's just a beautiful touch to that silt.
- Yeah, the jeweled fins, I don't know, I'd seen it done on gun bolts and they make the reflective tape that you can actually put on fishing lures with that look. So I experimented a little bit with it and I kind of liked it and few other people liked it, so I just stuck with it.
- [Mark] Now we're stepping up a class and explain, now you actually traced a pattern from a real fish for this one, is that correct?
- Yeah, it's a tullibee and it came out of Clifford Lake. It's just about 20 miles from here. And it's actually one of my favorite fish.
- [Mark] It's one that really catches your eyes as you walk in. And every one of these scales you've done one at a time?
- [Jay] Right.
- [Mark] You've just put like indentation here?
- I've got a burning tool, and I burn 'em in. This fish, when I started it, I wanted it to turn out like this with a nice airbrush finish on it. Well, sometimes it doesn't work. So I just took some acetone, totally wiped the fish down, started all over again, and this is what happened. Some of the colors had to stay, the greens, I couldn't get out. So we just call this folk art.
- [Mark] Wow.
- [Jay] Sometimes it does work.
- [Mark] That's a pretty upscale folk art if it's a fish like this.
- This actually fits what I call the totem series.
- That's the word I was looking for, this totem series. And would you call this kind of also, they often talked about is fish on fish.
- [Jay] This may be the one I've got the elephant on.
- [Mark] I'm not sure, I'll have to take a look at it once, is that an elephant on it?
- [Jay] Yeah, right here, you have to look right there.
- [Mark] Oh yeah, well that's what's unique. You start rotating this decoy, if you can see the spear right there and antelope head and just amazing, once you start looking, what's on this.
- This trout here is all northerns. A fellow from Michigan ordered that. This is a box that the fish actually fits down in. Well you know, just about every carver says, oh yeah, my fish, they all swim, wow. So this winter I have to take a couple of these out and dunk 'em.
- [Mark] It's hard to stick one of your decoys in the lake though. After talking with Jay, I had to see Otis Lael again, the folk artist I had talked with back at the John Jensen Sports Show. He was up in Pine River, Minnesota, and if his shop was anything like the man himself, I was in for a real treat.
- Hi Mark.
- Otis, how you doing?
- Come in.
- It's good to see ya. Haven't seen you since April. See you show me some of these decoys you got in here.
- All right, we got a bunch.
- I know what you do and I'm looking forward to this.
- My oldest son brought a decoy home one day. I didn't even know what a decoy was.
- All right.
- Except ducks, of course, everybody knew them. And he said, can you make one of these dad? And I said, yeah, what is it? And he told me that it was used for decoy and fish spearing.
- Goes into the whole spearing, yep.
- And so I made up four or five. He was in high school then. He's now a retired army master sergeant.
- [Mark] All right.
- So it's been a while.
- [Mark] Been a while.
- And I gradually just evolved into doing this because it keeps me busy and it keeps me out of my wife's hair.
- So she appreciates that, doesn't she.
- She likes it, and I'll tell you right here, the most important thing about decoy carving is to have a wife that understands that decoys are more important than taking out the garbage and washing the car. These are tuna fish cans and mushroom cans.
- [Mark] Are you a pepper eater, is that what I see here?
- No, I'm a recycler.
- [Mark] Recycler, so you pick the stuff up and make 'em out of this?
- I pay about 50 bucks a year recycling tax.
- [Mark] All right.
- So I go to the recycling bin and if I don't have it, I get what I need.
- [Mark] Do I dare ask where you're getting all the beer caps from?
- Well, I could say that I drank this, but I really, I pick 'em out of the-
- [Mark] Recycling?
- Recycling at the golf course, I work at the golf course's garden.
- [Mark] Okay, is that what I think it is, a clothes pin?
- [Otis] That is-
- I know it's a dragon fly. So the body of this dragon fly is the clothes pin, right?
- And he has part of a tongue depressor.
- [Mark] All in the middle of that, all right, I thought maybe you'd carved that down, I understand. We got legs here, they look like nails in there, little nails put in there.
- They're nails or wires, probably copper wire. I very seldom make two things exactly the same. In fact, I'm not sure I have the skill to make two things the same.
- [Mark] But you could remember it though, right?
- But it's a lot of fun. Okay, this is awful, Minnesota license plate. And on the other side of it, it's says 10,000 lakes. I made this for a fellow in California.
- [Mark] And I know you're sending them all over the country, it's just gorgeous. And you can see all kinds of these laying around here.
- [Otis] That's a bead chain they call it. And this particular size used to be used in bathtubs.
- Oh, the old style plug, I remember those. Let's go back and show me where all your parts are, all the things you've been saving to do all these wonderful decoys. So let's take a walk back there, Otis, all right?
- [Otis] Okay.
- Now we're into the recycling here, is what I call it, Otis. This must be what you were talking about for the big fish or your license plate. My goodness, this is from '72, '73.
- These are licensed plates, Minnesota license plates. I've never done any other state. This is all stuff that I use in decoys.
- Man, like wood beads. Here you've got animal eyes. Oh, that's like your brad tacks there also, isn't it?
- Oh, I got a little bit of everything.
- Now, you're not raiding your wife's jewelry box with some of this stuff, are you?
- No, I'm a garage sale nut. Whenever I see something that I think will go good on a decoy.
- You grab it.
- I'll grab it.
- That's what it is.
- 'Cause if you wait and go back, it'll be gone. These are fins for big fish.
- Like the big northern we showed there.
- The big northerns and so forth.
- So that's what you're cutting these with.
- I'd like to give you a brief demonstration of how to save a lot of labor. There you got more or less a fishtail. Well, this fish probably has a dual personality, I guess.
- So that's why it's like that.
- I'm really not sure what I was doing except that I thought it was different and like me sort of crazy. I'm throwing away my money.
- [Mark] You're throwing away your money. Got a couple of them pennies embedded in there.
- [Otis] Of course, a penny ain't worth much anymore.
- [Mark] Well.
- And this is half of a spool.
- [Mark] That's gotta be a foot and a half long. That's a world record sunfish.
- I guess, I hope so. This here is a Pine River tiger fish after our local ball team.
- That's right, the school colors?
- Right.
- The school colors, oh, that's wonderful. Well, Otis, it's been a pleasure talking with you and I wanted to let you get back to work, all right?
- I've enjoyed it.
- Are you gonna show me the way out here then? 'Cause we got a long way to go to get out. After visiting Otis, there was a little time to spare, so I thought it would be a good idea to drop in on my friend Bob Johnson. He teaches classes in fish carving in Brainerd, Minnesota and is no slouch when it comes to creating a great decoy. Bob was with a couple of his students when I dropped by, giving me the chance to talk with not just one carver, but three. The decoys these kids were making were incredible. I was so impressed. One of these kids was even already selling his creations at a local sporting goods store.
- Actually, I live by a store, and the guy came over one night to visit my dad and he'd seen some of them. He offered pay me for some, to sell 'em to work. So I make a lot of 'em to work. He sells him up there.
- Yeah, you're an entrepreneur on the rise is what you are. I sure hope he kept his first decoy for himself. Now this is a decoy that you didn't carve. And what's the story behind this Bob?
- I had an eighth grade student last year. I can't remember if it was a boy or a girl who even did it. Got to the end of the year and they had left this decoy sitting in my room. And I thought, well, you know, I didn't wanna let it go to waste. So I figured I'd, you know, pick it up and throw a paint job on there and see how it swam. This is probably one of the best working decoys that I have.
- Leaving there, it felt good to know that the craft was continuing to be passed on to a new generation of artists. After visiting with all these amazing artists, there was still one last person I had to visit. The one guy whose family name is more synonymous with fish decoy carving than anyone else, Lawrence Bethel. Now I just had to hunt him down. Luckily for me his pickup made the hunt pretty easy.
- Hey, how are you, good to see you Mark.
- It's good to see you.
- I thought you'd get lost up in the sticks.
- No, I saw the tailgate.
- Oh, good deal, that's why I put in on there. I'll put a light on there at night.
- All right.
- Okay.
- Now I need to go look at some of them decoys you got in that shed of yours. Let's go take a look at them.
- Come on, let's go, let's go. I might even put you to work.
- [Mark] Lawrence, look what we got here.
- I wanna welcome you into my shop, Mark.
- Oh, I'm delighted to be here.
- And I'll show you some of this junk that I've got collected.
- Well, I don't know about that. This looks a lot like a lot of history here. Explain what you got.
- Well now, these all the way through here are my dad's. This one here was probably made in the early forties. And I would say this one here, probably earlier than that. Now you can see by this one that it's been thrown around. It's been used, you know, there's a lot of use. I would like to imagine how many fish were hooked by this one. Now these are some joining ones that he made. And this I think is a new style that he tried because it don't bend as far as the old one. You wanna hold that one up?
- [Mark] Sure.
- [Lawrence] And see how this one here goes all the way, bends all the way.
- [Mark] And this one stops first?
- [Lawrence] And that one kind of locks. And I think it would work better because this one, when it goes in the water, this is gonna go like this and it's not good. It's just not good at all. Of those that I've used, I don't like them. But this one here, I think would be a good working fish decoy.
- It doesn't go very far does it?
- [Lawrence] No. He only made working decoys. He didn't make none to show like nowadays, you know, there's too many for the collectors.
- That's really in great shape.
- Yeah, and this one here is Mark, the dollar 35?
- [Mark] Yes it is.
- He didn't get that for it, I know that. I bet he'd be lucky if he got 50 cents or a dollar. 'Cause you're talking about right after the Depression. But then a bucker 50 cents in it was good money for something like this see? And then we're going to his brother Sorrell, done these three. And he never put enough time in them like my dad did. But he sold millions of them.
- He sold a lot of them.
- He sold a lot of them, you know. Oh yeah, because I can remember going to the tackle shop and there'd be just row after row of these, but usually you'd have to buy two or three because a couple of them wouldn't sink. He was a little cheap on the lead sometimes. And I can remember when I was a kid going to visit my dad's dad and he would be sitting there, whittling and I'd asking him what he was doing, and he'd say, making fish decoys. And you know, at that time he was making 'em for himself and the kids to use to get fish. Hell, they had to have something to eat.
- [Mark] They had to eat something.
- [Lawrence] Yeah, yeah.
- Now some of these others now are yours.
- Yeah, this is probably the third or fourth fish decoy that I ever made right here. This belongs to Todd Norquist.
- [Mark] I take it you're not gonna get it back either.
- Well, no, there was no way yesterday unless I steal it. But you can see the difference in my style then to now. See, I just changed it for some reason, I don't know. And when I was making these Mark, I made 'em to use myself and I wasn't selling them.
- Right, let's talk about your wife. She painted, when she was alive, she painted a lot of decoys.
- She painted, I'd say she painted about 30 or 40,000 fish decoys.
- That many decoys.
- Yeah, now I've made right around 50,000 fish decoys since I started, and we used to make, when we made these, we would make from three to 5,000 a meter. When I think when I got contract with CSI and the LMM stores and about four or five sports stores, I just didn't, I just, I said, I just don't have time, I can't do this. I said, you're gonna have to help me. And she was from California and had never seen a fish decoy before we moved up here, and she didn't know what she was doing, and so I showed her how to paint and to blend this like this. And she painted these for me. And she would get sick and tired of painting fish decoys. Up in the air her arms would go, and she said, we're either going to dinner or I'm gonna quit.
- [Mark] And the eyebrow was a trademark of hers?
- [Lawrence] Yep, and the eyebrow. And she said, well, I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna put eyebrows on mine and nostrils in it. And I said, you do whatever you want. And when we first started making these Mark, I got a buck for 'em.
- [Mark] A dollar.
- A dollar. I got a dollar a piece for 'em, and now I'm getting seven, you know. Everybody tells me I should charge more for my fish decoys. But this is the way I look at it, Mark, how many guys are gonna go buy one fish decoy for a hundred dollars when they can come and buy a Lawrence Bethel five or six decoys for less than a hundred?
- [Mark] Well, I've learned quite a bit on this trip and I hope you have too. Now I've got to head back to my shop and start making some decoys myself. Maybe get a head start before that first snow. Take care, and happy fishing.
