It’s been awhile since I stumbled onto some Taxidermy Gone Bad, but I found this gem a few days back. It seems that rainbow trout and steelies, two of the world’s most vibrant creatures, are particularly vulnerable to bad mount jobs…it’s just not that easy to recreate the color schemes these fish sport when alive. Mix that with a few decades up on the wall, plenty of exposure to fluorescent lighting and a 1/4-inch of dust …and PRESTO!…you’ve got a trout that is either coming down with the flu or looks like he was maybe swallowed up and cast solid in the ash flowing down from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

To see more bad taxidermy, click HERE

It’s been awhile since I’ve run into some really lousy taxidermy, but when I do it often comes in spurts. Such was the case in a little Nor Cal pizza joint the other night….when I lucked into these two fine specimen…on the same wall!

I was immediately torn as to which one to include in our always popular Taxidermy Gone Bad section, so I decided I’d let these two toads go at it in our first ever Steel Cage match. Check out the contenders and then vote for the winner below!

In the “here’s why you should get a fiberglass mount” corner, we have a large king salmon that looks like he may have had an unfortunate encounter with a concrete floor at one point…either that or he was mistaken for a piñata.

I swear I'm not a piñata

Up close, you can also see he’s got oily skin like a teenager!

Clearasil cleanser and a cotton ball is like not having oily skin at all!

Then in the “I paid how much for that mount?” corner, we have Ol’ Clefty, the Rainbow:

How did I ever swim with this belly and those fins??

Why you should never, ever kiss a pike!

What you get when you cross a trout with a piranha!

Who’s our winner?

You guys know by now that I’m always on the lookout for “Taxidermy Gone Bad” and, I’m pleased to announce, we’ve got a couple nice new additions to the collection here. I especially like this lingcod head…a wonderful blend of creepy, strange and more than a dash of disturbing.

But wait, there’s more!

Here’s one that our pal Rod Vin Steel sent in…from what I understand, I think Thomas Jefferson caught this striper on the Potomac River!!!!!!!

And then, how about a closer look at our lovely cover model…

Don’t forget to pass along any pix of Taxidermy Gone Bad that you run across!

As you guys know, I’m a huge fan of really bad fish mounts and this one, sent in by regular FishwithJD reader Rod Vin Steel, is a dandy! I’m not sure what the skunk has to do with anything, but it certainly adds to the appeal here…

Apparently, there’s a lot more where this came from:

“Just in case you’ve haven’t been in to Fosters Bighorn in Rio Vista, CA, you can have a lot of eye balls watching you eat lunch,” says Vin Steel. Click here to see more Taxidermy Gone Bad!

My ol pal T-Man, who despite the fact he lives in Florida, still has an excellent eye for sad-looking salmonid mounts, sent in this dandy to be added to our ever-growing collection of Taxidermy Gone Bad.

He says the fish is a rare Christmas King of the Northeast, known not necessarily for the time of year in which they run, but instead for their tendency to bite anything that looks remotely like a Christmas ornament (I hear white is a hot color!).

This actually could be a historical moment here at fishwithjd.com. This fish may just be the first-ever Taxidermy Gone Bad/Smoker of the Year Contest entry!

Here’s the latest entry to one of my very favorite portions of this site, Taxidermy Gone Bad. This beauty (you can almost see the reflections of the headlights in her eyes, can’t ya?) was sent in by reader Luke Veldt who ran across the mount in Romania.

Guess they have oakies who “truck hunt” at night there, too…