It’s not too often that a hobby turns into a way to make money.
But that’s what has happened to Jared Sypnieski of Clearwater.
Sypnieski has loved fishing as far back as he can remember. As a child, he would go fishing, and spear fishing (spearing) with his father.
“I remember I bought my first fish decoy at a gas station,” he says.
Fish decoys are made of wood with lead weights inside. They are used to attract other fish by simulating the appearance and movement of a real fish.
He says his father told him he could probably make a fish decoy himself.
“That’s where it all started - making fish decoys,” he says. “I was about 12 years old.”
Using photographs of fish he had caught, or images from magazines, he traced patterns of fish onto a wood block and started by cutting out a rough shape with a bandsaw, first the side profile and then from the top.
He didn’t have nice equipment back then, he says. But using a dremel tool and sanders, he managed to get the shapes he wanted, then experimented with adding the lead to balance the decoy and make it move just like a fish.
“There’s a certain way you place the lead and the fins to make it swim,” he says. “If it has the proper swimming motion, it goes down and forward. When you pull the string, it’ll make a smooth circle under the water.”
In those early years, he would put the lead in spoons he took from the kitchen, then melt it with a blowtorch in the garage. Since lead was hard to come by, as his decoys got better, he would remove the lead from the older decoys and put it in the newer ones. At that point, Sypnieski says it was just trial and error.
His craft improved beginning in 2010 when he joined the National Fish Decoy Association, a group of decoy carvers.
“That’s how I began progressing,” he says. “The people I met were awesome. They showed me the tricks and techniques. That’s where my career as a carver really took off.”
And that’s when his decoys began to resemble works of art.
There are two grades of fish decoys. One is the working decoy, also known as “workers.” They’re used in spearing and aren’t too detailed - but realistic enough to attract other fish.
The other type is the competition grade. Those are the life-like decoys that collectors want.
“The working style, the type you use to go spearing, can take me about three or four hours,” he says.
His “workers” are made of white pine and are patterned after a sucker minnow. He has the swimming motion perfected for that design.
A competition grade decoy is a different story. He uses tupelo or basswood. The process, which includes airbrushing and painting individual scales, can take 10 to 15 hours. The detail is so precise, collectors wouldn’t ever want to use them for spearing.
“It’s still a working decoy, but the price keeps people away,” he says. “The more time invested, the more expensive the decoy.”
Over the past few years, Sypnieski has continued to hone his skills, entering competitions and bringing home prizes for his work.
One wall of his shop, which is located in a back room at Authority Deck and Fence in Clearwater, is covered with ribbons from competitions he has entered. Most of those awards have come from the National Decoy Show in Perham. It’s the biggest decoy show in the nation.
He also sells his decoys on eBay, and on his Facebook page, Thin Ice Spearing Decoys.
He says he’s lost count of how many decoys he’s made over the years. “A few hundred, probably,” he says. “Forty or fifty in a good year.”
Now, he’s busy trying to keep up with orders from people who have seen his work. And he’s in the process of making a decoy for an upcoming show in Alexandria in March. He took second place in one category last year for his two crappies decoy display.
Sypnieski says he can still remember his first sale as a youngster to a bait store in Monticello. He did it for fun back then - any extra cash he could get.
After 15 years, he still enjoys it just as much.
“It’s been just as much a learning process as artistic showmanship,” he says. “Now, if there was no money involved, I’d still be doing this.”
