Tiger trout pinewood derby car

[MathFish]

So, I have been keeping my tradition alive of making a trout-pinewood derby car in the time I have off between Christmas and New Year's. This year I opted to make a tiger trout car. I have only ever caught one tiger trout, but it was not a wild fish. When I caught the tiger trout, it was very early in my fly fishing career. I caught it in Loyalhanna Creek and it was maybe the 30th trout that I had caught at that point. The marbled pattern had me baffled as to what it was and luckily for me there was another fly fisherman who told me what I had caught.

One of these days I would like to catch a wild tiger. I looked through the images of wild tigers on this site and opted to model my car after the one posted by Steveo27 in this thread: Wild Tiger Trout
(I see that the photo posted is no longer visible, but it is the tiger trout in Steveo27's avatar pic)
I particularly liked the blueish markings on that fish.

Again, I have no intent to race the car, I just made it for something to do and to keep my tradition going. I finished this one off with a soft hackle fly stuck in its mouth.

Here is a link to my Rainbow derby car from last year. That post has a link to my other two postings regarding the Brown and Brook trout cars I made before: Rainbow trout derby car

I wish all of you a happy new year and hopefully a new fishing season with a perfect amount of rainfall for 2019!

 

[Out4Trout]

That is sooooo cool. Did you airbrush them?

 

[MathFish]

Thanks!

The fish were all painted with cheap craft store brushes and the paint I used was cheap acrylic paint. I have about 15 or so colors that I mixed to get the coloration that looked right and I sometimes watered down the colors when I wanted to get a translucent effect.

The other thing I used was tenacity... I do not regularly paint or do artistic things. I do think that I have an eye for detail and I think that helped me out with all of them, but for sure, I do not have painting down to a science, it’s more trial and error for me. It took me about three and a half hours to paint it. I’d imagine someone who knew what they were doing could paint it much quicker and better.

Investing in some decent brushes is something I may do someday. The cheapy ones I used kept shedding fibers that would have to be scraped off and it got to be pretty annoying...

 

[ryansheehan]

Beautiful! On to the palomino ;-)

 

[MathFish]

My wife wanted me to paint it as a palomino for this year, but I had it in my mind that I was going with the wild tiger since last year. She wanted me to go the palomino route because I finally caught my first one on a fly this August. I had been trying to get one for the past few years on a fly but either never saw any, got refusals or I ended up hooking into one, only to have it spit the fly out shortly thereafter...

I may paint next year’s as a palomino, but I’m not certain yet.

 

[poopdeck]

I love these cars. Great job! Why celebrate a hatchery creation? Go with a carp car next year.

 

[Acristickid]

Look nice. Interesting outlet for your art. Maybe a smallmouth bass too.

 

[skybay]

MathFish,

This is the coolest thing since invention of the fishing rod!
Great imagination and execution!


Happy New Year everyone!

 

[MathFish]

Thanks for all the compliments!

I think I’m still on the trout kick, I can foresee making a cutthroat, a steelhead, one of those California golden trout, etc...

Once I exhaust some of the other trout types then I may move onto carp and bass. I have nothing against warm water fish, they are fun to fish for, I still want to make more trout species derby cars. Plus, I think I need to redo my brookie car, I think I can do a better job with the painting of it, but I’ll carve out a new fish for it.

 

[dryflyguy]

Neat stuff!
And brings back memories of my youth.
When I was a cub scout, we had a pinewood derby every year.
Can still see the long wooden track set up in the church basement where the monthly meetings were had

 

[afishinado]

MathFish wrote:
Thanks for all the compliments!

I think I’m still on the trout kick, I can foresee making a cutthroat, a steelhead, one of those California golden trout, etc...

Once I exhaust some of the other trout types then I may move onto carp and bass. I have nothing against warm water fish, they are fun to fish for, I still want to make more trout species derby cars. Plus, I think I need to redo my brookie car, I think I can do a better job with the painting of it, but I’ll carve out a new fish for it.

Really nice stuff!

If you love trout, like you mentioned, there are other species you can carve and paint. The California Golden Trout is really a stunning looking fish.

 

[jeremymcon]

Those are awesome!

 

[gfled]

BSA Times Square Nationals require a 1/2” flat surface at the front in order to sit on the starting gate, unfortunately your cars do not meet requirements. District and Pack requirements may vary, check with your PWD chairperson.

 

[MathFish]

Noted...

Thanks for the info, but I made these for the fun of it, not for the glory of being a pinewood derby competitor...

 

[LongLineRelease]

Beautiful work

 

[djs12354]

Nicely done!

 

[tracker12]

Are these carved from wood. If so can you explain how you go about doing it. They are awesome by the way.

 

[HopBack]

Time for a smallmouth!

 

[MathFish]

Thanks again for the compliments.

Tracker12, I should be able to put together some information about how I make those cars in the next few days, but for now, I can tell you that it is cut/carved from a block of pine.

For all of the trout cars I made, I used the official BSA pinewood derby car kit that you can get at a BSA office (I imagine you can get them online too) and there are also kits that you can buy at craft stores too. The kit comes with the wood block with a slit cut out for the placement of the nail axles. It comes with four nails and four black plastic wheels too. You can buy other color wheels like blue and red and others, but I prefer the standard black wheels.