Published: June 1, 1990

The Lure Of The Decoy

That's good news, sort of, to James Cottle, the Wash- ington, D.C., area's entry in the fish decoy-carving field. An English and German teacher at Largo (Md.) High School, 46-year-old Cottle has cut back to halftime teaching so he can spend more hours in his basement making decoys from sugar pine. Still, he has a six-week backlog of orders for his six-inch-long, hand-cut, hand-painted walleyes, trout, bass, bluegills, and suckers, which go for $30 to $90 apiece.

Cottle learned about fish decoys and how to use them growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., spearing whitefish, great northern pike, and the odd muskellunge through the ice. He lured the big fish in with his own colorful, hookless, hand-carved wooden decoys, and spent some of the happiest hours of his life at it.

On the best day he ever had, Cottle saw 20 pike, mostly smaller "hammer handles'' of 18 inches or so, and speared the three biggest. Some came on full bore, attacked the decoy on the fly, and kept going, he says. To spear them, he had to haul them back under the hole by the string with the decoy...