Larry Christy Bio

Fish Decoys Net ™

Larry Christy

Collector, Woodworker, Photographer

Larry is located in downstate Illinois (Southern Illinois) in an area called Little Egypt. Surrounded by many lakes like Rend Lake, Crab Orchard, Carlyle, Kinkaid, Cedar lakes and large hilly wooded areas and just North of the Cache River Basin in Shawnee National Forest and between the mighty Mississippi and the grand olde Ohio rivers.

Larry started hunting and fishing at a very early age of 5 when his grandfather would take him for meat on the table fishing (bluegill) and quite a few older friends of his grandfather would take him duck, rabbit and squirrel hunting. Now after being retired from the U.S.A. F. Larry returned to his home and started a computer service company but never losing sight of the early days returned to the nature but this time armed with a camera and the capability to do websites.

Larry is an avid collector of all types of fish decoy. His favorite decoys are critter decoys for their artistic and innovative styling and natural carving. Larry starting collecting fish decoys in 2004 after his wife told him about fish decoys after she watch the Antique Road Show . Larry started searching the internet in search of decoy information and after a year he has purchased over 600 decoys and all the main books and some associated items. Larry expanded his collecting over to fish lures, but not with the same enthusiasm.

Larry finally found the true roots of folk art in fish decoys to the point that he (I) started this website to help further my learning and understanding of the fish decoys and carvers behind the decoys. As with any folk art - it is all about the people behind the object of admiration. Larry is a wood turner and is trying his hand a making fish lures and decoys. Even though Larry has never Spear Fished from above the ice - he has speared from beneath the water and ice in his earlier days as a amateur scuba diver.

Because it is all about the folks behind the object - Larry, in late 2005, started building this website to catalog fish decoy carvers and providing what information that he can find about the carver. Larry will try to visit Perham Mn and some of the other Fish Decoy centers in the summer of 2006 in a fact gathering trip with hopes of bringing additional wealth of information back to this website. Larry does not do this for

profit but for the love of a folk art the at the heart of folk art - Larry believes that decoys are the original art when it was not an art but a survival tool that historians have reported to be over 20000 years old. Then last reason to do this website is: "Just because I want to"

A couple items that Larry had made: