Looking for Taney sculpin Pictures

[Mississippi Man]

I have searched google trying to narrow down sculpins color in Taney and the white river. It looks like the banded and ozark sculpin are native to the area. I live 8 hours away and went to Taney the first time last year, it is a great place. I am not familiar with the creature. I assume it changes shades according to water color and it's bottom surroundings so it could be shades of green or brown. Wondering if anyone could give me some guidance or had any pictures of sculpin that were local. I painted these by a picture from the internet.  Thanks

[rps]

I used to fish sculpins to use for bait for big browns. Their color very much matches the color variations of the bottom where you find them. The longer baits above are well within the range I have seen. The brighter green on the smaller baits seems a bit off, but then I have never seen a shad the same color as a Table Rock Shad or Clown jerk bait. A second color shade I might suggest would be somewhat darker than the long baits with brown added to the light green.

Side note - another good match the hatch for a jerk bait is a lighter rainbow finish with really subtle spots to match the color of the "silver bullets" at stocking time.

Just my opinion.

Good luck!

[Ham]

Close enough. Lots of variation. mottled browns and greens. Sometimes amber and somes chocolate 

[Ham]

[Ham]

[Johnsfolly]

As @Ham mentioned lots of variation in coloration. Your lures look really spot on to me. Here are a variety of sculpin photos to give you some additional ideas.

All of the ones above are Ozark sculpin.

The top one below is a banded and the other is likely an Ozark but has more of the banded coloration.

[JestersHK]

@duckydoty has a great formula going.  They catch allot of fish.  The rainbow patterns work really well too.  Bone white or pearlescent white work really well when the shad are thick also.

Nice looking baits.  Those will catch fish for sure down there.

[rps]

Whoa! Johnsfolly's post shows a small one with green head. I had never seen that before. I stand corrected.

[duckydoty]

I paint with 4 different shades of sculpin green, white, orange, sepia, black, and interference blue in a 22 step process by low pressure stippling.  I’ve had some success in fishing them.

 

[Mississippi Man]

Thanks Ham and Johnsfolly for taking time to post those pics for me. There is a wide variety in coloration. This will really help.