08/30/2026
It is with great sadness we share the news of the passing of club member Aage Bjerring on August 27th.
Born April 2, 1938, The grandson of a Danish immigrant, Aage was exposed to the art world at a very young age, having a father who was an artist in his own right.
Aage attended the Pratt Institute in the 1960's before opening an art studio in Greenwich Village. While working and living in Greenwich Village, he was lucky enough to have been able to hang with the likes of Lou Reed, The Stones, Bob Dylan, and John Lee Ho**er among others. He was also fortunate enough to have the honor of being in the company of Andy Warhol (Aage was able to be cast in one of his films call "Fight", Richard Chamberlain, Thomas Berger and Larry Rivers.
Aage had always been an avid fisherman and started creating his own lures in the 1960's. This was the start of his artistic talent coming through. In the 1970's he purchased a large lot of fish spearing decoys intending to resell them. He took a closer look and started to see the artistic work that went into creating them. This got him started on the road to creating his own decoys. Traveling to the Midwest, he learned more about the decoys by meeting some of the artists who created them. Among them are Art, Scott and Annie Kimball. Art gave him his first break in the fish decoy carver world by putting his work in The Fish Decoy - Volume 3. Aage then met legendary fish carver Nick Tortella and they developed a very close friendship.
While Aage's artwork encompassed paintings, music and other forms of art, he was always drawn back to fish decoys. He collected old spearing decoys and fishing lures of all types and saw the beauty in their simplicity. He started creating his own style of decoys that were uniquely Aage. They include fish with their guts spilling out, swiss cheese lures with holes along the bodies and his famous "Lucky Strike" decoys.
We at SWLCC were very honored to count him among our Members since the club’s beginning. He brought a lot to our group and was a wealth of knowledge when it comes to lures and decoys. He will be missed by many.
