This is the fish that Jay painted.

That lies on the maple drawing table that Jay built.

That sits in the studio that Jay and his dad and his uncle built.

That rests in a meadow on a farm that Jay and his wife, Christa, spotted and rehabbed.

Jay Falstad, AS ’96, the ultimate do-it-yourselfer, was a newspaper ad salesman who’d never picked up a watercolor brush until he happened upon a duck painter at an outdoor art festival and thought, “Hey, I could do that.”

The very next day, Falstad headed to the A.C. Moore arts and crafts store to buy watercolors and paper.

An angler since age 4 when his dad took him ice fishing on Lake Superior, Falstad painted what he knew best.

A rainbow trout.

Then a brown trout.

Redfish. Yellow perch. Grouper. Marlin.

Before long, other fishers wanted him to paint their catches.

That’s when Falstad hatched a business plan: He’d sell actual size watercolor portraits of fish that people catch. No more dusty fiberglass fish mounts hanging on living room walls.

He visited some angler supply shops and left his paintings behind. Terry Peach of A Marblehead Flyfisher says Falstad’s painting is the first thing customers notice when they walk into his Centreville, Del., shop.

The fly-fishing community is a tight one, and once one angler had his catch painted, word got around. Even fly-fishing legend Lefty Kreh has a Falstad watercolor of a redfish he caught with fellow legend Flip Pallot.

One fish led to another, and in October 2003, Falstad decided to quit his day job and paint full time. Now, his fish hang in homes and offices across the United States and Canada,  and even in New Zealand.

Falstad’s paintings of a bonefish hooked in tropical waters and a giant trevally caught off the coast of Madagascar attract sportsmen at The Urban Angler on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Falstad’s matted and framed paintings sell from $165 for a small yellow perch to $1,200 for a custom-framed and couch-sized blue fin tuna. He estimates 80 percent of his anglers are male, but about half the customers who do the ordering are female.

The watercolors are often matted in muted shades of blue or green, with a legend cut into the matte to explain who caught the fish and when. Sometimes, a fishing trip photograph is shadowboxed into the matte. Sometimes, the fly is included.

Because many fly-fishers adhere to the catch-and-release philosophy, Falstad often works from a photograph.

Moms commission him to paint first fish keepsakes—an actual-size watercolor of their child’s first catch framed with a fishing trip photograph to freeze the moment in time.

All Falstad’s work is custom. He once scaled a 7-foot blue marlin down to 3 feet because the customer just didn’t have enough wall space for actual size. Spouses bring sofa cushions to match the matte color perfectly. And, of course, sometimes anglers commission fish that are just a little larger than their actual catch.

Falstad says the best part of the job is playing deliveryman. “Whoever gets it sees the details of the fish actually on the painting and they see the photograph on there, and you can just see it brings back all the details of their fishing trip,” he says. “A lot of times, they’ll recount the whole, entire story of it to me. That’s the coolest part of it.’’

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service turned to self-trained Falstad when it needed an illustrative painting of the infamous Northern Chinese Snakehead fish that made news in 2002. His painting now covers a wall at the service’s Annapolis office.

Falstad, who had been painting in a garden shed, recently cashed in his IRA to pay for building supplies for a professional art studio. He built the one-room studio just uphill from his bungalow on Unicorn Lake in Millington, Md. From one window, he can see the lake that laps right up to the property line. From the other, he can see the field of sunflowers that blocks the view from the road. Deer pass by as he paints.

Christa McClure Falstad, BE ’91, an accountant who supported the family when the business was budding, now splits her time between framing fish portraits and being a stay-at-home mom to baby daughter, Paige.

Steve Spangler, BE ’80, a fly-fisherman for 35 years, says timing was perfect for Falstad’s business launch because fly-fishing has been growing in popularity since A River Runs Through It was released in 1992. There are two cable channels promoting the outdoor life, and catch-and-release fishing has caught on as more anglers become environmentally conscious.

Spangler commissioned Falstad to paint a trophy bull trout he caught and released on a Montana fishing trip to hang in his second home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

Andrew Derr of Urban Angler says fishing enthusiasts usually are delighted to learn somebody’s painting trophy fish, and they enjoy meeting Falstad because he’s a classic sports enthusiast and a congenial artist.

“He is actually the only person I know who’s doing it. Traditionally, a lot of people have done skin mounts in the past, and now plastic mounts are quite popular, but this is a lot easier to swallow for people who are concerned with how the place is decorated,” Derr says. “We have three 150-pound tarpon on the wall here, which is fine in this setting, but at home, most women prefer a watercolor. I just think it’s a real nice alternative to traditional mounts.”