TROPHY PRINTS® promotes catch & release practices “A Conservation Minded Gift” A must have for those that catch and release! John Waldman Professor of Biology at Queens College Former Senior Scientist with the Hudson River Foundation Author of “100 Weird Ways to Catch Fish.” Author of Heartbeats in the Muck: The History, Sea Life, and Environment of New York Harbor. Editor of Stripers: An Angler's Anthology

Rods were already bent in the October predawn darkness as I took a spot on the boulders beneath Montauk’s famous lighthouse. I cast and immediately a big striped bass slammed my plug and then headed downtide. Following a memorable battle, I landed the fish shown in the accompanying photograph. But moments later I released it to rejoin the great autumn migration of stripers that would winter in the Atlantic Ocean and then run up the Chesapeake Bay or the Hudson or Delaware Rivers the following spring to spawn. At thirty pounds, this fish was almost certainly a female, with the capacity to release upwards of three million eggs—helping to ensure good striper fishing in the future. Bob Spurgeon, the man who shot the photograph is an Welshman who over several days spent surfcasting at Montauk noticed that many of the stripers he caught or saw landed had been captured before, based on their showing marks from hooks or from tags on their bodies. What Bob saw, and the angling he enjoyed, is the payoff of catch-and-release fishing—game fish are a reusable resource; they are, as the new old-saying goes "too valuable to only catch once." Although keeping fish for the table is one of the pleasures of angling, in these times of declining fisheries gluttony can no longer be tolerated—the days of big catches kept to be shown off at the dock are fading. But when catch-and-release fishermen land trophy-sized stripers, bluefish, and other warriors, they often want to preserve some artistic record or memento of the conquest. This is the niche that Dimitry Schidlovsky aims to fill.