The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s TrophyCatch program has awarded prizes for the catch and release of more than 10,000 largemouth bass.
Thus far, 8,006 Lunker Club, 1,966 Trophy Club and 78 Hall of Fame fish comprise this landmark occasion.
“If Florida is to remain the big bass capitol of the world, Florida anglers need to be part of our research team. The FWC receives valuable data from TrophyCatch anglers and this information will continue playing a crucial role in management decisions,” said FWC Commissioner Gary Lester. “Their participation is vital in keeping bass fishing in Florida great!”
The TrophyCatch program rewards anglers who provide documentation of their catch and release of largemouth bass weighing 8 pounds or heavier in Florida. In order to be eligible for prizes, anglers are required to submit photos or videos of their catch to TrophyCatch, showing the entire fish and its weight on a scale, before releasing it back into the water. FWC biologists use TrophyCatch data for bass research to make informed decisions about the management of Florida bass fisheries and to promote the catch and release of trophy bass.
“We want to thank Bass Pro Shops and all of our partners and anglers for their continued commitment to the conservation of Florida’s trophy bass fishery,” said Jon Fury, FWC’s Director of the Division of Freshwater Fisheries Management. “TrophyCatch would not be possible without our anglers’ participation in this program. It is truly a unique collaboration between anglers, partners and the FWC to ensure that future generations will experience the same excitement that these anglers did when they reeled in their trophy bass.”
The FWC encourages anglers to join TrophyCatch to become citizen scientists and assist in the management and the conservation of Florida’s freshwater fisheries. The associated TrophyCare program promotes best handling practices for trophy bass to ensure that each TrophyCatch bass is released alive.
This book is a selection of some of Grey’s best work, and the stories and excerpts reveal a man who understood that angling is more than an activity–it is a way of seeing, a way of being more fully a part of the natural world. No writer exceeds Zane Grey’s ability to integrate the fishing experience with a world he saw so vividly.
Though he made his name and his fortune as an author of Western novels, Zane Grey’s best writing has to do with fishing. There he was free from the conventions of the Western genre and the expectations of the market, and he was able to blend his talent for narrative with his keen eye for detail and humor, much of it self-deprecating, into books and articles that are both informative and exciting.
His first published fishing article appeared in 1902, and he continued to write books and articles on angling until his death in 1939. From the trout streams and bass rivers of the East to the steelhead rivers of the Northwest; from the offshore angling of Nova Scotia and California to the unexplored waters of New Zealand and the South Sea islands, Grey was constantly in motion, sometimes fishing three hundred days a year, always writing to support his passion. At one time or another he held more than a dozen saltwater records, yet he always returned from the big game to the freshwater streams he had learned to love as a boy. Buy Now
