A Multitude Of Fins: Art

Monday, June 28, 2021

Poster - Keep Fish Wet

"Keep Fish Wet promotes the use of science-based best practices to catch, handle, and release fish.

Science shows that even small changes in how an angler catches, handles, and releases a fish can have positive outcomes once that fish swims away. Not only does using best-practices increase survival rates of fish, but it also helps fish return to their normal behavior as quickly as possible after release. Using best-practices for catch-and-release is a quick and effective way to put conservation in to practice.

Adopting science-based best-practices is a personal evolution and work in progress for all of us — especially as the science continues to advance as well.

Our goal is to create a supportive community for learning and sharing best-practices for catch-and-release. We do not support finger pointing or shaming. Keep Fish Wet is not opposed to the lawful harvest of fish. We also acknowledge that even when we ‘catch and keep’, we often return some fish to the water (due to size limits, closed seasons, etc.) and therefore practice catch-and-release. Keep Fish Wet best-practices can be applied to any type of fishing in any type of water anywhere in the world."

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Striped Bass: Illustrations & Wildlife Art

Shared in this post are what I find to be a healthy sampling of the most admirable and accurately-depicted Saxatilis illustrations and works of art that I have chanced upon in my years of having lived immersed within the salty subject of everything Striped Bass. Selected are thirty (keeper) pieces created with mediums of ink, pencil, oil, acrylic, watercolor, or digital pixel. While there are seemingly countless examples of this celebrated fish found throughout various realms of the art world, whether professionally-commissioned or humbly-sketched and shared on the internet, I find it striking that no two artists seem to express this same fish in the same manner. That is, each artist has a different eye or physical capability for what he or she mimics and envisions. Some aspect (whether coloring, curves, overall proportion, anatomical accuracy, body and fin shaping, attitude, or state of motion) of a finished product is always different from extant pieces of work, and moreover distinguishes what I as an observer and fisherman believes to be a convincing representation of the East coast's most popular gamefish. With that, some really do stand-out against the "school." I suppose it's just enough to share a few that should merit any Striper enthusiast's artful appreciation, and in this case especially, exhibit the true-to-life and apropos valediction commonly used of an angler - tight lines.