A striped bass caught by Ian Kiraly '07 in the Hudson River on May 9 was so big that by the time it was landed in the 16-foot boat, it had straightened one of the prongs of a treble hook on Kiraly's minnowlike lure. The 55-pound, 6-ounce fish set New York's state record for "stripers," measuring 49 and 3/8 inches long and 32 inches around.

"Once we got it in the boat, the lure fell right out of its mouth," said Kiraly, who majored in natural resources and is now a technician in the southwestern Adirondacks at the Little Moose Field Station, an aquatic research station run by the Department of Natural Resources in the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell.

Kiraly, who is from an area near Walton, N.Y., travels three to five times a year to the Hudson River to fish for spawning salmon and stripers. He was joined this trip by his father and a family friend and hooked the big fish near Kingston, N.Y. Kiraly said it took 30 to 45 minutes to get the striper in the boat.

While trolling with the lure about 20 feet deep, Kiraly said the fish bit and took a lot of line. He had no idea how big it was but began to wonder when he had trouble gaining back his line, he said.

"It charged the boat a couple of times and that was the only time I could gain some line at first," Kiraly said. "Then I'd lose the line again. We never even saw it until the last time I brought it to the surface." Once in the net, the three men heaved it on board together. They still had no idea it was the record fish.

Kiraly said they almost let it go, but since it was almost dead from the fight, they kept it. After weighing it, realizing it was a record fish and then showing it to a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation biologist to verify it was a striped bass, Kiraly froze the fish and is having a wall mount made. Coincidentally, the last record striped bass (which was only 6 ounces lighter) was also caught on May 9 -- four years ago.

Stripers, native to the Atlantic Ocean, spawn in the Hudson and Delaware Rivers each spring and can migrate up to Maine.