Congratulations to Connor Brazell, who's early-season pike photo takes top prize in our weekly Catchbook Photo Contest! Connor gets a PFG Blood and Guts™ Ball Cap from Columbia, and also qualifies to win our monthly prize, a Columbia Airgill Chill™ Long Sleeve fishing shirt and his mug in the pages of our magazine. Click here to learn how you can enter this contest by. Click here for the official rules.

--Chad Love

It's not often that a 10-inch long fish and a 14-year-old boy make history, but that's exactly what happened recently in Wyoming when Colton Bustillos reeled in a .35-pound stonecat from the North Platte River, and became the first person to hold Wyoming's state record for the diminutive fish.

From this story on kulr8.com:

A 14-year-old Torrington boy is now in the Wyoming state fish record book. The state Game and Fish Department says Colton Bustillos caught a stonecat last month from the North Platte River near Torrington. The catch was 10.1 inches long and weighed .35 pounds. Torrington game warden Jon Stephens verified the fish was a stonecat and that it was the first entry in Wyoming for that species, making it the new state record.

--Chad Love

Remember last month, when the EPA was petitioned (once again) to ban lead ammo and fishing tackle? Well, guess what? The EPA has (once again) rejected the petition...
 
From this story on infozine.com:
 
The Environmental Protection Agency today rejected a request for federal regulation of toxic lead in hunting ammunition, again abdicating its responsibility to protect the environment from toxic substances. Earlier this year, 150 organizations in 38 states petitioned the EPA for federal rules requiring use of nontoxic bullets and shot for hunting and shooting sports to protect public health and prevent the lead poisoning of millions of birds, including bald eagles and endangered condors.

If you're an angler, you know that keeping a detailed journal of your time on the water is one of the best ways to up your catch rate. That's because, over time, your journal will show you patterns in when and where fish bite, and what lures and baits work best under different conditions. The more detailed your journal is, the more of these patterns you'll see. But keeping a detailed journal requires time and dedication that most anglers can't afford.

Not anymore. Field & Stream's FREE new Catchbook app, just released on the iPhone, is designed to take all the work out of keeping a fishing journal. The app does this by taking photos of fish you've already shot with your phone and automatically converting them into detailed fishing reports that include the weather and water conditions present when those photos were taken. The app pins each report to a map, then lets you share them exclusively with trusted friends and fishing buddies. The more friends you have, the more reports you see on your map, and the easier it becomes to pattern your spots!

Our editorial team has been working for nearly half a year on the project, and it finally launched last week. Now we're looking for feedback from the people we designed it for. You! If there are bugs, we want to know about them. If there's something you think we can improve, we want to know what that is. And if you love something we've done? We want to know that, too.

We'll incorporate your comments into updates to the app, which we're planning to roll out regularly. You can give us your feedback by commenting on this post, or within a new "Catchbook" category in our online Answers section. And, right now, exclusively for readers of this site (and for a limited time only) if you sign up and request user "Field & Stream" as a friend within the app, we'll add 5,000 points to your F&S Online username.  

Click here to view the app in the iTunes store, or follow the jump for more details on how Catchbook works. Thanks for checking it out! -- The Editors