Yes.

Lance Butler, an aquatic biologist with the Philadelphia Water Department, sent it to me after I was asking after the health of the Schuylkill.

"We've had this major resurgence," he said. "It's loaded with different species. I can give you 45 different species of fishes we've surveyed from the Flat Rock Dam to the confluence of the Delaware."

So he e-mailed a shot of a formidable striper that Water Department scientists netted in 2006 from the tidal waters just below the Fairmount Dam. It's on Page B8 with the rest of this column. Note the Water Works in the background. That's a Center City fish, weighing 30 or so pounds.

The reason I was asking? A Comcast show called City Limits airs tomorrow on the Versus network, and on it, championship angler Mike Iaconelli fishes the Schuylkill. He's already sportfished New York City's East River, the Potomac in Washington, and the Chicago River.

Here, he's given six hours to catch and release five large- and small-mouth bass within Philadelphia's borders as the camera rolls.

If you are a YouTube fan or watch fishing on cable TV, you might recognize the Philly-born Iaconelli (pronounced IKE-o-nelli), who moved to Runnemede when he was 5 and has cast in the Schuylkill for a quarter-century.

The videos have titles like Never Give Up! and Mike Iaconelli Break Dancing. He is an excitable boy. Think the Jim Cramer of anglers.

One such video begins with Iaconelli screaming, "Big one! Big One! Oh, my God! This is a giant!" as he reels in a scrappy bass, a species he calls "a little ball of muscle." That particular catch won him the 2003 Bassmaster Classic on the Delta. He's a big fish himself.

Off camera, he is much more low-key. I met him along the Water Works Tuesday afternoon as the sun was low over the expressway and a dozen or so young men in hoodies fished for catfish. Iaconelli was touting the virtues of urban fishing - how the remnants of the river's industrial past create challenging nooks and crannies in which fish gather to feed or hide from predators like Iaconelli.

The challenge, he said, is picking among the 20 or so casts he knows - or making up new ones on the spot - to sneak his bait next to the sewer outflows and bridge pilings and barge ties to entice a hungry fish.

He shot his Philadelphia episode back in October after an unseasonable cold snap. A couple of days before, there had been a fishing tournament in the river. As a result, he said, the fish were "pressured." That means they weren't jumping at his bait.

"They're living creatures with brains the size of a pea," he said, "but they're smart."

Hooked

"These are city kids who love to fish," enthused Iaconelli, a wiry, tanned 36-year-old in a woolly ball cap and thrift-store slacks. "It's what I'm talking about. Look at his face. He's using a spinner rod. I went out on this river with a $50,000 speedboat that does 70 miles per hour. Here you've got kids with equipment that doesn't cost $50.

"Look at his tackle box. It's tagged with graffiti! That's urban fishing right there!"

So back to the big bass. A beautiful fish, but could you eat it?

Not too much of it, said Mike Kaufmann of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. The state has issued a health advisory for stripers pulled from the tidal portions of the Schuylkill. The commission recommends that no one eat more than eight ounces of the fish a month. Why? PCBs.

Iaconelli turns out to admire fish too much to eat them - whether pulled from the water or found on a menu.

"I consider fish my competition," he said. "And I wouldn't eat the competition."