The background looks about right to me as far as the foliage goes. No trees in bud yet, and the only thing green appears to be Hemlocks and yews.

But stripers do not do well in livewells, and my guess is that it would have to have been transported as a schoolie. Probably sub-20 inches. Which would mean it's been in there a good long while.

Lots of big fish are seen surfacing in C'wood. A lone fish of that size taking a herring off the top? Would most likely be written off as a carp.

I don't see anything about that image that looks shopped. His hands are right -- left one with a death grip on the jaw, right one with the fingers into the V of the gill plates, and it looks like his thumb has just lost its grip on the lower lip.

As far as buckcall's concern that a striper or two would in some way damage the bass population n C'wood, it's both narrow minded and baseless. Yeah, it's big enough to eat a bass. But its lot in life is to eat herring. That's what they do, whenever possible. They tend to feed in open water, so it might take a trout or two as well. But any bass it ate in its lifetime would be negligible.