A real fish tale: Mosler’s “My Montauk” hits shelves

Cushman & Wakefield’s Bruce Mosler has a reputation for reeling in the big fish when it comes to real estate clients. But he’s also reeled in his share of actual fish off Long Island.

Now he’s turned his experience and time on the high seas into a photography book, “My Montauk.”

Cushman’s chairman of global brokerage said his father taught him to fish as a boy, but he had no training as a shutterbug. Mosler picked up his camera about eight years ago.

“I used my AmEx points to acquire a Canon camera,” he said. “Then I used my AmEx points to buy a telephoto lens. Some of my initial pictures were not publishable.”

But he kept at it.

It took the dealmaker about a year to put together the 80-page book, which Mosler published independently. It includes nearly 50 photographs that he snapped from his 40-foot fishing yacht, aptly dubbed “The Done Deal.”

Mosler has a home in East Hampton, and for a decade he’s made the trek nearly every weekend out to Montauk where he docks the yacht.

“I was out there looking at the same venue over and over again, particularly that iconic lighthouse. I wanted to capture some of that … and to look at it at any given moment, even when not out on the boat,” he explained.

The book, which includes anecdotes about fishing 80 miles offshore, was feted late last month at the Fifth Avenue apartment of cosmetics CEO and GOP fundraiser Georgette Mosbacher. Guests included TRD publisher Amir Korangy, who wrote the foreword; developer Joe Moinian; Republican consultant Ed Rollins; and Stephen Siegel, chairman of global brokerage at CBRE.

“He’s one of my closest friends and I never realized he was that serious a photographer,” Siegel said.

Proceeds from the book, which can be purchased at mymontaukbook.org, will go to two charities: The Fisher House Foundation, which provides free housing to military families while a family member is receiving medical care, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Both were started by Fisher Brothers founder Arnold Fisher, who Mosler came to know through his work as co-chairman of the Intrepid.

Not surprisingly, Mosler draws some real-estate-related analogies in the book, noting that catching fish in the deep seas is much more challenging than doing so closer to shore.

“It is a bit like, in my business, closing a big deal,” he writes.