By Joe Cermele

Last week I discussed YUM's new Shakalicious Worm, noting intrigue with the design, but skepticism regarding durability. As promised, I fished the Shakalicious over the weekend for smallmouths. Well, let me tell you, I'm always envious of Dave Petzal at the Gun Nut blog. When he tests a rifle, he need not worry that the target will not show up on the range that day. Nor is there much concern that the chamber will refuse to open and accept a bullet he wants to test. Testing lures is a whole other story.

By Joe Cermele

By Chad Love

Reptiles and amphibians have long been used as a bellwether for water quality, sort of a slimy and/or scaly-skinned canary in the coal mine. Salamanders, frogs, turtles, alligators...wait a second, alligators?

From this story in The Sun News:
Could pesticides in the state's waters increase a woman's chances of contracting endometriosis or a girl's risk for early onset puberty? Do they affect the size of a man's sex organ? A group of local researchers are studying alligators to find out. Gators and other marine life offer a portal into human reproductive development and disease, said Dr. Louis Guillette Jr., a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Medical University of South Carolina Guillette, who joined MUSC last month after studying gators in Florida for more than two decades, moved his operation to the Hollings Marine Laboratory on James Island, where his team will conduct experiments to study the links between environmental factors and reproductive development and disease. Guillette said gators and humans are "very similar at the cellular level." "The difference is they're in the water all the time," he said.