--Chad Love

Landing one of these babies is pretty much a catch-and-release-only proposition. I hear they're not good eating and extremely difficult to fillet. Not to mention the fact that they thrive in some pretty nasty water...
 
From this story on therepublic.com:
 Robot "fish" developed by European scientists to improve pollution monitoring moved from the lab to the sea in a test at the northern Spanish port of Gijon on Tuesday. The developers hope the new technology, which reduces the time it takes to detect a pollutant from weeks to seconds, will sell to port authorities, water companies, aquariums and anyone with an interest in monitoring water quality...The fish, which are 1.5 meters (5 feet) long and currently cost 20,000 pounds ($31,600) each, are designed to swim like real fish and are fitted with sensors to pick up pollutants leaking from ships or undersea pipelines. They swim independently, co-ordinate with each other, and transmit their readings back to a shore station up to a kilometer away.

--Chad Love

Remember the story about the 18-year-old Colorado teen whose 31-pound striper shattered the state record?

In what is becoming a depressingly common theme this year, the record catch has been nullified because the boy apparently lied about where it was caught.

From this story on timescall.com:

A Longmont teen lied about where he caught a hefty striped bass last month, he admitted Wednesday night, so he can't claim the state record for the 31-pound, 8.4-ounce fish he landed. "It was a different lake, a different place," said 18-year-old Isaac Sprecher. He said it was "stupid and immature" for him to have originally contended that he'd caught the striper on April 20 at northwest Longmont's McIntosh Lake, when he'd actually reeled it in that afternoon from one of the ponds at Pella Crossing, a Boulder County Open Space area at North 75th Street south of Hygiene.

--Chad Love

Kayak fishing and kayak duck hunting are things I've really wanted to get into for a while now. I even have dreams of taking my own do-it-yourself kayak fishing trip to the Florida Keys, Baja California, or some other storied saltwater destination. On the other hand, maybe I'll just stick to freshwater kayaking, because something like this would inevitably happen to me, and then I'd have to spend the rest of my life wearing Depends and going to therapy.
 
From this story on sanluisobispo.com:
 Joey Nocchi, 30, of Paso Robles, had the big-fish tale to tell, after his kayak was upended and bitten by a great white shark. Nocchi and friends James Byon of Paso Robles and Matt Kerschke of Los Osos were fishing for rockfish at 1:30 p.m. Saturday near Leffingwell Landing off Moonstone Beach. “We’d just about limited out on rock cod, and Matt caught two halibut,” Nocchi said. “We were cruising along together and talking.” He was reaching for his knife when “I got hit from underneath and started coming up out of the water. My buddies said I came out of the water 4 to 5 feet — it flipped me over the side. 

--Martin Leung

Sage Manufacturing, the company behind some of world's finest fly rods, was recently dubbed Seattle Business magazine's Manufacturer of the Year, Small Company.

From this press release:
The May issue of Seattle Business features the awards for 2012 and is the culmination of the publication’s Washington Manufacturing Awards. Each year Seattle Business honors companies whose work results in growing or advancing the manufacturing sector in the state. During an awards ceremony on Thursday night, April 26th, six winners were chosen in different categories. Representatives of roughly 270 manufacturing companies located in the state attended the event.