by Joe Cermele

Here's the scoop per the website of the Ottawa Sun. On November 9, Jason Phillips (left) decided to run out on the St. Lawrence River for a bit of walleye fishing. Phillips was trolling a deep-diving crankbait when guess what? A 54-inch, 70-pound muskie took a swipe. If I were in his shoes, I'd have that same "I need to check my drawers" look on my face.

Back in 2009, a 65-pound muskie was released in the St. Lawrence that stands as the current catch-and-release world-record  for the species. Phillips let his fish swim away, too, so now he may be the new holder of that title.

According to the article, the fish pulled Phillips' boat a quarter mile, and took thirty minutes to land. What makes this catch even more astonishing is that it was the first muskie Phillips ever caught, and he's been a life-long angler.

Despite the fact that friends informed Phillips Bass Pro Shops would have paid $10,000 for the muskie for a skin mount, he feels good about the release. From the story:

By Joe Cermele

The gentleman in the photo below is Skeeter Scoville, a fishing guide who I just met two nights ago in Pulaski, New York. Skeeter has been chasing salmon and steelhead on the Salmon River for almost 40 years, and though he ties an unholy amount of flies every season, he hand paints an even more unholy amount of trout beads. Last season he painted tiny intricate dot patterns on more than 10,000. Skeeter believes consistently catching steelhead means dialing in the colors they want with pin-point accuracy, and the flat hues beads come in from the factory just don't cut it in his mind.

by Joe Cermele

For all of you counting down to Mischief Night (19 more nights, by the way), here's a story that will help if you're bored with throwing toilet paper around and egging your neighbors' houses. Leave it to college kids to finally capitalize on the similarities between catfish bait and good ol' fashioned cow turds.

From the website of WKBTX:
Texas Tech officials "strongly condemned" vandalism that targeted a Texas A&M bus before the Aggies played the Red Raiders, but said fish bait, not manure, was used in the incident...

Before Saturday night's game, A&M athletic director Bill Byrne said that manure went "from one end to the other" in one bus and was spread on the outside of three others.

by John Merwin

Back in early June, I wrote a glowing tech review here of Berkley’s new NanoFil spinning line. Since then, that product has won an “Innovation of the Year” award at EFFTEX, the European tackle-trade show, and a “Best in Show” award at ICAST, the U.S. fishing trade show. That combination generally marks NanoFil as the hottest new fishing product of any type for the coming year.

I’ve finally gotten extensive time on the water with this new line, which included the fat walleye shown in the photo, so here’s an updated report.

First, at ICAST I grilled Joe Meyers from Pure Fishing/Berkley intensely about just how NanoFil is produced. Meyers is a very talented process engineer, which means he figures out how to make things. Yes, he acknowledged, NanoFil is made from Dyneema filaments (gel-spun polyethylene) like other superlines but is fused into a single filament rather than being braided.