By Joe Cermele

Without question, Thanksgiving is a hunter's holiday. While turkeys roast at home, in the early morning hours grunt calls sound off, decoys bob, and dog bells jingle. I've hunted my share of Thanksgivings, but not in a while. Not since I bought a boat have I commenced turkey day anywhere other than a quarter-mile off the beach, looking for diving gulls and gannets.

By Joe Cermele

This morning, Senior Editor Colin Kearns asked me if I had a recommendation for a fish reproduction artist. Colin recently caught a whopper 31-inch rainbow trout and is toying with making it his first wall-hanger (which usually leads to more...it can be addictive). I gave him the name of the repro guy I use. Then I found the video below on the Fishing for History blog. It's about 22-year-old Bryon Wilson, who happens to be an Olympic moguls skier.

By Joe Cermele

This week, I had the chance to chase largemouth on the Potomac River with bass pro Dave Wolak. It was cold and breezy, and though the section of river we hit is known to hold an astonishing amount of bass, they were astonishingly tough to pattern. Despite pounding every likely late-season haunt, only a couple fish opened their mouths. But it didn’t matter to me. If you spend a day fishing with a guy like Dave and don’t come away a smarter fisherman with some new tricks, something’s wrong. Here are a few pointers I gleaned from this Elite Series angler.

If It’s Brown, Flush It Down
Dave pointed out that the Potomac is known for its vast grass flats, and sure enough, we motored our way across great expanses of milfoil and hydrilla gently waving in the current. However, seeing that it’s late in the season, most of the grass was brown and dying. Now, had I been out there alone, I would have looked at that grass and thought, gee, what great structure. Normally I’d be right, but according to Dave, if the grass is brown, boogie out of there. “Bass and baitfish don’t like to hold in dead grass,” he told me. “It still looks good, but because it’s no longer producing oxygen, the fish don’t use it. It’s pretty much a waste of time to fish it.”

By Joe Cermele

I will never forget the first time I visited the marshes of Louisiana. Having never seen a tailing redfish before, watching a shoal of them pushing shrimp was an epic sight. But I won't forget the bugs either. Up until that day, I had never experienced no-see-ums as determined and plentiful. Of course, I was unprepared.

"You got a can off OFF laying around?," I asked my guide.

"Nope," he said. "Won't help you anyway. Try this." He handed me a near-empty bottle of Victoria's Secret Berry Kiss lotion. "I've tried strawberries and champagne and coconut," he said. "None work like berry." So I slathered it on and suddenly the gnats paid me no mind. I was bite-free and smelled like Gisele Bundchen...a win-win in my book.

Fish long enough with enough people and these little tricks get revealed. I'm not talking about ways to tweak a lure or tie a fly, I'm talking about the random uses for the seemingly unfishy.