By Joe Cermele

I have to admit, I'm having a blast looking through all the photos that keep pouring in for our weekly vintage tackle contest. There are rods, reels, books, gaffs, nets...tell you the truth, picking a weekly winner is no easy task. Of all the different kinds of gear I'm seeing, lures outnumber the rest, and although I struggled to pick one for this week, I kept coming back to the Mud Puppy below. The photo was sent by Rebecca Schoon, who wrote:

I found this in an old tackle box in an old boathouse at a place I worked on Lake Vermilion, Minnesota. The Mud Puppy is really neat. The tail piece rotates when being pulled along the water's surface. The wooden body detaches from the hook when a fish strikes so that the fish won't have any leverage to spit the hook. The included paper document says that you just go pick up the floating wood body after you land the fish.

By Anthony Licata

A guest post by Field & Stream Editor Anthony Licata

The Bassmaster Classic on the Louisiana Delta is over, and there were two big winners.

The first was Kevin VanDam, who extended his dominance on the sport by winning his second consecutive Classic, his fourth overall, and shattering the tournament record for a 3-day, 5-fish bag that totaled 69 pounds, 11 ounces.

Vandam’s closest competition, Aaron Martens, finished 10 pounds behind him, ending up in the second slot for the fourth time in a Classic. On any other day Martens’ tournament bag probably would have been enough; at 59 pounds even it also surpassed the old record of 56-2 set by Luke Clausen at Florida’s Lake Toho during 2006 Championship.

By Joe Cermele

So after combing through all the current entries--great ones I might add--in our weekly vintage tackle contest (if you missed the details, click here), I chose the reel below as the week two winner. Not only is it a cool piece of old gear, it also has a great story, which I think adds character. The photo was sent in by Dustin Brown, who wrote:

In 2009, I took a trip to our family's old homestead to hunt deer during Arkansas' muzzleloader season. I set up camp in one of the woodworking shops that was still standing on the property and found this baitcaster inside a rusted out toolbox. My dad remembers my grandfather pulling many catfish out of the area lakes with this old reel.

By Joe Cermele

Back in college, I spent one spring break in Aruba and took a rod along. One morning I got up early to fish a little park connected to the resort. I spent the first hour hanging lures in the coral and catching nothing, but on the way back, I crossed a canal and spotted the biggest barracuda I'd ever seen. So I pitched a Zoom Fluke in front of it and started twitching. Right around twitch three, the 'cuda turned and began tracking the lure. That's when a small group of people came up the trail led by a tour guide. "As we cross the bridge, look to your left and you'll see Charlie, our resident barracuda," she said.