By Joe Cermele

You're not seeing things. That's a Louisville Slugger with fly rod guides and a reel seat. It belonged to Ted Williams, who, as evidenced by the photo, was not opposed to running across a flat and swinging for the fences when he just couldn't land that Crazy Charlie in front of a cruising gray ghost. I'm joking, of course, though the novelty bat did belong to Williams. It's actually his own signature model bat, reworked and renamed "The Bonefish Slugger." And if you act now, it can be yours!

By Joe Cermele

To the best of my knowledge, Jason Covington's new book, "American BeheMouth," is a work of fiction. However, the science laced throughout the story is supposedly legit. This a chronicle of a couple that spent many years growing a largemouth bass to the 27-pound mark in a 70-acre, man-made, temperature controlled lake in Kentucky. "American BeheMouth" is so new, I haven't gotten the chance to read it yet, but according to Covington's website:

The book is much more than a fishing story; it is a metaphor for many other things: life, family, sacrifice, commitment, and dreams. In addition, it raises ethical questions about modern American sports, American businesses and consumerism, and our quest for the elusive. 

By John Merwin

I spent the past few days at one of my favorite fishing areas, the 10,000 Islands/Everglades region of southwest Florida. For inshore, light-tackle saltwater anglers there is probably no better place--not even the Florida Keys. In fishing here with Capt. Terry Shaughnessy, I also learned a few things that others might find helpful regardless of where you fish. Shaughnessy is roughly my age, meaning he’s been around the block more than a time or two, so I was especially interested to see how he rigged and fished his gear.

There are countless small islets and cays in this wilderness, mostly within Everglades National Park, where on any particular day we were catching redfish, seatrout, snook (as in the photo), jacks, and potentially tarpon if we found them--we didn’t. Most of our fishing was with medium-weight spinning tackle using 3-inch soft-plastic grubs on various sizes of leadhead jigs. Pretty simple, and the grubs worked for everything.

By Joe Cermele

This week in our ongoing vintage tackle contest we have a lure sent in by Tim Keenan. Tim's grandfather gave him this Pflueger Musky Globe when he was cleaning out his garage, and told Tim he and an old friend actually used it to stick a few muskies back in the day. Given the pristine condition of the lure, if that's true, it couldn't have been too many muskies. I don't see any teeth marks.