By Joe Cermele

Though I get all fuzzy inside when a trout sips a dry fly or slurps a nymph on the swing, I will take the crushing blow of a big brownie slamming a streamer over the more dainty stuff any day. And the bigger and uglier the streamer, the more pumped I am to throw it. That's why I'm really digging Thomas Harvey's Trophy Wife...which just so happens to be tied in this video by Brian Weiss with help from his real trophy wife. Granted, there's about $40 worth of material in this bug, but it's dead sexy and there will be some Trophy Wives in my flybox before my next visit to the river. I particularly like this tying video because of the clear, concise portrayal of each material and step. Yeah, that's it. Let's go with that. Have a great weekend.

By Joe Cermele

Yesterday I posted a story about a 12-year-old kid that beat a big bull shark on a hand line. Today I found another epic tale of youth versus monster fish. Nineteen-year-old Sterling Ellis of Houston, TX, is in remission from Hodgkin's lymphoma per this article on THV11.com, though he'll be undergoing a bone marrow transplant in the very near future. Now, if I'm not mistaken, the Make-A-Wish Foundation can set up almost anything you want...lunch with Jim Carrey, drum lessons with Tommy Lee, or perhaps a tour of the Playboy mansion. Sterling asked Make-A-Wish to take him big-game fishing in Hawaii, where he scored a 700-pound class marlin. I couldn't think of a finer choice. Good luck with the surgery, my friend.

By Dave Wolak

Over the years, I've fished with a lot of folks on my boat, and during those countless trips I've witnessed all kinds of common bass fishing brain lapses (and been the executor of said brain lapses, as well). The thread I've noticed that ties many of these common bass fishing foibles together is poor concentration-keeping practices during the mundane, monotonous times when the action isn't hot. It's easy to be on your A game when the bass are biting with regularity, but it's just as easy to lose focus when it's slow, which often causes you to screw up during those explosive moments peppered among the doldrums. These are the 5 mistakes I witness most often in descending order of criticality, and they're all easily fixable.

By Joe Cermele

The monkfish (pictured below) is definitely one of the most hideous looking fish in the ocean. But, if you frequent posh seafood joints, you might know that monkfish meat is very expensive and very delicious thanks to its lobster-like texture. It's not unheard of for a recreational angler to reel up one of these beasts while dropping on a wreck, but for the most part, monkfish live in water so deep that a baited hook rarely gets in front of them. Why then are researchers capturing monkfish with tiny seabirds called Dovekies in their stomachs? Because no matter how much you think you know about fish behavior, you don't know everything, and there are no hard-and-fast rules to feeding behavior.