By Joe Cermele

There are pure-strain, landlocked striped bass all over the country, but there are only so many places in freshwater where these fish reach the same "cow" proportions as their coastal cousins. Being a Jersey guy, I know a thing or two about big bass (or pretend to, anyway), so it's taken me a while to pull the trigger on a sweetwater striper hunt. That's partially because it's hard to break the mentality that the biggest bass are salty, and partially because picking the right body of freshwater and finding the right guy to get you on the big fish is tricky. But I finally found him. In three days on the Clinch River in Eastern Tennessee, veteran guide Bud White made me and fellow Northeast striper nut Mike Sudal realize that you can't appreciate the fight of a 30-pounder until you need to lock down the spool with your thumbs to stop the fish from running into one of many downed trees that are always in close proximity. Enjoy the show. 

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.