By Kirk Deeter

I've been fortunate enough to have fished with many professional athletes in recent years. You'd be surprised by how many actually gravitate to fly fishing as a release from the rigors of playing sports under bright lights for a living.

I'll be honest though—some are way better than others when they put on waders, and I think that has to do with the dynamics of their professions. Golfers, for example, are usually really good fly anglers. After all, one could argue that fly fishing and golf are kindred pastimes, both born in Scotland centuries ago. It's all about planning the next move, and adapting to the current situation. The way the wheels spin in golfers' and anglers' minds are very similar, so it's not surprising to know that Tiger Woods, Mark O'Meara, Nick Price, and Davis Love III (among many others) are all avid anglers. [ Read Full Post ]

By Ben Romans

Michael Eisele just became the envy of every fish-and-chip franchise in Great Britain. According to a story from the New York Daily News, the 44 year-old resident of Kiel, Germany, recently caught a huge cod off the coast of Norway that weighed an incredible 103 pounds—about five pounds heavier than the current International Game Fish Association’s (IGFA) all tackle cod record (a 98 pound fish caught near New Hampshire in 1969). It's also the first known cod caught with rod-and-reel to break the 100-pound mark.

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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.

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By Joe Cermele

Here's a fun story from Down Under that supports my theory that land-based Australian anglers are often a bit more rough-and-tumble than us. Check out this cliff fishing video and you'll see what I mean. Though Isaac Callaway didn't catch his shark while dangling off the edge of a cliff, he did score a near-five-foot bull on a hand line. The fish weighed about 90 pounds, which is how much 12-year-old Callaway weighs. According to the story in The Australian, this is actually Callaway's third hand line bull, but the biggest by far to date.

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By Tim Romano

My trip to the Key West last week was a nutty one: two rods broken, three falls by one guy off the bow, a destroyed rental car, night fishing for tarpon, and a few new species in the bag. [ Read Full Post ]

By Chad Love

In the wake of last month's news of a huge great white caught off the Florida coast by a Canadian tourist, comes yet another news story about a 1,000-pound great white caught and released a mile off a Fort Lauderdale beach.

From this story on sun-sentinel.com:  
Great white sharks are a rarity in Florida, so when a shark ate a butterflied bonito on a kite line Tuesday morning off Fort Lauderdale, the crew on Hooked Up figured it had to be a bull shark. It wasn't until almost two hours later that Capt. Greg McCauley realized that his four anglers had been fighting a great white estimated at 131/2 feet and 800-1,000 pounds. [ Read Full Post ]