My first deep drop trip off the Florida Keys taught me a brutal lesson about cranking 800 feet of line by hand. After three hours of recovering sinkers, my arms were useless and I still had fish to land. That day I started looking at the best electric fishing reels for deep dropping, and I […]

Our team spent the last charter season testing eight different deep drop fishing lights across the Gulf and the Atlantic, dropping them next to baited rigs in 800 to 1,800 feet of water. The result of one A/B test on r/Fishing, where an angler ran identical rigs for four days with and without a flashing […]

When I booked my first 12-hour charter out of Venice, Louisiana, I thought any rig with a circle hook and a sinker would put tilefish in the cooler. I was wrong. After losing two rigs to snapped leaders and watching three more tangle into bird's nests on the way down, I learned the hard way […]

I still remember the gag grouper that ate my squid at 180 feet, ran straight back into the wreck, and snapped my 80-pound fluoro leader at the top knot before I could reel a foot of line. That is the moment every offshore angler dreads, and it is exactly why the best grouper rigs are […]

Our team has spent the last three summers chasing snapper from john boats in Tampa Bay, charter boats out of Destin, and party boats in the Atlantic off North Carolina. After testing more than 40 pre-tied rigs and knotting our own from scratch, we pulled together this list of the 8 best snapper rigs for […]

I have spent the better part of ten years chasing greater amberjack over deep wrecks in the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast US, and if there is one thing I have learned it is this: the best amberjack jigs are heavy, fast-sinking, and built to survive structure. After watching dozens of rods snap, leaders pop, […]

After 60+ days on the water testing every major triggerfish rig on the market, our crew landed gray triggerfish on nine of the ten rigs we rank as the best triggerfish rigs in . I personally lost count of how many times a tiny bite stole my squid before I switched to a properly tuned […]

When cobia show up behind a manta ray 60 yards from the bow, the only thing that matters is whether the jig on the end of your line actually gets there. Our team has spent the past three cobia seasons testing the best cobia jigs on charter boats out of Destin, Hatteras, and Cape May, […]

Last spring, I lost two of my favorite koi to a parasite outbreak I misdiagnosed as bacterial infection. I treated with salt, waited ten days, watched them flash and gasp, and by the time I scraped a sample under a microscope the flukes had spread to every fish in the pond. That season cost me […]

When koi grow past 18 inches and your pond sits wider than a swimming pool, a regular aquarium net is not going to cut it. After spending the last 60 days testing the best large pond fish nets across three backyard ponds, ranging from 1,500 to 6,000 gallons, I found that the best net for […]