When I was a kid living in Southern Illinois, I had a line in the water if I could. Being young and boatless, shore fishing was our only option. Preparation then sitting and waiting was the game. It’s a tranquil business tight lining for catfish.  Skip ahead many years and many miles,  I found myself living in Chicago in the same situation. After a time away from fishing I found myself wanting to shake the dust off my gear and head out to the giant lake that I lived next to.  One thing I knew was that I was unfamiliar with northern fish and fishing techniques. Like anyone I consulted the oracle, scouring fishing blogs to acquaint myself  with the aquatic inhabitants and affairs of the north. During my inquiry I came across an arcane style of fishing that was murky as a burbot eye.  It was employed by the die hard salts that frequented the lake front on a daily basis. I kept coming across references to powerliners and powerlining. One guy ventured to ask if it was worth going out to the harbor without one. “If it gives me an advantage” I thought, ” why not give it a shot.”

Little did I know that this discovery would become an obsession. Powerlining had all the aspects I was looking for in a fishing style. It has an engaging architecture and an execution that incubates pastoral pauses punctuated with ecstatic moments.  It’s not unlike baseball accept without the grass and dirt.  On a Great Lake casting a rod and reel can feel like you brought a knife to a gun fight.  Powerlining allows you to fish out away from the bank for fish you would have little or no access with conventional gear. It’s a throw line fishing technique that evolved over time as technology progressed. The “casting” is accomplished using a modified co2 fire extinguisher. A wad of wet paper then a 10 oz weight, a cylinder,  slightly less than 1 inch in diameter is loaded into a five foot one inch barrel and shot hundreds of feet out into the lake. A 50′-100” rubber band is attached to the weight and the rubber band to a rod and reel. To cast, you lay out your rubber band on the pier, open the bail on your reel and place the weight in the barrel attached to the fire extinguisher.  The barrel is placed at a near 45 degree angle and fired out into the lake. Make sure you know what you are doing and have witnessed this before attempting. Make sure there are no boats in eyesight and always keep the safety key in your co2 tank when not casting. You will be surprised the first time to see how far it goes. When the weight sinks to the bottom you reel in the line and the weight stays stationary while the rubber band stretches. When you have reeled in the line to the end of the rubber band you attach your  ”powerline leader”. This is your main line that has your hooks attached and is then fed out as the rubber band pulls it back into water. You tie your leader to a bell that rests on your base. Listen for the ding. Set the hook and pull your line in by hand. You will want to walk down the shore placing your line very carefully. Retrieve your fish. When finished renew your bait, make adjustments and feed your powerline back out into the lake. Having a net when fishing on a city harbor wall will make your life much easier.  There you have it. You don’t buy one of these contraptions you construct them, so for every powerliner there is usually a unique approach to this assembly. Remember that fishing with multiple hooks is unlawful accept for specific bodies of water.  Lake Michigan in Chicago is open for business. Consult your local dnr for details. Although the coho have come and gone till early next year the summer perch are just coming in. Get your perch line together. Its a good way to start powerlining and next spring be ready for the big boys. For more information about all things powerlining check out my blog at powerlining.com. Keep your lines tight.

I just got back from a week in southern Kaua’i. Like all vacations, the time was too short, and now I want to move there.

A week living amongst people who stab away their days in the slow, tropical pulse of the south pacific rim makes me wonder how and why I managed to find myself in Chicago, enduring unending indignities for little more than middle-class shelter and a consistently renewed inspiration to carve my nervous system down to a whimpering mass of battery-operated impulses.

But, I learned a lot about myself on this trip. Yup, that’s right. I just invoked that final resignation of a beaten man, that foul consolation of earning a learn “about myself”. What a gift.

But it’s true, I did learn some things. But nicer than the actually learning of these terrible truths was the fact that I had the time to learn them. That was the real treat as, back here in the shit-show, I’ve been existing in a vacuum of commitments, responsibilities and non-starts for so long I hardly recognize myself anymore. So, even though I acquired that dread insight into my failed gorilla self, I’m at least grateful I had the luxury to actually find that filthy wisdom. Too many aren’t so lucky.

For instance, many of paradise’s natives. Before the U.S. finally wrangled the Hawaiian Islands into it’s quiver of territories in 1959, we had spent almost 70 years courting our would be native bride. By courting, of course, I mean indulging in the same shameless charades of European imperialism we’ve come to be so skilled at over the years. You know the map: introduce wealthy white business creeps then promptly employ waspian double speak while systematically dismantling the culture, swatting away would be pests and make way for your pock-marked and alabaster ass to cradle across all those brown faces and building yourself a home.

Take for example the coyly named “Committee for Safety”. These pony-white assholes, formerly known as the more verbose “Citizens Committee for Public Safety”, were a collection of 13 crackers, all republicans, whose goal was the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s kingdom and the annexation of Hawaii by the United States. Filled with a super-sized sense of entitlement, these shitnoses are the same kind of pin-lipped morons who would fart up onto an island as gorgeous as Kaua’i and resolve themselves to build a double-wide church to help them feel closer to God. Yes, whatever god that is you’re praying to – you know, the one that rubs a little warmer on your leg once you shut out life’s bounty – you best keep praying to that there god, Barb, cuz he libel to fuck you up good n’ hard ifn’ ya don’t.

But, hey man, I’ve got flies on me, too. I took benefit from this smarmy white acquisition, as well. I bathed in the blood of so many fellow humans, doing my backstroke through it all and with no regrets.

I’m not so naive as to think that my right and my pleasure to bitch about inequities isn’t paid for in buckets and buckets of innocent blood every day. Keeping Moloch at bay requires a lot of this red dirt gold. But, it’s these kind of tantric truths that keep a middle aged fat man in repose and one of the good reasons I still need to go on vacation.

And vacation I did. Aside from a little surfing, and less snorkeling, and the disciplined art of keeping my head fully submerged in a mai thai from dusk til dawn, I did discover two little gems of Hawaiian grace: Poke and Musubi.

Poke is raw ahi tuna, cut into cubes and served with a little cabage. Amazing in it’s pure form, but I became addicted to the Koloa Fish Market’s variation on that theme, the wasabi Poke. This is cubes of raw ahi tuna, cabage, mixed with a lightly brushed wasabi cream sauce and just a little bit of fish roe to give the whole thing some snap and texture. Truly, this is the fruit of the oceans.

Musubi is the perfect articulation of the cultural pastiche that is the Hawaiian Islands. It’s one part maki roll and one part Spam, tipping it’s hat not only to the strong Japanese influence of the islands, but also the military pragmatism that brought us little white devils to come and steal that land away. Musubi can be served with just the nori, rice and spam, or it can be dressed in any number ways including scrambled egg and coconut oil.

The bride and I made a daily ritual of waking up with the roosters, pouring a cup of coffee, picking up a Musubi roll and heading to the waterfront to watch the surfers play. When death finally comes for me, it will be those waters that my viking soul will follow to the sun.

Here’s a recipe for Musubi from the Spam website:

2 slices SPAM® Classic
3 ounces cooked white rice, seasoned with furikake* and toasted sesame seeds, if desired
1 tablespoon House of Tsang® Hibatchi Grill Sweet Ginger Sesame Sauce, or SAM CHOY’S® cooking sauce
1 sheet nori **

In large skillet, cook SPAM® Classic until lightly browned and crisp.
Place 1/2 of rice into musubi press or small can. Place SPAM® Classic on rice; drizzle with grill sauce or cooking sauce. Top with remaining rice; press down. Remove SPAM® and rice from musubi press.
On work surface, lay nori shiny-side-down; top with SPAM® mixture. Wrap up. Cut each musubi in half. Slice each half diagonally into 2 pieces. Serve immediately.

With a good Musubi, I can bow my belly and my head in reverence to a world so fucked up and complex that blood can taste like pineapple and defeat like the warmest mother’s sun. So, here’s to it.

Here then is something that scratches several itches, Bill Dance:

The warming weather has brought with it a renewed faith. I now believe that spring will actually arrive. Assuming my hunch is correct I think it’s high time to start dreaming about early mornings on the water or at the very least the banks. There really is no better way to spend a spring, summer, or for that matter, any day than fishing. Unfortunately being from a bit further north I know very little about fishing in Illinois so I thought I’d dig around a bit and see what information I could find about Spring fishing in The Land of Lincoln. I was pleasantly surprised with the results.
It turns out that the Illinois Department of Natural Resources stocks some 60,000 Rainbow Trout among 43 locations in the state, many of which are in Cook County forest preserves. You can check out the details on the season and licensing as well as find a list of the stocked locations here. The spring season begins at 5:00 am on April the 2nd. Now all I have to do is figure out how to catch Rainbow Trout, how hard can that be.

Arrived last night from Seattle after an AA fare sale kept us stuck in the northwest a few days longer than planned. I’ve uploaded some photos from the trip to the facebook account, but who knows, I might even post something more extensive about it here.

The trip was amazing, we hit 6 parks – Woodland, Ballard Bowl, Burien, Renton, Milton, & Marginal Way – in 5 days and even managed to unsuccessfully fish Puget Sound as well. For some reason the kings weren’t biting for anybody, I guess that means I’ll have to go back when they are.

Our trip home found us in Phoenix for the night staying, literally, at the scene of probably the most heinous accident that happened in that town that night. We tried and failed to hit the Desert West Skate Park before our flight in the morning, but fucked up and went to 67th Street instead of 67th Avenue. Huge bummer as that place looks sick.

All in all the trip was an amazing success. Skating for sometimes up to 8 hours a day for 5 days in a row has really bumped both mine and Trevor’s skills up to the next level. We got schooled on some carving techniques and found a couple great parks for practicing technical stuff, the best probably being the Burien skate park.

Going into the trip I was viewing it as a kind of shamanic vision quest, a dance with old Mescalito, where I knew I would be pushed to some scary places, but eventually come out the other side with some new, hard won knowledge gained. Sitting on the other side of our trip it’s safe to say my presumptions were right. I can’t wait to Dawn Patrol tomorrow.

In just about a week I’ll be heading up to Minnesota for a little rest, relaxation and some fishing. I’ll be staying on Lake Lida, a lovely body of water and certainly fun for recreation. The fishing however, while improving in recent years, hasn’t always been the best. Given the fact that I’m a man known to have trouble catching fish in places where the fishing is considered strong, I thought it a good idea to look for some help.
While digging around for some Crappie fishing tips I ran across an interesting article on the thermocline . The thermocline it appears, is a mid layer of water, close enough to the surface to still provide fish with enough oxygen to breathe but deep enough to avoid the rising water temperatures that come with the summer. I remember reading last year, while hunting fish on our Lake Vermilion Trip, about Walleye’s that would hang out at a medium depth and could be missed by those of us fishing traditionally closer to the bottom. Perhaps the thermocline would have been the answer, we will never know. Here’s hoping the thermocline or something else, maybe the grace of god or just dumb luck helps me catch some fish.

Check out these dogfish that keep wiggling after they’ve been skinned and gutted!

Don’t lose hope dear internetting ones, we still have every intention of launching the full Outsider’s Almanac website in the near future, it just won’t be quite as soon as we had hoped. We’re pretty insanely busy these days, between writing projects, client needs, body/mind/spirit rehabbing and the pursuit of winter in it’s many splendered and distracting forms, but you should expect to see the site live by around April 1st, 2010.

We’ve got our sites on making Outsider’s Almanac the most exhaustive and user friendly site for all Outsider activities by combining tutorials with expert articles, videos, web based and mobile communication apps, up-to-the-minute live and critical information on sites and conditions, gear reviews, site reviews, events, and so much more.

Like you, we love the Outside, it’s beautiful out here, and boy is it easy to get distracted. We wouldn’t want it any other way.

Film maker, OA Woody Creek correspondent and all around American Hero Wayne Ewing sent me an article today about a new movement taking foot in the shadows of New York City. Self-proclaimed urban cavemen sustain themselves solely on red meat and some vegetables and fruits. In addition, they eat in a manner that would mimic the hunting and gathering of that time, gorging on red meat and then fasting for one, two or three days. Their thought is that primitive man – though he was typically lucky to live to 30 – was in much better shape than the pudgy, modern, air conditioned nightmares that haunt the earth presently.

“Mr. De Vany’s blog promotes what he calls Evolutionary Fitness. Like his disciples in New York, he believes that ancient humans could perform physical feats that would awe the gym rats of today.

His followers believe that he too is capable of fearsome feats. When Mr. Durant told a gathering of New York cavemen that he had seen Mr. De Vany at a seminar in Las Vegas, Matthew Sanocki, 34, asked if Mr. De Vany looked as muscular in the flesh as in pictures on his blog.

“He looks great,” Mr. Durant said. “You feel like he could, at a moment’s notice, charge at you and trample you.”

Already, the New York cavemen are getting attention from the patriarchs of the paleo movement. One such figure, Erwan Le Corre, a Frenchman whom the magazine Men’s Health said “may rank as one of the most all-around physically fit men on the planet,” stopped by Mr. Durant’s while visiting the city in December. The men sealed their friendship with what both described as a bare-chested — and in Mr. Le Corre’s case, barefoot — run across the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges on a frigid night.”

It’s not a rare occurance any more to find a stark reminder in just about every populated pocket of this tumbling rock that pretty much everyone drawing air these days is out of their friggin’ minds, though I am encouraged by the particular brand of crazy these cavemen are bringing to the table. It’s almost like, quietly, in a distinctly macho manner, old mother gaia is blushingly making amends for all the lame vegans skulking about our fair neighborhoods.

Ah, what balance emerges when the collective consciousness gets goose pimples from vertigo.

Read the whole article here.

The thing about fly fishing is that aside from the end goal of landing a fish, it holds few similarities in either technique or equipment to the rod and reel fishing I’m used to. Here’s an illustrative video:

It seems to me that the most important place to start is understanding the equipment necessary for the task at hand, so far Fly anglers Online has been the best resource I’ve run into, they do a real nice job of taking you through the whole process from choosing equipment to tying flies and landing fish.

Fly fishing certainly seems to be the sort of thing you want some helpful one on one advice and how to’s on. Luckily that information is available right here in Chicago. I think my next step will be to walk into The Chicago fly Fishing Outfitters, admit my total ignorance and see where that leads me. Place seems pretty cool and they offer classes on tying your own fly’s as well as sweet gear.