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.

If we had this guy on our Lake Vermilion Fishing vacation we probably would have eaten a bit better.

Apparently, this was a real commercial back in those decadent mid-90′s. Ahh, that wonderful pre-9/11 world, full of senseless acts of senselessness and rich with double entendre.

Does anybody have a Wunder Boner? The only place I could find it for sale is sold out. I’d love to review it.