My Pocket Fishing Kit and a Poor Man’s Tenkara – Have Nymph, Will Travel

I love to fish.

Fishing is a philosophical and often metaphysical activity; it could have come straight from the Tao Te Ching. It is the meeting of life and death; of harmony and chaos. It can be the greatest, most peaceful activity imaginable and the most frustrating, bang-your-head-against-a-cinder-block-wall experience possible, all in the same afternoon.

Most importantly, it is the ability to do nothing, while doing something.

Here is my short list of why fishing is awesome:

1. Fish are yummy
2. It is an important ability for the self-reliant to posses
3. Your mind can wander from pre-Socratic philosophy to Lynyrd Skynyrd without missing a beat
4. You can crack a beer at 6:30 AM and no one will think less for you for it.

I have talked about my regular fishing gear before, but I had always wanted to build a mini pocket fishing kit that I could always have with me in case I should stumble upon a nice pocket of fishy water in my travels. I also have been trying to get into fly fishing, so I wanted my kit to give me the ability to fly fish without too much difficulty. Here is what I came up with:

It ain’t fancy, but it is portable.

Contents:

1. A tiny Altoids tin (2.5 x 1.5 x 0.5″) with a match striker and block of foam (to hold flies) glued to the inside of the lid
2. 50′ of 4# fluorocarbon line on a sewing machine bobbin
3. A 7.5′ furled leader (wrapped around plastic tube)
4. Hooks, sinkers, and swivels (kept inside plastic tube)
5. A 1/32 oz Panther Martin Fly lure (gold/orange, kept inside plastic tube)
6. Fishing flies – an olive woolly bugger, a parachute Adams, an elk hair caddis, 2 gold ribbed hare’s ears, and a prince nymph
7. A small bobber
8. A small vial of fancy Himalayan salt (nothing is too good for my fish)
9. 6 wax dipped strike-anywhere matches and a razor blade (under the premise that one can never have too many fire starters and sharp edges)
10. An inner tube band to hold it all together

With these components I can build a casting stick to bait and lure fish with, clean and cook my catch, and build a makeshift tenkara rod.

What is a tenkara? It is a Japanese method of small stream fly fishing that is centuries old. Unlike modern western fly fishing which uses a rod and reel, it consists of a long rod with a fixed line (about foot longer than the rod); as simple as can be. It is becoming popular in the US with the start up of Tenkara USA (check it out, you will be intrigued), and seems to be the hot topic on all the forums with people either loving it or hating it. Although it may seem too simple to the western mind to be effective, western angling was fixed line for most of its existence (check out the Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle, it is the best of 15th century fishing technology).

I should point out that I am relatively new to fishing. I have only been fishing for about five years since I decided that it might be something fun to do while canoeing. I had to pretty much teach myself the tricks of the trade, and I can now hold my own in most situations. While this means that I am no expert, I do have two advantages in being a relative novice: I am as happy catching a 3″ sucker as a 3 pound northern, and I am always open to new ideas.

I have always been fascinated by Japan since I read Shogun in high school. I studied aikido in college (I am not all that good, but I can take a fall like no one’s business), and my original NES from 1989 is still functioning. While I don’t believe that just because something is Japanese it is superior to its western equivalent (you can keep saké, I’ll have a Guinness), there is something about clean simplicity bedded with deep tradition that is universally appealing.

I like the concept of tenkara; fishing has become too complex for me in a lot of ways. Much like engineers say that you lose 15% of mechanical efficiency every time that you add a set of gears to a machine (or something like that), every complex add-on seems to make the fishing more about the gear than the fish.

I figure I will buy a Tenkara rod before next spring’s trout opener (I am thinking the Yamame; it should have enough backbone to land the little smallmouth I catch in the Cloquet River), but for now I thought it might be fun to improvise for the purposes of the pocket kit.

My basic set up is to cut a sapling around 6′-7′ long (not really tenkara length, but I don’t have the luxury of bamboo or river cane in northern Minnesota and even willow or aspen gets cumbersome quickly if it is too long). I fasten the furled leader (which is pretty similar to a tenkara line I figure) with some of the 4# line as a tippet. It back casts pretty well, and roll casts beautifully, although at 15 feet of total reach is not going to win any casting competitions.

I have been scouting a small stream near my house and had found this little pool where the brook trout all stack up to stay cool in the afternoon. This was thrilling to me as I have never caught a brook trout but have always wanted to. In northern Minnesota, we do not have open streams in the middle of wide meadows; we have thick forest walling in the streams, making an easy approach often difficult. And with only 15′ of reach with my rig, I have to be stealthy like a ninja to stalk the trout. It is relatively easy to stay hidden as the sun is directly upstream at around 2 PM and so the fish cannot see upstream very well (as long as you don’t let your shadow fall near them), and of course approaching from downstream is always good as the fish will be facing the other way. Unfortunately, as I was approaching the hole I slipped on the rocks, spooking all of the bigger trout (bigger means 5″-9″ in this stream). I stuck around anyway and had the little fry trout playing with my hare’s ear nymphs and Adams dry fly. Their mouths were too small to take the hook (which I didn’t really want them to do anyway), but I do have fun playing with the little guys; since I am not actually hooking them it is a game to me and to the fish.

But that is what fishing is about anyway – a moment of Zen. Standing there playing with the fish on a beautiful September day was what it was all about.

Although loosing three flies to the overhanging tree wasn’t very Zen.

A Quick Outdoors Packing Tip and Some Financial Advice for the Outdoorsman

Packing for camping trips is a pain. I am a pretty organized person when it comes to packing with a master list of what gear is needed for what condition, but packing is still a pain.

My mantra is “lighter and smaller, über alles.” As my cousin Rachelle put it: I would probably be packing in a Kleenex box if I could; she is undoubtedly correct. I am not there yet, but I did have an epiphany a few years ago that can save you a lot of space.

Anyone who has bought and used camping gear knows that what you are dealing with are a bunch of awkward cylinders. Sleeping bags, mattresses, rain gear, and everything else that is cloth based is almost always designed to be rolled into a cylinder or to be stuffed into a cylindrical sack and thus has a circular cross section. Packing all of these cylinders is like filling a jar with marbles: there are a lot of gap in between. If all of these cylinders were the same size it wouldn’t be so bad, but they will usually range between long and short, and skinny and fat.

My personal gear includes:

1. My sleeping bag. I use (and highly recommend) the The North Face Allegheny +40 Sleeping Bag. It is a 40 degree bag, but with my ample body type (I prefer “robust,” but fat is more accurate) it works well on its own to 30 degrees. It packs small and is comfortable.
2. My mattress pad. My current pad is a Thermarest ProLite 3 Short. Its primary virtue is that it packs really small. I you are a “princess and the pea” type, you will not like it.
3. My sleeping bag liner. I like the Sea To Summit Silk Travel Sleeping Bag Liner. In the spring and fall it will boost the insulation of my sleeping bag considerably.
4. My bivy sack. I have a Snugpak Bivvi Bag Cover. If the temperature drops even lower, this will also add about 10 degrees to my sleeping bag. It is also good if a real storm is blowing or you are in a leaky tent. It is less roomy than I like , but is handy in a pinch.
5. Everything Else. This includes rain gear, clothes, camp shoes, books, and a Snow Peak Titanium Trek 700 Mug containing a spork, first aid kit, heavy knife, travel Kleenex (handy as toilet paper if you run out), a MSR MIOX Water Purifier, and my fishing tackle bag.

The trick to packing all of this stuff into a small space is to use the sleeping bag like packing peanuts. You want to take the sleeping bag out of its sack and use it to fill the gaps in your gear like you would pack breakable items in a box for shipping. My personal gear sack is an Outdoor Research waterproof stuff sack that measures about 10″ by 18″ when sealed (it has been discontinued, but there are similar models out there). I simply put a few items in the bottom, pack some of sleeping bag around it, add a few more item, pack around them, and so forth. As long as you put the stuff that you might need accessible near the opening, it will work slick. It may seem simple, and people might have been doing this for years before I figured it out, but it allows you to turn many small cylinders into one larger one. This is really handy when canoeing as two of these sacks will fit well into a #3 Duluth Pack with space for my fishing rod and any other miscellaneous items that need to be accessible.

Now for the financial advice. You may have noticed that I referenced REI for a lot of the gear mentioned above. They are not cheap, but they sell good equipment and they are a cooperative. A cooperative for those of you who don’t really know much about them are, in a nutshell, companies owned by their members, and while they are run for profit, are built more around providing service to their members than generating profit for shareholders (this is an oversimplification, but I don’t want everyone to fall asleep). REI doesn’t call itself a coop anymore as they provide services to non-members, but members receive a 10% refund on anything they purchase as a dividend as well as getting special discounts with member-only sales (often up to 20% off a full priced item). Lifetime membership is only $20 and well worth it. For those of you who might be wondering, I am not an employee of REI, I just like them.

Now for the good part. REI offers a Visa credit card for members. You get an additional 5% rebate on REI purchases, and 1% rebate off of anything else you buy with the card, anywhere.

So here is the advice. Your credit rating is one of the most important things you have in our society; it is like honor to a samurai. Without it you cannot get credit for things like a house or a car, and your interest rates are usually linked to what your rating is (the higher your rating, the less risk you are to the lender, and the lower interest rate you can get). So here is my recommendation for outdoors people who are responsible and want to build their credit:

1. Get an REI membership and an REI Visa. If your credit is not yet good enough to get the card, talk to your bank or credit union for advice on what you can do to build your credit.
2. Use the card to make your regular purchases that you might generally make with checks, debit cards, or cash.
3. This is the important part: PAY OFF YOUR BALANCE EVERY MONTH. Credit cards are a slippery slope and one you fall into credit card debt through overspending, you may never get out. If you do not have the discipline to spend only what you can pay back immediately, do not get a credit card. I know too many people who have destroyed their credit, savings, and peaceful existence because they could not control their spending.

If you do this right and pay everything off as you go you will:

1. Owe no interest on the card.
2. Build your credit rating.
3. Get a nice refund from REI that can be used to buy the gear that you want.

This way you can the buy more expensive items guilt free. And if you find that you do not need anything right now, you can request REI to send you a dividend check after July 1st to redeem your refund in cash. It is worth thinking about.

So why would a wanna be hillbilly be advising on credit? Because sometimes you have to play the game to get ahead in this world.

Some Advice for New Canoeists – I Have a Diploma from the School of Hard Knocks

I love to go camping and get away from it all: cell phones, the office, proselytizing religious groups, etc. There are many grades of camping ranging from John Muir types who need only a blanket, tin cup, a little oatmeal, and some tea to those who think roughing it is a weekend at the Holiday Inn Express. I am not picking on anyone; the only wrong way to camp is if you are not enjoying the experience.

Perhaps my favorite way to get away is by canoe. Canoeing is as old as the peoples of North America, and indeed was the only way to get around much of the continent in many places until quite recently. The North West Company, one of the largest companies in the world in the latter 18th and early 19th centuries, had its entire trade network from Montreal to Lake Athabasca (something like 3000 miles by water) driven by canoes. They are fast and efficient on the water and light enough to carry over portages. For the outdoorsperson, a canoe allows you to carry more vital necessities (I am taking about wine, specifically) than would be practical for a backpacker, and gives a fisherman total access to water too far out for the shore fisherman, and water too shallow or reedy for a motorboat. It is a good way to get around.

That said, there are lessons to be learned in the fine art of canoeing in order to make the experience not suck. Canoes have trade offs for all their advantages. In order to make them light, they often lack the robustness of other watercraft. While they are far more stable than most people think, doing stupid things like leaning way over the side and standing in the canoe can cause it to tip. They tend to be low to the water and as such can take on water quite quickly in rough conditions.

I am fortunate to live on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a huge federal wilderness designed expressly for canoes. In my hundreds of miles of paddling and portaging, I have experienced many of the ups and downs that come with the territory. While, like always, I don’t claim to be an expert, I have learned a few lessons (often painful) in my adventures that I wish to impart to anyone who might be looking to try their hand at canoe camping.

#1 – Take care of your feet. On one of my first canoe trips I had the idea that since I was going to have wet feet anyway, why not just wear sandals? That way my feet would dry faster and be more comfortable. I bought a nice looking pair of adjustable sandals with Velcro closures. It turned out to be the worst idea I have ever had, bar none. Portages are often muddy and that mud made the Velcro refuse to stick. On the first day my sandals kept falling off and even were tripping me as I walked; not a good thing with a 90 pound aluminum canoe on my shoulders. I had to use 550 cord to lash them onto my feet, which resulted in bigger problems. All of the mud and grit from the portages and landings got under the straps and, like sandpaper, pretty much shredded the top couple layers of skin off of my feet. When you are miles into the bush, it is not like you can just hop on the bus and go home, you have to suck it up keep going. I did, and I have permanent scars on my feet from the abrasion and where the 550 cord was digging into my Achilles tendons.

So the lesson is wear footwear with good ankle support and socks of some kind. I personally use Waters neoprene booties pared with Chota portage boots. The Chotas have full ankle support and drain quickly while the booties protect me from any grit that might enter the boots and keep my feet warm in cold water (although I am thinking of switching over a to simple pair of wool socks instead of the booties). You don’t have to have specialized footwear, however, hiking boots will do just fine.

#2 - Accept that you will have wet feet. You do not want to know how many canoes have been destroyed because people who were afraid of getting their feet wet got into the canoe while on an rocky shore and tried to scoot into the water. I once saw a guy with a beautiful cedar strip canoe (the canoe equivalent of a Chevy Corvette) do that on a gravel beach; it is enough to make a grown man cry. I recently saw a group of guys load up their canoe on a boulder beach (the canoe was almost suspended in air on four or five pinnacles of rock), try to get in, and swamp the canoe. They repeated the process again, and swamped again. Meanwhile I walked straight into the water to about calf depth, set the canoe down so it was floating, loaded my gear, got in, drained my boots over the side for 10 seconds, and off I went. I could feel the envy.

You can get away with the “sit-and-scoot” method with an aluminum canoe, but you can obliterate a Kevlar canoe in short order that way. So why not just always use an aluminum canoe? Many people do (I used to), but my Kevlar canoe weighs 50 pounds at 18.5′ versus 80 to 90 pounds for an old Alumacraft which is only 16′ long. Kevlar is also faster and quieter as aluminum is rough on the microscopic level, causing drag. For most of us, once you try Kevlar you will never go back.

While my feet will be wet during the day, I always bring a pair of dry, light shoes for camp. I have a pair of Steger moccasins that I bought on sale, and they are awesome. They pack flat, are comfortable, and are perfect in every way. You have to be able to dry your feet at night or you might end up with foot fungus or trench foot. I like to pack light, but a second pair of shoes is a necessary addition.

#3 – Assume that the canoe could tip over at any moment. I have never had my canoe tip on me, but I always prepare for it. It is amazing how many people have crap strewn in their canoes from tackle boxes to coolers to chairs. If their canoe tipped over, they could spend hours trying to gather all of their loose gear, and would lose any of it that sank.

So, either put everything in your pack, or tether any essentials to you or the canoe. When I am traveling, I have everything in my Duluth pack (lined with a 55 gallon drum liner) except for my paddle, life jacket, and fishing gear if I am currently fishing. That leads us to :

#4 – You only need so much fishing tackle. I have never understood how one person can need as much gear as most fishermen haul in to the BWCAW. All those nets, boxes, and multiple rods (you can only fish one rod at a time in Minnesota anyway). I understand all of the theories that different colors can trigger better reactions under certain conditions, but I do not really subscribe to it. My dad tells me that my great grandfather only ever used one type of plug his whole life under all conditions and still caught plenty of fish. I think the moral is that you will catch more fish with your lure in the water than if you constantly have your lure out of the water because you are changing it to a potentially better one. I know that there are thousands of fisherman who would argue that with me, but this isn’t their blog now, is it?

I am able to catch plenty of fish with the following:

-A 7.5′ telescoping rod (packs down to 18″) and an ultralight reel with spare spool (generally 6# test fluorocarbon line)
-An 8″ by 5″ pouch with carabiners to clip to either my belt or to the canoe containing:

• Small Plano box with hooks, sinkers, bobbers (the kind of slip bobbers that can clip on to an already tied line), bobber stops, leaders, marabou jigs, fast snaps (makes hook and lure change easier), and quick change clevises (great for adding sliding sinkers to an already tied line). I find that with a bobber stop and a fast snap on my line, I can set up almost any sinking, floating, or lure rig imaginable in seconds.
• Small tin box with foam glued to the bottom holding my Panther Martin Lures (all Fly models in gold with orange bucktails and silver with yellow bucktails in multiple sizes; the best lures ever made in my opinion), fishing flies (I am new to flies so I have generic types like gold ribbed hare’s ear, elk hair caddis, and parachute adams), and a small red and white Daredevle (I have never caught anything with it, but I like it anyway)
• Casting bubble (for casting flies with a spinning rod)
• 4# tippet material
• Forceps
• Stringer
• Fillet knife
• Plastic bag for holding fish

If I want bait I will bring sometimes bring worms. That is all. I used to carry a net, but they are cumbersome and unnecessary if you know how to handle fish (just be sure to wet your hands in you are going to catch-and-release). If you are looking to pare down tackle for a canoe trip I recommend Boundary Waters Fishing by Michael Furtman; It is a good place to start, but you will want to tailor thing to your personal tastes.

#5 – Bear canisters are awesome. I hate bear bags. When you look up how to set a bear bag they always show a pretty little picture of a tall tree with one branch jutting out at the horizontal that is totally free of obstructions. This tree does not exist. Most trees tend to be a mass of random branches and obstructions that make throwing a line over one nicely almost impossible. Even worse, much of the BWCAW is coniferous, and if you want a frustrating experience try hanging a bear bag in a jack pine. And if you even can get the line up there, good luck hoisting it very high. You will often end up with what is dubbed a “bear piñata.” I became like MacGyver and at one point had rigged a pistol crossbow to a fishing reel in my attempt to make this easier; it didn’t really work.

I now have a bear canister. it is basically a thick plastic container with rounded edges so that a bear cannot carry it off. All you do is close it, set it away from your tent, and you are done. I have customized mine with the following:

• Coghlan’s bear bell with silencer. It has a Velcro ring to go around a walking stick in grizzly country to make the bears aware of your presence (and make them less apt to maul you). I cut off half of the loop and attached it the the canister with Velcro tape (so that it can be packed inside the canister for traveling). This way if something is trying get inside the container I will hear it and can decide if I really want to get out of the tent in the middle of the night and scare of a black bear. I try to keep everything packed in plastic inside to cut down on smells, and have never had the canister knocked over.
• Table top. There is nothing more longed for by the wilderness chef than a clean, flat surface to work on. Robinson Crusoe’s first project after building his palisade was to construct a table, “for without this I was not able to enjoy the few Comforts I had in the World, I could not write, or eat, or do several things with so much Pleasure without a Table.” All I did was to scribe and cut a piece of scrap wood to the rough size of the opening in the canister, sand it to fit easily yet snugly, attach it to a square of birch plywood (nice and light), and polyurethane it. It is not very large, but it is a huge advantage over no table at all.
• Cooler. Most of the food I bring is preserved in some way, but it is nice to be able to keep things like bratwurst, cheese, and eggs fresh in hot weather. It is made of two layers of Reflectix insulation (like bubble wrap with a Mylar surface) and duct tape, with a Velcro closure (I like Velcro if you haven’t guessed). It is made to fit against the rounded side of the canister so as not to take up too much space. Simple, but effective.

I also keep a large Ziploc bag inside to store garbage without it leaking. I suppose you could make a seat for a bear canister if you wanted too, but I like the table better.

#6 Cooking tips in the Wilderness. I love to cook and I love to eat, so food holds a priority for me in the wilderness. Here are some of my personal opinions and tips on camp cookery.

• Get an aluminum Dutch oven. The 10″ GSI aluminum Dutch oven is the ultimate in camp cookwear. Being aluminum, it only weighs a couple of pounds, cooks well on a stove or campfire, and its thickness provides even heating. I have fried fish, baked biscuits, boiled potatoes, and everything else you could want in this little beauty. Its thickness is also great on camp stoves which tend to be rather hot and can burn food easily in the standard sheet metal pots. The rest of my cooking accessories shown are two plates, sierra cups, and utensils, a measuring cup, folding spatula and serving spoon, cleaning supplies, a small brick of Ivory soap (to coat the outside of the Dutch oven, making cleaning easier), a wash cloth, a dish towel, and a foil pan to hold everything when I am using the Dutch oven. They all bungee together to make a tight bundle that packs easily and securely.
• Bring a good stove. Campfire craft is, in my opinion, a good measure of wilderness skill. To be able to build a fire under less than ideal circumstances and then prepare a meal on it is impressive when done well. Although I love cooking on a campfire, it is not always practical and a stove is often a necessity. In summer there are often fire bans in the wilderness, and well used sites can be picked so clean of firewood that you cannot find enough to make a cooking fire. My stove of choice is the Jetboil PCS. With the pot support kit, it works great with the Dutch oven, and no other stove can make you a cup of hot chocolate in less time on a cold morning. I like canister stoves because I do not have to worry about the smell and leakage of liquid fuel, although the canisters cannot be refilled (so if you use only half a canister you cannot top it off for the next trip). So I cook on the fire when I can, but cook on the stove when I must. Also, if I want to grill steaks in the woods I often bring charcoal from home. I do not want to grill a $10 steak on pine, and a small bag of charcoal (I prefer the natural lump variety) weighs almost nothing, takes up little space, and won’t give the meat a bad flavor.
• Aluminum foil is your best friend. I love the stuff. Need to fry something quick, but do not want to wash the Dutch oven afterward? Line it with foil. Catch a nice bass, but are out of oil to fry it? Wash it, season it, wrap it in foil, and poach it on the fire. Its uses are limitless.
• Leave the Wonder bread at home. I love bread, but it is difficult to haul without crushing, and bagels and pita get heavy in quantity. So I get Cache Lake frying pan bread mixes. Each one feeds 2-3 people, tastes great, and cooks up in only a few minutes. If I am going to make it with a meal I will cook it ahead of time by lining the Dutch oven with foil and wrapping the bread in the foil once cooked to keep it warm by the fire. This way I only need the one Dutch oven to make a whole meal. The intrepid can design their own recipe for frying pan bread, but I like the Cache Lake stuff.
• Here is a quick, hot breakfast for two that takes no time at all. You will need: 1 Jetboil or stove with a liter (or more) sized pot, 2 cups of water, 4 eggs, whatever you like in your eggs (seasoning, cheese, chives, etc), 2 Ziploc sandwich bags, and 2 packets of hot chocolate. Start the stove and get the water heating. In each bag, crack in 2 eggs and whatever additions you like, and beat well (trying not to puncture the bag). Once the water is boiling, turn down the heat and put the bags, partially sealed, into the water; use the lid to keep the bag tops from falling into the water. When eggs are firm, remove and serve; use the water to make the hot chocolate. I like to serve it with Quaker Oatmeal Squares. I know that people are saying that you shouldn’t cook in these bags, but I only do it once on a trip so I am not too worried (besides, everything is reported to be harmful these days).

If you are looking for little packets and pouches of food or condiments try Minimus.biz. I buy everything from little bottles of olive oil to A1 sauce there, and orders over $20 get you free shipping. Also if you are looking for little storage bottles for oil, condiments, or toiletries, I like the bottles that 5 Hour Energy comes in (cures headaches, hangovers, and makes studying accounting at 10:30pm possible). They are robust, watertight, and the perfect size for canoe trips.

I am sure that there are other tips that I could give you, but my head is starting to hurt from typing (time for a 5 Hour Energy!). I know that other people do things different ways, but these are the ways that work for me. If anyone has any specific issues they would like to raise, feel free to comment.

Hasta Luego.

Alexander Mackenzie

My Victory Garden – Because Food Is Just Plain Good

It has been a while since my last post; I have been finishing up my accounting degree and looking for an upgrade in my profession. But alas, with the economy in a depression (my theory is that it is recession if you have a job and a depression if you are looking for one) I have been unsuccessful thus far. If anyone out there is looking for an entry level accountant in northeastern Minnesota who also has a history degree and the ability to start fires with a bow drill, I am the man of your dreams.

The economy is tight right now. Hiring rates are low, wages are frozen, and yet costs keep rising – especially when it comes to food. Between shopping at the grocery store and watching all of the reports about the price of food, I have no doubt that this is new to anyone. You can blame ethanol subsidies, global warming, or whatever else you like, but the fact remains that costs keep rising (it almost makes you wish we were still on the gold standard – but that is a different topic). Most people seem content just to grumble about it, while shelling out ever more money. I say “no more!”

During WWII food was being shipped by the kiloton across the world to feed our soldiers, sailors, marines, and to shore up our hard pressed allies; the drain caused massive shortages at home. We have all heard about rationing (I actually have an old ration card from the War; it still has a few stamps on it I could try to redeem), but another solution was the victory garden. The government issued seed and instruction to our citizenry to encourage them to help the war effort by growing as much of their own produce as they could to reduce the strain on the food supply. America responded in force by planting victory gardens on every scrap of available land. Backyards, vacant lots, prison yards, even the strips between the sidewalk and street were tilled and sown by dedicated Americans who wanted to do their part to win the War. By the end of WWII, 40% of all domestically consumed produce was grown in a victory garden.

While we are not coping with massive food shortages anymore (thank goodness), the same mentality can help save you money on food. Growing your own produce; even just a few square feet of salad greens, can pay dividends.

This is my victory garden. It is officially my Garden MkII, and is an improvement over last year’s Garden MkI. Last year I tried to grow a “three sisters” garden – where corn, beans, and squash are grown together in a mutually beneficial relationship. It actually worked fairly well and I got about a gallon of dried corn (which I grind into flour with a hand mill), two cups of dried beans (which swell to four cups when soaked and cooked), and a half dozen medium sized squash out of my 12′ X 12′ plot. You can tell by those numbers that I wasn’t exactly going to feed myself on that. I was growing the corn and beans in 16 hills with six smaller squash hills in between. Squash is a warm weather crop and didn’t like last year’s cold early summer. The beans had poor germination and there were not enough viable plants to produce many beans. The corn did the best; I used a variety called painted mountain corn (the link will tell you a lot about it). It is a very hardy variety and did pretty well this far north with its quick growth cycle allowing the corn to grow and dry before the first frost. It was a good start into the world of gardening, but I wanted a more productive garden this year. Enter the Garden MkII…

Let’s start from the ground up. I double dug the garden to a depth of about a foot and fertilized it with a heavy dose of compost and some dehydrated poultry manure. On a garden this size, that one 40 pound bag of manure could hypothetically last me 20 years, so you do get your money’s worth. The only radical thing I did with the soil was to add 14 pounds of crushed charcoal (about one pound for every 10 square feet). What I am trying to do is to replicate the famous Amazonian terra preta do indio, Portuguese for “Indian black earth.” In Brazil these ancient man made soils allow, even today, intensive agriculture in what is otherwise a green desert of water leached, acidic soil. Scientists are still trying to unravel what makes these soils so productive, but the primary ingredient is charcoal. Charcoal (also known as biochar when used for agriculture), is like a sponge for chemicals, which is why activated charcoal is used as a treatment for poisoning as it can absorb the toxins before your body metabolizes them. In agriculture, biochar can help hold nutrients and moisture in the soil that would otherwise leach through the soil; this means, in theory at least, that you should have to add less water and nutrients to the soil to get a good crop. I am not sure if this is due to the porous nature of charcoal or chemical bonding (or both); I am not a chemist and have heard all sorts of theories as to why it works. People who have experimented with it have reported much higher yields than normal, especially in subsequent years of planting.

I was going to try and make my own biochar at first, but I found natural lump charcoal (the kind with no additives; not briquettes which are made of sawdust and flammable chemicals) on sale at Home Depot. I brought it home and crushed it myself, which was a really unpleasant process. It takes a lot of pounding to crush charcoal to a fine level, and it throws up a ton of choking black dust – I might have taken a few years off of my life in the process. I have since found a place to order preprocessed biochar online. It is not all that cheap with shipping, but per pound is about on par with the natural lump charcoal and I don’t mind paying a premium to not have to crush it again. I cannot speak to the effectiveness of charcoal yet, but it certainly is not hurting the plants at all.

You cannot really see the fence in the garden picture, but I am using a simple plastic 5/8″ mesh fence that is tucked under the weed cloth at the bottom which covers the outer walkway. I have been pleasantly surprised at it effectiveness -  I have had no problems with deer, rabbits, squirrels, or any other vertebrates (bugs can be pests, but I have enough spiders living  in the garden to keep them manageable). I have a group of rabbits that have made my yard home and figured that they might find their way in to the garden, but they have not been an issue. Really, there is no reason (local laws allowing) that you could not treat offending small game as a secondary crop. A wire snare or two could gain you some free protein and more than compensate for the calories lost from animals pilfering in the garden.

I also have my guardian plastic owl to hopefully help deter invaders. On the one hand I have not seen any animals too close to the fence, but on the other hand there are bird droppings on its head, so they cannot be too intimidated.

This year I am growing sweet corn, cabbage, Swiss chard, midget cantaloupe, beans, and two kinds of potatoes.

Triple Play Sweet Corn – Although the painted mountain corn grew well last year, I wanted to try a sweet corn that could double as a flour corn. This type is also short seasoned and is said to produce two 6″ cobs. Unfortunately we have had lots of overcast skies and cooler temperatures (in the 60s through most of July) so I am not too optimistic about what the results will be, but there are still a couple of months before it starts frosting regularly and they might still yield a crop. The corn is at the back left of the garden picture.

Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage – A compact cabbage with a quick growth cycle. I have just planted it recently for a fall harvest, and so it is the void in the lower left of the garden picture. I love sauerkraut from the can, so I figure the homemade stuff would be even better. If anyone has a good recipe for sauerkraut please feel free to post it in the comments. If you are wondering what the white things in the cabbage plot are, they are buried clay flowerpots with plastic lids that are filled with water. The unglazed clay will slowly seep water into the soil and act as subsurface irrigation. It is similar to what Native Americans in the southwest have done for centuries (if not millennium). It works, but is probably unnecessary in my fairly wet climate.

Swiss Chard – I love anything that has more than one use, and Swiss chard fits the bill. It is a good salad green, especially when young, and is great on sandwiches even as it gets big. The leaf itself can be cooked just like spinach, and the cooked stems make an good asparagus substitute. I find the leaf to have a mildly salty spinach flavor (which I like) and the stems taste like a cross between asparagus and a green bean (which I also like). It is the bushy row to the right of the cabbage. It grows like a weed (I only planted 8 seeds, but now have a virtual hedgerow of Swiss chard), will grow back over the season if you don’t over-harvest individual plants, and as the most expensive green in my supermarket, saves me money by growing it at home.

Minnesota Midget Melon - I have always wanted to grow cantaloupe, but it is difficult this far north to achieve the necessary heat and length of season to do so. I found this melon, which was developed back in 1948 (or something like that), that will produce a miniature cantaloupe in a much shorter season. They are planted below the trellis in the garden picture, but the cold and overcast of this summer is not doing them any favors. Hopefully August and September will be warm and sunny to aid their growth.

Paint Dry Bush Bean – Legumes are one of the greatest foods a person can eat and have the added bonus of adding nitrogen to the soil in which they grow. While green beans are the garden favorite, dry beans (while being edible in their green stage) are much easier to preserve without freezing or canning. They are perfect for baked beans, chili, or any other dish that you might otherwise use canned beans to make. Last year’s beans were a pole bean (Hidatsa shield figure beans), which produce more per plant than bush types, but require trellising. I planted these beans 4″ apart to see how well they perform in an intensive growing situation (that is 324 plants in a 6′ X 6′ area). They have been growing well in terms of foliage, but the acid test will be how many beans they produce. In hindsight I wish I had planted a couple of rows conventionally for comparison. They are starting to flower, so cross your fingers for me.

Potatoes, Kennebec and Peanut Fingerling - There is no other crop on earth that can provide so many people with so many nutrients from so little land. During the worst of English oppression against Irish Catholics in the two centuries after Oliver Cromwell ransacked the Emerald Isle, the Irish were able to survive quite well on potatoes, milk, and a little salt (which is actually a more balanced diet than the wheaten bread that the English gentry were feasting on). I am growing 32 plants (30 of which sprouted) on a 4′ by 8′ plot, which could yield anywhere between 15 and 45 pounds of tubers (according to what I have read; this is my first year growing them) Even at 15 pounds yield, that far exceeds on 32 square feet what I got from 144 last year. So far the Kennebecs (a full sized Maine potato) have been the most vigorous growing with the fastest leaf growth and fewest insect problems, but both seem to be loving the wet cool summer we are having up here. I am using the straw method where the seed tubers are only slightly buried in the soil, and then straw is heaped around the growing plants. This allows closer spacing and less work than the traditional hilling method. I also fabricated an irrigation system with PVC pipe put together to form four parallel rows with 1/16″ holes drilled through, top and bottom, every foot. At one end I have a bucket attached via a t-section of PVC from which I feed the system water. The small holes create enough surface tension that not much water leaks out until the whole system is full of water, and so each plant gets a pretty even watering. It is not really necessary on a plot this small, but it is a test for future, larger gardens.

When trying to provide a little homegrown food for yourself, don’t over look what nature provides as well. In the woods behind my garden there are plenty of good wild edibles. There is a massive thistle patch right behind the garden which once dethorned provides asparagus-like stalks in early summer, and edible roots in the fall (which I have not yet eaten, but I hear are sweet). I also have burdock (which has tasty if somewhat tough roots), dandelion (more vitamins per ounce that any other plant), broadleaf plantain (good potherb when young, and a good astringent if you are bleeding), and stinging nettle (the young leaves make either a tea if you add sugar, or a soup base if you add salt, and the stalks make a decent cord in a pinch – the Ojibwa often used it for fishing nets and animal snares). There are also plenty of raspberries (the ones in the store cannot compare to their wild cousins), thimbleberries (like huge raspberries with a more complex taste – they would go well with a good blue cheese, perhaps Stilton), and beaked hazelnuts (its a pain to remove their spiny husk and shell, but they are quite tasty and a great source of vegetable fats with an up to 60% fat content – be prepared to fight the squirrels for them). The tree right behind the garden is a pin cherry (or chokecherry, I get them confused, but both make good jam from what I hear), and there are apple trees in my side yard (not wild, but I didn’t plant them so they count). My yard is by no means unique, and you might have just as many great resources in your yard, if not more. Wild edibles can make a great addition to your diet, and they are free! Just make sure that you identify them properly or rising food costs will be the least of your problems.

Animal resources can be great as well. I already mentioned potentially trapping nuisance animals that want to raid your victory garden (with a proper license where required). I like to go fishing whenever I can and my freezer is currently stocked with four pounds of catfish fillets, four pounds of walleye, and half a dozen whole perch – all locally caught and from only two fishing outings. I fish with simple gear and the catfish were caught on chicken liver (cheap from the butcher) on a plain hook, and the rest were caught on crawlers with a simple harness (two harnesses actually, a northern took one). The math breaks it down to no more than $2.00 per pound (including my fishing license, but not counting the cost of beer) and they were fun to catch. You won’t find that at the store.

To sum up, the victory garden (and the wild resources surrounding it) can be fun, economical, give you a better respect for your food, and act as insurance against tough times. A couple of books to get some ideas would be Fresh Food from Small Spaces and the Vegetable Garden Bible; I think they are good anyway.

Okay, enough preaching from me. Get outside, crack a cold one, and make summer count.

Fresh Food from Small Spaces

Some Articles Worth Mention

I have run a lot of searches on the internet over the last year, and have found a few articles that are entertaining and worth repeating:

Man Catches Record Catfish on Granddaughter’s Barbie Fishing Pole – This is by far the best fishing story that I have read in years. I cannot find the original article that I read, but I believe that the rod was 36″ with 6# line. When you think about it, the Barbie fishing pole might be a good item for survival; it is compact, light, and has shown it’s worth by catching a 21 pound catfish. As an added bonus, its bright coloration and Barbie decoration will ensure that it will harder to lose and that no man alive will try to steal it.

Man Beats Attacking Bear to Death With Stick – This is a man who has the right to swagger. It would be great to be sitting at a bar and be asked about the scar on my head, only to nonchalantly answer, “Oh that? I was attacked by a bear; she was getting frisky with me so I beat her to death.” I shouldn’t be surprised about all of the negative commentary that this man has received; there are too many movies with talking animals. Don’t get me wrong, I love animals and take zero joy in killing any of them; even fish that I am going to eat (I always whack them over the head to kill them quickly, which is a practice that more anglers should employ). However, when you are jumped by a bear from behind the time for diplomacy is over. Whatever your politics, that man is a survivor; if I ever met him, I would buy him a drink.

Man Powers Home in Snowstorm With Toyota Prius – This one is hot off the wires. It is no secret that a car can be used as a generator in a pinch (with an inverter to bump up the voltage if you want to power household appliances), but a hybrid seems to be born for it. This could be a handy dodge in a pinch; apparently you can get three kilowatts out of a Prius, and he was able to get three days of power from five gallons of gas. I like the concept of hybrids, but I worry about the battery (rechargeable batteries will eventually wear out, and a battery large enough for a car is an expensive proposition). Should they prove as dependable as conventional vehicles, I would be all for buying one. There is a company creating a marketable compressed air vehicle that might be a viable alternative to the hybrid. Using compressed air as a power source is an old concept (I believe the first torpedoes were air powered), and this company claims that their car will go 800 miles on one 8 gallon tank of fuel (which powers a compressor). Compressed air is not without its drawbacks (the pressure tank cools rapidly when in use, causing a loss of pressure; a tank heater would be vital in my climate, which would use more fuel), but we will have to see what develops.

I received a lot of great feedback on the last week’s blog entry, and welcome everyone again to point out any articles that you all have found to be either entertaining or informative.

Recommended Reading – Do Not be Afraid; Reading is Good for You

Like most of you who are into bushcraft and other like pursuits, I get the bulk of my information from books and magazines. In this age of mass media we have tremendous resources at our disposal for researching anything from edible plants to making pottery. This boom of information technology is a godsend to all of us, but the downside is that we are so deluged by information that it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Take the subject of survival. If you run a search on Amazon.com you will find dozens of books on the subject of survival, but not all of them are created equal, in my opinion. Books are big business and many manuals written by experts are flashy and full of pictures, but often contain little useful content and what they do have can be quite vague.

I have read a great many books on survival, bushcraft, and like topics, and will give you a short list of some resources that I consider to be quite good. I will reiterate that I am not a definitive expert on any subject here, and many of you might feel that these sources are not as good as others that you have read or watched. If there is any media that you find particularly noteworthy, please feel free to share them with everyone else. So here we go…

1. U.S. Army Survival Handbook – You do not have to be a veteran to appreciate this manual as a great survival resource. It is well put together and is generally pretty thorough on the important subjects. Unlike many writers, the army is not trying to sell books; they are trying to train soldiers (the rest of us get to read it because of the Freedom of Information Act). The manual contains a lot of information about escape and evasion strategies that won’t apply to most of us, but on the whole the book is worth its weight.
2. SAS Survival Handbook – This book can be a little more vague than the U.S. Army Handbook, but it covers a great array of subjects including survival kit construction, survival in different environments, and edible and medicinal plants. They also make a pocket version that takes up little space and can be thrown into a daypack or glove compartment without difficulty.
3. Outdoor Survival Skills - This book is considered by many to be the Magnum Opus of bushcraft, and for good reason. It has been in continuous print for over 40 years and was the book that inspired my interest in bushcraft when I was still a Boy Scout. It covers topics from bow making to hide tanning to hot coal beds and so on. It also has some good stories about the psychology of survival that are entertaining and educational.
4. Chippewa Customs - If you want to learn about bushcraft in North America, a good place to start is with the skills and traditions of the original peoples who have thrived here for many millennium. This book, originally published in 1929, chronicles the culture, religion, and industry of the Ojibwa people local to my area. If you do not live in the upper Great Lakes region, look for book about the people who lived in your area before European influence; it will give you a whole new perspective to your home region.
5. Backwoodsman Magazine - I have recommended this magazine before, and think it is a wonderful periodical. There are many contributors and the topics range from gardening to black powder rifles to the firesteel that I showed you on my knife. Some of the contributors often have political undertones to their writing which may put some readers off, but whether your are an eco-hippie or gun toting survivalist, you will find stuff in there that will appeal to you.
6. Survivorman (not a book, but still good)- I know that this TV show is controversial in the survival community, but I believe that it has real value as an educational resource. There are lots of commentaries about how what Les does is all wrong or that he is a fraud, but most of the critics appear to be either a) armchair survival experts who like to talk smack, or b) real survival experts who are trying to market their own competing books or shows. While he often fails at what he does, that is the reality of survival. Keep in mind that he is trying to film a TV show on his own and is often putting himself outside of his area of expertise (which is consistent with many if not most survival situations). What he demonstrates is that thinking outside the box, trying to keep a sense of humor, and maintaining the right attitude are essential to keeping alive when you are lost or stranded. He also has a book out that has some really good information based upon his personal experiences. If you do not like his show, that is your right, but this is my blog and I like him (so put that in your pipe and smoke it).
7. Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden - An extremely thorough narrative of a Hidatsa woman relating the traditional agricultural practices of her village. The Hidatsa were some of the premiere farmers of the North American continent and grew corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco; many of their cultivars still are bred today (I have grown shield figure beans myself). The book chronicles tools, ground preparation, planting, harvesting, threshing, customs, and cooking. A must read for anyone interested in gardening using traditional methods (you will be the talk of the garden club if you use a deer scapula hoe).
8. The Forager’s Harvest - In my opinion the best book that someone trying to learn about wild edible plants in the Midwest could buy. It is by no means a comprehensive guide to wild plants, but it covers the more widespread and easy to identify plants like cattail and burdock, and does so with more detail than any other book I have read. Samuel Thayer covers identification, habitat, poisonous look-alikes, harvesting season, preparation and storage, and includes plenty of high quality photographs. He relates his own personal experiences such as discovering the fallacy of of milkweed’s bitterness (I have eaten milkweed myself and did not find it bitter in the least) and unearthing a several pound hopniss tuber (dubbed the Hopness Monster). If you live in the Midwest and want to learn to identify some good edible plants, you should get this book.
9. A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and Central North America - While it lacks the detail the the previous book, it makes up for it in volume. Most images are drawings rather than pictures, but it contains several hundred wild edible plants. I use it as a beginning reference when I am evaluating a plant to determine what it most likely is, and then run web searches to get photographs to confirm what the plant is (Note: sampling wild plants without the supervision of an expert can be dangerous, so if you start sampling plants and get sick, don’t blame me).

This is just a short list of some of my favorite books; there are many other books that are just as good as anything I have up here. Reading about things is no substitute for actually doing them, but we all have to start somewhere. I would give these books a shot, but as they say in Reading Rainbow: “Don’t take my word for it!”

Homemade Hard Cider – Because Few of Us Are Strong Enough to Face the Holidays Completely Sober

Where would a hillbilly be without his moonshine? As Homer Simpson once exclaimed, “Alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems!” Well said. When you hear the word “hillbilly” the first image that most of us have would be of a mountain still guarded by a disheveled man with a sawed-off shotgun. There are still wily woodsmen in the Appalachians that make their living dodging the law and making their forbidden spirits.

I do not do any actual distillation (the process of making real moonshine) for two reasons. First, I do not want to go to jail. Second, a still is one blocked pipe away from becoming a steam powered grenade. Instead, I do a little brewing; just a gallon or two here and there as I get thirsty. Unlike distillation, brewing is legal without a license in most places unless you try to sell your products or brew hundreds of gallons per year.

I have been learning the tricks of the trade from my cousin Ben. He is not just a microbrewer, he is a MICROBREWER (all caps). He measures things like specific gravity, and has tables to track his efficiency. His brewing rig has pumps and insulated kettles and is powered by propane burners (at least until his fusion reactor comes on line). He grows vines, harvests rhubarb, and has pressed plums from my backyard to make wine. He makes the kind of drinks that you could label and serve at the class of restaurants that will not let you in without pants. I keep telling him that he should go pro, but he does not seem to buy in to my plan (perhaps because the plan has me on the staff as bookkeeper and official taste tester).

In contrast, my current set up consists of a plastic jug in my closet. My stuff will not win any contests, but it is drinkable, has alcohol, and won’t make you go blind. We all have to start somewhere, and that somewhere is the closet.

While brewed beverages are regarded as mostly recreational now, for most of human history since the discovery of fermentation they have formed an important staple of human survival. As a beverage they were far safer to drink than many water sources; waterways were often full of human and animal waste, or pathogens like giardia and cryptosporidium that we still contend with today. As a food they provided valuable vitamins and carbohydrates, and alcohol itself acts as a preservative (although drinks with less than 18% alcohol will still spoil) and with later additions, such as hops, they would keep even better. Brewed beverages were a staple of medicine from ancient Sumeria and Egypt until very recent times. They still are important in many parts of the world for folk healing, and many modern doctors still tout the health benefits of alcohol in moderation.

Brewing exists in many forms from cauim (an Amazonian beverage made from cassava that has been chewed and spit out by the brewer to utilize her saliva in turning starch to sugar) to kumis (a Mongolian specialty brewed from horse milk; apparently also good for folks who are lactose intolerant), but to start let us do something a bit more basic for those of us without access to a milking mare.

In my neck of the woods apples are an abundant fruit that grows well in our often cold climate. Hard cider has been a staple of American drink since colonial times; beer was the beverage of choice for most Europeans right off the boat, but barley was often in short supply. Apple trees, an import from the old country, grew well in the colder areas of North America, and soon people were planting orchards all over the place. Cider was well regarded by most people as a healthful and nutritious beverage; even our second president (John Adams for those of you who were not paying attention in history class) drank a full tankard of cider every morning with breakfast. It is simple to make and delicious to drink.

If I were truly devoted to the pioneering lifestyle I would have pressed my own apples, but since we turned most of the apples from our trees into applesauce and I don’t have an apple press, I bought my apple juice for this experiment. You can buy your apple juice/cider in whatever volume that you see fit, but the critical thing when you buy it is that it must contain no preservatives. Preservatives are wonderful for keeping food fresh by killing the microbes that cause spoilage, but since we need certain microbes for the process of fermentation be sure to buy juice that states “no preservatives” on the label. Then we need yeast. Yeast are the little microbes in question that make bread rise, sourdough sour, and cider ferment. They are airborne and exist everywhere (in fact the fine white powder you find on wild fruit and smooth tree bark are wild yeasts), but in their wild form can be too unpredictable for consistent brewing. Instead, buy a package or two of wine or beer yeast; they can be found on eBay for a good price. Add to your list a simple balloon and a paper bag and you will be all set.

The set up is quite simple. Just do the following:

1. Drain a little juice from the container – We will be brewing in the container that the juice comes in, and fermentation can cause a totally full container to overflow.
2. Activate the yeast – There will be directions on the package; usually it will involve suspending the yeast in warm water for a few minutes before adding to the cider. Some brewers just add the dry yeast right to the juice, but I usually try to follow the directions.
3. Shake the container to aerate - A tip from my cousin. Yeast need a little oxygen to breed, and shaking the container vigorously while the yeast is activating will add some air to the mix.
4. Poke a needle through the balloon near the top – The balloon will serve as an airlock, and the needle prick will keep the balloon from bursting or flying off the container. Why an airlock when the yeast need oxygen to breed? Because too much oxygen will turn the alcohol to vinegar and unwanted microbes will get into your brew.
5. Add the yeast to the juice when done activating - Pretty straight forward.
6. Cover the opening with the balloon - Then just cut the paper bag to fit over the container (yeast like the dark).

Your final set up should look like this:

Fermentation is temperature sensitive, so pay attention to what kind of yeast you are using. The yeast I used here works well between 60 and 70 degrees F. The balloon, as well as being an airlock, will also tell you how well fermentation is going.

The balloon will eventually stand upright due to the carbon dioxide produced during brewing. The little bubbles formed in the juice are also a sign of fermentation. Fermentation, in a nutshell, consists of yeast eating sugar and producing alcohol (in the same way that a cow eats grass and produces manure). Apple juice already contains natural sugar, and so I just brew the cider alone. If you want to boost the alcohol content you can add white sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses, or any other sugar source as long at it does not contain preservatives. Different yeast types can tolerate differing levels of alcohol, so choose a hardier strain if you want to have a higher potency.

Depending on temperature, aeration, and quantity of yeast used, fermentation will take between five and nine days in my experience. When the bubbles start slowing down to a trickle, you have probably gotten most of the alcohol out of the sugar. At that point you can cap it and put it into the refrigerator (or chill it in the creek if you are a proper hillbilly). It will still naturally ferment a little bit after capping, and will naturally carbonate the cider. Be careful and check it periodically to make sure that the bottle doesn’t rupture from over carbonation; just twist the cap open for a second if you have any concern and it will bleed off the pressure.

The finished cider will taste like white wine or even cheap champagne depending on the carbonation level. It will be a bit cloudy and have yeast at the bottom of the container, but you need not be worried as yeast are good for you (and not the same as the yeast of yeast infections). I am drinking a glass of the pictured cider right now and it tastes great. Plus, at around $5.00 a gallon to make, it is hard to beat on price.

So start your cider today, and it will be waiting for you as New Year’s Eve approaches. If it is good enough for John Adams, it is good enough for the rest of us. I can hear the next batch of brewing cider fizzing beside me that I started the other night. So everyone pass ’round the bottle, howl at the moon, and remember to pee downslope.

I wish you all a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a joyful Kwanzaa, and a kick ass Solstice!

The Survival Kit – How to Keep Your Edge When Mother Nature Catches You With Your Pants Down

Oh Goodie! Yet another blogger who posts pictures of his survival kit; that’s original. I know, I know; there must be 100,000 survival kits posted on the internet ranging from duffel bags containing four year supplies of Spam and 80mm mortars, to mini kits so tiny that they are mistaken for suppositories. What does this mean? That there is no such thing as one perfect survival kit. All of us have different abilities, needs, and priorities when it comes to survival and our kits reflect that. You will also find that if once you start building a survival kit, it will forever be a work in progress; you will be constantly reorganizing, refining, and redesigning. Why? As you try different things and read different peoples’ work, you will find better gear to carry and new ideas to explore. Plus, playing with your survival kit is just plain fun!

There are many companies out there who make a living selling already completed survival kits. I have bought a couple over the years, but mostly for parts. Commercial kits often tend to be gimmicky and include things like tea bags, hard candy, and chapstick that might be conveniences, but take up valuable space that could be better used for more vital equipment. Also, as a major goal of business is to keep production costs down, the items in commercial kits can often be cheap and unreliable. This is not to say that there are not some great kits out there, but I believe that a premade kit should only be a starting point and will need refinement.

Then there is the subject of size. There are two major schools of thought: those who think kits should be big enough to carry the best equipment, and those who think kits should be small enough to be carried at all times. The people who believe in big kits include things like hatchets, radios, and firearms and their kits are usually between lumbar pack and backpack sized. Their philosophy is well founded; a good axe greatly simplifies life when making a fire, and a good firearm will outperform a throwing stick or a sling. While I do see the logic of their kits, I find them too bulky to be practical. When your kit is the size of a backpack, or even a lumbar pack, you will find excuses to leave it back in camp because it is such a pain to carry. Murphy’s law states that it will be the time that you are without your kit that you will get lost.

The pocket sized kit, on the other hand, is small enough to be carried comfortably at all times. If your kit is not a burden, you will be more apt to have it on you when you really need it. The down side of small kits is that in order to make them small, compromises have to be made. Axes are replaced by wire saws, and firearms by snare wire. What they gain in smallness they can lose in durability.

Despite the compromises, I subscribe to the pocket kit theory. When I am carrying a 50 pound canoe and 60 pound pack, I don’t really want to be toting another 10 to 15 pounds of survival kit. Besides, the more you strive to learn the ways of the woods, the less gear you should need (that is the theory anyway).

Building a survival kit is a very personal affair and should be built with a plan in mind. Too many kits are thrown together without considering the potential uses (or lack of use) of the items included. Looking at other people’s kits over the years has given me inspiration, and is a good way for you to determine what you want include in your kit.

My personal kit is based loosely on the SAS kits made famous by the British soldiers of that organization. They are traditionally built using a 2 oz tobacco tin, and are explained thoroughly in the SAS Survival Guide by Lofty Wiseman. I have strayed a bit from the traditional kit perhaps, but I have a plan for everything in my kit. Here it is:

1. The Tin – It is an old container from a surplus East German 7.62mm rifle cleaning kit. Unlike Altoids cans (the usual containers for these kits since tobacco tins have become harder to find) it opens from the end. This has two great functions; first, I can fit more into it without the lid popping off, and second, I can wrap things like duct tape around the container. Plus, I find it fits more comfortably in my pocket than a traditional tin. I waterproof it with a strip of duct tape around the top.
2. Spark-Lite and Tinder Tabs – It’s like a lighter flint on steroids. The included tinder tabs work great with it (and only part of a tab need be used for each fire), and I have also been able to ignite plenty of natural tinders like cattail fluff and finely shredded birch bark.
3. Waxed Book Matches – There are better matches on the market, but a cut down book of matches (there are eight matches included, and they can be split to make 16) that is waxed to make it waterproof fits better, keeps the matches together, and provides a striker. It is meant to be a backup to the Spark-Lite, not a primary firestarter.
4. Folding Razor – A simple razor blade attached to a plastic handle. A razor blade is no equal to a real knife, but it if I lose or damage my pocket knife I will at least have a sharp edge to work with.
5. P-38 Can Opener – I have sharpened this so that in addition to being able to open cans I can also use it as a gutting hook to help clean game and fish.
6. Small LED Light – Night vision is great, but a simple light can make all the difference in the dark. With the development of new LEDs, you can find very bright lights packed into tiny packages that fit easily into survival kits. If you need to use it at night, close one of your eyes; it will help keep your night vision.
7. Duct Tape – Five feet wrapped around the tin. The uses of duct tape are limitless. You can make a splint, seal a wound, patch a leak, form a cord, lash poles together, or anything else you can imagine. Duct Tape is also flammable; something worth remembering if you are short on tinder.
8. Innertube Bands – Two, looped around the tin. Simply sections of an old innertube, they make great rubber bands. I mainly include them to make the casting stick I wrote about previously, but like duct tape they could be used for multiple purposes.
9. 40 Pound Test Woven Fishing Line – 25 feet of Spiderwire brand. This is not so much for fishing as for use as high quality cord. Rope is of limitless value for everything from making tools to building shelters, and although making passable cordage is not difficult given the right materials, some good high test cordage is not something you want to forget.
10. Eight Pound Test Fluorocarbon Fishing Line – 50 feet. Fish are one of the easier creatures to catch for food, and fishing line takes up little space. Many kits include cheap line, but when my life might depend on something I want the best. Fluorocarbon line is almost invisible in water, and at eight pound test offers some forgiveness when fishing without the benefit of a fishing rod.
11. Fishing Kit – A Panther Martin 1/32 oz gold fly lure, nine Gamakatsu Hooks, and six sinkers. I have had caught many fish with Panther Martin Style lures, especially the gold plated ones (nothing beats gold for shine and it doesn’t tarnish like silver or brass). Gamakatsu hooks are top quality and incredibly sharp;  I have always had the best luck with size six hooks, and have caught everything from three inch suckers to a three pound smallmouth bass with them (I let the bass go, so if you are on Lake Brule in the BWCAW, you can try to find it; say hi from me if you do).
12. Nightline Kit - That is what the little green bundle in the bottom center of the picture is. It consists of a 24 foot line (40 pound test) with snap swivels at each end. At the 8, 12, and 16 foot marks there are fluorocarbon lines (8#) tied to the main line (3, 4, and 3 feet long respectively). Three size six hooks are included to tie to each hanging line. By securing one end of the long line to shore and anchoring the other end out in the water (or suspending across a stream), you can have multiple hooks fishing for you at all times. You may cover more ground with a fishing rod or casting stick, but having the nightline out day and night will increase your odds of catching something.
    

    A nightline works like this (from the U.S. Army Survival Manual)

13. Snare Kit – 14 feet of brass wire, and eight feet of 40 pound line. Snares are a fast and easy way to get traps out and working for you. Most kits I have looked at seem to only include about 2 or 3 feet of wire; that only comes out to about 1 or 2 snares. Most estimates for successful trapping say you should have 20 or more traps working to ensure a reasonably reliable food supply (per person surviving). 14 feet of wire will make around 5 rabbit sized snares and a squirrel pole with 3 smaller snares (the eight feet of line is to help secure the wires to anchor points). This is only a start, but will enable me to already have traps out working while I make deadfalls or go fishing to round out my food supply. A good basic how-to on snaring can be found here on YouTube.
    

    Squirrel Pole taken from U.S. Army Survival Manual

14. Sewing Kit - Two sewing needles and 10 feet of thread. For making and repairing clothing, or sewing wounds (I hopefully won’t have to try this one out).
15. Two Safety Pins - Great as garment fasteners, makeshift fishing hooks, ferrules on a fishing rod, or grommets on a tarp.
16. Aluminum Foil - 18″ square, heavy duty. Serves to make a pot to boil water for purification. In addition, boiling any fish, meat, or plants you forage to make a stew will enable you to get all the nutrition out of your food. If you crack and boil the bones of snared animals, you can extract the high fat content of the bone marrow and bone grease, helping to avoid rabbit starvation. The local Ojibwe peoples used this method to get fat from the overly lean cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares of my area according to Francis Densmore.
17. Water Bag and two twist ties – The type used for transporting goldfish. I used to carry a condom like everyone else, but they are difficult to fill and can be fragile. These fish bags are waterproof, robust (I can stick my finger up to the second knuckle in a full one without causing a leak), and hold a little over a liter. This brand supposedly can keep goldfish alive by releasing CO2 through the bag walls; I might see how my extra bags do for transporting minnows.
18. Aquatabs - 10 chlorine purification tablets (purifies 10 liters) in a flat package perfectly sized for my kit. As my supply of Aquatabs is finite, boiling in the foil pot would be my primary method of purification. I should note that while there is a risk of waterborne parasites anywhere you go, there are many outdoorsmen in my neck of the woods who have drunk straight from lakes and streams their whole life without getting sick. You should try to purify water if possible, but a chance of illness is preferable to certain death if you are really dehydrated in my opinion. Avoiding stagnant water and gathering from moving sources will help decrease your chances of illness.
19. Potassium Permanganate – An antiseptic. Mixed with water to a deep purple it will help treat foot fungus and disinfect sores (I know from experience how debilitating foot problems can be in the woods). It is also said that when mixed sparingly with water (to a light pink) it will serve as a means of water purification, but I have never tried it. It should be noted that all chemical purifiers should be used as a back up, not as a permanent source of drinking water. Since a purifying agent is basically a low dose poison (meant to kill the critters in our water), I have heard that long term use can lead to some pretty bad kidney or liver problems. When mixed with sugar or glycerin (another sugar), potassium permanganate will also start a fire quite effectively (something well demonstrated on Survivorman). It is a useful chemical to carry in your kit.
20. First Aid Supplies – Bandaid, butterfly closures, alcohol swab, and Neosporin. Open wounds can fester in unsanitary situations and become major health liabilities, so a few first aid supplies can be a lifesaver.
21. Pencil and Paper – Good for making patrol maps, tracking bearings and time travelled, and if things are bad enough, your last will and testament.
22. Button Compass – Even if you do not know where you are, if conditions are such where travel is preferable to staying put, there are few places on this continent where heading along a constant bearing won’t lead you to a trail, logging road, or other thoroughfare. Knowing direction is also useful for tracking time (East = 6 AM, South East = 9 AM,  South = Noon, etc) and wind direction (where I live wind can often be an indicator of weather; E = wet, W= clear, N = cold, S = warm – not always, but often).
23. $100 Bill - People will generally help a lost individual without question, but Ben Franklin is still a hand guy to have around. If nothing else, he can buy me cold beer and a greasy burger after I “get found.”

The survival kit is a toolbox with items that will make survival potentially easier should the occasion arise, but will unlikely be the only item that you carry into the wild. Rather than make a kit that has everything you may need, you can save a lot of size and weight by building it to augment what you already carry.

Some basic items that I carry during the summer months can be seen here. They include:

1. Swiss Army Knife – I carry the Victorinox Camper model as it has the tools I use most: two knives, wood saw, reamer/awl, etc. If you are wondering what the little thing attached to the lanyard ring is, it is a Torch Lighter Flint (used in the igniters for acetylene torches) with a hole drilled into the aluminum threaded base to facilitate attaching it to the knife, and a small amount of cotton wool packed into the threads. It is an idea I found in the Backwoodsman Magazine (an awesome periodical for anyone interested in bushcraft and self reliant living) and allows me to carry a firesteel without making my knife awkward to carry or use.
2. Bic Lighter wrapped with Duct Tape – Cheap, reliable, and effective. You cannot have too many means of starting fire at you disposal, and duct tape is second only to toilet paper as a crowning achievement of civilization.
3. Heatsheets Emergency Bivvy, made by Adventure Medical Kits  - I am sure that all of you are familiar with space blankets; this is a space blanket sleeping bag. They are not particularly comfortable or quiet (they like to crinkle when you move), but can keep you from freezing to death.
4. Equinox Silnylon Poncho with 550 cord to serve as guy lines – An ultralight poncho that has grommets to make it function as a tarp. Ponchos make great rain gear (except when in a canoe and the wind is coming from straight ahead), and a tarp will greatly simplify waterproofing your shelter. Keeping dry is key to avoiding hypothermia and fungal diseases.

Winter presents its own set of challenges; water is clean and abundant in the form of snow and animals are easier to track, but shelter takes on the ultimate imperative. Here is what I keep in my parka, and not just when in the woods. A broken down vehicle can quickly turn into a struggle to survive in cold weather (my thermometer read -18F Friday morning; plenty cold to kill you).

1. Matches and Tinder Tabs – Not paper matches this time, but high quality lifeboat matches that burn for up to 15 seconds under water. When you need fire in winter, you need it bad!
2. Candle – not the highest BTU output, but does the job when used correctly.
3. Space Banket – Not a premade unit like the last one, just a large sheet. The idea is to sit and wrap it around you with the lit candle between your legs; that way all the heat from the candle will reflect and stay within the confines of the blanket. Just keep your head exposed so you don’t have carbon monoxide issues.
4. 55 Gallon Drum Liner – Basically a really heavy and large trash bag. Makes a quickie tarp.
5. Wool Socks – I wear dress socks to work (not great for insulation) and cotton when driving normally (cotton + wet + cold = amputation). As the feet are one of the first places to suffer from the cold, and since when feet are injured survival becomes way more difficult, wool socks can help to keep my feet functioning in an emergency. If I am already wearing wool socks, I have a dry pair in case my feet get wet (wool maintains 85% of its insulation when wet, but soaking feet in heavy boots can cause trench foot).
6. Two lengths of 550 Cord – If stuck in deep snow, cutting the tops off of two evergreen trees will provide field expedient snowshoes. The rope is to make bindings for them.
7. Wire Saw – While I don’t include this in my regular kit, in winter deep snow can make firewood more difficult to get to, and green wood is needed as a base to keep your fire out of the snow.

To sum up, this list is meant to give you ideas for your own kit. Your needs and skills will determine what is right for you. I warn you, building survival kits can become an obsession; a quest for the perfect kit. A survival kit is no substitute for knowledge of your environment or common sense, but it will give you an edge when you need it most.

Polaris – Why Living in the Northern Hemisphere Has its Perks

Last Monday, the 1st of December, I am sure that many of us happened to notice two bright planets (Venus and Jupiter) next to the moon as we were heading home from work. It was a rare and beautiful phenomenon, and so I rushed home hoping to take some pictures. Unfortunately, between the cold temperature and long exposure time necessary to take a night shot, I couldn’t keep steady enough to get a good picture (I have a tripod, but I cannot remember where it is). As I was muttering to myself and walking back to the house, I looked to the north and saw an old friend winking at me: the North Star.

The North Star, Polaris, the Pole Star, Giwedin’anung (the Anishinaabeg word for it); it carries many names. It is universally important in the star lore of peoples inhabiting the northern hemisphere for one major reason: it stays in the same place. Of course, Polaris does move, but from our perspective it appears to be stationary because the north pole is currently pointing in its direction. I say currently because Earth’s axis wobbles over time. However, unless modern medicine finds a way to bestow immortality, we will all be long dead before the wobble unseats the Pole Star from its throne. When the Egyptians were aligning the Great Pyramids, the star Thuban in the constellation Draco was the North Star; In about 1000 years the binary star Gamma Cephen in the constellation Cepheus will take the title. Kappa Draconis, also in Draco, was the star that Long-Suffering Odysseus would have looked to for guidance during his quest to return to Ithaca. For now, Polaris is actually getting closer to true north, and will continue to do so until the year 2120, so that will be the star we will concern ourselves with.

For the star to be of any use, you first have to find the darned thing. Once you know what to look for, it is pretty easy to locate. Polaris itself is located at the tail end of Ursa Minor, better known around here as the Little Dipper. The Little Dipper is not the most prominent constellation in the night sky, but it has two easy to locate constellations near it: The Big Dipper and Cassiopeia.

Ursa Major is shown on the left, and Cassiopeia on the right

The circumpolar stars (the stars that surround the North Star) rotate around Polaris throughout the night. What is nice about the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia is that they are on opposite sides of Polaris, so when one of them is below the horizon, the other is still high in the sky. Tonight, for example, Cassiopeia will be at about its highest point in the night sky at around 8:00 pm local time; due north and directly above Polaris. The Big Dipper will be well below the horizon at that time, but as the night progresses, it will become visible towards morning. If you can find those two constellations and remember which way they face, you can always find Polaris.

The most obvious use of the North Star is to find north (duh!). There are many viable daytime methods of finding north without a compass, but methods like the shadow stick are time consuming, and methods like the watch method require an analog timepiece. Finding the North Star requires only a glance. Now most people in a survival situation, unless they are in the desert or at sea, most likely will not be traveling through the night. The best thing to do would be to mark the direction of the North Star with a stick or a couple of stones that can be used in the morning to reference against natural landmarks, giving you a bearing.

What if you have a compass? That should tell me exactly where north is anywhere I may be, right? Not quite. The magnetic compass probably rates with fire and toilet paper as one of the greatest discoveries of humanity. It enabled ship captains (who previously had Polaris by night, but by day had to guess direction based on the sun and wind if they left sight of land) to navigate more safely and accurately than ever before, and was a crucial factor in the Age of Exploration. There is only one problem: a compass only points due north on two lines of longitude (the vertical lines on a globe). That is because the magnetic north pole is several hundred miles away from the true north pole. But wait, there’s more! In addition, magnetic north is always moving; not fast, but fast enough that aviation maps have to be updated every six month or so. Most good navigation maps that you would buy will be factored for local magnetic declination (the difference between the two norths), and will have a magnetic north arrow that you will align your compass with, which will orient the map to true north.

But what if you have a map without that correction? Or what if you know that a good place to go is due east, but you don’t know the local correction? According to the NOAA, my home here in Minnesota is only 25 minutes of arc (a little less than 1/2 of a degree) off of true north, but if you are in Anchorage, Alaska that difference is almost 20 degrees! To put that into perspective, if you walked one mile without correcting for magnetic declination near Anchorage, you would move 1/3 of a mile to the right of your intended path. That is a good way to get hopelessly lost.

Polaris, as we know, lies at true north. If you do not know the exact magnetic declination correction for your location, all you need do is point your compass at Polaris, and adjust the dial so that your compass needle is pointing to north. If you were traveling long distances, by correcting your compass each night against Polaris you would keep in tune with local magnetic declination as you travel, keeping compass error to a minimum. It is important to note here that no compass is perfect and all compasses (even the best tuned) will have an error ranging from fractions of a degree in highly tuned compasses,  to perhaps a few degrees in really cheap or damaged models. If you do know your local declination conversion, Polaris is still useful for determining how accurate your compass is. As I believe that all essential gear should be tested before you are in a situation where its performance might prove critical, this would be a good test to perform in your backyard before the big trip.

There is another useful purpose that Polaris has to offer: finding latitude. Latitude is a measure (in degrees) of how far north or south you are on the globe. When you are standing on the equator, you are at 0 degrees latitude; at the north pole you are at 90 degrees north latitude; at my house you are at approximately 46.85 degrees north latitude. While for most wilderness excursions knowing your latitude is not really that important, it is still a neat thing to understand. If you are ever lost at sea, knowing your latitude could be vital in finding out your location. GPS units can do this at the touch of a button, but Murphy’s Law, the most consistent law in the universe, implies that when you really need your GPS, the batteries will be dead.

I have a nifty surveyor’s compass that belonged to my Grandpa Abe, who was a mining engineer up on da Range (if you have ever been to northern Minnesota you will know what I mean). It is a highly accurate magnetic compass that also can measure altitude by using the aiming sight in conjunction with an internal bubble level. I can determine my approximate latitude by measuring the angle of Polaris above the horizon (when adjusted so the bubble is at the level mark, in this case). If I measure the altitude of Polaris at 50 degrees, my latitude is 50 degrees north. I will admit that it is a bugger to use this compass at night (you will find it rather hard to measure Polaris by day) since you have to use a flashlight to see the bubble, which ruins your night vision.

On the left is a precision surveyor's compass that can measure alltitude, and on the right is my 81.5 cent sextant

I decided to try making my own mariner’s astrolabe (a method of determining the altitude of Polaris from the early Age of Exploration) on a tight budget of one dollar.  The final result requires:

1. a protractor (80 cents)
2. a straw (free at restaurant)
3. 4 inches of duct tape ($6.00 for 60 yards = 1.1 cents)
4. 8 inches of cotton twine (I am not sure about the math so I will allocate a cost of 0.4 cents; accounting is not as exact of a science as you might think)
5. a barrel fishing sinker (free, found on fishing pier)

This leaves me 18.5 cents to invest in my IRA, and a rough measure of latitude. You can see how I assembled it up above; just tape the straw to the protractor and run a weighted string from the little hole made for using it as a drafter’s compass. To use, just look through the straw at Polaris, wait for the string to settle, and pinch the string against the degree scale. Cheap plastic protractors are not designed for navigation, so to get the right latitude you will have to take the smaller of the two numbers that the string is resting on (protractors usually have a two 180 degree scales running opposite directions) and do some simple math:

• 90 – degree reading = observed latitude

I say “observed” because there are mitigating factors, like atmospheric pressure, that can refract light and alter the perceived position of Polaris. However, anyone using a protractor to measure latitude is not going to be navigating a 747, so don’t sweat the small stuff.

This device would not be a modern navigator’s first choice (or even fifth choice for that matter) for celestial navigation, but much of the world was explored and mapped using a compass, a log line to determine ship’s speed, and an astrolabe not much more sophisticated than this.

To conclude, I would recommend that anyone who spends time in the wilderness should learn to find the North Star. If nothing else, you will be a hit at bonfires. Just leave the protractor astrolabe at home; most laymen won’t appreciate its subtleties.

The Casting Stick – Where Hobo Fishing Meets the Staff Sling

Every once in a while you will just be tooling along, minding your own business, and you will come upon something so simple and brilliant that you think, “why didn’t I think of that?” I was just running searches online the other day and came upon this site. The idea of using a smoothed stick to cast and reel fishing line has probably been explored in depth by many other people, but I have not been able to find any other sites that talk about fishing in this manner.

Anyone who has ever bought or assembled a survival kit has most likely included a length of fishing line, several hooks, and maybe a few sinkers as they are small, light, and take up little space. Many experts recommend fishing as perhaps the easiest source of animal protein (although any of us who have been skunked on a fishing trip might debate that), and its therapeutic nature could help to calm someone suffering from the shock of being lost and alone.

However, once you are out there with your hooks and line, how do you use them effectively? Hand lining would be an obvious choice. How much more primitive can you get than sitting beside a stream with a line in your hand. But how do you cast? Simply attempting to throw coiled line out of your hand will likely result in a tangled monofilament nightmare.

How about tying the end to a stick? Many millions of fish have been caught by people using nothing more than a length of bamboo, a string, a hook, and a worm. The down side is that you only will have a reach of a few feet unless you can rig some king of casting system.

I once had the trying experience of breaking my fishing rod on the first day of a canoe trip; a plight that I am sure many can relate. Here was my solution:

I took the handle from my broken rod and inserted a length peeled maple. At the tip end I used fishing line to lash on a three way swivel for use as a ferrule.  The 550 cord is there as a backing to strengthen the rod, similar to the way that the Inuit would back their bows with sinew cord. It worked, but I had the advantage of a reel and full tackle box a my disposal. I am sure that you could whip up a nifty rod using safety pins as ferrules and perhaps creating a reel of sorts out of scavenged materials, but I wanted something a little more foolproof for my needs.

Another method, and one that I learned back in my Boy Scout days, was “hobo fishing.” Ray Mears has a nice video for those of you not familiar with the concept. Basically, you wrap fishing line around something smooth like a soda can (I think I am the only Minnesotan who says “soda”), toss the weighted end to the fish, and reel the line in by wrapping it around the can. For a long time I had line wrapped around my survival kit tin for that purpose (I will post my survival kit at a later date), but the line eventually began to fall off of the tin and would wear against other things in my pocket, so I now I carry about 50′ of 8# fluorocarbon line on a sewing machine bobbin.

The hobo method is great, but it can be difficult to cast long distances with accuracy. Enter the casting stick. The casting stick applies the same principle as hobo fishing, but uses a length of stick to give you the leverage to cast more effectively. It is about the most simple device you could make, but if you are like me, you want pictures. So here we go…

All you need is a dry stick (a wet one might make the line coils stick), a knife or abrasive stone, some fishing line, a hook, and maybe a bobber (although a wooden one can be fashioned on site). For mine I am using a bobbin to hold extra line and a couple rings from an old inner tube (makes great rubber bands) to help keep things neat.

From there, just taper the end that you want to wrap the line on and smooth out the stick as much as possible. Any slivers or burrs might catch the line and mess up your cast. Here is the finished product:

I also carved a bit of a notch in the end to facilitate casting. Just set the hook end of the line in the notch (the notch should be oriented up-and-down), leaving a foot or two to dangle, and it will keep the line from falling of the stick as you bring it up to cast.

I didn’t want to cut my fishing line so I used one of the rubber bands to hold the bobbin firmly on the pole. I pulled about 30 feet of line out and wrapped it around the stick, securing the hook with another rubber band. That’s it. Pretty simple.

I will admit that I have not actually fished with it yet, but I tried a couple of practice casts in my backyard and the line shot off perfectly. Hunting season is still wrapping up here (I don’t really feel like being shot) and it is way too early for ice fishing (and most successful ice fishermen find casting unnecessary anyway). Come spring I intend to give it a whirl, and I will let you know how it works.

Remember: if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him to make a casting stick, his friends will think he is a dork… But a dork with fish!