The Wall Street Journal had to send someone all the way to Minnesota to report out the story that fishing is only tolerable when you're drunk.

At a recent New Hampshire tea party rally, Sarah Palin spoke of the regulatory burdens on the area's Yankee Fisherman's Cooperative, a group that she compared to "our own commercial fishing family." Back in June, on a previous trip to New Hampshire, she said, "Well, commercial fishing is near and dear to my heart of course. You know, having fished for so many years. And I understand fish politics. I understand what these fishermen are going through."

But an open records request by The Awl found that Palin, once again, failed to apply for a license to fish in Alaska this season. The request follows our [...]

Today's Times op-ed on menhaden and the insane Omega-3 fish oil industry is pretty amazing. The practitioner of mass overfishing of the algae-chugging fish called menhaden is Omega Protein, a 40-boat company out of Houston that fishes in North Carolina and Virginia and further ashore, and that processes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia. Their board of directors is fascinating as well, including as it does an all-male cast of oil industry execs, insurance brokers, the former VP of Equus Capital Management and the "professor of Swine Nutrition at the University of Missouri." Also, you are probably spreading menhaden on your lips, ladies.

People scream. [Via]

The Awl: Joe Brown, you have spent a lot of time in New York City and environs and you have been commended to me as wildly outdoorsy, despite your indoorsy day job as features editor of Gizmodo. I would like to know your secrets without you blowing up any secret spots. So tell me: if I want a good hike within reasonable distance of New York, and maybe I lived a little, so maybe not too hard a hike, wherever would I go?

Joe Brown: Spent a lot of time in New York? I am a ****ing native!

The Awl: Spoken like a native!

Joe: Don't [...]

Have you had shad for dinner in the past week? If not, you should do so tonight or tomorrow night. It is one of the most delicious fish in the universe, and incredibly easy to cook, and due to the same mild winter than has local flowers and, apparently, Republican primary voters, so confused, the American shad spawning season, which usually heralds spring in March or April, has arrived early this year.

"We eat, therefore we hunt." —Sarah Palin, Going Rogue

In December, after an episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," The Awl, along with many in America's hunting community, asked some questions about the former Governor's longstanding claim of being an avid and experienced hunter.

At some point, all hunters are inexperienced, and even experienced ones are often unsafe, but being unlicensed is more than just illegal, it's detrimental to natural resource efforts. Palin herself believes this, writing in 2010's America by Heart that "…it's important that we're managing our fish and wildlife resources for abundance in the Last Frontier."

Curious if Palin was licensed for her 2010 [...]