 What's up guys? If you've ever been on a hunting trip, a fishing trip, a golfing trip, a camping trip, any kind of trip that you plan for, you know how excited I am right now because it is all right in front of me. I'm finally doing it, doing a solo camping wilderness ice fishing trip. Gonna stay right on the ice, unspecified amount of time, up in the north main woods. Far, far from any town or other people going for native brook trout. No tank scrubbers up here. This is the real deal. Nice pink, fleshy, neat. Gonna be fun to catch these things. I jumped in the truck early this morning, headed in the north, drove three, three and a half hours to right now. I am nothing but dirt roads. I got another probably hour ahead of me on login roads and I'm gonna find out where they're cutting right now. If they're cutting anywhere near where I wanna fish, then I'll just jump on the snow field and have about a half hour ride in, maybe an hour ride in. If they're not cutting in that area, then I gotta go up and around and it's gonna be another probably 45 minutes to the snowmobile rides. We'll see when I get there. I don't care either way. It's gonna be fun either way. I'm pretty pumped right now. Looks like we got a lot of snow up here so that's not gonna be a problem. Winter is fully set in. Goals for today are to get in there and get set up. That's the key for today. That's really important. So I have somewhere to sleep and nice and comfortable tonight. It would be really cool if I have enough time and things go smoothly to set a couple lines and maybe catch a brook trout for dinner tonight. That would be awesome. Goals overall for the trip are to catch a nice native brook trout and go from there. If I can get into the brookies or if I get bored with the brookies or if I catch a nice one early, I'd love to move out, try to catch a toad. Love to catch a whitefish, which I have very, very little experience with and then also try to catch some cask too. It's gonna take two runs to get everything in there. I'm gonna have to come back and get the heater, get the ice shack, get my sleeping bag and then just a few various things. I could probably jam everything in. I don't know what the 370 can handle for weight. I know we got a couple giant hills. I don't know how far this trail's packed. We'll take this to get started and come back out after. Right now I gotta get my truck off of the log road. So I made it in. Got everything unloaded for the first load. I gotta go back at the shack, the cook stove, the buddy heater and whatever else I got in the truck. I don't know what else I have in there. Got a pretty meaty storm coming in tomorrow night or Thursday, 8 to 10 inches, which here could end up being double that. I've seen it usually a lot worse than they say. I hit some slush on the main ice, which I was not expecting way up here. So I'm gonna have to be super careful where I go with a snowmobile and where I set up camp. What I'm gonna do now is run all the way back out there, get the second load of stuff and come back in and should be able to get set up before dark. But I am stoked to be in here. The weather is gorgeous. If I took this trip for the next 10 years on the same date, I wouldn't expect to get a day over zero up here this time of year. A deer hunt right over there usually with my good friend Stevie. About three and a half months ago I came out and walked on this ice to see a track. There was a track and like a little bit of snow out on the ice. We thought it might have been a deer, but we went out and was able to walk on it. There was a couple inches of ice and it was just a coyote. The ice should be pretty thick by now, but I'm really shocked at how much slush is on this. They must have either gotten a lot of rain or maybe the level went down. I don't really know. I don't know why there's so much slush, but I'm a little bit worried about that. I'm gonna have to find a good spot on the lake that is slush-free to set up camp if I'm on a jig for whitefish, cask, tog, or even brook trout. It seems like if I run the banks and I stay off the lake, then I'm not getting any slush. As soon as I get on, I'm getting slushed up, but I don't know about the middle yet, so I'm gonna have to check that out. Here we go, round two. This patch of slush right here, I'd like to set up outside that. I'm gonna take the shovel out there and the snowmobile and see if I can find a spot that doesn't have any slush over some deep water. It'd be a really cool spot to set up. If I can, normally I dig right down to the ice, but I'm not gonna do that if there's water on top of the ice and slush. So what I'll do is I'll pack down the snow really hard. I'll use the snowmobile, probably jump on it, maybe use the snowshoes and try to pack it down so I have a nice base to set up camp. No slush. It's got like a layer of crust it looks like. It doesn't want to break, so I think if I dig it in here, set up camp right about here, I should be okay. I'm hoping. I got an island right here. I got an outlet behind me. I got a point right there. I'm pretty sure there's deep water here from the one time I've been here before I caught a toge. That was it. It was pretty close to here. I want to have a spot where I could jig, maybe set a cusk line at night inside the shack and then maybe just stroom my brook trout sets along this shoreline. I'm gonna set up right here. Normally I set this thing right down to the ice, but today with the issues we're having with the slush and the water rising above the ice after I drill. I think I'm just gonna dig down the corners and peg them down so that way if the wind picks up we're good and then call it good. Alright, that's into some ice. That's good. We're gonna base everything off that corner now. Nice. Alright folks, we are set up. I don't know what time it is. Sun is still up a little bit over there, so let me walk you through camp real quick. Got a 20 pounder out here. That's hooked up to the buddy heater. Got some dead bait. Alright. Cool. So tarp on the floor. Got another mat right there for a vapor barrier and heat barrier caught set up with a blow up underneath it that's insulated. Got some coats hanging up here. Chair, fishing hole in the corner. Camera stuff in that yellow bag. Clothes in that bag. Buddy heater right there. The big buddy heater. Food in the blue tote and just various fishing stuff in that other black tote with some more food. Coleman cook stove here. Various fishing stuff there and yeah, we're all set up. The big buddy heater is awesome because you got your pilot but you got, you see you got 4,000 BTUs, 9,000 BTUs and 18,000 BTUs. So when both those get going, it's cranking. Right now the tent is still pretty warm. So I don't even need to run the thing. I was thinking about running it just to dry some stuff out to get wet. I still got some daylight. We're going to fish. See if we can't get a brook trout or something to eat for dinner. Let's go. Well, I just got back to the shack to get the aerator for the bait and we already got a flag up before I could even get back here. So let's go see what it is. Looks like it's just barely tripped, but you never know. There's one there. What are we looking at? Ah, chub. Chub. There it goes. That might have been a trout. I was messing around. Serves me right. This is going to be a fun week. I don't know if I brought enough bait. Nope. There it goes again. Another chub. Oh man. Another big chub. I don't know if I'm going to get any other traps set. Just wait here for a minute. This is crazy. I'm going to have to get a jigger on. Oh, that one popped off. Boy, look what they do to that bait. They absolutely mangle it. That thing's heads hanging on. That's a good size chub. Almost 12 inches, maybe more. Look at the size of that chub. Wow. Oh, got my bait. Alright, it's jig rod time. I forgot I had a jig rod rigged up right there. Let's cross some eyeballs. These chubs are incredible. I can't get over the size of these chubs. These are jug-bianic chubs. Look at that thing. What do we get into here? The main thing. Man, how would a brook trout ever survive in this place with this many of these things? Dinner is served for night number one. Got everything all set up. Everything's looking good. I'm super happy with how everything worked out. Didn't break anything yet. Plenty of room. I got some clothes hanging up. Going to dry out my bibs for tomorrow. The knees got a little bit wet kneeling down for quite a while. But I think I'm good to go for tonight. Going to eat some awesome deer loin, my buddy shot in Illinois, my buddy Matt. And we ate some the other day, and it's just incredible how good it tastes. Main deer tastes awesome, but Illinois tastes even better. I guess because it's corn-fed, maybe. I don't know. The meat's super sweet. And of course this is tenderloin, so you can't beat that. I got a little bit of greens to go with it. Got some asparagus there, some mushrooms, peppers, garlic. Pretty much living like a king tonight, eating like a king. There's probably not another person within 50 miles of me right now. I got the whole area to myself, and we're going to go catch some fish tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get out of the chubs. Had a little run of chubs tonight. I only got the one trap set, and ended up pulling like 15 out of that hole, and not very long. Hopefully I can get in some trout tomorrow, and we won't get chubbed out. Tempts are fairly mild. I think it's right around 20 degrees outside. I'm going to kill the buddy heater for tonight, just so I'm not burning up propane or have any worry about carbon monoxide. I have a detector that I just picked up yesterday, and it's right by my head, but still I'm going to shut her down for the night. Pretty much took the chill out of the air in here. It's super warm in here with this insulated tent. I'll shut her down, crawl in my sleeping bag, and I'll be up bright and early, and we'll have to make a game plan for tomorrow to try to catch some brook trout. Alright, so made it through the first night. It's about 5.30 in the morning right now. I shut the heater off last night when I went to bed. I don't know, around like one o'clock in the morning. I woke up. It was pretty chilly in here. So I put it on low, and took the chill off. Now it feels pretty good in here for sure. Got some coffee parking. If you're a coffee drinker, there's not much better than percolated coffee. It's going to be good. Definitely going to go set some brook trout sets and see if we can get away from those chubs and catch some brookies today. Breakfast this morning, some porridge, and coffee's just about done. Now this percolator, for some reason, pours all the grinds into the coffee cup. So got myself a little save, a little strainer to strain out some of the grinds. I don't like eating the coffee as much as I like drinking it. Time to eat. That's good porridge. That is the best part about staying up here, staying on the ice is no ride, no drive to the lake in the morning. No traffic. Just unzip this door and we're going to be fishing. Let's go. I drove through. It's pretty chilly this morning. I got four degrees on the outside thermometer. So we'll get this sled rolling and go drill some holes and see if we can catch some early brook trout. This is just unbelievable beauty. It's four degrees above zero right now. I'm up here on the lake and there's nobody within many, many, many miles. This is awesome. We got a little fog rolling in. It was warm yesterday, so the snow and the lake's a little bit warmer than the outside air temperature. So the fog's going to lay in here pretty hard over the next hour. But let's get set up. Alright, first flag of the day. Let's see what we got there. Oh, she's rolling now. We've got something hooked. Oh, yes. There we go. There we go. There's a native for you. First native brook trout on this trip. It's a dandy. Brook trout number one on the ice. I'll just let it go. Maybe on purpose, maybe inadvertently. Popped the hook out. It flopped one side of my hand, hit the holes and was gone. Perfectly fine. I plan on catching some more. Another flag. We're on the log. Oh, we got the log in the fish. Felt like a giant at first. Couple logs. That's something I've got to be careful about up here. Any of these old log drive bodies of water like this where they used to drive logs down to the mill is the bottoms of them are just covered right up with wood and they could wrap you up in them. Another flag. I don't know if I still have them. There was a lot of sticks. Yeah, I think he's still on there. Fighting a little bit better now. But we definitely got some other stuff attached to the line. Oh man. A lot of sticks. A lot of sticks. Man, he took some line. He's coming right at me. That's a brookie. That's a good one there folks. That looks like breakfast to me. 16 inches. Alright, I got a little brook trout hole here with only 10 inches of water under the ice. I caught one out of it. Just lost another one. And then I was reset that one before I could even get the thing set. I got stripped. So I'm going to go after him with a jig rod and see what happens. There he is. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What the heck? Wow. This isn't tiny. What did I get into? I hope it's a brook trout. Oh my goodness. It's a brookie. Wow. Look at the size of that one. Wow. Holy cow. That was awesome. I can't even believe that. I mean, I don't even have 10 inches of water under this hole. Let me get that hook out real quick. Stop. Unbelievable. Jig that thing up a couple times and this is the biggest one of the day by far. What a nice brook trout. Wow. Alright, let's get a quick measurement on him. Get him back down the hole probably. I'm going to think he's over 16. 17 inch. What a pretty fish. Holy cow. Look at that guy. 17 inch brookie on the jig stick. Beautiful fish. He's going right back down. That was unreal. That's the shallowest I've ever caught a fish. One of the nicest brookies I've ever caught too. He might have been pushing two pounds. 17 inch. Awesome. That's why he came up here. Native. I'm going to jig another one. Let's try it again. But that's what they do in the winters. Those brook trout will get super shallow and they'll drive bait all the way up under the ice. All the way to the shallows where the bait can't go up or down. And then they kind of work together in schools and just hammer on bait fish. So when you're brook trout fishing, you want to get as shallow as you possibly can without hitting your auger blades. I like to leave a couple inches for fish. I mean, I caught that other one in less than six inches, that little tiny guy. And then this great big one just came in less than a foot. So you don't need a lot of water. It is fun. It's fun catching them in that shallow. I think I ought to drill another hole, go get the camera and see if I can get you guys some cool underwater footage. It might be a little colder than I was thinking. My auger blades are frozen up. Get all this ice off so I can drill this hole. Yeah, look at all that ice there. That's just enough to keep it from drilling. All right, we're resetting this entire trip right now. I'm going to pick up the tip-ups or the traps as we call them up here in Maine. We're going to turn this into a jigging trip. Radle reel's going. Well, let's find out what it is. Cool, we got ourselves a Cossk. All right, first Cossk of the year for me. First Cossk in a long time. It's such a cool fish because it's like half eel, half catfish. And man, they eat just as good as an eel and a catfish. We're going to eat some brook trout for lunch. The sunshine and it's absolutely gorgeous out here. A little bit of wind, but not bad. So I got that one Cossk and I only kept the one brook trout out of this morning's action. It slowed down a little bit with the jigging so it sounds like a good time to eat and do a little catch and cook. So it's important when you're wilderness camping to know what your dangers are and your most dangerous things. For me up here, it's probably the propane. So I got myself a carbon monoxide detector that's, you know, a couple inches away from my head. Of course, you got to watch out for fire too. So you want to check your fittings. I got everything checked over with some soapy water. There's no leaks. Nothing can catch fire. Nothing can pump out too much propane. So another thing to consider are any of my sharp edges. Those are pretty dangerous too. So I got the auger, which is like a razor blade. All my knives are very sharp and I got my axe too. Use a little bit extra caution, you know, up here with blades because I'm over 100 miles from the nearest hospital and there's no help around it all. So if I mess up, I'm on my own, which you know that going into it. Probably the third most dangerous thing I'm working on is the snowmobile. Just got to be smart with it. Be careful with it. Don't get near anything. I used to check the ice first with the auger and, you know, I don't go over 30 miles an hour with it. The ice fishing sled, the days of speed and racing around, taking jumps are way behind me, especially this far away from any help. You know, that's probably, those are my biggest dangers out here, external dangers. And you know, you just have to be cautious and really careful with those types of things. And don't want to ruin a great trip with one little slip of a knife or something like that. Look at how pink that meat is. That is going to be incredible. Pure pink right there. Nice native Maine brook trout. Man, I think that fish is actually big enough to filet. Normally I don't bother, but I think I'm going to filet this one. The one heck of a slab of brook trout right there. Normally I just throw the whole brook trout right in the pan after gutting it, but this one was pretty thick and pretty good size. So I cut the sides off. It made a couple slabs out of that. I'm going to cook the center now with the tail on it. All that has a lot of bones in it, but that'll fall right off the bone when it's cooked. So it's going to be damn good and there's absolutely no waste at all. This one, I kind of hacked it up a little bit. Wow, that's tasty. That's good stuff. What a brookie. What a brookie got that on the aqua view. That is awesome. Wow, I was just about to change up lures and this big boy came flying in. All right, all right, all right, all right. Wow, definitely the biggest one of the day. That was awesome. I dare stick my thumb in his mouth. That is a big trout right there, fellas. Big native. Look at that baby. Big old square tail. He's probably 17, 18 inches. Just jigged up two big whitefish and switching up lures and man, this thing came flying in. I'm going to do a quick measurement and probably just put him back. Hey, 17, 17 inches. That is a beauty right there. Holy cow. All right, there he goes. Release on his own. That's fine by me. He was going back anyway. Wow, was that fun on the jig rod? This is the deal, this aqua view and jigging for a moment, about four and a half foot here. And boy, that joker came out of nowhere and hit that. Looks like something happened over here. What are we looking at here? Oh, trout. Wow. That guy was deep. I don't even know if he's hooked. He just got it across his face. Look at that guy. Are you hooked or are you just messing around? No, you weren't hooked. You were not even hooked. He was just holding on. I don't know if there's spike in here. I don't think it's a, it's not a toge though. It's got the colors of a brookie. I don't know, maybe there's spike. Either way, we're going to let him go. I need a center pole for my tent in case it snows tonight. I'm not sure how much snow those Eskimos can hold off. Couldn't do that again in a hundred years, I bet. I was just trying to square the butt off so it didn't poke through the tarp. Put the buck saw and then I was going to cut the top off after it was measured. But look at this. Absolutely fits perfect. I mean, couldn't have measured it any better. Oh, he's there. Feels good. Oh, a whitefish. Whitefish. Got myself a whitefish. Yes. I don't think he's going to keep. They got to be 16 inches long. This one's more like 13 or 14, but that's cool, man. Whitefish. All right, you got to sit still for a second. Just for a second so I can get a measurement on you. Come on. Come on. 14 and a half. All right. He was close. He was close. 14 and a half. Got my first whitefish of the year. Whoa, what a weird mouth. They got like a tarpon mouth. All right, super fork tail. Kind of purple-like. Looks like a mini tarpon, really. Super cool. The mouth opens like a tarpon too. Look at that. It's got hinges all through it. Does smell like a cucumber. Cool. Nice whitefish. He's going to go back and hopefully we catch another one. This morning that track froze up on me with getting that slush and soft snow in there. So I figured I'd clean it off the night before. Probably not a bad idea. If I lift it up and bang it a couple times too. All right. All in all, amazing day. I caught some really nice native brook trout. Caught some on the jig rod. Got a cast. Got my first whitefish. Man, had an amazing day. Caught a pile of chubs. I'm already looking forward to tomorrow. Tonight's dinner, I think I'm going to do some moose burger. Compliments on my good buddy Jeff Osborn. Maybe mix that in with some dimmy moor beef stew, which is pretty good when you're up in the woods for some reason. Even better than normal. And then to start it all off, I'm going to have some cusk nuggets. Let's call it a night outside. We might get some snow. I got most of my gears covered up. Handy to where I can find it and dig it out. I got a center pole in the ice shack. So if I get a bunch of snow on the roof, it won't cave in. I put an extra cord down for wind blockage. And I'm going to park the snow vial on this side because we've got a little bit of a wind ripping in right now. Got a little Louisiana fish fry products. It says bring the taste of Louisiana to Maine. It says in crispy fish fry breading mix. The way I look at it is the water is so dirty and muddy in Louisiana. If they eat a pile of fish down there, if they can make it taste good, I'm going to try it on some good clean Maine fish. These are the cusk nuggets. We got some oil fry in with some garlic still in there from earlier today. That is ridiculously good. Wow. That was incredible. Now it's time to shower up. And this is what I always bring on hunting or hiking or camping trips is a pack of these baby wipes rather than go without. This is a really good way to get cleaned up and take a little dry semi wet shower. Got that. Got all my toiletries. Going to hit all that stuff up and call it a night. Maybe do a little bit of reading.