 Fish and Freaks, I am beyond excited about the excursion we are about to embark on. Oh yeah, we are heading up north of the wall. We're going up into Canada. I know there's a lot of fish and freaks that watch this channel that are from Canada. Thank you guys for supporting me, watching me fish for largemouth, I guess when it's cold, but I'm coming up there to catch some of them brownfish, some of them wall-eyes, the best golden grispies in the world, maybe some pike, we're going to do crappie, we're going to try to do it all north of the wall this week. So we're prepping right now, y'all. We're going to be heading out the door here in about 10 hours to head up to Canada and I guess what, I have flown up there a few times. I am driving with my dad this year. So this is a trip that we try to do. We started as like a father-son with one of his friends and he had a son. So it was, you know, around father's day, little trip. And the last couple of years I haven't been because they had a blockade for people like me that, you know, didn't get stabbed. But they're letting us back in now. So this is good news for me because now there's probably been a lot less fishermen up there and I can go and I can just snatch on these fish that I've been missing out on the last couple of years. So that's why I'm so excited about, so excited to go with my dad. But there's some things we got to prep because, I mean, been fishing here spring, summer for largemouth and other stuff. It's just not the jam up there. Where we got to go, a light limer, going spinning gear, all that stuff. I'm about to head up to HQ. I've been told there's a bait that was really good last year I got to get that they smashed them on. You gonna spray your sister? You're being sneaky. You better be good while I'm gone, dude. You better be good boy. Speaking of jokesters, let me show you guys our first bit of a fruit popping off on our tree over here. I realize that was made no sense, terrible transition. But I'm so excited about this little tomato here. Hopefully it's a full groaner when I get back. Thanks for going to be going quite a while. Look at this. Hard work paying off. Hard work paying off. Look at that. Little tomato. Quick chicken shack before we head to the HQ. I just went in here a second ago. Colonel Sanders tried to pop me multiple times. He's in a mood today. I don't know what's going on. Every time like, if I come in here and I turn my back or something, he'll try to charge me. This thing's pretty chill right now. I gave him some scratch. Very white. Get a little testy. Get close. She packs at you. But look at these little babies. These are no longer chicks. These are pull-its, folks. These are pull-its. And they're jumping around the plan. They're like play-fighting. They'll be, uh... All right, Fisher Breaks. We are up at the HQ right now. I don't think you guys have seen this on my channel. This has been all over at Guggen Squad Channel. I know John's been up here and showed you guys the whole renovation, but the last time you saw this on my channel, it looked completely different. So this is the most baits. Guggen baits stocked anywhere in the world right here. So we can get anything in this store. You guys can too. And what I'm looking for is smallmouth gear right now. So we're going to pick out a few things. And one of the baits that I was told I have to have is junior scouts. Now, I personally don't throw the junior scouts that much unless it's like really shallow water. And we'll probably run into those shallow rocky situations. But I'm going to get some pro-blue junior scouts and probably a couple of full-size scouts for this mission. And that's going to be a good search bait for the smallmouth and honestly anything else. Pike will crush it. Actually, this is my favorite color right here. This is similar to pro-blue, but it has chartreuse on the bottom. And that is Heligee, Heligee Bone. You can get a few of those. And of course, we got to get the perch color. I actually catch a lot of largemouth on that color. Some weird reason. And we got to get a couple of classic bones. Oh, you know what? Smallmouth left that little chartreuse butt. Chartreuse butt. We'll get some of those bluegills. And that should do it. I've got other full-size jerkbaits, but I didn't have much juniors. Neds. You know, we're going to be throwing some neds. This is a new size in the Saucy Swimmer. And this is going to be money for smallmouth. But we have the 2.8 right here. I already have some packed and ready to go. But I just want to show you guys, if you're fishing for a finicky, largemouth, spotted bass, you just need that smaller shad size. We have the 3.3 right here. Just to show you the difference, a little bit smaller. And when they're feeding on minnows or just real small shad, that 2.8 is very good. And we also have it in black, which is a very popular smallmouth color up north. So I already have some of those packed, ready to go. But 2.8's, good summertime, largemouth into fall. And then smallmouth, just they love them. Some more neds from the back. Appreciate it. Go in the basket. And let's just think anything else. So how we have set up the store, this is pretty cool actually. So whenever you're looking for a specific plastic, we also have the tackle that goes with it. So right here, we've got our rattle and neds. And then we've got the net heads. Right by it, close, same thing. You know, we've got the drag and drop. You know we're going to be taking some drag and drops. But you've got your drop shot weights. We've got the new gold series terminal. And if you're looking for additional information, you can pop up on the QR code right there. And that will show you all the other rigging. And you can watch videos of me and the other guys explaining how we fish it and the scenarios that we like to look for when fishing those baits. So we're trying to make it as easy as we can for you guys to hook up on some Mondos. Perfect example. We've got DC playing right now, doing a tip for us. Let's check in on our fishes, our F1 strain bass. Where are they hiding? Oh, there's a catfish in there now as well. They have hit bit the dust. They bit the dust. We accidentally threw in two pounds of bait. And the bait kind of didn't make it. So it killed the rest of the fish. Rest in peace. Rest in peace, F1s. I thought they were going to be the brothers of Mondoism. They looked so healthy. Over here in this section, y'all, we have some of the new baits, the grubs. We've got the happy trailers. We've got the quintessential smallmouth killer. We've got the tubes. We've got three sizes in the tubes. I've already got a bunch of these packed, but just to show you guys the sizes, 2.5s, 3.5, which is mostly what I packed. And then we have a four. So if you want to do some flipping, some more largemouth style tubing, we got that as well. But I'm thinking the three and a half is going to be money for up there. If you want to get super finesse with smallmouth, so they do like this 2.5. And I'm going to go ahead and assume some large crappie would eat that too. Running low online, yes. We have 20, we have 20 and 15 actually. So I'm going to throw mostly spinning gear. 20 pound braid is probably my favorite for throwing most bass spinning setups. So we'll grab some 20, maybe even 15 for up there for a little better casting distance. And we're going to go a light leaders with this. We're talking eight, 10 pound line, soft rods. We're going to be carrying mostly finesse spinning setups. So we'll get a 15, we'll get a 20. And I should have enough leader line to wrap that up. Literally. We are checking out, y'all. If you want to come up to the store, what's our hours right now? 10 to six, Thursday through Saturday, and then 10 to three on Sundays. Wabam, there you go. And you can always go online. You can use my promo code as well. Save 10% at checkout and that is LFG. Back at the treehouse, y'all. Tackle preparations. Let's talk about it. This is always the hardest part of the trip to the outdoors. Whether you're going camping, hunting, fishing, when you throw some clothes in a bag, but then when you start getting into, dang, should I bring this bow or that bow? Should I bring this rod or that rod? How many tackle boxes do I need to bring? And that's where I really go nuts. And it's crazy. I'm sure a lot of you have this problem. But here's what I've got it condensed down to at this point. I'm going to try to keep it as simple as possible. Now, since I've been here a few times this area, I kind of know what's going on. Something that I think is going to be a player is Wakebait. Topwater I think is going to be good. But we got a Wakebanger. I've got a couple of bone flavored ones. I think those are going to be big players actually. So this is the doob tubes. This is the neds. This is the small saucies. Look at that. I believe that color is called Canadian Crawl. I made a little hair jig box, y'all. Because I've only hair jig fished a little bit. But I know this lake I'm going to is it's good for it. And I got some. I actually got some Guggen Squad hair jigs. I'm not sure if this, I'm not sure if we're ever going to come out with these hair jigs. But I have some Guggen Squad hair jigs, probably one of the few people. Me and John be probably the few people that have them. So we're going to be trying those out. And then this is the bread and butter right here. This is the perfect size little terminal tackle box for smallmouth finesse fishing. So this is our smallest size bass mafia box. And we've got these new boxes that have the one flip lid, a full 180 degree open. And in here I've got my stupid tube jig heads. If you guys have never seen the stupid tube, stay tuned. You're definitely going to see it in these videos coming up for the smallmouth. I've got my net heads. I've got some interesting jig heads that I wanted to try out for walleye that are swiveling jig heads. We don't make these. But this is just something I really wanted to try out. It's got a cool hook on it for basically vertical jigging for walleye and or crappie bass. And I've got just standard core rounds jig heads for swimming around the little swim baits. Got to have plenty of those. There's lots of rocks. And you have to have such a light line because the water's clear that you really want an exposed hook. And with an exposed hook, you just get snagged a lot. So got to carry plenty of extra tackle. This lake has big black crappie all. So I'm hoping to deploy the crappie jig so I got a bunch of extra crappie jig heads in there. You know, random vibe jigs. I'm going to carry a couple of those. This is going to be for the pike action. And then in here, I'm hoping that we use this box a lot. I'm hoping this is primary box. This is jerk baits and top waters. Even got a couple other little fun nuggets in there. But I'm hoping that the blooper is going to be on. It's really going to depend if they're up around their beds or not. If they're not up on beds, jerk baits are going to be super cheap. So here's all the extras that we got for the trip. And that's basically everything I have in the boxes. Keep in mind, I'm fishing with like four other people, so this isn't all for me. Here's the real difficult part right here is choosing the rods. So I think I'm just going to go with these four, actually five here in a second. I'll show you, but I've got green finesse. I've got my jerk bait rig. I just love throwing a jerk bait on bait casters, so I'm going to go with that. We've got our gold series finesse light, and then I've got my 7-foot microseries crappie rod. And what I'll probably end up doing is throwing the hair jigs on that crappie rod, because they're so light. It's basically like throwing a crappie jig. And then I've got one extra pole. And you might be wondering, how are you going to throw that swim bait? I'm going to attempt to throw it on this right here. This is a two-piece go-to in the gold series that is a 7-2 medium heavy. So for most things, this is going to be too heavy for up there, but for fishing for pike, and if I want to throw like any other heavy bass lures for the smallmouth, I can get away with it with this. So I've got that two-piece ready to go, just pack it away. Then I'm going to carry a net, a little dip net, and a stringer, because these fish, these are not like our Texas smallmouth. These smallmouth actually have small mouths. And when you try to lip them, and they're going berserco mode, it is so hard to get your fingers in their mouth. So I've learned it's a lot easier with a net. I typically don't like using a net. It just kind of fumbles things. But in the case of the smallmouth, you just fumble them a lot more, trying to grab them than you do with the net. And I got some other little extra nuggets for camping and survival, but we're not going to get into that today. So stay tuned for the videos to come. Big bug hunt mode right now. What's crazy is when I get back, these guys are probably going to be fully feathered. They grow so fast. Well, bam, catfish time. I'm going to show you guys my catfish recipe that has been crushing it. The reviews are amazing. I should basically open my own restaurant. My reviews, I mean, I have one for my wife, okay? Hi. Now I've been using blue catfish, but the other day I caught a channel cat, a big juicy channel cat, and it looked ripe, like in a good way. So I went ahead and slapped the sides off of it, and we are going to throw it into a little bit of Cajun style blackening seasoning. Okay, so we got just a little Cajun mix and some old bay in there. And I'll probably slap a little bit of black pepper in there as well. And we'll do no binder. We'll just go straight up, fish, right into that. And these have been sitting in the fridge, waiting, vacuum sealed them for a day. So they're going to be nice and fresh. What is that? Is that grits? Have you touched this one? No, I have not. It's a fresh one. Whole family's sick except for me. I'm trying to hold off, so I don't dookie myself on a 48 hour road trip. All right, we're going to throw it in. It was cheese making some cheesy grits. Some sort of grits, right? Cheesy grits. Cheesy grits? Oh yeah, all right. Couple minutes on one side. I'm going to flip it, minute or two, we're going to pop it in that up. One clean flipperouski. Double utensiling it. Oh yeah, look at the coloring, the blackening on that. You guys are going to just thank me later. Impressed by your flipping skill. Don't hear that too often. Mm-hmm. So that is, oh, what's that? So you got a lot of practice, don't you? Oh yeah, you know I like to flip it. All right, so here we have the blackening. Okay, and then we're going to just let that hover there for just a minute. Turn it down. Oh, you already did turn it down. Turn it down for me, because you know. I didn't want the fire alarm to go off. Yeah, you know what, I want that happening again. I've got to micromanage the kitchen over here. All right, it looks good. So we'll leave it in the skillet. No reason to put it into a pan, okay? We're just going to leave it in that hot skillet. It will actually cool down a little bit, but it'll be baking convection style all around. And that'll be about eight or nine minutes, just depending on what you're, ooh. Ah, bam, got her in there. You guys have doubts about catfish, all right? Eight minutes from now. We're going to pop that onto some cheesy grits. You're going to lose your mind. If this was taste division, you'd be losing your mind. Yeah, buddy, it's been about eight minutes and we're looking good. I think we're going to pull it out. Look at that steam vision. Steam vision, y'all. Now, one of the ways that I usually tell that a fish is cooked is that it flakes apart. Unless it's a buffalo, and then it just looks like jerky the whole time. But it'll start to flake apart at the creases of the fish. You'll see that. You'll see some juices coming out. That was nine minutes, nine minutes. We've got some tomatoes and some zucchini with some parmesan over the cheese grits. Sort of like a pilaf, all right? Now, let's just take a bite. See what we're working with. Delicious white flaky meat, y'all. Incredible white flaky meat. It's going to be a little hot, but get a little bit of grit in that bite. Some of the juices and the spices coming over the grits as well, so you get extra flavor in the grits. Oh my gosh, honey, I know you're not hungry, this is amazing. Now, this is three or four times in a row that I've nailed it. This recipe is true now, so that's 375 guys. That's the key, keep it in your cast iron or your little stainless steel skillet. Thank you a little bit once. That way your seasoning's not getting all flip flopped and the fish is breaking apart because it'll start to break apart the softer that it gets. Incredible, incredible. Oh, are you excited? Are you excited? Got your meat necklace and your net. Can I get a high five? Good one, dude. Good one, dude. I tricked you. Man, I remember playing with a little stuff like that when I was a kid, you know, get in the dad's bow and get out, you know, the little metal stringers and all this just stuff I didn't know about, this world that was so strange to me, but I knew that I liked it. There's something about it that I liked. True story, when I was a little boy, I got into my dad's bass boat. He didn't know about it. He used to let me play in the bass boat till after this, but I was in there for a while and I had put a night fishing light, like a lamp on his boat. I turned it on and then back then they had this like plasticky carpet and it just melted this giant ring in the center of his root beer brown Terry bass boat. And from then on, I was not allowed to play in dad's bass boat. He took me fishing, but I wasn't allowed to play in it by myself. So I can definitely see little Ben doing that and just trick down memory lane. Stay tuned for this series of videos that's coming y'all and this is gonna be the longest trip I've ever taken by vehicle to go to a lake. We'll be vlogging that. That's gonna be the car ride from hell. Hopefully we get across the border and everything is good there and I cannot wait to smell the wilderness of Canada. So amazing up there. So you guys stay tuned. You know what to do. Thanks for being here. And I'll see you up in the north.