 plan on getting there early. And the first thing you do when you get there on one of these ice fishing trips is not go fishing, is not get there late and talk to everybody at the bait shop and all that stuff, get set up, get prepared for the night because while we plan for trips to go super smooth and nothing to go wrong, I'm gonna tell you right now, things are gonna go wrong and things aren't always gonna be smooth. I made a big mistake last time and it cost me a good day, day and a half. It could have cost me a lot more but I got super lucky and was able to get out of the mess I got into. You know, if you're doing this alone, if you're doing it solo, if you're doing it with a buddy or if you're doing it with not much experience, plan for things to go smoothly, plan the best you possibly can but expect things to go bad, expect there to be failures, expect things to go happen wrong, maybe your snowmobile breaks down or whatever machine you have, maybe you get hurt, maybe it's 50 degrees colder than you thought, maybe the wind starts blowing, maybe slush comes up in the middle of the night like five inches while you're sleeping happened to me. And it's really important to keep a level head and in situations like that more than ever is don't panic, think, take time, think, think of what you need to do, think of how you're gonna make your situation better and make it better. Cause I'm gonna tell you right now, it's not always gonna be easy and sometimes it's never easy. Have fun out there, have a great time and leave it in the comments where you're going and if you've had a good time or if this video helped you or if it even inspired you to go out and do it yourself, that's half the reason I do this stuff is I love helping others and inspiring others and if I have the ability to do that, you guys do too, try it yourself, it's so much fun. What's up guys, Joe Holland here. I've been doing a ton of winter camping ice fishing, having an absolute blast at it. I'm gonna answer all the questions you guys have in this video right here so you can do it yourself if you want to. I'm gonna give you all the tips, tricks, tell you about my mistakes, tell you about things that have worked for me and everything that's made my trips way more enjoyable. This is all the stuff I need for a winter camping trip right here to have a nice, comfortable time. The challenge and the adventure of camping anytime is awesome and I loved ice fish so there's nothing better to me than putting the two together and doing an ice fishing trip and a camping trip. It's so much fun and there's so many pros, there's also some cons to it, there's positives, negatives to anything in life and let's go over some of the things that I can think of for pros and cons to winter ice fishing camping. Two of my favorite things about it is I save time by just staying on the lake. I'm already on the lake, went on there, went on camping and there's nothing better than waking up, setting your traps, coming back into camp or waking up and just going from the lake to whatever part of the lake you're gonna be fishing. A lot of times when I started this, I was driving like an hour to an hour and a half to the lakes that I wanted to fish and I might do it two or three days in a row and it just didn't make sense wasting an hour and a half to get there, an hour and a half to get home three hours a day, you're totally pooped after ice fishing hard all day. You gotta get up an hour and a half earlier in the morning than you would if you were camping right on the ice just for that drive and you're spending the gas, you're putting wear and tear on your vehicle. A lot of time you're taking chances, I almost had a really bad accident last year. I wiped out the trailer from the snowmobile camera and I'll smack the side of the truck on black ice that I just couldn't see when I was traveling to an ice fishing lake that I would not have had if I was already staying on that lake overnight. Those are like my favorite positives about winter camping right there. Those are a couple of them. Now if you're traveling to do these trips or going to these big lakes or going long distances too, you're gonna need somewhere to stay. So that's why I love being on my own, setting up my own place to stay rather than paying for a hotel or paying for a motel or something like that. Now I know it's a lot more comfortable at a hotel or motel, but being on the ice is just so much better to me and it's a lot, you save a ton of money. I know there's an initial investment to buy a tent. You're three to $500 in depending which one you get. You got a cot, sleeping bag, you cook stuff. So there's a decent amount of money right here right now with the heater and everything else, but you figure that's what, three, four nights in a hotel, maybe as many as six and then you own the stuff. So that's another reason why I really like to do it. I'm also big time into challenges. I love challenges in life, whether I don't care what it is. I just love a challenge. I love testing myself, seeing what I'm made of, going against the elements, making, going against hard stuff and then seeing how I come out, trying to prevail with a well-balanced mind and make it through any obstacle that I can. The other things are, it's fun. It's peaceful really when you're out on these lakes is super quiet. You're already at the fishing spot. So if you have areas that get a lot of pressure and you wanna get there first, by all means set up a tent, go camp and you wake up, you're there way before anybody else can be there and you're on the spot. I do the opposite a lot. I go to these super wilderness spots or really far away spots where there's no people, which I do enjoy. I spend a ton of the year with people and I love people, but sometimes I just love being alone and isolated in different spots to kind of see what I'm made of too. And the last couple of things are, you make a lot of memories when you're doing this. I remember the trips a lot better when I stayed on the ice than when I went for a couple of days and traveled back and forth or stayed at a hotel. And if you wanna try to figure out a lake, there's nothing better than living on that lake for a week and trying this cove and trying that cove and trying over there or deeper, shallower. It just seems like it's so much easier if you already have your stuff here than if you're driving to different areas of the lake each day with a vehicle. Some of the negatives to this are the cold, the elements, the weather. Like those are things that you do have to plan for. You have to try to watch the weather as much as you can so you don't get yourself into a bad situation. There is a lot of gear, so you have to have a way to get it out there whether you're pulling it by hand behind you or the sled or you're bringing a snowmobile. So you're bringing more gear than just a regular fishing trip. So that's something that you have to think of with the cot, the sleeping bag, the table, the cooking stuff. So whether you bring those things or not on a regular fishing trip, you're gonna need more gear when you do a winter trip. So that could be viewed as a negative. A couple other negatives are it kinda locks you into a spot on a lake if you can't travel that much cause you have your gear there. In Maine, I have no worries. The sportsmen are all amazing. I could leave this thing set up for a month and not worry about losing any of my gear. But if I wanna fish six or seven miles away, I don't really pick up the tent or move it. So that's kind of a little negative thing is just leaving your stuff behind. It locks you into an area. But to me, all of those cons or negatives are way overshadowed by the positives. I love doing this as you can see and I love the challenge of it and it just makes it so much more fun to do that. Bring a buddy, go alone, do whatever you can, get out there and do it. Other than the normal items that you see here that you can buy in a store like the tents, the cook stove, the heater, the cot. The number one thing that has made this so much more comfortable for me is the floor. A friend of mine built this for me and it's awesome. This is one inch pine boards with one inch strakes underneath it. It's four pieces so I can get it in and out of my truck basically and to the lake easier. And what it does is it keeps things dry in here. Once you get it dry, it stays dry. You have a nice floor to walk on. You can walk around your socks if you want to, if you haven't dragged much for snow in. It really keeps the temperature up because basically you're sleeping on a large ice cube when you're sleeping on the lake. So having a nice dry hard floor has made my trip so much easier and so much more comfortable. They make rubber mats that lock together like puzzle pieces now. Those are awesome too from what I hear but for me, I like the hard floor. It's a little bit of a challenge getting the hard floor in and out. It's a little bit heavier than if you didn't have it but it's well worth it to me to take a second trip, bring it in, put it together and then it extends my stay and makes things so much nicer and more comfortable. Another thing I bring that's in the tote is a carbon monoxide detector. These buddy heaters don't put out carbon monoxide apparently and they have low oxygen shutoffs. They have tip over shutoffs. They have sensors. I run my carbon monoxide detector right next to my head just in case like the one pounder leaks that's hooked up to my cook stove. I don't take that off every night. Once I get it tight, I leave it or just in case for some reason the big buddy heaters put that out. So that's a good safety precaution. They're under $40 at the Home Depot. Always bring a carbon monoxide detector with you if you're gonna have propane and even probably with a wood stove too. This is not a minimalist camping trip. I take a lot of flak in the comments that hey, why do you bring too much stuff or you bring too much stuff or what do you think can bring in that much stuff? Not a minimalist trip. These are tough conditions. You're talking 20 below zero. You're talking slush snow, wind and no breaks at all with the weather. I don't wanna put myself in a situation that makes it even harder than it already is. So don't make it a minimalist trip. Bring the stuff that's gonna make you comfortable. It's gonna make it a fun trip for you. You know your comfort level better than anyone else. I have a super, super, I guess low comfort level or high comfort level. I don't know which way you wanna put it. The cold doesn't really bother me too much. I'm super lucky that way. I don't mind being wet that much. Wind bothers me a lot, slush bothers me. But for the most part, I know where I'm gonna be comfortable and what's gonna make me comfortable. Know that for yourselves, bring the gear. Don't worry about bringing too much gear. Even if it's in the truck, you could always go get it out of the truck. I always bring an extra propane canister. I always bring extra gasoline. I always have extra blankets, extra clothing, all that stuff in the truck in case I need it or I even bring it in the tent with me. Don't make it a minimalist trip. Make it a comfortable trip. I bring a first aid kit. It's got burn cream. It's got stuff for cuts. It's got neo-sporin. It's got stitches even if I have to go as far as stitches and it's got bandages. So prepare for that. Always prepare for the worst. Expect the worst. Hope for the best. Bring a first aid kit if you can. A couple things to consider also with comfort is bring some food. Bring some good food. I know it's a fishing trip and you're planning on catching a lot of fish. But bring things that make you happy. Bring some stews, some soups, some deer meat if you had a good deer season or moose meat or bear meat or turkey or partridge or whatever you were able to harvest from the land and bring good comfort food. Bring like a chicken noodle soup or tomato soup or something like that. Grilled cheese. I don't care what it is. But bring something that's gonna make you comfortable for food too. To me, comfort, food, being warm enough. Those are a couple things that are really comfortable and make for a good trip. Get yourself a good bed that's comfortable to sleep on. Something that is light enough, small enough to travel with, but strong enough so you're gonna be comfortable and have a good night's sleep. Don't cheap it out on your heat source. Get like a big buddy heater or a wood stove if you're gonna go that way. I'm gonna probably try that next year a little bit. I haven't decided yet. I have no problems at all with a buddy heater. So no sense messing with that. You know, a good two burner stove. Get yourself a good tent that's big enough. This is the 450I outbreak from Eskimo. Big enough for two people in my opinion. You can go bigger, but I don't think I'd go smaller for two people. And honestly for one, I wouldn't go smaller than one as you can see with my comfort level. I'm a big guy, but to have a chair, table, all the gear, all my ice fishing gear, all my camera gear, this is a good size tent for me. So make sure you're comfortable. Spend the money on the good stuff that lasts this quality and you won't have to buy it every year, every couple of years. I bring extra tie downs for every corner of this building. I've had to tie it down before. Two tie downs on one side. The wind was so hard. There's nothing worse than a wall blowing in and all your stuff flipping over, flipping over on top of your heat source or spilling water or spilling coffee or something like that. Bring extra tie downs, bring extra straps, bring those ropes, those paracords, whatever it takes. One thing I found at least in Maine and especially around the mountains that I fish around is they make their own weather. So when the weatherman says it's gonna be 10 below, expect 20 below. When he says it's gonna be blowing 15 miles an hour, expect 30. But one thing that has helped me on a lot of these trips is I always watch the wind on these big lakes and I'll set up where I'm gonna fish according to where I expect the wind or where I anticipate the wind for the next couple of days. Northwest wind, I'm worried. So I'm setting up to try to block that Northwest wind. East wind, same deal. I'm gonna set up on the East side to try to block that East wind. Watch the weather, pay attention to the weather. It could make or break your trip. Another thing I do on these longer trips is I'll leave a note in my vehicle, especially if I'm parked in an isolated spot or even at a public boat launch. I'll leave a note on my dashboard or tape to my window where they're still gonna be able to read it if we get a bunch of snow. The windshield, they won't be able to read on the dashboard. So I'll tape it to the side window and it'll say what area of the lake I'm on. It'll say what day I'm anticipating coming back. It'll say who I am or even leave a phone number or a phone number where they can reach somebody else if there's a problem. Just in case somebody hits your truck or law enforcement sees your vehicle there and gets a call, hey, this guy's truck's been there three or four days and it's 20 below zero. Nobody's gonna be out there in that. And people are smart, they worry about you. So even if they're strangers, so it's a good idea to leave a note on your truck if you're gonna leave your truck for two or three days in the same spot or a week like I do. Plan your meals out. If you plan on staying for six days, who knows, you might have a breakdown, you might need to stay for eight days. So plan for extra meals, bring extra food, canned food, I've had some of these cans on like six or seven trips that I haven't opened yet. So bring those. I switched over to a lot of the pull-top cans for soups. So one thing I probably own like six can openers because I forget them a lot on these trips and then I gotta buy one at a store near where my destination is. So I switched over to a lot of pull-top cans. So bring a can opener if you're gonna bring cans that need can opening. Don't try to just do it with a pocket knife and get hurt. Have an adequate lighting around, plenty of lighting. You know, I bring a couple headlamps too to have for reading. The fan pushing the heat down is really helpful too. Bring extra batteries for any of the stuff that you need. I have triple A, double A for my headlamps, for the other lights, for anything that might need batteries. I usually bring a handful extra batteries. I bring an indoor outdoor thermometer. It's nice to know how cold it is outside and it's nice to know how warm it is inside or cold it is inside. So I just bring a little digital one that's got like its own wifi or Bluetooth, whatever it is, where they talk to each other. And I set the one outside like 10 feet away from the tent. So that's kind of a cool thing to have that you may or may not think of. Plastic totes and plastic tubs, we all know that. They keep everything organized. So that's another good thing to have. You know, get the right size ones and you could fit a whole pile of them inside and you keep everything organized and that way you know where stuff is like my cooking stuff and spices are in one. So I always know where those are utensils, same thing, food in another, clothing in another. Don't forget your toiletries, your toothbrush, something for wipes. I usually bring baby wipes which are really handy. They work in a pinch for a shower. If you're gonna be out there and you're sweating or you're not sweating or whatever, the baby wipes work really well to clean yourself up, clean your face, everything else when you can't get to a shower. Bring a couple extra trash bags. I use one for clothing and I use another one for obviously for trash and they're helpful. You don't think you're gonna make much trash but man, you always have waste. So I tie one bag up to the leg of the table to put the trash in and then I throw the bag at the end of my bed down by my feet for clothing, dirty clothing. Bring a couple extra things of paper towels if you're gonna do it. Those are nice to have for just cleaning up, use them for the bathroom, use them for whatever you're gonna need but it's always nice to have a couple rolls of paper towels. They pack easy, they're light. I bring sandwich bags, gallon bags too in case I need to store something in to keep it dry. Don't forget utensils. Been a long time since we had to eat with just our hands but it's nice to have utensils. I bring metal ones from home and they clean easy and it's nice eating off a metal one rather than a plastic one. Don't forget your lighters for your camp stove or for if you need it for your heater stove. It's nice to have a couple backup lighters too. These are just a few things that I've learned that you can forget so I'm gonna help you guys out and one thing I do is I make a list and I've actually got a master list now that I just highlight whether I've packed it or not. Make the list, think things through, think of what you're gonna need. My dad has always said one thing that has just resonated with me, it's stuck in my head forever is it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it and that is the truth because you get in the woods, you get on the lake, you don't wanna ruin a trip by having to go home and get something or go to the store to get something and it's so much better just to pack it, have it, never even use it than to need it and not have it. Water on these trips, I usually pack three or four gallons of water, there's enough snow now where I can just melt down the snow. Sometimes it's hard to keep the water from getting frozen but you're gonna go through some water. I go through water with cooking, drinking, coffee and then cleaning up pots and pans every day. You could bring a big water tub that in a metal one that you can set right next to the heater, I just have the little plastic ones, they pack pretty easy. I hope if you're gonna try winter camping and winter ice fishing and combine them that you have an absolute blast like I do, try to stay safe, think of all the stuff that might happen first, try to think ahead that way if you're gonna get in trouble at least you're prepared for it. You guys see me on a lot of these trips that I've taken, if you've seen them or not, you can go back there and watch a lot of the videos. I make a ton of mistakes, I put myself in a lot of tough situations mostly with slosh, mostly with weather but a lot of people don't know that for quite a few years I'd spend three months at a time in the woods completely alone, sometimes not seeing a person for a month. I've been in those bad situations before so if you haven't been in those bad situations, try to really plan for them, anticipate them and then the other thing that a lot of people don't understand is the first trip I took was at a lake right next to my house and I took all my gear out, I wasn't even gonna fish and I just set it up there in case things didn't go well or in case things didn't go well that first night, I had an out plan, I had a B plan and it wasn't one of these solo wilderness trips way up in the woods, 15 miles into the woods, 100 miles from a town that I'm taking now so I would highly recommend your first trip either be on a very close local lake or it be in your backyard or your driveway and spend the night in your tent at home with the comforts 50 feet away in case it doesn't go well or in case you forget something or in case, just to get a feel for it. They always say practice in sports and practice makes perfect or permanent. Well, do the same on a trip like this. Take a trip if you have any fear or worries or if you're inexperienced, take a trip in your backyard the first night and spend the first night in your backyard. You'll still have fun doing it, I promise you that but the nice part is it'll take away a lot of your fears from the trip. We in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we talking about practice. Not a game, not a game, not a game. We talking about practice. In my opinion, there's not a whole lot to fear if you plan for it. So go out there guys, have fun, have a blast. Let me know where you go in the comments. Let me know how much you guys have done this yourself and let's share some tips in the comments. If you're already doing this and there's items that make your trip way more comfortable, put them in there. You know, if there's things that you do that make it way more comfortable or if there's other safety precautions that I'm overlooking, which I overlook sometimes, put those in the comments too. Let's make this about making everybody else's trip and winter camping trip an absolute blast so that everybody has fun doing it themselves. All right, here's a little tip. If you've got the 450I or any of the new ones that have the full size opening door, not the triangle door, but the ones that open through the bottom like this to make a really nice tight fit. I like to close it, zip it up tight first. And then do the door first. And then after that, everything goes together really nicely. Bring in the bigger items first. This is my cot, it's a man size cot. I'm gonna throw a link to this in the description section because I get asked a lot about what size cot I'm using, what cot I'm using, because I'm a big boy as you can see and this thing is rugged, it is plenty big enough for me and it actually fits in this tent really well too. I like to bring the bigger things in first to set them up and it makes it a lot easier when you bring in the smaller things. If you did it the other way, it might make things a little bit more difficult and things would get in the way. Not super easy to set up as you can see, it just opens up like an accordion and it's pretty good size. It fits in here really nice. There's plenty of room, there's extra room for if you're longer, if you're taller than six foot like I am. As you can see, you could fit as plenty of head room, plenty of extra foot room too. And I usually keep it off the walls in case of any condensation and then slide it back and leaves enough head room up here to put a tote with your stuff that you might need in the middle of the night or anything like that. Usually I tuck the tools and stuff that I'm not gonna be using under the bed for the trip and the bag for the tent, stuff like that. So let's get that bed set up. Next is my mattress pad. This one's a gel foam. I feel like it holds a little bit of the heat in which helps a lot. But there it is. I throw it in a garbage bag for storage. If I had a bigger garbage bag, that would be better. So garbage bags are really good to keep stuff dry, guys. Keep that in mind. Just roll it right out, flip her over, good to go. So I do also own an air mattress sleeping pad too that I just haven't even opened up yet because I really like this gel one. The thing about the air mattress ones is, yes, they're lighter, they pack easier if you're in on like a minimalist trip. But the thing about them is they do go flat sometimes and for some reason in the cold weather, I don't know if the air's dense or what, they seem to go flat quicker. So the gel one never goes flat and the foam one never goes flat. So that's why I switched over to that one. I haven't even been using the other one yet. Next is a sleeping bag. This should also have a garbage bag to fit in it. This one's got a nice outer case. So just that little bit of snout shouldn't bother too much. All right, there's that sock. I was wondering where that sock went. Oh, short one in the laundry this week. So this sleeping bag is absolutely awesome to me, guys. This is one item that you don't want to cheap out on. I know everybody's on a budget, I am myself, but certain things you don't want to cheap out on, certain things you definitely want to spend and you get what you pay for. I know there are a lot of newer sleeping bags that are lighter, go down to 40 below or whatever. This one, a friend of mine's parents got me this because we were doing a lot of camping in high school. So I've had this for a long, long time just to tell you how old I am. This one came from Cabela's. It's a cloth sleeping bag, but it's super heavy and pretty thick and it keeps me really warm. Once I get my body heat going in there, I stay really warm. Very, very important to have a nice sleeping bag. Next, I like to bring a couple extra blankets. These ones right here are wool blankets. That's your army wool blanket. And what I'll do is I'll throw those over like my feet and work my way up with them. Just having that little extra weight there and a little bit heavy weight adds a lot for the insulation. And then I also bring a fleece blanket too that is super soft and it's actually warm. And this thing, I actually just take this and throw it in by my feet inside the sleeping bag. And it seems to hold a lot of warmth for my feet if I'm sleeping with just socks or with bare feet. And it takes up a lot of that space and keeps the heat in. So I throw that in the bottom of my sleeping bag. That's a little trick that has worked for me. All right, on these solo trips, I bring a table. There's plenty of room for at least two cots in here. If you wanna do a two person in the Eskimo Outbreak 450i, definitely plenty of room as you can see. I like to bring a table. And man, the table is just such, it just makes it so much nicer to have a good workspace. There's my table set up. This thing is made by Costco, COSCO. I got it at the Lowe's for, I think it was like $39. It's like one of the best $39 bills I've ever spent because I use it a ton. Whether it's inside or outside next to the shack, it's really nice to have a table when you're ice fishing, trust me. Once you start, you're not gonna ever wanna go without it. Even if it's just for a day trip. Super, super important to have a chair for your comfort for the trip, whether it be for a day or for a month. This is my chair right here. This one I got is the, that is the Trophy Angler. What it is is it has a metal frame which I like, it folds up really nice. It's not too heavy, but it's rugged for a guy my size or for bouncing around in the ice shack. I've used some of those ones from the Wally World that are plastic and they fold out and they're lightweight and they're like stadium seats or whatever they call them. But I've broken so many of those that it's just not worth buying them anymore. So get yourself a good chair, whether it's a fold up like this one or even a standard non-fold up chair. If you could fit it and get it in, it's really worth it to have a nice comfortable chair. All right, now that we have the table set up, let's bring in the cook stove. All right, there it is. That's your standard Coleman. These things do not work without the connector, the propane connector. So as you could see, there's mine right there. I always just tuck it right in underneath the grill when you're done. All I've been using for these week long trips or eight day trips, that's all I've needed is two. I definitely go through one after four or five days and then the other one I leave with still a decent amount of propane in the second one. So I like to bring, I'll bring three or four of those because they're light and they pack easy and I know I'm only gonna use two. Now this is not a source of heat. This will throw out carbon monoxide. So make sure that you have your vent open. I usually keep my vent open when I'm cooking unless I know that I'm getting a lot of oxygen and air in here or if I'm just cooking something quickly. All right, next up is probably the most important thing of the trip other than the tent, the buddy heater. Gotta have a source of heat. Now some people have wood stoves in their shacks. I do not have a wood stove in mine yet. I see a lot of guys doing that. I think it's really cool. I'll probably go that route in the future but I have no problem at all with a buddy heater. This is the big buddy heater. It has served me extremely well, been extremely reliable for over a year now. Highly recommend it. I recommend going with the big buddy heater, not just the regular size buddy heater. This thing puts out 4,000, 9,000 and 18,000 BTUs per hour depending on what setting you have it on. Most of the time with my comfort level being pretty good, I keep it on low and if it's super cold I'll even leave it on at night on low. I've cranked it up to medium like when it's down below 20 degrees and it keeps this place really warm. And then on rare occasions or emergencies or when I need to dry something out or if I'm super cold, I crank it to high but I usually don't last very long on high cause it really rips but it's really nice having that if I need it. First thing you wanna do when you get one of these big buddy heaters is get the hose that comes with it. So that way you can hook it up to at least a 20 pound propane tank. Now I use the 20s just cause they're easier to handle, they're easy to pack. You can get 30s, 50s or 100s if you're gonna be on an extended trip. What I've been bringing is 320s and I've used as many as two before on a trip. Now another tip is I don't like to keep my propane here just cause if there's ever a leak or a fire or who knows what, I'll run that hose underneath the tent and outside to my propane cylinders. Let's get the propane cylinder and hook it up. I bring my propane cylinder in a milk crate. I could use the milk crate to set the heater on top of if I need to or set my boots on it or set my ice fishing traps to dry out or I could just leave the propane can in there. Not righty, tidy, lefty, loosey on these, it's actually the opposite for propane. So these are a left-hand thread. You thread them in left-handed. I bring a wrench with me just cause it's easy. When you buy one of these hoses, it has this thing too that little plastic pieces that can go over the, in most cases, it goes over. Kind of a pain, but it's better than doing it by hand, especially when it's super cold. Well, yeah, there we go. That's good and tight. You could tighten it up with a wrench if you think you need to. If you're gonna put this inside for any reason, definitely tighten it up with a wrench. Maybe even bring some soapy water in a bottle so you could spray it and check for leaks. It'll bubble up if there's a leak. What you do is you push down on the pilot on these, turn it, when you hit a certain spot, it's going to click and that's your igniter. There we go, just like that. Bob is your uncle. Once you let off on it, see if your pilot keeps. You can push it down and turn it to low, medium or high on the side there. All right, so we just went out. Sometimes that does that when you're first starting up, if you have air in your, if you have oxygen in your hose. There we go. All right, we are on medium right now. Gonna kind of thaw things out in here a little bit so we can shoot the rest of this video as I bring other stuff in. Now that we have our table set up and our stove in there, I'll bring in the cooking stuff. This is my cooking stuff right here. This is basically my kitchen over here. Consider that my bedroom. This is my kitchen, if that's how you wanna figure it out. But I always have a coffee thermos. I love coffee, especially when I'm ice fishing. I bring a percolator, seems to work really well on the ice. That stays on the burner. I'm mostly only using one burner, but it is nice having two if you're doing like soup and a sandwich or something like that. And then in this Tupperware or plastic container right here, I keep all of my cooking stuff. So in this, you'll find some oil, usually frozen, which is fine, it won't leak. Some cooking spray, ketchup, salt, pepper, garlic, some sugars if I ever need them, rubber bands, I don't know why those are in there. And then various utensils and a spatula. So that's my little cooking compartment right there. And then pretty much bringing the rest of the stuff. All right, so on these longer trips, a lot of times you'll see me with two totes. I bring these Walmart totes, they're like five bucks. They're pretty cheap. Sterilite. And then with the two, I usually have food in one. And then various other things that I need around the tent in the other to keep it a nice comfortable trip. So as you can see in this one, I've got my big pan. I like to bring a big pan. This is a fan and a light. This thing is pretty awesome. It's rechargeable. I've been super happy with it. A lot of times the heat will sit in up at the roof. And with this thing, I hang this from the ceiling and it has a light on it, which I don't use the light very much because I have other lights. I'd rather use the battery on the fan part. It is rechargeable, which is a little bit of a bummer. I don't mind the rechargeable stuff at home when I could plug in, but when I'm on the road like this, I do like the, just to be able to swap batteries, bring extra batteries, but it's pretty quiet and it pushes a lot of heat. As you can see, it moves a lot of air. Watch this. It has a hook on the bottom. Hook on the bottom that I hang from my rafter poles. So usually I'll put that over the heat source like this and just hook it on. And then you can move it wherever you want, wherever the heat's sitting. And then this turns to push the heat back down. So a lot of times the heat will be up in here where the difference between the heat from your head level to your feet can be as much as 30 or 40 degrees on these winter camping trips. So if you could push that heat down, it keeps things a lot warmer in here and you're burning less heat too. Other things that I have in this particular one is this is really an important thing and my mom's probably gonna cringe when she sees this, but I bring a pecan. I know it's not a pecan, this is actually a pecan. So I throw that by the bed and at night because I pee in the middle of the night at least once. I know a lot of you guys probably do too. And I know we're not really supposed to be talking about this type of stuff, but I would much rather pee in a can and dump it out in the morning with all my clothes on then you cannot afford to lose the heat that you generate and that you establish in your sleeping bag. So if you're gonna pee once or twice or three times in the night, bring a jug to pee in or a can to pee in and pour it out. Super, super important for me to have a comfortable trip. These are the lights that I use for right now. I know there's some other options. There's some other ones. These seem to be working really well. Let me pull a couple of these out. I got these in like a pack of three or four from the Walmart. These lights are pull lights. You basically just pull them like that and they go on and you push them and they shut off. This particular one also has another hook on it. So I hang that from the rafters as well. Just like that, pull it for light. And like one of these will suffice, but if you can get a couple and put them around, maybe have a couple near your cooking station, that helps too. And whereas I got like a three pack on the last ones I bought, it was nice having these little ones too. If you're doing an extended trip, like I do a lot of times, these things are actually pretty cool to have. So they're solar light. So I put them out in the day and just leave them out there wherever I'm gonna put them and they light up your walkway. If you are going out at night or if you're up early in the morning, if you're cusk fishing and you have traps set or tip up set at night, these things are really nice to put next to your trap so you can find them easy. And it's also a good thing for safety. If you're out in the middle of the lake or where snowmobiles or a truck might be running around, people might be drinking and snowmobiling. I know there's really good reflectors on the tent, but these things add a little bit more light that you don't have to ever worry about in their solar power. Those came in a pack from Walmart. They were six in a pack for $5. So it's well worth the $5. I bring extra twine, rope, string, all sorts of different rope. You never know when you need it. I've had to tie tarps over this because I've had some pretty bad rain storms and these tents are not good in the rain. That's why you see me with a tarp that I don't think I've used but maybe once on this trip but it's really worth having an extended trip. If you don't bring a tarp in at range, you're probably gonna be wet and your trip's gonna be over. So it's nice to have a tarp and something to tie it down with. And if you ever lose your straps, you could also tie it down. You never know what you're gonna need rope for. So it's always a good idea to grab one of these. These are like five bucks at your Home Depot, maybe not even five bucks. And that's quite a bit of that parachute cord. I also bring ropes and I bring smaller twine too. Another thing I threw in here that doesn't take much room, boot laces. I bring one set of boots that need laces. And you never know when you're gonna break a thing of laces, so those are good to have. And you could use them for various other things. Another cool thing, if you have a tent like mine with the little plastic rafters or S hooks, those things are awesome for hanging your lights, for hanging clothes, for hanging various things on. I also do bring clothes hangers and the clothes hangers work really good to hang your jackets up or other clothes and just get them out of the way. Over my feet area, they're never in the way. So that's a good spot to hang stuff is over your feet area. This cooking case that my buddy Scotty and his wife got me from GSI Outdoors is pretty awesome because you see how it packs. It packs pretty small, but it opens up into several different things. Basically all I need, I use a little bit bigger frying pan because I cook a lot of bigger stuff too, but the lid on this thing fits everything inside of it. Could also be used as a plate. Another lid that can be used as a plate. That's your handle for all the items for the pots and the pans. There is a plate in it. All right, so that's the fry pan. It's a non-stick and this thing will lock into it. Oops, I down. Yep, there you go. So that locks into it and there's a nice little non-sticker. Soup bowl right there. Another nice pot to cook soup in. I've cooked stew, soup, various things in that, melted a lot of snow in it. And then the bigger one too. This actually comes out of the sleeve and that's your big pot to cook in. So it's one, two, three, four, five, six pieces and they can all be utilized. And then my buddy just told me you could use the bag to carry water in. And if you need to do dishes or whatever, you can use that just to carry water in from the lake if you have an ice hole over there or if you're camping and it's not ice season and you're near the lake. So super, super handy. I bring this on every trip as well. And the nice part is all those pieces pack up into one little thing like that. Under the table you can fit two totes really nicely on the one that you're not opening up a lot. I usually set my cooking stuff and extra pots and pans on top of that. And then here's a couple other items that are super necessary at least here in Maine is a decent shovel. I bring a decent snow shovel. This thing has saved my butt countless times in deep snow with a snowmobile but it's also great for using it for fishing, for clearing out camp, for making a nice flat area around camp, for clearing out where I'm gonna put my tent, shoveling walkways, all sorts of things. You never understand how important a shovel is till you don't have one and you're digging by hand or with an item that's not a shovel. So I bring one of those, that's always staying handy with me in camp. I bring at least one axe with me. Normally to be honest with you, I have at least two but it's super, super important to have an axe. This one's like a two and a half pounder. It's full size, it's 28 inch and then I bring a smaller one. I bring the Grand Forest Brooks small forest axe, fits really nicely in my pack basket and that thing's great for working around the brush and stuff but if there's bigger stuff that needs to come down, I'm gonna want something that I can get a good two hand swing full swing on. So I bring a full size axe, a smaller axe, sometimes even a hatchet. All right, this is another item that I just started bringing that's just made things so much nicer around camp and it's something you overlook. If you're on a one or two day trip, don't bother bringing a broom but if you're on an extended trip where you're there seven or eight days and you're in and out so many times and you've got snow conditions or you're even near the dirt or whatever, it really is handy to have a broom, especially if you have a hard floor. So that way you're knocking the water out and you're not creating condensation and creating a lot of wet situations inside. So as you could see, just from me tracking all the snow and it's starting to get wet and then I could just take my handy broom and sweep out the puddles of wet, sweep out the ice and then sweep out the snow and it really makes it nicer at camp because if you don't bring one, this whole door area right there will be just a big block of ice by the end of the week unless you're cranking the heat in here, which I don't crank and it takes up such little room, it's really handy to have a broom. So there's a tip that you might overlook. Spool or rope, you never know when you're gonna need it to either tow somebody out or get towed out. I've been super fortunate and got towed out myself before because I had some rope. Thanks for tuning in guys. Don't be afraid to go back through some of my old videos. I've done a couple in the Allagash. I've done a couple on Moose Head Lake and I've done quite a few of these winter camping trips and I usually set them up day by day and it shows the trials and tribulations of these trips. You know, it's feast or famine sometimes and to me they're a lot of fun. So hope you guys enjoy it. I hope this gives you the confidence to try it yourself and I hope I shorten the learning curve and kind of flatten it out for you so it's a lot easier yourself. Make a list, check it twice, go out there and have fun and let me know how it goes. Thanks again guys for tuning in. Really appreciate a sub on the channel that you guys do. Every time somebody subscribes to me I get a notification. Absolutely honored when you guys sub to the channel or hit that like button or hit a comment. It really helps.