 If you're new to the channel, welcome, Joe Holland here. I have winter ice camping, solo winter ice camping as you can see for the first time this year. I'm super excited. Me too. Yeah, double. There's my first crappy of the year. Oh, okay man, Licky wanted to eat. Not a bad one. We'll probably let him go. Oh, you got him now. Now we got some decent. What are you two? There's some that are like three foot under the surface. There's other brookies in here. Huh? Yeah. Looks like a school of brook trout. Holy, that's got to be a crappy right below me. A nice one. Looks decent. I'm in forward view. It's a little harder to tell what they are. It might be big sunfish. That'd be cool. Yeah. They're round. Let me tell you in a second. That feels like a good trappy. Yeah. It's coming up like a log though. Oh, that's... That is a giant. Yes. Oh, yes. That is a giant. Yes. All right. We are on the board, folks. We are into the big trappy. Took a little while to find them, but CJ and I always work hard and look at that beast right there. We're over 14, I'd have to say, right? This is my first good one of the year, so I can't tell. Oh, he touches. He's 15 and a quarter. Yeah. All right, I'm going to enter my first fish ever on the donkey app. There we go. We're going to slide him back. Take a video of him going back. Guys, just landed an absolute staving giant trappy GoPro's freezing up. It's cold out here. 16 and... 16 and a quarter. A quarter. 16 and a quarter. We're going to get it entered. And then we're going to get him back. What a tough fish to catch. Yeah. We literally... Oh, I'm going to give a recap. Guys, the GoPro froze up. I hate GoPro's for this reason, but I'm out here with CJ. Just caught a 16 and a quarter inch trappy. Thing was like this big around. You saw it. I'm hoping you guys saw it. I'm hoping the footage comes out. But let me show you what we're doing. We literally... He spotted the fish from 150 away. Whatever you paced. No, it was 75 yards, 75 feet. He paced. So he paced it out. We already had a hole here. We put it down. Couldn't get it to go eight feet over to us. So we redrilled at 12 feet and it had moved two feet. It wouldn't come two feet. So I drilled right over and he drove right over. I dropped down and it's just chewing on photo plankton or the plankton and it's not moving at all. I gave it a yank and got him to turn. And when he turned, he just slowly just sat right in it and he was on it for the longest time before he jumped and monster fish, great fight. I really wish you guys could have seen it, but hopefully you get to see the picture. Or the hold up at the end. But CJ, what a fish. This is why I love fishing with this guy. He's just an animal like I am. We're going to catch him. You know, and if not, we're going to try our best to get him even if we have to drill a hole four feet away from another hole we already had. That was awesome. I'm in a fish donkey tournament. I've never done one. I saw my buddy Sean Ricegrave was leading it. I said, I can't let him pull this from Minnesota. So I've been out for about an hour and a half now. I got two fish for 31, 30 and three quarters inches for two fish. And the leader right now, somebody just overtook Sean at 42 and a half. All right, we got some dinner just about ready, guys. If you're new to the channel, welcome. I am out winter ice camping, solo winter ice camping, as you can see, for the first time this year. I'm super excited. I got about six, seven inches of ice under me, plenty of ice to get all the gear out here and get set up. Pretty cold temperatures. We're looking in the teens right now. Inside is a brisk, just warmed up to 35. Got a new heater I'm running. I'll show you guys that later and let you know how it's doing. It's new to me, so I'm kind of easing my way in. But it looks like we're doing an old staple for dinner tonight. We got a grilled cheese on rye and what goes better with grilled cheese than tomato soups. So I got some tomato soup heating up in the saucepan. In the regular pan, I got a grilled cheese going there. It's just about done. I'll shut that off. And the tomato soup will let heat a little bit more. Probably have a nice hot cup of tea with it tonight. But super, super excited to be on this trip. Not only am I winter ice camping, but I'm also going to be fishing with a good buddy of mine, CJ, from Burnt Meadow Guide Service. He and I are after big crappy this week. I was able to come out and get set up. He gave me a hand and set everything up earlier in the day. And we were able to get out for two hours of crappy fishing. And I top sided a 15 inch or first thing. And then I followed it up with one of the biggest ones I've ever caught at 16 and a quarter. And just a mega, mega big crappy. Didn't get great footage of that one, but you should be able to see it. So I'm pretty, pretty excited about that. Tomorrow we're going to jump around, hit some different ponds. We're still searching for good ice or decent ice everywhere. And we're on the hunt for big pan fish this week. We're looking for big crappy, big yellow perch. We're looking to get some pumpkin seeds, not a big species in the state of Maine, not targeted very much either, because there's just not a ton of them. But that's what we're after. This thing's beeping or dingin' at me. I guess it's heatin' up. Got a new stove this year. I had a Coleman that was like supposed to be an upgrade, but the knobs were always junk. And the thing couldn't take a beating. Then I give these things a beating. So I went back to the old reliable. If you saw my video on the gear I'm using this year, then you were able to see that. But if not, this is just the old two burner Coleman stove. I can't beat it. You cannot beat it. But that's the story. So I'm going to enjoy this dinner. And finish unpacking. I'll walk you guys through the rest of the place after dinner. And gonna try to hit the hay, because I know we're gonna really early morning tomorrow. But there we go. But really appreciate all the support for the channel, guys. I appreciate you clicking on this video. I know there's a lot of videos to choose from nowadays. And a lot of people are doing this ice camping thing. It's kind of new to a lot of guys. For me, I just love doing it. I've been doing it for years and years. And it's one of my absolute favorite things to do while I'm fishing is just stay out the whole time and just unzip your zipper and go fishing in the morning right where you are. Don't worry about going jumping in the truck or doing a commute or anything like that. I don't know what's digging. I've never heard this thing ding before. Maybe it's the metal. I bet you these things are heating up and digging. But I've never heard it do that. It's pretty interesting. So yeah, we're looking at it just dropped to 14 degrees. I think it's going to be pretty cold tonight. It'll be single digits tonight. They're calling for about seven degrees. And then the rest of the week, I got probably four or five super, super cold days where they're calling for like negative one to positive three degrees at night. And then when you're sleeping down the ice in a hole where I am, and this place is always colder than what the weatherman says, you got to take about 10 more degrees off. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see 10 below zero this week at night. Be really cold mornings, cold nights. And in the day we're looking at roughly 20 degrees every day is what they're calling for. Not a lot of wind, which is nice. But if we can get out of the teens in the day, that's always nice with a little bit of sunlight. So before this cools off too much, I'm going to dig in. Thanks guys once again for tuning in. I hope you enjoy this trip. Okay guys, as promised, I'll give you the quick walkthrough of the 850XD by Eskimo. This is my favorite tent for camping. This one's really big. So, you know, when you're alone, you really don't need one this big, but it's got all sorts of room. So here's the kitchen area. You saw this one I was cooking before. Got the Coleman two burner, just standard green Coleman. Bunch of pots, pans, just the stuff I need. I keep in this tote right here. I keep all my kitchen stuff in there, food, utensils, plates, bowls. Over there is the coldest spot in here. So I just threw like the freezing, the frozen stuff in there. And as you could see, you could run hangers on these. You know, I don't put a lot of weight on these, on these poles that come with the tent, but you can hang some stuff there. So I got a pair of pants, jacket, and some bibs hanging there. And then over here's my bed. This is an extra-large cot because I'm an extra-large person. I got a foam pad on there that's, I think, Teton. I'll throw a link in the description for you guys on a lot of this stuff. This is my favorite sleep bag, that green one there from Cabela's. It's well over 20 years old now. And then the one I'm going to try out tonight is this browning that I picked up last year from my buddy David. Came up and had never done this before and doesn't have like a good cold tolerance. So that one's like a mummy bag. Supposed to be like 30 below. So we're looking at seven degrees right now. So it'll be a cold one tonight. Little Power Box Bogue or Booz RV makes that one. And that runs my lights. That LED light strip that lights this place up. And then this is the new heat system I'm running this year. It's a double burner, vented, as you could see, propane burner. So I don't know. This is the first night I'm running it. It's a little smoky in here. One thing I do have, first thing, this is right by my head at night is a carbon monoxide detector. So I got that thing. I just tested it and it's good to go. Just in case there's any leaks or the flame goes off or whatever. I don't know. But just to be safe. But there was a little smoke in here. I think it's because it's the first time I ran it. So it's burning off some of the paint and oil and newness. And I got, I got most of that smoke out of here. But yeah, then in here I got a bag of clothing. Got a P-jug. So you don't have to go out at night and got some electronics and stuff in that bag. And then over here, just a tote full of various odds and ends. They got the water and cooking oil and boots, stuff like that that I don't want to freeze tonight. Next to the heater. And then this is the stuff I'm taking fishing tomorrow. So if you guys want to see that, I'll, I'm getting up bright and early tomorrow, a little bit before 5 a.m. to cook up a nice breakfast and be ready for a big day. And then I got to take my snowmobile all the way over and meet my buddy. So we can go fishing for a big crappie tomorrow. Maybe we'll keep a few and eat them. But that's what it looks like. It's 41 in here, 8 degrees outside. As you can see, I'm expecting it to drop probably, I got a feeling we'll be below zero tonight. It's dropping fast right now. I'm going to finish up my tea and crawl into bed and do a little bit of reading. I think I brought one book by one of my favorite main authors, Tommy Carbone. And yeah, I know I brought one and then another book of series from one of my favorite authors from Furfish and Game, Maurice Decker. So I'll be reading some books tonight and then hitting the hay and getting after tomorrow. So thanks again guys for tuning in. Hope you're enjoying this. If you have any questions, just leave them in the comment section. I get back to everybody with questions and answers.