 Good morning! It is day 11 on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. First real solo day actually. There's no one up here I know. Not many people up on the waterway in general at all anyway. Wouldn't be surprised if I don't see anybody today. Last night it got down to about 13 degrees and it's 5.20 a.m. right now and it's warmed up to 23. I think I'm gonna go fish for some toge with the electronics out over the flaps. It's a little bit different lake trout fishing than you see online where you see on other YouTube shows where they're fishing deep breaks or deep lake trout and even different from some of my other videos. These are smelt chasers. If you live in Maine and you know about the Landlock salmon you know that you set for salmon just under the ice because the smelt are usually running pretty high. And the salmon chase them really high so if you're fishing 100 foot of water you're really only fishing 5 foot down over that 100 foot of water. One thing I noticed in the very little bit of jigging that I've done here on the waterway since I've gotten here is every tog that I've seen has been no deeper than 8 to 10 foot. And a lot of them have been in that 5 foot range and you pick them up from the live scope just for a blip as they're flying through. They're not sitting still, they're not hanging around. They're just up over these flats just cruising in that 5 to 8 to 10 foot of water. So I'm going to set up the live scope. I think I might set up the camera too and see if I can get on some. It'll be super exciting because there'll be nothing going on, nothing going on, nothing going on because you're not sitting on fish that are stationary. And then all of a sudden they're going to come flying in. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes in little schools of 5 or 6, sometimes solo. And they all seem to be pretty decent. So I'll bring out the Eskimo Escape 2800 which will be nice in the wind and snow today to be sheltered and it'll be better for videoing that I will set up and do some jigging. So stay tuned if you want to see that. Before that, I'm going to drive some breakfast into me. I got some potatoes, onions, green peppers and sausage in the pan right now. Throw a couple eggs in there, drive that into me with a cup of coffee, fill up the thermos. Go get the gear ready for today and head on out. Stay tuned. Got the whole place to ourselves. Let's get it ready. Absolutely love that machine. Here we go. Alright, there she is. That's the Escape 2800. It's the biggest one that Eskimo makes. Pretty giant in here. You could definitely get a cot set up and sleep in here if you go this way. I like all the extra room this way. So I'm going to shovel her out and drill a couple holes and get set up. Live scope right here. Nice lake whitefish. Went down to the Microtuncle. Got him on the lift. Decent whitefish. Might be a keeper. Yep, that's probably a keeper right there. Another decent whitey. I bet that one's long enough, but we'll throw him back. Get a bigger one. There, fun to catch. Way off the side. Ooh, nice a smelt. Alright. Nice little smelt right there. Was not expecting him. Okay, it's about midday. Haven't seen a person, pretty awesome. Lake trout really weren't cooperating yet. So I'm going to switch gears and come back to the shack and get some lunch. Do some reading, but first I'm going to set some brookie traps with the flags so I could have some, a chance of catching a brookie while I am doing some reading and eating. Let's go. It is after dark. Not going to cusk fish tonight. It is getting nasty out there. She's blowing straight sideways. Had out of the Northwest. But this camp for that Northwest wind, there wasn't too much in the forecast. A South wind usually blows a little bit warmer weather. So I don't ever worry too much about a South wind unless it's going to be super rugged. And the East wind kind of is neutral. So primarily in the winter we see a North Northwest wind. So I'm tucked in behind this corner here. I got like 50 to 100 yards out away from this corner and she's ripping. She's ripping had. So we're kind of sheltered pretty good right here. Set in the traps late in the day like that. Geez, I had like eight flags but no fish to show for it. So had one break off in the rocks. But guessing mostly mountain trout, I don't know. But still worth it. Still worth setting. I had a really fun afternoon sitting here reading a book next to the buddy heater. The buddy heater seems to be working pretty good right now. Yeah, gonna finish reading that book. Getting some really good parts and then make some dinner and call her a night. Alright, just finished reading this novel. It's called I Am Penobscot by Tommy Carbone. Really enjoyed it. It's a beta copy. I was one of the early readers helping a little bit on some of the edits. And it's a beast. It's pretty good size. It's 300 and what is it, 350 pages? Yeah, 350 pages. It was a novel about David Libby and a lot of his exploits as a Penobscot river man and log driver and civil war soldier and pretty much adventurer. So it was really cool book. I really got into it. It was sometimes hard to remember to look for anything that needed editing because I was getting wrapped up in the story pretty well. So definitely worth checking out. Definitely worth checking out when it comes out. And a few others from Tommy too, you know, based in Maine, about Maine stuff and even about this area where I'm staying right now. But other than that, pretty slack day. Didn't see another human all day, which was pretty awesome. Weather starting to get a little bit more like Maine. You know, it's blowing out there, getting colder. Didn't catch many fish today. I didn't go crazy hard at it. Had a nice camp day. Thinking about possibly tearing down tomorrow and heading south to get this all edited for you guys or thinking about maybe going for a good snowmobile ride too and doing some exploring up here. So we'll kind of see one or the other. I'll make a decision, I guess, in the morning. But tonight I'm going to cook up some dinner tonight. I'm thinking maybe like a ham steak, some baked beans and some good old fashioned brown bread out of a can. If you guys never heard of that, stay tuned. Maple and cured bacon. That's Bush's best. Beans are pretty good on a camping trip. They seem to fill you up pretty good and, you know, warm you up, warm up your belly and then a couple hours later they even warm up your sleeping bag. Now for the brown bread. This is like a dessert almost. Donny and I kind of look at it like a dessert. I don't know if it makes it outside of Maine. Let me know in the comments if you guys have ever heard of brown bread in a can or if you've ever had it. Either in Maine or outside of Maine. But that's what it is. B&M Beans makes it. It's a New England tradition. It's the original brown bread. But I like to, both Donny and I like to just throw some butter on it and throw it in the pan and kind of fry it up with butter and make it a little bit crispy and taste awesome. It's like a thick molasses bread to be able to push it right through. There you go. There's a loaf of brown bread right there. We usually cut that into about inch, one inch wide pieces. Throw a slab of butter on it and throw it in the pan. And you could eat it with your meal. You could eat it as a dessert. We've done that before. Or you could eat it for breakfast even. I probably only need a couple pieces but I'll cook a few. I'll cook whatever fits in the pan. Looks like three will fit in the pan pretty good. Super easy dinner. Pad of butter, brown bread. Throw it right in there with a ham. Won't hurt nothing. Pad of butter, pad of butter. That bread will soak up that butter. Ooh, it's gonna be good. All right, we're cooking. A good old style New England dinner right there folks. All right, there's dinner. Looking pretty darn good. All of them beans right on top of that ham. That's good. Then you could clean up all of them bean juice. With that piece of brown bread too. That's good stuff. All right, that's it for today guys. Thanks for tuning in. That was day 11 I think. We're gonna do the math. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was day 11 up here. So going on a marathon I guess. Tomorrow will be day number 12. I'll make a decision in the morning to pack up and travel home day or if I'm gonna stick around for day number 13 after that. We'll see. Thanks for tuning in guys. Leave it in the comments if you want to see me stay two more days or if I should get home and get to editing for you.