 Good morning. It's day six. It is a pretty mild 20 degrees out there. It's a little bit before five o'clock. It's snowing or raining. I can't tell. It's like either a really frozen rain or it's a really wet snow. It's in between and it's kind of making a pretty cool sound on the roof. It's like a pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Been doing that for about an hour now. It's not really accumulated too much. We're looking at like an inch more than we started with last night. Today might be the last real fishing day on this trip. It might be the last fishing day on this trip. We got some negative 45 real feel come. It'll be pretty rough and then the next day I think is going to be somewhere in the same ballpark. So kind of looking like today might be the last day. That'll give me some time to get home, edit, get these videos uploaded and start on the next trip. This morning I got like a pan of green peppers, onions and potato shavings going and I also got the coffee going and the other one. Today we're going to go after some brook trout pretty hard. The boys still want to do some jigging for for lakers. They got that lake trout bug. I think it's where they come from on West Grand even though they got like a phenomenal salmon fishery. These guys really love catching lake trout jigging for lake trout. They love going for the big fish. You know everybody likes to catch a big fish myself included. That's why I like pike fishing so much. Today we are going to set primarily brookies. We're going to head up towards like lockdown area on the north end of Chamberlain Lake up past the arm. All right it's 5 30. We're going to get a little jump on it today. Get a little early start. There's a little bit of accumulation out here. Let's take a look. You can see it's starting to build up a little bit on the sled. We got about an inch. Yeah the rest of that will come off as I go. Love it. We got some pretty good snow right now. It's coming down good. It's big flakes. It's starting to build up a little bit. Should make for a pretty fun day. I've always got fish when it's snowing and when it's not crazy cold. Deckwam? Yeah. How long does that take you? How long does that take you to get to Deckwam? My truck two hours. Gotta get that one to the mill. Have a good day. Good luck to you. Good weekend. Yes you too. About seven foot right there. That's a little surprising because I fished right by that bow the other day. It was about two foot so a little drop off here. We're fishing rainbow smelts today. Brookies love these things like candy to them. She's warmed up pretty good. I bet you she's close to 20 degrees right now. We got no wind blowing yet. It's hard to believe tomorrow's going to be negative 40. So we got about three foot here. That's about perfect. I got a nice short leader on this one. Another tip for brookies is use the shortest leader you can get away with. You know that's the stuff that's going to break the quickest on you or get frayed up or get into a snarl. So this one I got about a 14-15 inch leader. If that going right to a swivel right to the nylon. This is a really good depth for brookies right here. Anything under four foot is pretty well golden. In the winter brookies really drive that bait shallow right up under the ice. As shallow as they can. They feel pretty comfortable there. We're going to set it about halfway down. We got a good 12 inches of ice here to contend with too. Maybe 14 inches here near the bank. All right no flags up. Let's keep going. That auger is pretty well awesome. That one's drilled probably close to 3,000 holes now. Maybe more. Not the first set of blades either. Wow some water right there too. So these are good sets to start with. That's a 7, 7 and a half foot. And then I can work my way in from these and make an easy shift in. I just don't want to hit those rocks. That's bad. I always straighten out my fluorocarbon just by pulling it. That tests the knot. Run my hand down the line to clean it off case there's any real grease on there and also feel for any abrasions. So we'll set this one a little lower than half in 7 foot. We'll go down about 4. Make it nice and visible. I think they travel the bottom or within a foot of the bottom for the most part. All right we are set. Great day already. Got him too small. Oh just ripped out. Dang it. Shoot. Ripped it right out of his mouth. Look promising. Ah nothing. Oh yeah it came around. Oh man that was a nice trout. Why are they not eating today? Dang it. That was a nice one. Yeah I got a look at that one. He was in the 18 range. Real pretty fish. I don't think I spiked them. When I got here the line was slack. He dropped it. But he was just coming around. Oh maybe. He dropped it for return. He dropped it. The bait's still alive. That's weird. Maybe better. That flag right there just went out. Did it? That was walking down the line. This was the only one I caught. Hey we got a chance? We're good to have one of these guys. Oh jeez. That's not a mountain though. No? Oh stay there. Come on. No, no, no. Dude I burned that fish right sideways. Oh for four. Felt nice. He'll come back at least because he didn't get a hook. That's crazy. How are these guys not eating? I hate to let them eat any more because because the rocks. I know. You can't let him go too far. I don't want to let him stop and I figured I'd hit him because he's running. That's unbelievable. Come on baby. Be on there. That feels nice. Be a brookie baby. Be a brookie. Be a brookie. Come on baby. Be a brookie. That's a big one. Beautiful brook trout. Beauty. Nice big fat brookie. You guys got a flag. Nice brookie right there guys. Big fat one. Beautiful colors. Nice fish. They're uh, gorgeous. Look at that belly. Holy cow. All right I'll pop the hook out and get that one right back. 17 and a half. And I got another flag. Cool. Got it. All right let's go catch this other fish. I'm gonna hit and run here. I don't like how that line's on there so I'm gonna refeed it. Not big. Not big at all. But we do have them. Nice little trout. Nice little trout right there. We're gonna get him back. Beauty. Good hook set on. It's hard to get him to go down. Are you always taking that? We got a burbot. No that fish come out. That's a white fish. Laker ain't it? Come back. He came in like I thought he was gonna take it. He's way high left. Maybe next time. I don't believe so. We got a whole lot of nothing. The hack. What the heck. I almost don't even want to watch that on camera but we'll see. I hate losing them. 17 range brookie right there. Real pretty green back. That's like four ice today. Tough day. I just talked to the group north of us and they haven't even caught a fish yet today. So it's tough day. I got I think four on the ice. I've missed like close to four probably and had maybe three or four other flags like hitting runs. So it's been it's been definitely tougher day fishing than we expected. You know the front's I guess here on us. I thought we were prefront because tomorrow's gonna be about negative 40. It's a negative 40. We'd have a good bite today but I guess it was yesterday. Yesterday we had a spectacular bite. Pop that hook right out. He's pretty lively because I just caught him right there. But look at the colors on that one. That's a beauty. Wow. Went out of his face from somebody else. That shows you guys about cutting the hooks. He's got a line coming out from somebody else right there and he's still eating. I'm going to cut that a little shorter for him and he's still eating. So that shows that that is a good way to do it. There's a nice pretty 17 and a half 18 inch brookie going back. The old man. Just know snow is good. Snow is good means it won't be ice. That's right. Got some weight there, huh? Yep. Didn't run. Probably a burp. Anyway. It might be a white parish, maybe. Burp. Another burp. Nice. Jamblin Lake Whitey. Get him, slam. Play him out. Play him out. Oh, yeah. How'd that feel, buddy? Nice. Looks like. Oh, geez. What you got there, Bob? That's keeper if you want to. Yeah. He won't bite you. Nice job, buddy. Thanks, Joe. All right. Okay. Beautiful. Oh, yeah. Nice. One more. 40 feet. That's no mountain trout we're on. Yeah, I don't know. I don't feel I'm not going to lie or something. Oh, but weight crossed my fingers, but then we get the bottom marker on it, bud. Right here. Swivel. Oh, yeah. Nice one. Pretty late in the day. We're looking at like 3, 330. I just shifted some traps. I think I switched four spots and I left one just kind of shifted the depth on it. When you guys are fishing brookies, here's a couple of tips for you. If you're not getting action on a decent brookie body of water, move. Keep shifting them, whether it be 50 feet in, 50 feet out. Find some shallower water. Find a little bit deeper water. Find an edge. Just move them because brookies are pretty attracted to action like the drill, believe it or not. If you're not on a super high pressure lake, you can move and every time you move, you should find some more fish and some new fish. That's how I've been catching a lot more fish is by moving and being active with my bait. Smelt are notorious for spinning up lines and spinning up above your reel and spinning up around swivels and weights and stuff. That's why I'm always checking my bait and when you do that, you lift it, you lower it. It shows a fish in that water column. It also gets the bait really active and moving again and maybe try a different depth. Those are a couple tips for brookies and I'll tell you a weird one. You'll laugh at this, but if you're on a lake like this that doesn't get a ton of pressure, I've found that those two things first, that's fishing, moving your traps around and you're finding new holes in different depths and when you're moving the bait and checking your bait, that's just flat out fishing. That's what I call fishing rather than just setting your traps and leaving them till the flag goes up. But the other thing and this works is drive your sled right next to the traps one time and just turn around and see what happens. Yesterday I did that about three times and it gave me about six extra flags and you hear guys say, you know, oh I just drove by that and it wasn't up, you know, when they get back to the shack or when they get to where they're going and look behind them and it's up and that does a couple things. You know, if there's a brookie just hanging out watching your bait and eye in it and you go by and it stirs up your bait. A lot of times that'll trigger that brookie to bite or if it might be the brookies just to the side and it hears the sled and it comes out of wherever it was and it looks to see what's going on in that area that just made some noise and there's your bait sitting there. But it does work. I know it sounds foolish driving a sled next to a trap but don't be afraid to drive right by your trap line. As you can see it's great through here. There's several tracks so when I come out and check I drive right next to it. Now on high pressure lake do the opposite. Stay away from your traps, walk to them, you know, park your sled really far away, walk to them. On the high pressure where the fish are a lot smarter and have been smart enough by anglers over the years. But on the very low pressure ones like this don't be afraid to make some noise, don't be afraid to stir up, you know, drill some extra holes. It usually happens with brookie fishing quickly after you drill a hole and set a trap because they're coming over to investigate because they are predators. So those are a couple tips for you. Smelt, I've been working way better than everything else. It's a really soft little hooks and pretty light fluorocarbon works well too. I don't run weights when I'm brookie fishing. I'm not that deep so it's just a matter of getting that that smelt or whatever your bait is below the bottom layer of the ice so we can swim around. You know, if you can get them to go down without a weight, you're golden. That way the brookie won't feel the weight or get it hung up in the rocks or the dry kai or logs underneath the surface. And then I use fluorocarbon. Fluorocarbon sinks as opposed to mono which floats so that's another good option to use. It's a lot clearer and you can straighten it and take the memory out of it. So I use like all use as heavy as 10 if I'm around a bunch of junk on the bottom. If I'm not, I'll use eight pound test maybe even go down to six so it's less visible. I use light wire Gamakatsu hooks. I think they're number two drop shot hooks actually and they work really well for brookies and you can snip them if they get them too deep and they're light enough they should be able to rust them out. But that's about it for brook trout fishing. It's pretty easy. They're pretty aggressive. Got quite a few on a really tough day on the ice. I talked to the group up there and I don't think they had one fish yet. They've been struggling today. And our group hasn't been stacking like we we haven't been the last couple days because I think these fronts are really brutal right now. The last of that front right there you can kind of see it. Now we're starting to get some bluebird sky and got some clouds and then it looks like another front coming in with some more weather some more snow. And then after that it's probably going to turn real clear because we're supposed to get way into the negatives today and go from whatever we had for a high like 18 this morning. It's been getting colder all day and windier so it's going to go probably to 18 below. So that's quite a change in a few hours. Yeah usually I just pull the roof down first. No you're all right. No much. I replayed most of it. We think oh boy we're getting serious out here. Okay made it off the lake. That was a pretty rough ride. It's uh it's bad right now. We're looking at negative five degrees mercury and it's blowing easily 30 out of the northeast. Maybe maybe sustained 25 probably getting gusts of 35 so real feel is cold. I'll put the math right over here for what that really is with negative five mercury and 25 mile an hour winds so it's getting cold. Tomorrow's going to be absolutely brutal. We're looking at real feel wind chill of negative 45 degrees so not efficient day tomorrow. It's going to be a try to get out of here day tomorrow which isn't ideal but that's just the way it's working out. I came back to the shack made sure my heater's going. I'm going to start to dry out my boots and the clothes I wore today. I'm going to go eat some dinner with the boys and take a load out tonight get it stowed away packed away make sure my truck's stowed away ready to load up all the rest of the stuff tomorrow when it's brutally cold and get out of here tomorrow. Well we're coming to an end of the trip Joe. Seems like it flew by but we spent seven days in the Allagash. We tried hard. I would say about four out of the seven days we landed on fish and done well. We struggled for two or three days but we fought the cold. I can't even remember struggling. I remember struggling down tea loss. Yeah that was about it. Today was today was a slow day but we still probably scratched that 15 fish or so. You know you're better than nothing. Yeah I got some nice brookies on the ice. I seen a lot of brookies this week. We caught a lot of brookies from 16 to 19 inch I would say we caught a lot of trout. I agree. Pretty fish. Can't ask for no better really. I wish we would have hit the jig in a little bit better but we never landed on a good jig hole. We just never found them you know. No it was too miserable to move around too. Yeah you know we fished through two absolute ignorant cold snaps you know. Yeah I had a hole of a week. Yeah good time. Glad you could join us. Yeah me too thanks for having me guys. A lot of fun. Enjoyed it. Lots of good grub. Lots of good fishing. I'd say excellent native brook trout fishery. Oh yeah absolutely. I believe they stock it right. No this is all a native fishery. I never saw a clipped fan or anything so. You know I caught that one decent lake but we didn't catch a lot of dink of lakers you know they were quality fish. They were nice fish a lot of lake trout we caught. Small white fish that we caught. Small white fish we didn't. Yeah we usually see bigger white fish out here. They were our legal white fish. No I don't think we did. Not one legal white fish. 50 and a half was a close to it. Two or three 15 and a half and a couple real nice casts. Yeah bunch of bourbon they're probably the most bourbon I've ever seen. Kind of a slack mountain trout. We only probably had right 10 mile trout. Maybe you know usually you get nailed fishing for brookies but if that right yeah everybody caught nice trout that come up and fished you don't need. Everybody did. Mark caught nice trout. You caught nice trout. I caught nice calling landed on one the first when he first got to you. Slim had nice trout. Was that your best brookie? Aaron caught a nice trout. Aaron got one for you. I haven't weighed it. Mine's right up there. I don't know what it weighs. You get some close to three pounds. That fish of Cameron was one of the fattest trout I've ever seen. I mean that thing was an absolute 18 inch football you know. We see a lot of silver trout but we see a lot of dark trout with nice collars. You know what I mean? If you had it all over again would you have done this trip? Knowing what you know now? I'd go next week. Yeah I'd go next week. How about you fellas? Would you do it again? Absolutely. Yeah me too. I mean honestly we fished probably four or five of those days without seeing another human outside of our group. Never seen nobody. Today we saw some life since human-wheelers and well for the most part. No one else crazy enough to do it. That's pretty much what it was when the warden checked us. I guess when the ranger checked us first he was worried about our safety with the cold. Yeah. Then the game warden came out a little while later and said we were the only idiots around. Yeah well I'm looking up the temperature that propane freezes. It's cold out. What was the verdict? Negative 44 propane freezes. Then we're going to hit that tomorrow real feel right? And the wind chill that you guys had was negative 35. Yeah. So that's that's flirting with disaster. It was real. I've fished some brutal weather and we fished a day that was in the 20s negative 20s. One trip we come up here. Slim and I and Cameron his sled wouldn't even turn over that morning. It was in the negative 20s but we didn't seem as though we had win that trip. We caught fish. We caught fish. We caught fish. We come here. We tried hard. Yeah. I'd say the only one who's planning a trip up here make sure you got good gear. I could not my trip would have been about 20 minutes after I hit that first slush patch. But you got to have good gear. You got to have good clothing. Got to have good friends. If you're crazy enough to do it alone make sure you got everything good and you got several exit strategies because this whole week could have been a disaster any day of the week. You got to be responsible. You don't want to put someone else in a pinch to come and to save you. Yeah. That's just it. You know it's not just you. Yeah. That shack we had of Slim's though that that Ascomo shack was just I mean that made the week it made a miserable week comfortable. Yeah. You know it really did. I mean do we see the five pounder absolutely not? You know what I mean? We look for one. We didn't find it. But we see a 16 to 19 inch football truck was nothing to sneeze at. Yeah. We had fish every day. You know what I mean? We some days were better than others but I'm still not surprised but I'm still impressed that you guys hammer the Lakers even being on a lake where you catch a five six pound rookie. Oh yeah. You guys got it in your blood. Oh yeah. I always have it in your blood. We go to West Grands best salmon lake in the state. You guys are wailing on the Lakers. We come to the best rookie leg. You guys are were still wailing like and now you fish Brookings too but that's like what I've always said about the pike down my way. I'm just gonna say if there's pike in here would you be would you have a trap now for no I wouldn't. I'd have five for five. Right. Yeah. I mean it's all about the big fish. I know that's what you guys are. Toefish is an addiction when you see like you ain't got to catch one when you see one of them 15 pound fish come through the ice you. And the same thing goes for pike. Yeah. When you guys catch something over 20 the game changes. Yeah. You don't even want chase a flag for a three pounder. Right. You know so that's why I totally understand why you guys do it. And I actually like it. You just don't see trout like that down home. You know what I mean. And everyone was different which was cool. Yeah. A lot of the hills up here. I know it. They all got their fins. Thanks for 10 years. They're not easy to catch. So pretty awesome trip. Thanks for viewing it guys. Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as we like doing it over and out. Catch all the grand. Yeah. West Grand. Oh if you guys want to see a West Grand trip leave a comment at the bottom saying what you want to see on West Grand and if you even want to see it this year. All right. That's going to do it for tonight. Had an awesome dinner with the boys. Had some potatoes with pork loin and some leftover baked beans that were just tremendous. Ride home was pretty rugged right now. It's blowing in the 30s. Air temp real feel is cold. It's negative eight on the mercury and it's blowing between 25 and 35 right now. So she's ripping. As long as this doesn't turn too hard east I'm pretty safe here where I set up. I set up for Northwest which is the primary this time of year. So hopefully it stays right there. All in all great day fishing. Bite was off pretty hard today. Really had to work for him. Had a lot of drops. Had a lot of hit and runs. But still managed to catch quite a few. You know anytime you can catch oh would I get six or seven brookies. All solid good keepers. That's a heck of a day. Got him pretty good. The boys caught some fish too which was good. All in all excellent trip. Tomorrow morning I'm going to go ahead and try to bust out of here. It's going to be pretty pretty ridiculous. I guess the lowest of the low is going to be at 6 a.m. It'll be 45 48 below zero real feel. Thanks for tuning in guys. Hopefully I'll have some footage for you tomorrow morning. Really hard to get footage this week with the go pros and and the camera stuff. Just batteries freezing up. Cameras freezing up and it's been it's been a challenge. So hopefully I'll get a little bit more footage for you for the end of this video. She is a frosty out here. I got the first load ready to go.