3-Day Wilderness Spring Fishing Trip During Epic Fly Hatch

What's going on guys this is Noah with Northern Scavenger and we're out here for another Nova Scotia spring three-day fishing trip. I'm with a fan favorite that you guys all know and love, the great, the only, Matty B. We also have two other guests showing up at some point either tonight or tomorrow. We don't know when they're going to show up or what the deal is but stay tuned for that. It's going to be warm over the next three days above 10 degrees. It hasn't rained at all during April so it's going to be super dry. The route might be really challenging with how bony it's going to be. If we can get to these pools with the low water, the trout are still going to be active but they're going to be focused to specific spots. So if we can find those spots and present the right fly, oh baby just watch out for that. Oh this is a pretty big one. He must have been in less than a foot of water. It was such a subtle bite. I thought he was maybe just a six inch trout but not a bad size. No, beauty fish. So this is a fly fishing trip and the first thing you got to do when you go fly fishing is assess the environment. What bugs are out? Are there larvae? Are there caddis flies? Are there mayflies? Are there stone flies? A quick assessment to pick the perfect fly. I think that's the one. Seems like they're kind of, we've seen a lot of flies coming up on the surface hatching so it seems like they're sort of three, four inches under the surface hitting these emerger type patterns and stuff. Cast 45 degrees across the current, swing it across, give it a few twitches when it gets to the end. Perfect. That's impressive. Yeah that's a really nice one man. Very representative. You guys probably haven't seen Matt for about a year and there's a reason for that. I think the last time I would have been on camera was the Aguaniche trip. My big concern yesterday was that we cliffed ourselves out by coming up this high. Since then a lot's changed. The next spring we moved from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick. I got married to my fiancée Katie that summer and then this winter my wife gave birth to our beautiful daughter Madison. So now I'm a dad and this is kind of like my first outing since we had the baby this winter. So I'm really excited to get back and spend some time with some good friends. Oh I love this time of year. Lots of mayflies. Oh hooked up. Look at that. Oh I love it. Right in the corner of the mouth. Freaking love it. Back to back. Back to freaking back on the dry fly. You guys just missed it but I didn't put the boat up properly and then she floated away, jumped in, now my dry pants are just full. Doving after her. All right that's good right there. It's a hit. Oh baby. Yeah well I'm right in the zone. Maybe a little. Oh there we go. Oh he's on. This guy was acrobatic. Just a little guy but acrobatic. It's crazy how the colors sort of change with with the fish you know. Some of them are really red like the last episode you guys watched. Some of them have like really defined yellow spots and then some of them are silver like a salmon. We just had a full day on the water. Absolutely perfect conditions. That top water bite was on because of all the mayflies that were out and we sort of had an idea where we wanted to camp tonight not knowing if there was camping and we stumbled upon one of the better sites we found here in Nova Scotia. Flat chopped firewood, makeshift table, frying pan. This area has obviously been used a lot and it makes sense. We're right beside this really nice riffle and pool. Assumingly really good fishing too. It's getting late in the day. It's about five o'clock. We're gonna start setting up camp, do all that stuff and probably get back out there and do some evening fishing. The whole surface of this is soaked. With what? Birch sap. How much does it taste like? Slightly sweet water. I've never seen that before. I've seen it like we used to cut open a birch tree and some would pour out but I've never seen it like this much. Birch sap coming right from the tree dripping like a faucet. That's nuts. This tree would have come down during Hurricane Fiona which would have been in September so about seven months ago and obviously there's still a lot of nutrients going through it. Good find Matt. I mean I was hoping for firewood. You found something much cooler though. Yeah dude. Gentlemen of the woods. What is going on? How are we? What's up? A special guest just arrived. We're having a reunion in the backcountry. Hey everybody I'm back. Dave Green. Double chocolate peanut butter ole henry and a wonder bar. Holding on to these babies for weeks. Fighter. Oh I think that's the biggest of the trip. The hook set looks dubious at best. Oh that's a dandy. That was just barely hooked. That is a dandy. That's a dandy. Fish on. One of the thicker ones of the day. Oh still has lots of energy. Not too shabby eh? Look at that under the uh the jaw hook there. Let's take at least a fish. Pickled beans. So what's for dinner? Elk sirloin steak. I shot this in uh New Mexico. Gnocchi with parsley butter and cheese and asparagus. Dave came late last night to spend the night with us but he has to go back today to do errands back in the city. But this morning we're still waiting for another guy to arrive that you guys might remember from previous trips. Yo. Morning boys. What's going on? Basically I used a $10 tarp off your run class 2-3 rapids. Fishing was awesome yesterday. Yeah we got a lot of fish. Yeah the mayfly hatch is in full force. Oh this is it. We're going our own separate ways now. Uh I'm heading back upstream the way we came and go out and take care of some adult stuff today and uh you boys are gonna continue on down the uh down the river here. Anything to say to the folks that have been missing you? Oh guys I've been around. I'm still here. Still lurking around in the background of Noah's life. Uh I'll be back. Well there's gonna be more. More in the future. Just stay tuned. I got a lot on the go. What are you planning to do this summer? Oh this summer is the Kilinik canoe expedition sponsored by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Uh Chris Giard who you may remember from the Labrador series uh young Christopher and I are heading up to Yellowknife. We're going to paddle about 1530 kilometers uh from Yellowknife to Baker Lake via the Snowdrift River. Yeah it's gonna be a good trip. It's designed to have a lot of travels. Hopefully it goes pretty smoothly. Uh 44 days. It's a long time to be out on the land. A good team. We're gonna have a good time. I'm looking forward to getting out there. Unplugging. Going away. I recommend you do the same thing too. Unplug. Go outside. Because of how shallow it is we get stuck on every chute. It allows us to walk up and fish every pool and we're going to take our time today and really dissect all these sections. It's still too early for the mayflies. You can see them all in the trees here but probably around probably the next two hours they'll start getting active. So it might be a subsurface bite this morning. Oh I was on there. There we go. Matt are we keeping it yet or waiting? You get you get points for presentation for sure. Oh no oh no. What's that? It's a ridge. No it's not. That's a black fly. You're losing your touch now. Oh is that a supper trout? That's a supper trout. Supper trout number two. Need a couple more. Okay so we have a couple of trout to clean for supper. We're just going to do an easy way to clean small trout like 7 to 12 inch size. Slit the belly and then basically we're going to make one incision around the gills and then if you grab right around the gill of the fish and then grab at the mouth and pull you can actually just pull the guts out all in one piece. It's a really easy way to deal with small fish and then all you've got left is the blood line. It's what we call a fistful of trout. Well one more and it would be a fistful. Cotton balls and Vaseline. We've got our hot and sour soup, our fried trout which will go into the soup and then we're gonna make some dumplings. So this is like a dumpling dry mix with flour, baking powder and salt and then we'll just add water and make it into like a doughy consistency. Boil the soup and then we'll drop in little dough balls and we'll make like a nice dumpling for the soup. Have you ever done this before? I've never done this before. This Ready to see how our dumplings are doing? Let's go. I kind of think they're probably ready. Yeah. Cut into one. Oh yeah that's done. No stretch. They're fully cooked. That's so doughy. Oh yeah. Tea bags. We're going all out now. Tea berry. I heard that they are pretty good for tea. Never tried them. They're supposedly quite intense so I don't know how much you want to have in there. Oh yeah it smells really good. It reminds me of tiger balm. What are the chances it kills us? One way to find out. It has a little hint of tea berry. I guess I could have crushed it more and used more and let it steep a little longer. Yeah it's subtle but it's good. Yeah oh it's nice. I think I'm just going to go with coffee this morning. So this morning you guys already know I love the bushwhacker's oats but I've had to modify them because no one else can finish a full serving. Originally I used one cup of oatmeal but now I've reduced it to half a cup of oatmeal and a quarter cup of granola. The calories are still there but there's a 25 percent volume reduction and this seems to be the key for everyone to enjoy the bushwhacker's oats in the morning. We're leaving a little earlier this morning from camp so we can make it back at a decent time tonight. But today we still have a lot of distance to cover and potentially a lot of good fishing holes. Oh you think we're gonna run it eh? I think Matt might have to solo it. The last day we didn't get as much fishing in as we would have hoped. We were on a bit of a schedule. It took most of the day to get down the lower section of the river because of how shallow it was. But still we caught a few this morning. Still beautiful out. The sun is shining and we're just happy to be alive here in the backcountry of Nova Scotia. Thanks for joining us. Until next time.