48H SOLO Backpacking & MOUNTAIN TROUT Fishing! (Catch, Cook, Camp)

Oh, he's, he's right over there now. Oh, he's going for it, he's going for it. What's going on, you guys? Welcome to another episode. We are way out in the mountains right now, going backpacking. First backpacking trip of 2021. I'm heading up to a small alpine lake where we're going to camp together. We're going to fish. We're going to look for berries and mushrooms and edible plants along the way. And if we get lucky and catch fish, we'll eat that as food. Check this out, guys. We've got a couple of ripe berries here for us. These are salmon berries. Ooh, yeah, look at this. Beautiful. Now they might not be, eh, you know, they're not a hundred percent ripe, but I'll take the calories. This one's good, actually. This one's real good. Oh, sweet, delicious. Get off of him there, Mr. Ant. And look at this ripe one right here. Oh, man, now we are talking. Oh, so sweet, full of delicious berry flavor. All right, that's enough berries for right now. We got to keep going, but that's nice to know that at least we do have edible berries all over the trail here to keep us full of vitamins. They'll keep us hydrated too and give us tons of carbs. Let's go, baby, let's go. And I am on a solo adventure today. So it's just you and me. Oh, look at this little lookout. And there's a carved bench right here. Oh, yeah. Sun's going to set soon. So depending on how far I make it, I might actually camp out at a small creek. This is the only water that I brought along, but in my pack I do have a water filter and I also have iodine tablets to purify water. I've got plenty of food to cook, but also fishing gear where really we're going to try and catch trout to eat them. This is like a scene from Jurassic Park or something. Oh, it feels so good. We're almost at a spot where we can get down to the big creek, maybe find a camping spot. So I'm not going to pull the water filter and everything out yet. I've still got just a little drop left. All right, all gone. Let's just explore right over here and see what's going on. We might have a spot here, guys, where we can get down to the water. Yes, look at that. So this bag is full of water. All we got to do is just screw on our filter. There we go, look at that. Oh man, feels so good to get some fresh water. That is one survival advantage that we have up here in the Pacific Northwest. We got water, we got plenty of water here. So that's something never to take for granted. There's a lot of places in the world where we don't have clean drinking water, but we are stocked up. This here should be, that's about one and a half liters. That should be good for the night. Oh, wow. Look at these, is that a skunk cabbage? It's giant. That's pretty cool. Right now we're kind of fighting our way through the brush here. Might have an area we can camp at right here. Look at this. This is fairly flat. Okay, so the tent is all set up. It gets its basic structure from the two trekking poles and then the four stakes on the corners holding the tent itself down. And then all of these lines right here with stakes are kind of pulling those two trekking poles apart, giving that tension. And then this here just brings the sides of the tent out. Perfect. Yeah, we'll be able to use this as like just a little utility table to cook on. Everything's pretty damp right now. So there's really not a danger of like starting an accidental wildfire, but I just want to just be extra careful. Remember guys, given the option, always try and find deadwood to start fires. Don't like start cutting down live plants to make your fires. The deadwood is drier anyways and works a lot better too. Hopefully the stuff is dry enough to get a fire started for us. So I've got some corn right here. Wrap this little guy in some aluminum foil and we're just going to kind of place it right there by the fire. What I'm just going to do is just cook up a little bit of quinoa, maybe roast it up with some onion and mushroom. We're just going to roast a little bit of the dry quinoa in there with it. Hot, delicious corn. Look at that corn, man. Oh man, I'm starving. This is so satisfying right now. It's just so buttery sweet. Man, nothing beats just being all by yourself out in the woods. It's a weird feeling knowing you're out here and there's bears and mountain lions living here too. In the middle of the woods, in the dark especially, it makes you feel super aware and super alive. Oh no, no, no, no, get out of there, buddy. You don't want to be in there. It's actually a lot warmer than I thought. So that's kind of nice, but it's a crystal clear sky out, meaning things can get a lot colder later in the night. But because we are in the trees, that should keep us somewhat insulated and warm here tonight. It's going to feel good to take these boots off later. Look at all those little moths flying around. That's everywhere. This will keep me going tomorrow until hopefully I can catch a trout that we can then cook up together. It's actually fairly warm tonight, like really warm to where I'm like sweating a little bit. There we go, in the sleeping bag. All right, I'm going to get some sleep and I'll see you guys in the morning. Oh, look at this. Tell you what, we're going to make our coffee right here. And here's just a little lighter trick for your backpacking slash survival lighter needs. Just wrap your lighter itself in duct tape. That way you don't need to carry around a spare duct tape. Roll, there we go. Oh, it feels good. Man, nice and warm. Ooh, yes. Oh my goodness, that looks so good. Oh, sweet coffee. All right, time to pack up camp, get up to the lake and do some fishing. All right, we're ready to go, but just always before we're leaving camp, we just want to do a quick look around. Just make sure that we didn't leave anything behind. Remember, we don't want to litter. Always clean up more than you brought in. I think we are looking pretty good. All right, off to the lake. What a beautiful, beautiful song that bird is singing. That's just amazing. Oh wow, look at this waterfall. Beautiful. All right, so we've come to a bit of a creek here. Oh man, I just love these Alpine creeks. Super crystal clear water. We're almost at the lake now too. Ooh, will you look at this? We got our first snow. In case we do catch something that we're too big to eat all in one day, we can preserve it with snow. We got ice up here. You guys hear that? They're singing with each other. One, two. It could be like a male and a female communicating with each other. Maybe it's mating season for the birds right now. It is springtime. Heh heh. Now if you guys do find just a little bit of trash on the trail like that, little piece of plastic or a bottle or something laying around, just remember to just pack it out. Takes only a second. Just doesn't need to be out here. This is absolutely beautiful. I mean, come on, where do you see this kind of stuff? Oh, I've got the answer for you, in the mountains. I am once again speechless, guys. All right, let's get over to the lake. The lake is right over there past this little creek. Oh my goodness, look at this. So what I'm thinking is I want to be able to get out a little deeper into the water, fishing-wise. So we might have to get out to that, look at that, there's like a little island right there. And I think we're gonna try and go out on that island and then be able to cast out there and be able to get to the deeper fish. I have seen some fish surface out there already, so I think we might get lucky today. That'd be really cool. If you see these rocks here, then it dips off a bit right over there and I'm seeing them surface right there at this seam, right about there. Good thing I brought this hat along because without it, we would get grilled out here. It is really sunny, we got the reflection coming off the lake. So I'm just heating up a little bit more water right here to make some delicious oatmeal for lunch. And then all of a sudden, a trout surfaced like right here in front of us. Right in front of us, we could have had that one. So cool though to see that there's fish right here. So I'm excited, I'm excited, man. I've got the spinning pole and a fly pole in here. They both fit into the same case. All right. I wanna cast the bullet lure just a little bit. I brought that with me. We're gonna try on the fly today for sure with that little leech pattern right there. That's just a little five foot ultra light. I'll just try and find the links for you guys to the gear and put it in the video description below. So for leader, I'm just using four pound fluoro. I wanna fish as light weight as possible here. And that's still plenty strong to fight any of these trout. It's pretty much what I've been using in all my videos lately. Water is boiling. Oh yes. So we're gonna grab our oatmeal. This is banana walnut oatmeal. Delicious. Oh, there's actual walnuts in there. This is delightful. And then we're just gonna set this guy right here. Kind of let him think about that for a while. Think about what he's done. Oh, this is gonna be so good. With the rest of the boiling water, we're just gonna make some more coffee. And look at that. While we let that oatmeal just sit for a second, I'm gonna start taking a first couple casts into the water here on the spinning rod here. She's all set up. We've got the bullet lure on there. That's right. It's bullet lure time. Oh yeah. Good casting distance. Good casting distance with that bullet lure. Oh, here we go. Look at her flashing around in the water. This is the first cast, mind you. If anything crazy happens, then, well, at least it's on the record. But who would be so lucky to get one on the first cast? That don't happen. All right. Oh, we're getting way out there, man. We're getting way out there. This is nice. And we're gonna do a fairly swift retrieve. These guys want to hunt something. Ooh, look at that little lure flashing away. The water here is so clear that we can easily sight fish. If we see a trout, we're gonna sight fish for them. Let's cast right over all those rocks. Trout like to hide, usually. Kind of behind boulders, where there's a little bit of structure for them to ambush their prey. So just one little test nibble here. One little nibble. Mm, ooh, tell you what, maybe we can make it out to, to this rock right here. That should give us a good vantage point to cast. Of course, I did not bring my net. I was not very smart, but oh well. Not worried about it. That's a good spot right there. That's right next to the deep drop-off. All right, nothing on the bullet lure yet, but that's okay. I'm now rigged up with a bottom fishing rig. And what we're just gonna do is we're gonna make a trout pill. Ooh, look at all these worms. Mm, mm, mm. Who wants to be the volunteer? Ooh, you. This guy right here. Just a little guy. This guy here is just to attract the fish a little bit. Then the next thing we're gonna do is take a couple pieces of power bait. Look at that, that's the trout pill. Oh, they won't be able to resist it. All right, I feel really good about that one. That's way out there. We're gonna leave a little bit of slack in the line there just so that when the trout grab the bait that they're able to swim off with it for a little bit and kind of munch on it before feeling the resistance of the line. Oh man, thought I saw a trout there for a second. We're gonna get the fly pole ready now too so we can fly fish and bottom fish at the same time. Double our effectiveness. All right, we got our fly pole rigged up here and we are using a small bit of a leech pattern, a large ant pattern. And the idea is this is gonna be kind of a semi, like a slowly sinking fly. So what I'm gonna do is like cast it out, slowly let it sink, strip a little bit, slowly let it sink, strip a little bit and see if we can get one of these picky trout to bite. We're gonna try and get a little fly bite. There we go. So we're just gonna let that little fly sink a bit and just kind of give it some twitches. What I'm hoping for is that we just see a trout circle through and then we can cast right at them. And I'm amazed that nothing is, nothing's even touching that pole. Usually they would be on that pretty quickly. Oh, maybe just had a little nibble. If you guys, as always, have tips about fly fishing, let me know. I'm still a learning fly fisherman. I'm no expert at all. In fact, I'm really, I'm at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to fly fishing learning. Well, nothing on the fly yet. So we'll just keep on trying. Oh my goodness, a trout just surfaced right next to us. Right next to us. I mean, like right here, I don't see it though. Oh, there it is, there it is. He was right there. Oh, there it is, I see him, I see him. Oh, he's swimming, swimming that way. Oh, there's another one coming for the bait though. Ooh, there's two trout. Maybe we can get him on the fly. Ooh, he didn't like that. He didn't like the fly at all. They kind of spooked him actually. Ah, just as things were getting so close. Those are the first two trout that I actually saw this entire trip. Healthy looking too, they're thick, thick around. They were like, that ain't no real fly. Maybe I cast it wrong too. You just never know, man. You never know, it's all good, it's all good. All right, well, there's only one thing I could imagine that could be better than what we're currently doing. So that's gonna require us to do just a little bit of searching, a little hunt. Let's see what lives down here. Huh, well, not seeing what I'm looking for. Or if we're flipping rocks over, just return everything to exactly how it was. I'm sure some of you already know exactly what I'm looking for. It's my favorite mountain bait for trout. So we're gonna try and find some and give them exactly what it is that they're feeding on up here anyways. There we go, there we go, got one. Oh, you see that right there? You see that little baby? Dragonfly larva, oh yeah, that's perfect trout bait. They can survive above water, so we're gonna put them into our worm jar for right now. I would bet you like $5 that those trout that came really close there that we spooked away, they probably would have taken this dragonfly larva under a bobber. All right, I found just a couple more dragonfly larva. Look at those little guys. This way we got some backups. Man, this is just the most beautiful bait in the world. I'd kiss them if they weren't so ugly. So what I've done now with our spinning rod is I've set it up with a slip float. We've got our bobber stop right there, a little bead. We got our bobber down to another bead, to the swivel, to four pound fluoro as the leader with some, it's probably hard to see, but there's some spaced out split shot there. Once again, we've just got one of these little panfish, Aberdeen hooks. This guy here's the lightest colored out of all the dragonfly larva, so I feel like, I don't know, he'll be on the hook and the trout will be like, something ain't right with him, and they're gonna eat him. All right, perfect. See right there? We got our little dragonfly larva on the hook. Once he's in the water, he's gonna do all sorts of weird things with his little legs. The trout can't resist it. Right out there where all the hungry trout are. Okay, in theory, this here should not take long to get a bobber down out there. And if the bobber goes down, we're gonna let him munch just a little bit, and then we're gonna set the hook into him. This is exciting. This is my type of fishing, man. We got the bobber on. This is the magic weapon. We're gonna get him now. Look at that behind me. Sun is just setting. I love how the sun sets right behind that little peak right there. How perfect. Still no luck. Wow, I just fell through the snow. Look at that. It's called post-holing. That can be pretty dangerous, actually. If you fall through one of those things and break your leg or twist an ankle or something, and you're way up in the mountains, that's no good. Well, I was trying to see if I can get some crawdads, but I was once again visited by little underwater mountain salamanders. Oh, yeah. Right in here, I was filming some wild salamanders last night. That was kind of cool. They were hanging out down there, but I think I got some on video. And right over here, I've got a camera. The stars were on fire last night, and with those stars in the background behind that tree, should have made a really good night lapse. The reason I had a little hot pack on there was to keep the lens warm and to keep the water from condensating on the lens because it was really moist last night. There's a trout right there. Look at how just crystal clear that water is. It's like a mirror. There, you can see the trees in the water and above the water. Absolutely insane. The trout seem to be hovering above the ground at kind of a weird angle, like this, in almost like a dormant mode. Just thought I would throw that out there so that we can all learn from that. I'm not sure what that means. He's checking out some little white thing laying down there. That's interesting. What a curious fish. They're not stupid. That fish is actively just curious about things. All right, it's game time. No more messing around. Things are getting pretty serious here. I'm giving this the last ditch effort. These are smart trout, which I enjoy. This is fun. A little frustrating, I'm not gonna lie. Not gonna lie at all. This has been a grind. I changed one crucial thing, and that is that we are now using an itty bitty little hook. These trout might just be so smart and so bite shy that if they see anything that seems off, they're just not, they're not gonna bite. We're gonna try with the dragonfly larva again. I've got two more dragonfly larva. I kept them in the container overnight. They're both still alive. The distinct advantage that we have in this position here is that we're able to look down into the water and we can see whenever a trout shows up. There we go. We got our dragonfly on the hook. There's already a little trout down there. I doubt that you guys can see him, but he's just kind of cruising right there in front of us. He's kind of small, but you know what? I won't discriminate at this point. And mostly I'm just curious to test. Oh no, he darted away. That scared the crap out of him. I probably shouldn't have cast right on him, but yeah, he took way off. Not the smartest thing I've done. Also not the dumbest thing I've ever done. Now when you're reeling in those dragonflies, do it really gently so you don't rip them off the hook. They're very, they're kind of soft. Look at this little guy. Oh, there's a trout right there. Oh, my bobber's down. There we go, that's a fish, baby. Oh, that's a fish. Oh God, it's a disaster. Those are the rocks. Oh, got him. Yes. I was just taking some pictures. All of a sudden I see this bobber just dipping down. Yeah, we got him, yes. Oh man, it worked. Oh my goodness. The dragonfly strikes again. Beautiful wild mountain rainbow trout. Look at this beautiful trout right here. Absolutely gorgeous. Gorgeous, gorgeous mountain trout. Okay, let's go ahead and get him out of his misery real quick. Darn phones. Kids, put the phones away. It'll make you miss the best moments in your life. This little guy here absolutely inhaled that thing too. Don't worry, buddy, don't worry, it'll be over. There we go. I just wanna make sure that it doesn't suffer, doesn't go to waste or anything. We're gonna eat this guy up. They're just so gorgeous up here in the mountains. That, oh, and what a fat belly on this little guy. I can't wait to see what's inside the belly on him. Oh, wow, thank you, buddy. Wow, I'm just so thankful right now. All right, look at this. We got a little bit of snow here and we'll be able to preserve our trout in the snow. I'm gonna put him right in there, cover him up again. Maybe we'll try and catch another one. I don't know, what do you think? Try one more time? There's a trout right underneath us. I don't know if you guys see him, but he's right there. Oh yeah, he's still there and he's chasing something. I think he's an active trout, that's good. Oh, he's right over there now. Come on, baby. He was right there. That was a good size one too. Oh, there he is, there he is, there he is, I see him. He's right there between the branches of that tree. There he goes, there he goes. Kind of coming this way. What I'm gonna do is cast over him and then reel into him. He's under the tree right there. Oh, he's going for it, he's going for it. He grabbed it. Oh, that's a bobber down. Oh, he's better size. Do you guys see him down there? Oh my goodness. Oh, he could not resist the dragonfly larva. He couldn't resist it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, oh, oh, it's a beauty. Oh my goodness. Oh, look at this one. Oh, he's beautiful. Full of spots, hooked right there in the front of the lip there. Could not resist the dragonfly larva. And this is a beautiful, beautiful rainbow, rainbow trout. Let's go. Oh, oh, oh, geez. Oh God. We're just gonna put this guy out of his misery right away. We figured it out guys. Small hook, dragonfly larva, that's all it is. There we go. We're eating him, totally fine. Just wanna make sure that they're not, that they go through as little pain as possible. Beautiful example of a wild rainbow trout. You can see he's got his adipose fin back here. So these are trout that are naturally reproducing up in this lake here. So to clean one of these trout, just start right back there by the butthole. There we go, make that cut there. And then the head and the guts all come out all at once. Nice and easy. Got us a clean trout. Yeah, let's go ahead and cut open the stomach here. Really curious to find out what's inside. Oh my goodness, loaded with bugs. Oh, look at that, look at that. A small, looks like a small dragonfly larva or something. Very similar looking bug. That's what they're eating. Very interesting. Only other thing you gotta do to these trout is give them a quick little score right there on their kidney. And then you just use a finger to squeeze it all out. And there you go, that's one clean trout. Little bit of a pink meat hue to them. Not bad, not bad at all. Oh, there's a giant rock fall up there. That's just one of the dangers in the mountains. That's actually one of the main dangers for mountaineering is rock and ice fall. Crazy, you just never know, man. Things could just be over that fast. Remember, always just live every moment and every day like it could be the last. I hope that doesn't happen over here, huh? That's crazy. Man, it was a rock avalanche right up there by that snow patch. Ah, oh yeah. Oh, look at that. Look at that beautiful, beautiful red meat. By the way, the stone that we're cutting on here, that's granite. So we got granite countertops out here. Now, one thing we're gonna do with our meat is just score it. Give it some nice scores, that way it doesn't roll up on us. Look at that, that pan is so hot from just the sun that the butter's already melting in there without a flame. Got a little mushroom here. This is absolutely beautiful up here. I love these alpine lakes. So that's probably what I'm gonna do most of the summer. We're gonna do a lot of episodes up here in the mountains, backpacking and fishing. So feel free to subscribe if you guys aren't already. Let me know in the comments too if that's what you guys wanna see. All right, we're gonna make just a little bit of room here for our fish. Oh yeah, look at that. Dang. Time for the main ingredient of the dish, the Danish sea salt. Ooh, yeah, here we go, here we go. Oh my goodness. Don't need to be shy at all. This stuff is full of minerals, not just sodium. Straight from the Baltic Sea, it's some of the best salt in the world. Oh yeah. And that is some juicy, juicy trout. It's just all sorts of delicious. You can see all that white stuff coming out, that's all the fat in the fish. So these fish have been eating good up here. They've had a really good life. Oh my goodness, look at that. All right, guys, it's time for the magic trick. Oh yeah, a little bit of cheese. And the tortilla's second. Oh man, this is gonna be so good. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Perfection. Golden brown, crusted onto that tortilla. I'm gonna try just some of the fish. Mm, mm. Wow, super firm meat. Almost tastes like a salmon. This is, this is a good one. This is a good one. This is the big one of those two. The little one I'll probably cook a little later on the trail, on the way back down. Let's load this up. We're gonna do our trout first, and we're gonna do all of our onions and the mushrooms. Oh, here we go. Mm. We're not gonna be shy, just a big avocado in there. Now we're talking. Mm. Cheers. Mm. All those flavors just come together so good. You've got that creamy avocado, the earthy onions and mushroom, the sweetness from the caramelization, the Danish sea salt just kind of gives everything, it just lifts everything up a little bit. And of course, that bold flavor of that trout, that mountain trout is just so, so flavorful. Wow, this is the best trout I've had since last time in the mountains. Now I'm gonna have to travel down that valley to get back out of the mountains, but on the way, there's another little lake just like this one that I'm kind of thinking about fishing. Mm. All right, I love you guys. Thank you so much for joining on this one. Remember to smash the like button, drop a comment below, subscribe if you guys are brand new. And I mean it when I say that without you guys, I couldn't be out here doing this. So thank you so much for all of your guys' support. Feel free also to pick up your merch, link in the video description below, and we'll see all of you guys in the next one. Until then, you all know it, fish on, baby.