Kayak Camping on the BUFFALO NATIONAL RIVER / SMALLMOUTH FISHING

Music Welcome back to another adventure. Super excited today because we are on the National Buffalo River and we are doing a two-day camping trip. Today is gonna be a beautiful day. 70 degrees low wind. Tomorrow is the exact opposite. It's gonna be 30 degrees. It's gonna be high wind, rain, everything. So you know I had this trip planned and last minute the weather just went like here's a curveball. Yeah so anyways we're still gonna roll with it. That's why I bought that dry suit last year to prepare for you know times like this. So today we're going to enjoy the sunshine. It's beautiful weather and try to get on a lot of fish because tomorrow they could be just locked y'all. So I did show you a few clips there of me loading out my kayak. I'm trying a new box out. This is a waterproof box from Academy Sports and I got all my kayak camping gear in this box. Two baits I'm going to start out with. A KVD crankbait. Just a crawl pattern. Now I might swap that to a some type of shad pattern a little later. We'll see how it goes. Then I have this Jade's jig with a little trooper on that from Berkeley and boy that looks scrumptious right there. But anyways enough of this talking. I got 12 miles to cover. I'm gonna try to cover as much as I can and allow a couple hours of daylight left to set up camp tonight. That way I don't have as much miles to cover tomorrow if the weather is horrible. I can get off the water pretty quickly. So anyways let's get rolling. Before we get too far we need to go ahead and get some hydration. I brought my geopress. Just cut down on water bottles and amount of weight in my kayak because it's already pretty loaded enough. I'm gonna go ahead and fill this up with water and filter it. We'll have drinking water for the rest of the day. Oh yeah we're ready. There's a fish. There's a fish. Oh that's a nice one. Oh yeah that's a nice start right there baby. Get in the boat. He just mucked off too. Oh it's deep right here. I'm about to do a spin here real quick but they're hitting the crankbait. They are hitting the crankbait. I just caught this smallmouth off my Shimano Intenza from H2 for Outdoors. Just a great setup. Very light. You can easily detect those bites real quick. Probably a 14. There we go baby. Look at that beautiful smallie right there. Good start. Good start. I was casting my crankbait, that craw crankbait through the shoals here. It's probably about four to five feet deep and running that KVD 1.5 through there and he crushed it right off of a big rock. We'll give him a drink. We'll put him on the board. Just kind of see where he's at to be honest and then we'll get back to fishing that little run right here. I'm only about 200 yards off the put in so I haven't made it very far at all but thank goodness they're hitting the crankbait because if I was having to drag that jig the whole day it'd be a really long day and be really really slow. Not a bad start at all. 15 and three quarters baby. Go ahead and let this one go. One last look. Thanks bud. There's a fish. There's a fish. Oh man. He might break me off. He smoked that crankbait. Come on. Stay out of the rocks. It's not that big but he smoked it right by the boat though. I didn't have time to react on this guy. He's not big but man the way he smoked it right off the nose of my boat. He felt huge. Just a little 10 inch guy but he liked that crankbait though. Oh right there. There's a fish. There's a fish. Stay on baby. Stay on. Not a bad one. Not a bad fish. It's not a bad fish. Not a big one but a lot better than the last couple of them. We'll stay on here. Get in the boat. It's a pretty good one actually. A lot bigger than I thought in that current. I just passed through here. It's probably about a 14. I just passed through here with my kayak. I was like I don't know if I spooked him or not but there should be a fish or two in here. Sure enough. Got this chunky butt right there. All right we'll go ahead and put him on the board real quick. He's probably going to flop. Yeah he's a 14. 14 and a quarter. All right buddy. Thanks for that awesome fight. He went under my kayak. Here's another one. Oh that's another nice one. Another nice one. Whoa he just put on a show for you. Stay on baby. Stay on. Oh he's barely hooked. I'll have to net this one. Got him. I don't want to jinx myself but this is my only crawl imitation crankbait so I just brought a little of everything. I didn't bring a lot of everything so yeah we won't measure him. He's probably 13. Long skinny. Go ahead and let him go. There's one on the tube. On the tube. On the tube. Just got uh one on the tube. Drifted it through there. Got this uh tube set up from H2 for Outdoors. Just a green pumpkin and orange with a tube hook. Weedless. It's a 3-yacht. A little dink. Might need a new tube after that one. I might be able to get a little bit more life out of it but that's how I got it rigged. Right there. Oh he smoked the red bass. Oh that's a nice one. That's a nicer one. That's a nice one. Oh he's not that big. Never mind. I thought he was a mondo. I'm about to hit some rocks though. Wind's blowing me right into this island. Oh that's a wreck. We got him in the boat though. That was awesome. There was just a gust of wind there that pushed me into this uh big rock peninsula here. Probably at 13. 13 and a half. Jeez. Oh it come off. No it's running. Going out of this hole here. Feels good. Can't tell. He hasn't shown his face yet. He's not bad. He's not huge but he's not bad. Come on. Come on. Come on. Oh he just felt massive in that. Never mind. He felt huge in that current. I've been throwing that crankbait just trying to find them and then once I find one I'll throw that uh tube back in there. Try to pull out a better one. Little guy. Felt like a two in that current. Third fish. Third fish. Third fish. Third fish. Probably at 10. Fish on. Oh stay on. Oh he's not big. As soon as it landed he was this whole fun fish. Goodness gracious. No that's a little smaller. He's a little guy. As soon as it landed he choked it. There's fish. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Stay on. Stay on. Stay on buddy. I don't know if this one's a big one or not but he's putting up a fight though. It's probably a 12 but I just haven't got a look yet. Try not to lose him. Man he might be a two the way he's fighting. Starting to get tired. Oh I'm missing some good spots because I should have dropped my anchor. Come on. Oh yeah he's decent. He is decent. He's putting up a great fight. Now he's on this side. Oh dang. Oh dang it. Come on. Oh get in there. Yes. Look at that gut. They are feeding up right now that's for sure. Not a long one but very heavy. Going to measure him real quick. He's probably another 15. 15 and three quarters most likely. I'll go ahead and put him on the catch board and then put him back in the water. That was a fun fight. Okay he closed his mouth. Yep another uh 15. I thought he's a little longer but definitely close to two pounds with that gut. Mr pudgy. There he goes. Well it's about a 4'10 and sunset is at 5.05 so uh as you can see there it's starting to go over those trees a little bit. This is kind of in the middle of the river. It's really really high off the water line too so if it does rain I have at least 10 feet before it reaches me um and I'm in a nice little eddy here the main river. It's just right off that point. There's some uh bush trees right there kind of blocking the wind and there's a little dip right there. It looks like a perfect spot to put a tent and I'm seeing some nice uh driftwood where I can start a fire. So we're going to go ahead and set up camp right here mainly because of that guy. Yeah this looks good. There's a lot of driftwood especially over there so there's plenty of wood to burn especially this piece right here. I got some uh brush right here kind of block the wind. All right we're gonna go ahead and set up the pad right here and get to cooking. I think we have maybe 50 minutes before the sun is set. So let's get rolling. So we covered 6.38 miles today. I'm going to show you this uh new I think it's McGillen Academy brand and it is Loctite. There's a uh air valve right there where it releases the air pressure. Dual latches it has latches on that side and this side and it's got these locks and right there it's got these two pockets here. It also has some drop down drawers and dividers and stuff which I didn't have space for all that. So I just kind of left it open and it is nice to have those two pockets on the lid and then all my camping stuff fit in here besides my cooking stuff. I have it in a separate bag up there in the front hatch. All right we're gonna go ahead and get the tent out, lay down our footprint, our tent, then throw all our stuff inside the tent real quick and then we got to get to cooking and get this fire rolling. So to make this comfortable I'm using my foot to rake out the chunk rock. I've gotten down to the sandy bottom and these rocks are very very small at this point and this is going to be way more comfortable sleeping overnight versus on these little rocks. You'll be surprised one little rock like that underneath your back will keep you up all night. So it's important to get a good night's sleep so I'm just making a nice little pad right there where it's going to be comfortable and smooth. Sleeping bag, pillow, got our sleeping pad here. How many blows is it going to take to get it inflated today? That is the question. There you go. It wasn't too bad. I'm gonna go ahead and fluff up the pillow that way it's ready. Having beef stew tonight. This meal calls for one and three-fourths cups. We're gonna eyeball it. Well that was pretty cool. There was a deer. I couldn't tell if it was a buck or a doe coming along this ridge here between the two bluffs and I guess it finally saw me or heard me and spooked the opposite direction. I can't tell in the video clip but maybe you caught the glimpse of the white tail. Well I figure while the mountain house is cooling down and cooking doing all those things uh it's going to take like 30 minutes for it to cool down and cook all together. Enough where you're going to be able to eat it without scolding your tongue. Yes done that before it hurts. But uh we're gonna go ahead and gather up some uh kindling and some driftwood and start getting a fire ready to go. Not started just yet and then we need to get everything inside of our tent that needs to stay waterproof and go ahead and batten down the hatches just in case we get some rain in the a.m.s. There we go. Well that's all she wrote today. It's a pretty eventful day. Had a lot of fun. Uh the rapids were you know pretty mild but uh the fish was pretty good. For being uh mid-November I was happy. Anytime you can catch smallmouth in November it's a win. Uh the biggest was near 16 today. I lost a nice one probably two plus uh probably 17 inches. That beef stew tonight was amazing. Very thick and hearty. I am definitely stuffed. Not sure what's going to go down tomorrow. It could be a total crapshoot. I don't know if it's going to be good fishing uh with the 30 degree temperature drop. Um rain possibly. So who knows. But I've had some of my best days in the winter when it was raining. So who knows. But anyways uh thanks for watching. I hope to see you tomorrow.