RIVERS OF PARADISE | A Wilderness Canoe Trip in Temagami

We just got on to my favorite river here. It's something I paddle every year. Feels great. Always a special place to be for me. Pretty good brook trout hole right here. One of the reasons this is my favorite river is the fish. I love hunting trout. The nook doesn't scare them away. We're dealing with some pretty serious gusts. They're nice when you have a tailwind, but going the other way, not so nice. This should be good right here. We've got a waterfall coming down and the trout like to school up there and wait for minnows and bugs to float down. Usually pick up something here. Brook trout, definitely a keeper. Got one. It's a little guy. Good eating though. Oh, this is a big one. Yeah, this is a big one. Oh boy. Oh boy. Hey, get out of there. That's a good one. Well, this is excellent. Not the biggest I've caught, but pretty close. That's a really nice one. Going to be eating good. Cutting up some of this nice red brook trout meat. The color of the diet, which is primarily insects and just like flamingos turn pink from eating the crustaceans, it's the same with the brook trout. Really rich meat, just rippled with fat. It's almost like eating salmon. There's a way to eat these. Just boil them up into a pot. You get a nice fish broth and pick the meat off the bones. About as simple as it gets. I like to taste what I'm eating. I don't want to hide the flavors. We stopped off for lunch at one of my little camps I've got set up here on this river. Going to eat, take our time and then move on to where we'll spend the night. A couple pork hogs ahead. Being out here paddling and fishing go hand in hand. It's a huge part of it for me. I've been looking forward to this meal since last fall. Brook trout cooked like this, just boiled in a pot, is my absolute favorite thing to eat in the whole world. There's so many good memories that come along with this meal that every time I have it, it's my favorite fish, This is probably my favorite campsite. I found this waterfall purely by accident. It's a whole area. A lot of good memories here. Back in the early days of the logging, they'd float timbers down the river and eventually reach a town that's, you know, miles from here. And this is the remnants of an old chute that they created. And that's when they were hauling logs with horses and they diverged the flow of the water and washed the logs right down. When I saw this for the first time, I came through on this side, which was a terrible way to portage, but I didn't know. I hadn't been here. When I walked out and saw this, I was just blown away. I've been coming ever since. Yeah, so today we're gonna head downstream here. We've got kind of a bit of a slog ahead of us. Some pretty treacherous portaging terrain. And there's a lot of drag in the canoe and getting wet. But tonight you'll see us camping on a really nice lake, hopefully catching a fish. Yeah, the next river is a river I've paddled the upper half of it, but I haven't been down the second half. And kind of the whole point is scoping out a route to start taking people out on guided trips, supplement my trapping income in actually probably the most hefty one on this creek and just fueling up with some coffee and bannock before I head on. And we've got a bit of a slog ahead of us. We're gonna have to line the canoe down a pretty extensive rock garden before we make it into the next river system. So getting a little thirsty. It's nice being in a place you can drink right out of the river. We just finished the last portage of the day and from here on out it's uncharted territory for me. So just getting the map out. Yeah, we're just going to camp out on this lake, find a good spot and do some fishing and get ready for running the river tomorrow. Supposed to be some pretty good white water up ahead. We made camp here, dropped our stuff off and decided to go try our luck to catch some dinner and it worked out. So it looks like meat's back on the menu. Good, all right, let's level this off. First day running the Maccoby. We've got a nice stretch of rapids up ahead. Most of them should be runnable from what I've read. Yeah, just another change of pace and some scenery out here. So just getting geared up for first run on the Maccoby. Got a decent set of rapids here, some rollers, big ledge at the end and low water means there's a lot of rocks to look out for. So excited. It's going to be going to be fun running this for the first time. Come on buddy, let's get him. This boat at the end of the river, we made an early camp today. Did a couple dips into the water so it needs a little extra time to dry off. Now I've got a couple more rapids to run and we'll be back to the take out. Good to finally see this river from start to finish. I've paddled the upper half many times. Doing this and running it and knowing the rapids and things like that make it that much better for when I want to bring people down here. So fish like this are a huge part of the experience out here for me. You don't find them too commonly like this in easy to reach places and wow what a specimen. Going to be some good eats tonight. So the rain finally caught up with us on our last day, about five and a half kilometers from the take out. Waited out the rain, all packed up and in about the last six kilometers got about three or four sets of rapids in there.