3-Day Solo Survival Catch and Cook in the Deep Wilderness

Bugs are awful. And this does not look any better. I mean, I guess it's digestible. What's that noise? So I've actually been here before, but I never quite liked this. I was here back in fall, and at that time I brought a lot of food to eat, but I was unable to catch any fish because fishing was closed. Today, fishing is finally open, but I brought no food with me on this trip. No food whatsoever. So, if I don't catch any fish, or perhaps forge for some food, I'm gonna be a pretty hungry dude over the next two nights. It's about noon o'clock. Let's get into it. Call this home. Ooh, wintergreen. Wow. So succulent. Blech, that one was not good. That's good here. The big thing is the bugs. Not too concerned about the rain. It's been a particularly dry year. In fact, it's been so dry that there's forest fires all over Canada right now. That's why the sky is so hazy from the fires in Quebec. And as a result, there's an extreme fire risk right now, which means we can't have any campfires for this trip. No campfires, I brought a burner to cook food if we have to cook, or if we get to cook, if we are fortunate enough to cook food. I brought no shortage of tackle. Most of them are spinners. Got one paddle tail and one spoon. Hopefully the fish are looking for spinners. This is a brook trout lake. Tasty fish. Hopefully they're biting. Gold. Fish on. Ooh. Hello. Yeah. We got a brookie. That was pretty quick. All right, one or two more of those and we got ourselves a meal. Tiny little guy, but perfect. Put her out in the sun and get herself another one. Cast it out like 30 more times. No more bites. I'm gonna try a different spot, but first I'm gonna gut this fish to get all its organs out so it doesn't decompose as quickly. Beautiful looking fish. So I only have one of those isobutane canisters. Great for boiling water. I'm not sure how good they are for cooking meat on. Probably pretty inefficient. I feel like in order to make it worthwhile, I should probably get two more fish at least. Another one. Here we go. Wintergreen. It's like eating a pack of gum. So originally the plan was to just use a pot to boil water on a campfire, but because of the fire ban, brought a little filter. Wintergreen. Last time I was here, this is where I camped. Great little spot. So I hiked around a little bit of the lake. Honestly, I'm getting no nibbles. Might be the time of day. Might be where I'm trying to cast from, but I'm gonna go back to the point where I was catching fish earlier because it seems to be the best spot. Hey, look, wintergreen. That's a fish. Wow, that's a big one. That's a beautiful brook trout. Shoot. Whoa. Oh my God. Okay. That's a big brook trout. Ooh, snapped the line. I need a net. Damn. Well, that was a blunder. I've made that mistake before. The first time I made it, the fish jostled the hook out of its mouth. This time it actually snapped the line. That was a surprise. I didn't expect that. I thought I'd be able to ground it. In any case, it was a really big fish and that would have been a lot of food. I'm pretty hungry, so we're just gonna eat these two fish. I was gonna try to wait out a little bit longer, but you know what? You know what? We're gonna eat them. We're gonna eat them now. Because I'm not cooking on the campfire anymore, I did bring oil so I could cook in the pan. And then I guess at this point, I also bought seasoning salt because might as well. And to be absolutely fully upfront with you guys, I also brought a little bit of instant coffee for tomorrow morning. Most excellent. I like it when you can eat an animal like corn on the cob. Eat the eyeball. All right, the brain, you gotta like get out the back of its head and just suck it out. I still don't like it, but it's not nearly as bad as the first time I did it. Oh. All right, that's one. Three would have been perfect. Two is just probably a little bit too little. Mm, thank you. About an hour and a half, two hours till sunset. Little bit of time. I'm not gonna do any more fishing for tonight. I'm good on that. I'm gonna go check the small little lake that's just behind my shelter. I'm gonna see if I can forage anything on the way. I eat mushrooms. Maybe find some cattails. Or see what else is around. Such a beautiful little beaver pond. But it doesn't look like there's any cattails here, which is surprising because I feel like they're everywhere. Except when you need them. Ah, there the black flies are. Been waiting for you. What cute, funny, loved little creatures. Like when they fly in your ears and your nose and your eyes. Whoa, no way. Wintergreen. Haven't seen any of this in about four minutes. Mm, that smells really nice. That was a nice little hike. I think the plan for me is go for a little swim. Just hunker in. Because I could do a bit of fishing right now and it'd probably be good fishing. But I think I'm good on food for tonight. Wake up bright and early tomorrow morning and that's when I'll go do some fishing. And we'll do a little bit more exploring. And also tomorrow I have a little surprise for you guys. Little surprise. The air quality has definitely changed. I mean, I can see the peaks around here a lot more clear than I could when I first got here. I think all that wind today blew a lot of that smoke out of here. I didn't expect that to considering how much smoke is everywhere right now. All right, time to jump in the water. Nice. Woo hoo! That's it for me today. See you guys tomorrow. Good night. Good morning everyone. I slept really well. I'm afraid that maybe there'd be some morning dew to make everything wet. But none of that. But what there is is a thousand mosquitoes all just outside my net. So, making it kind of hard to get out of here. Maybe we'll just stay in the tent. But the fishing is so good right now. And now we're gonna get mold. Let's go. No thank you. Do not want. Thank you very much. But no thank you. Big old cup of joe. Luxury. Sweet luxury. Woo! Wildlife is so cool. Few more casts and then I'm gonna show you guys the little surprise that I have in store. Come on. My new boat. So I obviously had to get here yesterday and the way I did that was I paddled about an hour and 20 minutes on another lake. Portaged into this lake and then canoed across. Stashed the canoe in the woods because I wanted to give myself the challenge of trying to catch fish and forage without the boat yesterday. But I figured on the second day I would have the luxury of being able to paddle around. So this is the surprise. It's my brand new NovaCraft Prospector. It's a 15 foot which is one foot shorter than my other boat which will make it a little bit easier to solo paddle. This one is made in Tough Stuff Expedition. Tough Stuff is very strong and it's also significantly lighter than my old canoe. I also have a fishing net with the new boat so it'll be easier to catch fish in there. Does that sound like a baby moose cat? So I wonder what that was. Sounded like a baby moose almost. Probably a wendigo. So here, I'm gonna go look. I'm gonna wait here for a few moments. There isn't really a point for me to do anything but fish. Well, at least at this point. Fish are gonna be my best source of calories so I should use all my effort to just fish today. Yeah, that's a fish, that's a fish. Whoa, there it is. Oh, I switched to a little Cleo and this one's barbless. Dang, that felt like a good fish too. We're not doing so well out here right now. Could be better. Oh, we could have a fish. Came close. Do not have one. Could have, but we don't. Do I want one? Yeah. Yeah, I do want one. Do I think we'll get one? Hard to say. I just got a nibble at the boat. I saw him too, so there's a chance. I had another one come up and it almost jumped out of the water to try and grab the lure. That was pretty cool. Oh my God. Yes. About dang time. Oh, and then the hook comes out in the net. Yes. Wow. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Beautiful fish. That only took us five hours to land it. Woo, I'm doing something wrong. Let's get another one, then let's go cook that one, then maybe take a nap. Here we go. Beautiful fish. All that done. That was excellent. I could probably eat three more of those. That was quite nice. I think I'm gonna take the canoe across the lake and go check out that pond. You guys wanna come? Come on. Loose tracks. Usually when I walk around the forest, you can see at least a couple mushrooms, even if I can't identify them, but I found nothing. There's a few kind of hardened ones growing on trees back there, but I don't see any fresh ones. And I think that's a result of just how dry it is. Mushrooms need quite a bit of moisture in the air, humidity to induce their spawning. So I don't think it's a mushroom type of trip. Just after 3.30. Fish aren't biting right now, or my strategy is just not very good. In any case, I'm gonna take a break from fishing and go climb this hill, because it's quite beautiful up there. So this right here is reindeer lichen. Moose and caribou both eat it. The reason why it's called reindeer lichen is because these little arms, these little branches, they look like reindeer antlers. In any case, we can eat that. It's something that we can eat, although it's high in acidic content, so it could hurt your stomach. The best practice is to boil it twice to get rid of all that acidity. And it's actually used as like a survival food because of, you know, like a tummy filler, because it's high in carbohydrates. We're gonna take it home and cook some for dinner because I've never tried it before. It's absolutely so beautiful up here, and there's blueberry patches everywhere, but until the blueberries want a fruit and the brook trout want a bite, we're gonna be eating lichen. It's such a beautiful lake. From up here, all that clutter looks absolutely gorgeous, but guaranteed down there in a canoe, it'd be chaos. I'm gonna head down. I was trying to get a cool shot with the drone of me casting a line at it, and I ended up catching the drone, and yeah, I dropped the drone right in the water. That was a funny sight, but unfortunately, I might've destroyed the drone. That's what a dying drone looks like. I think it's about time to eat the lichen. It's really hard and brittle. Right now, but once it gets wet, it gets really spongy. Let's see how this goes. Let's start with half. That's one boil. Safe for human consumption. You can smell the acidity as you pour it out. The big reveal. It's gross. Because of the overcast, I feel like the bugs are coming out a little earlier, so I might not fish anymore. This might be it, so I'm happy that I cooked this reindeer moss so I have at least a little bit of grub in my tummy tum, because I might have to hop into my shelter because the bugs are awful, and this does not look any better. Okay. Don't love it. I don't love it. It's growing on me. It's a little dirty. Yeah, maybe I could've got a little bit more of that dirt out. I can't. It's not good. Like, I don't need to eat this. I wanted to try it. No. Can't. I mean, I guess it's digestible, and perhaps if I got like a really clean batch of it, it would be a little bit better, but it tastes kind of fishy. Great, smaller bites is definitely easier. Little bites, little bites. Yeah, I do have some seasoning. 1,000 times better. Okay, this is actually pretty good with the seasoning. We'll see if I get a stomachache, though, right? Aminos, clobagus, toxic. This is reindeer moss, right? Lichen. Imagine eating this every day to survive. It's wild. I don't know what to compare it to. It's its own thing. A little crunchy, a little dry. Like a heavy vegetable that's lacking liquid. Is this Labrador teeth? Smells really nice. Definitely feel pretty gross, so I'm just gonna jump in and get a quick little bathe in. But I gotta be careful, because there's a snapping turtle around. I don't want it to bite off my wiener. Woo! You know, today didn't go according to plan whatsoever. Barely caught a fish. Caught my drone, swamp bat. Barely got anything to eat, except for that lichen. I wouldn't really call it a very successful day, but there's something about seeing a beautiful sunset that makes you feel like the day was a success. I think it's about that time to get into my shelter. The bugs are horrendous again. It's about nine o'clock. I mean, there's nothing else to do, but crawl into my sleeping bag, close my eyes, and hope to fall asleep, because once the black flies die down, the mosquitoes come out, and then vice versa in the morning. Anyways, I'm going to bed. Waking up, gonna do a little bit of fishing, and then hopefully get ourselves some breakfast. See you in the morning, guys. Good morning, everyone. It's just before 6 a.m. The vampires are out in droves. Anyways, we're gonna see if we can get some breakfast. Let's do this. Morning shower. It's actually pretty good. You don't even taste the bugs. It's just like the thought of just drinking bugs. Anyways, the fishing wasn't great, but the lichen was plentiful. Beautiful spot. I'll probably be back eventually. Maybe not for a while. It was a wonderful experience testing my skills out here in the spring, in the dry season without a fire. It was a fun one, and I'm really grateful to have had this opportunity. Hope you guys enjoyed that one as much as I did. Thanks for watching. Have a great day.