Truck Camping in the Snow | Fishing on the Ice & Cooking over a Warm Campfire

It's currently 29 degrees out, an absolutely beautiful winter day here in Minnesota, so Toby and I are going to bring you out ice fishing and we're going to do a little camping too. It looks like there's one person out there on the lake. I wonder if he's catching anything. The plan is to get out there, start popping some holes, marking some fish, and then I'll bring the hub house out. Once we get it nice and warm, Toby can join us. The temperatures are supposed to be holding all night long, which means we'll probably even have a campfire. This should be a good time. Well, there's another house out in the distance as well. I bet that's a spearing shack. Let's go find a campsite. I'm going to look for a campsite right on the shoreline, something that makes pulling all our gear out really easy. Bingo, I think we found it. A picnic table and a fire ring. Can't ask for more than that. Let's get it put in there. It actually feels pretty level. Come on, Toby. Check this place out. This is going to be all right. We're going to get camp set up quick. I know that sun looks like it's sitting low in the sky, but it's not even noon yet, so we should have about four and a half hours of daylight left. I just left the furnace on. It should be nice and warm in here. I've never really had an issue leaving the furnace on while driving down the road, but it's probably not something you're supposed to do. This yellow tote's been working out great for catching the snow and water coming in the camper, but just like that, we're all set. I love how these truck campers take five minutes to get the camp set up. Looks like I can chop off the table and we'll be good to go. I'm guessing that we're going to have at least eight inches of ice. Probably more. Getting ready always seems to take the longest. I'll put some Gordon Ramsay on for you. You can stay in here, stay warm. I'm going to go out, drill some holes, but I'll be back for you in a little bit. Check that out. He put up a house. He must be on the fish. This is a free app called Map Finder. It gives me the lake depth and we can see it's pretty much just a giant bowl here. I'm on five feet, a little ways out. It's 10 feet. I think the max depth in this hole right here is like 17 feet. The guy with the house is over here, right on the 10-foot line. Maybe that's what we'll try and find right off this point here. I can see some weed sticking up. Maybe what we'll do is just try putting down a few holes right on the edge of the weed line and see how deep it is. That looks like the reed line stops here. Let's try popping in a few holes. This will give us a pretty good idea of the lake structure and hopefully we'll be able to see something on the depth finder. It's all weeds. It's maybe five feet deep, but I can see that it's just all weeds in there. This one's about 10. Still got a lot of interference, but we're sitting at maybe 14 feet and then I've got a lot of stuff showing up between five and ten. Maybe we'll just try putting a waxy down and see what happens. Put these guys in my pocket so they warm up and get a little bit more lively. Let's see what we do. So basically what I'm doing is just using my fish locator to jig off the bottom just by about six inches. When I first drilled the hole I saw some fish move through, but I'm not seeing anything right now. We'll bounce it off the bottom. There's a lot of cracking. Here we go. I thought I saw something come off the bottom. Probably a little perch. That one sounded like it was right underneath me. Come on fish. Can you hear all the cracking of the ice? That's crazy. She's making a lot of noise today. I got this fish locator back when I was in high school yet. It was in the mid 90s. I was working at a bait shop. This is probably one of Vexilar's first fish locators. It took me four weeks of scooping minnows to afford it I'm sure. I think I can see something down there though. We're gonna try moving again. Going a little bit deeper and I found this. X marks the spot. We're right on this big ice heave. Maybe that tells us something about the bottom of the lake. Who knows? But we're gonna try it out and I'm gonna switch to using these little larvae or maggots. Let's see if they work better. That's what it looks like. I'll catch a fish now because my battery's gonna go dead soon. But honestly though does it really even matter if we catch a fish when we got a view like this? Yeah I'd still like to catch one. I mentioned that it gets dark way too early. Check this out. I brought a toy for Toby. It's got some treats in there. You want this? You want that? Let's get it. Go get it. Where'd it go? Good job. Good job buddy. He really doesn't care for it. He's never been food motivated. Chipmunks on the other hand. Oh he'll chase them all day. Oh check out all the deer activity. I wonder if they're nibbling the tips off the trees. Sure look at that. A lot of signs of deer around here. Well we're gonna head back to the camper, start up the fire. I threw the hoodie on. It's starting to get just a little bit cold out here. Temperatures are in the 20s but it's kind of that damp 20 degrees and makes the difference. I still haven't had to start that generator yet. Fuel is probably three months old. We should probably just run it dry. The lithium system's been working out great. It's weird I'm here in shooting but I've got no idea what anyone would be shooting this time of year. A little windy out tonight. Sure we'll be hearing the ice popping and cracking all night too. Supper tonight. It's going to be really simple. Just taking a sweet potato, wrapping it up in aluminum foil, tossing it in the fire. A little bit of oil, a little bit of salt. That's pretty easy. Good news, gunshots have stopped. Now it sounds like they're having some kind of racing wars on the other side of the lake though. I wonder what that's all about. It's putting Toby a little bit on edge. You just make sure nobody sneaks up on us. Let's see if we can get some of these coals ready here. That should be all right. Coals on one side, we can have the fire on the other. Last time I tried making a baked potato in the fire, I completely burned it so we'll see if I do any better tonight. That sounds like the race trucks are back. Thing is, 30 years ago that would have been me out there having fun. So I guess it's good to know that the world doesn't change that much. I think he's running super swampers on that thing down the highway. It's getting pretty soft. Should be done soon. My old partner at work, he used to eat a sweet potato probably two or three times a week. He'd have them raw. You just sit there and peel them at his desk and I asked him about it and he said well they're better for you than regular potatoes. Up until that point I don't think I ever ate a sweet potato. Tried it and I was hooked. Are they better for you? I have no idea. He was one of these guys though that looked like he was 25 even though he was 50 so something was working right for him. I'm not that lucky though. I think genetics plays a big part in that. I think it's almost done. Well this one turned out perfect. If you haven't ever tried a sweet potato over a campfire you definitely should. The smokiness adds a lot to the flavor. I like mine with just a little bit of the salt and butter. So good. Well I'm gonna finish supper, go sit by the campfire for a little bit and we're calling it a night. See you in the morning. I was thinking last night there's probably a reason why there's only two houses out on the lake. That's because there's no fish in there. We proved that yesterday. But honestly being 15 to 17 feet deep probably freezes out in the winter time. What happens is the ice covers the lake. The lake doesn't get a lot of oxygen so then the fish die off. What we need to do is we need to find a lake that is deeper, holds more fish. The problem is finding a lake that also has a campsite so what we're probably gonna have to do is get up north further and get into some of those dispersed locations. I've got that hub which would be nice because then we can stay out there maybe through the night cook supper out in the fish house. We'll have to save that for another video though. Toby and I are gonna get out this morning. He's got to get on his walk and then we're gonna get heading back home. You ready to go for a walk? Let's go. I'm glad that we went on the lake yesterday. Today is windy. It feels a lot colder out here. Come on up. Good boy. Well I just got off the phone with my stepson. He said that his brakes ain't working. One of the calipers just isn't doing what it's supposed to do. I had him crack the bleeder screw, set up his camera and told him push on his brake pedal and see how much fluid comes out and he said barely any. So I'm thinking maybe collapse brake line. He asked if I'd head over and help him take a look at it. So we'll do this again next Tuesday. Until then, be kind, be honest. We'll see you down the road. You ready to go home, Toby?