Solo Camping Challenge | Rain & Fishing for Food

Now I need fish. I'm hungry, officially. Fishing is just going to get more difficult once it gets dark, so... What's going on, guys? It's Alex here with Northern Scavenger. It is the last weekend of October. It's about eight degrees right now, a little chilly. I'm expecting some rain this weekend. I think there was about a 90% chance. And to top it off, I thought I'd challenge myself this weekend. I only brought granola bars for food and a little bit of coffee, because I can't harvest coffee, unfortunately. So my goal for food is to be able to catch some fish and eat that for dinner tonight. And if not, I do have granola bars as a backup. The other challenge that I've made for myself is with expecting 90% chance of rain, I only brought a tarp. And so I'm going to rig something up with my tarp to make myself a little bit of a shelter in order for me to sleep tonight. I thought I'd change it up a little bit from my normal style of tripping, add these little fun elements of challenge in to just keep things spicy. And right now, beautiful, it's not raining right now. And fingers crossed, it holds off for a while. So I'm excited. The fall colors are out. And I think it's time to hit the water. So it has been raining on and off my entire trip in so far, not heavy rain by any means, just kind of like a constant mist. But it's absolutely beautiful out here. The perfect paddle in so far. So it's pretty cool that even though it's the end of October, and sometimes the fall colors are gone at this time of year, there's still quite a bit of color out this year. It's beautiful. So as I've been on this portage, I've noticed that there's a lot of standing dead wood. I think I might collect some wood here now that I'm on the other side of the portage so that I don't have to do it when I get to camp because this stuff looks pretty dry and it's been raining for the last two days. So dry wood might be hard to come by. God, that's so nice. So this piece is completely dry. This dry piece is a huge find. So the fact that I've already got this, this should last me most of the night, I'm going to try to find maybe just a couple more. Because it seems like this area has quite a bit of dead wood, which is a gift, especially on a rainy day like today. So we'll take it. Alright, so unfortunately, I don't have an official timing on this. But I think this has to be one of the fastest wood hauls I've ever done on a trip. That's a total gift on a trip with this much rain. Can't believe it. Oh my god, there's even more over here. Look at all this. Those standing pieces back there. These big logs right in front of me right here. This one's actually, this one's rotten. No good. Can't believe this wood haul. Alrighty, I think I just found my site for the night. This looks like a nice little spot. Okay, so I've found a place to camp for the night. My next steps, I've got firewood. Now I need fish. My tarp setup I can figure out once it gets dark, but fishing is just going to get more difficult once it gets dark. So I'm going to unload the boat and then go out and see if we can catch some dinner. It's absolutely beautiful out here right now. So calm, so quiet. It's not raining right now, which is a plus. It is getting dark though, and I'm hungry officially. So I am going to try to locate some fish with the little light that we've got left. Try to get a couple in so that I can have some dinner tonight, which would be really nice. So my lure of choice is going to be this weighted woolly bugger because they have absolutely been crushing it for me so far this year, so we're not going to try to change the recipe at all. Found some structure. Oh, fish on. Yes! Oh my gosh, that's like perfect eating size. Oh my gosh. Guys, we have dinner. Thank you, buddy. He hammered that. After having a couple minutes there where I was not getting any bites, I was starting to get very concerned about whether I was going to catch a fish tonight, but he came through, which is amazing. This looks like a good little nook to clean a fish. So I spilled it there. Trying to get all the meat off this guy. Alright so I got a decent amount of meat off this fish, I think if possible maybe I'll try to get one more on my way back to camp because I don't know if one is going to be enough and we'll go from there. So another little bonus about this area that I'm in right now, there's a ton of fallen birch trees, so I'm going to grab some birch bark so it's a little easier for me to get a fire going when I get back. Primo fire starter right here, primo fire starter. I'm so stoked right now. The rain's come back a little bit, so close. Alright so I've got my fire going, I have my first line hung where I'm going to get my tarp hanging off of to sleep under. I'm going to get basically my zone all set up before actually cooking dinner just in case it hasn't been raining as of late, but it could start any minute so I want to be prepared for when that rain does come. You can tell this is nice wood because it's barely crackling, barely smoking, like perfect perfect wood. For those of you who think that I'm talking about this wood too much and think I'm getting too excited about this wood, I'm not. Those who know wood will appreciate what I'm experiencing right now because it doesn't always happen like this. So I'm very happy with the pile of wood that I've got. Time to get the rest of camp set up, it's actually beautiful out right now. Alright so even though I do have a fish for dinner tonight, I have decided to eat one of my granola bars to supplement the fish. And I needed a little pick-me-up to get this next little section of work done. Yum. Alright, so I'm pretty excited right now, this is starting to look really homey in here. Probably a little bit difficult to see but I've got a nice little zone underneath the tarp. I've put my canoe along one of the sides that's open over here just to try to block a little bit of side wind if we get any tonight. But other than that, it's starting to look pretty nice in there. Alright so I got all my wood cut for the night, should be enough to get me through the next little bit. And now I think it's time to make some dinner. Now I did bring a little bit of a treat along to go with dinner tonight. That is this thornberry spiced cider. It's so good. And I think what I'm going to do actually is warm this up in a pot so that it's nice and warm, which should be good. And will be a nice thing to go along with my fish. Another staple on our trips, sriracha lime. Seasoned to the max. I think our oil might be ready. God that's looking so good. Freshly heated apple cider. Dinner is served. That's so good. Good morning. It rained most of the night last night, but the good news, we did not get wet in here. It's actually still very cozy in here, which is awesome. Slept like a baby, and ready for the day ahead. First things first, time to make a fire and get some coffee going. Since it got dark so quick last night, I didn't really have a great opportunity to show you guys the setup that I went with for my tarp. So I'll take you guys through that right now. So you can see down there, I have a little ground sheet that I put down because it's been raining for the last few days, and I didn't want to get soaked from the bottom up. I put my sleeping pad on top of that, and then my sleeping bag. So the first part of this tarp setup was running this cross line right across, just to make like a little bit of like a vestibule off the front, which you can see my head is like well behind. Then the next part was dropping the backsides right down to the ground, so that if there was a draft coming up the backside, I wouldn't feel it as much. There's an awesome little attachment point on this RabSil tarp that allows you to pull from the middle of the tarp, and so I connected a line to that, and then ran that up through the tree there. It looks a little messy because part of my rope got caught last night, and I just couldn't be bothered to deal with it. It was going to hold though. That's the loose end of the rope that's just caught up there. So you can see that middle section pulled up gives me a lot more head space in there. The other nice thing about that middle rope is that it also doesn't allow water to really pool on the tarp at all, which is also handy. The last part of this setup I'd maybe point out is how I used the canoe along the side that the wind was coming from last night as a bit of a wind block. It seems to work pretty well. I wasn't cold really last night, but I was definitely bundled up pretty nicely. So overall, I'm pretty happy with this tarp setup. I think next time if I were to try this again, I'd maybe try running a vertical line from the back up and make more of an A-frame, because then the tarp along the sides here could have come down more, also blocking wind. But this absolutely worked. I didn't get wet at all. It rained most of the night last night, so it would really just be for wind protection. Alright, so I'm just cleaning up the last little bits at camp here. I'm going to take down the tarp, but first I'm going to re-tie my fly line because it got very knotted yesterday. So I'm going to get a little re-tie going on this fly line, so that I can fish on my way out, ready for action. Do do do do do do do do do do do, bass come and bite me, bass come and bite me, do do do do do do. Another important note to make is I definitely struck a chord on this coffee this morning, because it is the perfect mix. Oh my god. There's nothing better than a coffee that just hits right, fact. So a quick little tip that I'll share here with you guys is a simple way to wrap your rope so that it doesn't get any tangles in it, and it's easy to take apart when you're ready to use it. So I grab one end of the rope in my hand like this, and in the direction that it's going, I wrap it around my elbow. This part's pretty classic, nothing new here. Then what I do is I take this little ring, put it together, I fold them in half, and I leave a healthy dose at the end. You'll get better at figuring out how much to leave. And then I start wrapping, and then right over top of that line, to basically pinch that one in place. And then, with the rest of this, I go backwards, and then on my last go-around, I lift up the one before, and just slide it underneath on that last one. So now this is what all my ropes look like. I love this tarp, super compact. You guys saw how big it was, and then it packs up to something smaller than an algene. Not the cheapest tarp in the world, but it is definitely a high-quality piece of gear that I would highly recommend. Just a little guy, large mouth. Grow to be a big large mouth, young one. Another small large mouth. Thanks a lot for watching guys, hit that like button if you liked the video, drop me a comment if you've got any questions, or just let me know what you thought. And don't forget to subscribe so you can catch more of this great backcountry content. Thanks a lot guys, and we'll catch you on the next one.