Smelt Dipping & Tipi Hot Tenting - Upper Peninsula Michigan!

looks like the slide right place we're off chiefs here welcome back to the channel today we are going to be switching things up slightly you're still going to be doing a little bit of steel head fishing hopefully the river is currently chocolate milk but the main plan is going to be going smelt dipping for the next 2 to 3 days so we're going to be hot tent camping down this upper peninsula river here in northern Michigan smelt dipping very new to me and it looks like I already have rapids coming up in the first 5 minutes of the float so that is going to be interesting wow okay here it goes guys this is going to be a crazy one stick around barrett hang on tight buddy holy crap this is just the start of them too oh my goodness it might it might get crazy here in a minute pushing me into a tree oh my gosh we are flying down the river right now guys we are flying not something I would want to go into and the winds are kicking i forgot to mention we are in the middle of a early spring storm here there's going to be 45 mph gusts out of the north and uh a wintry mix it's going to be snowing and raining all night all right I might have to like pull off on an Eddie and regroup here i don't know if my anchor is going to hold wow there are down trees this water is flying i got to I got to put the camera away this is going to get too crazy barrett sit tight doggy we got to We got to put some stuff away here these waves are like 3 4 feet tall oh my god oh boy right in the middle oh my goodness you're doing good Barrett you're doing good tell you what mother nature is angry these tree tops are blowing like I said it's like 45 mph north gust right now you can definitely tell it's pushing me down the river it's at my back already going down these rapids i'm just trying to find a campsite at this point cuz I'm a little further downstream than I want to be so taking a little bear at pea break right now he's got the zooies yep that is a happy dog right there anyways pulling off a little pea break looking for a camping spot we're way ahead in the float right now this is probably the best thing I found camping wise we have some nice cover right here however as far as dipping smelt goes it's kind of fast water i'm not really sure if this is what I'm looking for coming further downstream this island looks a lot better smelt dipping wise yep there goes that and the GoPro and the rod tip broke can probably still float fish with it for this trip my anchor just lifted faster than I was anticipating and we just got sucked right in that current well the island initially seemed like a good idea and then it was covered in goose crap so Barrett was really interested in that and I could see that going in a bad direction so I think we're going to slide down just a little bit more all right we have found camp some more snow and rain coming in a minute so I'm going to try to get this tent up ASAP i've had some people asking me what my TP hot tent setup is this is a eightman seek outside TP hot tent shelter i have it configured to a six-man because I'm by myself i don't need the room for an eightman and you also have to consider the fact that I will also be having to heat all that extra space this is the titanium stove that I bought from them as well so far I've had it for probably about a year i've taken it on about a dozen trips and it has been great going to get this wood stove set up and I think I'm going to cook up a steak take a nap try to organize some stuff a little bit and then we should be smelting let that rest for a minute let that butter soak in with that rosemary and we should be ready to roll goal was to try to get medium rare would you munch on that please comment he just learned shake oh I guess he's he's on the cot with me barrett he'll Can you shake shake shake good boy look at you very good boy yes yes yes he's just a little weenie boy good boy so as of right now it's about 6:00 and I guess the people that smelt seriously don't even really start until about 8:30 9:00 with the best being like 10 to 2 so we have some time to kill i've heard decent reports but this is my first time out so I'd be pretty much happy to get a meal's worth i guess the the limit is two gallons though so if we're on them I'm going to try to try to get my limit and do that we're definitely going to be having a smelt fish fry all right guys time to go dip some spell you ready Barrett come on let's go all right here goes nothing barrett's pretty much crosseyed right now because he's so tired see how this lasts it's currently 10:00 at night and uh this is where we begin got a little bit of a hike into the spot that I scouted out earlier lead the way buddy apparently he knows where we're going oh that's a big turd that's a giant turd that looks like a bear turd great oh bear come here Bear heal heal oh he's peeing on the feces of another animal all right guys so we're out here right now Bear and I it is windy it is freezing right now i apologize if there's wind in the mic but you guys are probably wondering what the heck's going on here we're using a dip net and we're literally just hovering the bottom with this down speed so we're going with the current trying to scoop up the bottom not super fast but just ahead of the current and slightly above the bottom like so there we go it's as easy as that hopefully it's focusing i know it's probably weird lighting pardon that but it's a nice male smelt average size probably five inches and yeah sometimes you get one sometimes you get none sometimes you get 10 sometimes you get your limit in a scoop but just going to keep chugging along we got another one that's two in a row it's really not rocket science it is kind of weird though because it seems so crazy you just scoop a net off the bottom and think that you have realistically a chance at getting fish but it works it's been thing for a long time there we go look at that that's four that's four right there like I said sometimes you get one sometimes you get none sometimes you get a handful two three four all good eaters those smaller ones fry up better cuz the bones disintegrate when you fry them the larger ones they fry a little tougher but obviously they they'll still cook holy crap this might be the most I've ever scooped i'm making it look easy i promise it's not this easy maybe it is i don't know loaded loaded loaded not sure that's a big one right there it's a big male that's what they look like though they even got a little atapose fin on them just like a salmon or a steel head i am seeing them all over the the bank right here i wish I could get a video of it but they're so skittish and you probably can't see it we have to be close to a limit here i might dump this out my my net just to make sure i'm not going to go over i got a 5gallon bucket right here so kind of looking to be under that halfway mark ideally let's see here we've got a pile of fish well I apologize for the scary movie lighting it is humid in here barrett's wet i'm wet i got to get this fire raging i got to dry all this gear out but mission success we got probably I'd say half of our limit we probably modestly got about a gallon maybe a little bit more than that which is about half of our limit of two gallons and I'm content i am very content i know I can't eat all those fish so we should have a nice little fish fry tomorrow it's like 1:00 a.m right now i am freaking tired i'm going to wrap her up call her a night come here stinky eye boogers come here come here you can make it whoa and we still have a lot of smelt to clean the plan is to stuff my face completely full of bacon blueberry pancakes and one egg because don't ask what happened to the other six we're going to go elf style maple syrup on everything i need some carbs in this meal especially shout out Thomas one of my guests who booked a steel trip with me this spring got some pure maple syrup oh this is going to be so good i need this so bad guys perfect literally perfect i just poured the last pancake and I made a heart shout out Mom i think the plan's going to be tidy up camping we got to cut some smelt we got a lot of fish to clean i'll show you guys how I do that well before we get cleaning I read online that in order to have good luck you have to eat the head off of your first smell only doing this once probably should have thought about doing that with water on hand i have no water i apologize for the wind it's still being quite persistent but I'm going to show you guys how I clean these smelt right here it's very simple all we're going to do is take a sharp pair of kitchen shears clipping behind the neck and then we run up the butt thing about a couple inches until you're parallel with just below the head and it's as simple as this you literally it comes out in one piece you take the head where you cut it you pull down and then all the guts pull out attached to it and that's all of the insides of it and what I'd also recommend is you get a little bit of blood in here so I use my fingernail and I just simply kind of scrape it along the backside there rinse it in some water and there you have it nice chunk of smelt we will be frying some of these up later and having a nice fish fry and after a good tedious hour and a half two hours that's the end result maybe we were a little closer than I limit our limit than I thought i'm going to give them an extra rinse in some river water shake them up drain them out pack them in some snow and ice tell you what though the flow today looks a lot better i feel like I might be able to steel head fish wow it looks so swing fishy i just hope I can touch i can't tell if I'm like right on if I can wade this or not that's the one thing that's so tough about these up rivers is they run so tanic that brown water it's deceiving it's hard to tell how deep it is sometimes i'm getting a good swing though i'm kicking bottom just a tad i'm getting lucky on my cast cuz it's the wind is down river hitting one in a rapid like this with this high of water dude it would be nuts that's a nice swing come on funny i had to go to the vet the other day for Barrett's checkup actually it was a couple months ago and I just got a chuckle out of it cuz they're like "Yeah just try to not let your dog chew on sticks it's not good for their teeth because they can get splinters." I'm thinking in the back of my head like that's the whole reason my dog wants to exist probably not going to follow those directions sorry ma'am you think my dog likes to go fishing this dog is drifting heel whoa are you happy are you a happy boy are you a happy boy yeah yeah are you a happy boy yeah he's a good boy yes look at that tail wow yeah you do you bro this is your world i'm just living in it water dog sweat look at you oh come on bro not getting the swing angle that I want all right guys well I tried my best no steel head fish some really good holes i was pretty optimistic but nothing swing flies with these smelt around i thought might be decent threw some spawn through some single beads but nothing got dinner with the view tonight so the goal is we're just going to try to get this thing super hot burn down a bunch of coals and then we're just going to do a good old oldfashioned shore lunch fish fry overlooking beautiful Lake Hiron as the sun is setting we're going to get these smelt on the dry first actually probably just dump that in here oh this is going to be so good it's like the perfect amount i got 12 smell right now so we're going to go from dry to a wet mixture of this catch and cook cajinjun but we're getting some flavored onions right now crucial component to a successful fish fry all right we're switching her up slightly we're going with sweet potato fries this time normally I just do regular but we're going to do some sweet potatoes oh look at that bubble that looks perfect that is what you want right there oh yeah that's going to fry fast those onions look perfect too giving a bunch of flavor to the fries to the fish coming up here if anybody has any smelt recipes please let me know cuz whatever camping video I do in the future I'm probably going to be having a good amount of this smelt laying around our dry batter and our wet batter are smelting it right there and dip it in get the wet oh yeah that's fine that's fine sloppy grease mess dip it in boom so went from this to the wet and it looks like it is frying absolutely perfect and I have micro cuts in my hands apparently cuz this cinjun is burning my fingers oh look at this it looks perfect look at that nice golden crisp on it depending on how good this meal is maybe I will stay tonight look at that that looks textbook oh my goodness you literally couldn't make it any better all right here we are guys look at that goodness that turned out absolutely perfect i am so excited to munch on this i didn't know if I was going to stay the night tonight and see if I could get another limit because onions let's see onions are onions tastes good sweet potato fries a little bit of a hit or miss not You know the one thing I will say is I did forget salt so that would probably help a lot i've never fried sweet potatoes tastes good just needs salt all right now time for the real test the schmelt see what all this hype's about this is my first time ever doing a smell fry oh my goodness oh my gosh that is perfect the fends and all everything no bones wow i mean this I'm sorry if I'm freaking out i fry a lot of fish this is exceptional this is probably in the realm of top two or three fish fries I've ever had in my life oh the Cajun kick is so nice wow this is a lot better than I expected it to be i think I will be getting my limit tonight for sure i know this is something different for me i've never really strayed from trout salmon steel head but this was sweet i encourage you guys to try it out if you've never done it before something I've been trying to do for like the last 2 or 3 years ended up turning out into what I think to be a pretty sweet video so if you enjoyed leave a like comment subscribe hopefully we got some new ones coming soon got some good videos in the new boat coming and I'd like to get one more steel head video in before the end of season but I'm going to smash this i hope you guys enjoy i'll see you in the next one peace