3 Days Cooking Camping Fishing for FAT Mountain Bass and Trout!

Deba-deba-doo. What's going on, y'all? Welcome back to the mountains of South Carolina for another high adventure video. Back by popular demand, we're out on the great Lake Jocassee here in South Carolina. A little bit choppy this morning, but for the next three days, we are going to be pounding this reservoir in search of trout, spotted bass, and, well, that's pretty much it. Trout and spotted bass. We've got the old down riggers rigged up on both sides. We're going to have some planer boards out. I'm getting ready to throw all that out and show you guys currently sitting in about 200 feet of water. We're going to go troll this dam. I've been up since 3.30 this morning to get up here to get started on the morning bite. Without further ado, I see fish on the graph. Let's get some spoons down there. Let's see what we can do. We've got our down rigger rods here. Got some of this Poutski fire gel herring flavor. This is the secret sauce right here, y'all, allegedly. Put a little bit right at the back of that spoon. There we go. Drop this guy into the water. Let's see how that looks. Oh, that looks really good. I'm going to let probably about 20 feet of line out. Set that like that, and then what we're going to do is take this line, clip it to our down rigger, just like so. Second rod, a little bit different spoon on this one, but still kind of the same concept. See how that runs. Like how that one runs. So we'll troll back and forth in front of this dam probably two or three times. I'm going about a mile and a half an hour, so we'll cover ground pretty quickly. So it's definitely breezier, at least to start the morning, than they promised it would be. Hopefully, it'll lay down as the day goes on, but we might have to get back up into some of these creeks, try working that, because in my little flat bottom boat out here, it's a little bit brutal. Herring is the bait that dominates this reservoir, and that's what all these fish are looking for and feeding on. All right, y'all, line's in. Motor down. No bait. Passed in front of this dam three times. No takes. Time to find a new spot. We're going to just keep moving and grooving. No sense of wasting our time here. Plus, with the sun coming up, don't have a whole lot of time. All right, y'all, I'm calling an audible. All the big water is just absolutely getting destroyed right now by the wind, and it's just too much. It's too much. So we're tucked back up here in this creek, which is just, as you see, it's just night and day difference. It's glass up here. About a mile and a half that way, it's white capping. So I'm fortunate that we've got this area we can come in and get out of the weather. We're going to have to save our trolling for later. But no matter, I've got this awesome white jerkbait here. Little blue in it. Looks exactly like a herring, exactly what I want. See if we can make something commit to this. We'll catch trout or spot a bass on something like this right here. There's a hit right there. Just a little bass. Came off of that rock ledge, though. What is that? Oh, dude, that's a smallie. There's a rare find. What a beautiful little fish. It's been a hot minute since I've caught a smallmouth. Actually, you know what? I think this is a first for me, y'all. A smallmouth out of Jocassee, I know they're in here. This is where you can get hooked up. There we go. This is a first. Makes me feel like I'm back in Idaho again. Beautiful little fish. Unfortunately, not the quarry. But you know what gets the skunk out of the boat? Don't hate that. Oh, there's one right there. What do we got? Oh, there it is. Ah. I guess it's a spot. Yeah, there's another one. Oh, there are like two under him. Three. Oh my gosh, there's a whole herd under this fish. This is some fine eating right here. We'll put him in the live well. Look at that. Yeah. There we go. Kick off the trip. Actually, dudes, that's a largemouth. There's no rough patch on that tongue. That is a straight up largemouth. There were about five underneath him, following him. See that? There's no rough patch there. And you could just tell. Just looks a little greener to me. About a pound and a quarter probably. Pretty fish. Nice catch. Good hit. I thought we had us some table fare, but I'm not going to eat that. What happens is in these reservoirs is the spotted bass come in and they take over. And the largemouths just become more rare. And the smallmouth. Actually, we kind of caught two of the more rarer fish. You're saying that, and I'm catching them. But in all honesty, it happens. The spotted bass take over. And what happens is everybody tries to target those smallmouth and those largemouth. It's like the prize possession. Because the spotted bass are just almost automatic. They're super easy to catch. So they encourage you, though, to keep the spotted bass just to trim down on the population and try to help the largemouth and the smallmouth stay relevant. Oh, there's one right there. That's a good fish. Absolutely got smoked. The edge of this log right here. Tore it up. Yeah. That might be a spot right there. Little darker line on it. Find out in a minute. Yeah, that's a spotty right there. Guarantee it. Right. See the rough patch? That's called lunch right there. Here we go. The lines on the spot, like here, it almost feels like it's a little bit darker along the line here and almost along the back. And then there's that rough patch right there. That's good eating, folks. Real good eating. There we go. There you go. Y'all get a load of this. This is what I'm talking about as far as the wind laying down. We're back out here trolling again. Look at that right there. See that? Came up. That's 50. That was in about 20. Came up to about 15 feet. Dropped back down to 50 feet of water. That's one of our lines right there. One of our down riggers. So we're in good depths. Not getting them to strike right now. I talked with one other boat, and they said they caught one. So about 45 feet doing the same thing I'm doing. All right, ladies and gentlemen. A couple other potential bites, but no takers. Our camping spot should be open now, though. So we're going to go back. It's getting hot out. We're going to go get camp set up, take a little rest, regroup. We're going to come back this evening, start all over again. So let's go see what our camp looks like. I'm kind of excited to get out of the sun for a few hours. Time to jump in a T-shirt. Getting hot out. Well, there you go. Got the boat backed up, nice and level there. Glad I didn't decide tent camp in the back of the truck. It's on probably about a 20-degree angle. That would have been rough, but we do have this nice tent site right here. Check this out. Yeah. Oh, heck yeah. Look at this. Look at this. Free wood, and it's even got a handle on it. Fire pit's a little yumpy. That's okay. That's why I bring my own fire stuff, fire pit set. But nice table here. This looks pretty sweet, pretty sweet. I think somebody told me this right here. Isn't this for, don't you hang your trash off of this so the raccoons can't get to it? Or do you hang a lantern there? I don't remember. Somebody fill me back in. You know, I think the last time I got this tent out was actually at this campsite. Definitely putting the rain flap on because, well, it was supposed to be cloudy all day. Obviously, we've had, like, blueberry conditions so far, but that's what it gets you. I'm kind of weirdly fastidious when it comes to keeping the inside of my tent clean. It's like, I don't mind being dirty outside, but, like, I hate taking a shower while getting ready for bed. You come in and step on a bunch of dirt and sand and stuff. I just don't like it. Finally, what every good campsite needs. A sofa. Okay, enough laying around. We got work to do. Gonna cook up some brats for lunch. Little hot for a fire, so I just started to break the black stone out. It's still warm, but a little less warm. Check it out. Got me some fancy artisan buns, too. Dude, is this artisan bread? That's what's up right there. Y'all, it just took me absolutely glorious afternoon nap. Now, this is what we've done. Check it out. I have gone and procured us some live bait for tonight's shenanigans and tomorrow's shenanigans and the next day's shenanigans, quite honestly. We got mediums, we got smalls, we got larges, minnows. Look at that, that is called trout candy right there. Now, what I'm gonna do is, is I'm gonna pour them into our live well. Go ahead and pull our bass, who's still alive. Awesome. Pull him out. We'll cook him up for a little dinner before we head out. Here we go. There's your new home. He'll be fine for an hour and a half before we go dump in ourselves. Fresh bass. It's been a hot minute since I've had this. Let's see how it tastes. I remember it tasting really good. Oh yeah, not so good. Let's also pick something else up at this rate. These are called Sutton Spoons. I think they come from like New York. I think they're made in New York. Like this little fishing shop in New York and they're super popular at this reservoir. Now they didn't have the ones that I wanted, but I got the second most popular, popular, which is the Sutton 71. The 44s are super popular. And it's just a little bit smaller than that. But when I was checking out, when I was looking at all of them, the lady said, this is the second most popular right here. She said, I sell a ton of these. So I got this guy right here. And then they seem to, like the 44s were like the slim ones. So I tried to stick with the slim bodies instead of the fat bodies. I'll tell you what, dogs. I don't know what's worse, the dog barking or the owner yelling at the dog. Welcome to camping in the summertime. This is the other one right there, a little bit smaller. So we're gonna rig these up right here. Get some fresh spoons. Troll with those before we hunker down for the night with this live bait. How about that sunset, huh? We are back out. We've actually been at it for about an hour now. Trolling again. Got our new spoons. I've even got planer boards out and we've got some spinners on those, but y'all. I don't know. I feel like I should have had more action than what I've gotten. But I mean, this is, it can be like this. I feel like I'm missing something. There's something I'm not doing right. Some little detail that's keeping me for the amount of time that I've trolled and four rods out. I don't know. Keeping our fingers crossed, our hopes high, our rod tips low, and just keep doing the same thing. I mean, this is what everybody else does out here. So kind of just following the lead. Just gotta stay positive. Ladies and gentlemen, getting set up for our night soiree of trout fishing. Now, check it out. I've got my new Gigan lights in the water. I've got them hooked up to our battery. Even got toggle switches for both of them. So here we go. You guys ready? Oh, heck yeah. Oh, let's go. This is what we're doing, y'all. I'm grabbing different sized minnows. There's a little bit bigger one on this guy. One of the larges. I'm coming over here and I've got just as light a setup as I can get away with. Got this little golden J hook. Since we're sitting still, I'm hooking them through the back of the dorsal fin. Just like that. So then they swim around. See that right there? Give a struggle. You've got a couple of small split shots about 24 inches above it. And that's how we're rolling. I'm just dropping them down. Various depths, anywhere between 25 and 50 feet. Let's see if we can't find us some hungry nighttime trout. All right, all the lines are set. I don't know. Can you guys see the bait? Yeah, you can see the bait down. Look at that. We've already got a bait ball underneath us. I don't know what that is, but we're going to drop a sabiki rig down. If they're herring, they should take a nibble out of it, which is what I'm hoping they are. Oh, there's one right there. What is that? Oh, dude, that is a herring. I think that's a herring. Is that a herring? Oh, dude, that is. It's a little herring. Oh, heck yeah. Oh, that's prime bait right there. Toss them in. Oh, gracious. I think we can catch another one. Oh, that's a really good bait. Guys, look at this one. Get up here, get up here, get up here. Fish on. Here we go. Oh, man. Finally. I've been sitting here for two hours. Look at all the bait under the boat. Feels like a pretty solid fish. We're going to actually be able to bring him right up through the light. Come on, bubba. Looks like a trout to me. Is that? No, it's a catfish, dudes. It's a catfish. Come on. Oh, how disappointing. Oh, get over here, ya muppet. What did we get? We got a white cat. Dag nabbit. Definitely not what I'm after. It's nice to hear the drag, Peele. Drop him back in. I don't really care to eat a catfish right now. I'm after some fresh trout. There he goes. We're sitting in about 70 feet of water. That fish came, it was suspended in about, eh, about 30 feet off the bottom, if I'm not mistaken, where I had that rod. That's crazy. All right, y'all, it's midnight officially and still no trout, day one. Wind's picking up. You can hear the boat rocking, waves beating against the boat. I have bait just piled under the boat. I've got a beautiful strawberry moon, full moon. Nothing. So big fat F for us today on the trout fishing front. Let's hope for a stronger day two. I've got to figure out a different plan because today's plan definitely did not work. See you guys in the morning. Good morning. Folks, it has been a beast of a night. We got back last night and I was having a couple of little issues with charging my trolling motor, but I thought it was just the cord or the cable because, oh, mess. No, this guy right here, this part had come out of the plug that charges my 24-volt battery because you have to have a special charger to charge a 24-volt battery. So I thought it was just this. So what I did in my infinite wisdom is went out and bought the cheapest charging cord that I could, clipped the end off and over here, just really jimmy rigged it so I could charge it up. Now, somewhere in all of that mess though, something didn't go quite right. I've had this happen before where it's like an error code gets thrown in the charger itself without going into too much detail. It didn't charge at all last night. It is now nine o'clock in the morning. We've lost the morning. I got up at six o'clock this morning to see if it had charged and it still hadn't. So I fiddled around with it for about another 30 minutes, got it to actually start charging and we've only gone up 10%. That being said, we've lost the morning. By the time this gets fully charged, it's going to be, if it's even charging right now, which I'm not even sure yet, it'll be 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock. And by that time, the lake is going to be just an absolute nut house. So I've lost the morning and it's imperative to have the trolling motor. I really am dead in the water quite literally without the trolling motor. If I ran the big motor to troll, my big motor goes too fast. I can't get under like 2.8 miles an hour and the optimal trolling speed is 1.5 to two. So, it's kind of a curve ball. I'm trying to think here. Was not ready for the technical difficulties. And you can see, I mean, I was going at it last night. I had the tools out, clipping and flipping and spraying and praying. I'm just hoping, I've still got one more night here and I'm hoping that this will at least do the job for now. In the meantime, I've got to figure out what I'm going to do. What else is there to do in the mountains? All right, ladies and gentlemen, loading up the smaller rods. We are abandoning the boat. We're going to leave it to charge, cross our fingers that it does. Honestly, I need only like 20 more percent. I'd feel comfortable at about 60, 70% going back out there. But in the meantime, I quite forgot, there's actually a little mountain stream about 45 minutes from here that has trout in it. The only thing about it is, is we have to hike it. So, we're going to go see if there are any fish in this stream. We've got to do something different because it's better than just, I mean, otherwise we just sit around here all day, you know? And I ain't going to sit, I ain't about to sit. So, let's leave the boat. Let's take to our feet. And let's see if we can make something happen on this day. All right, guys, check it out. We are on the path looking for some trout in the mountains. Got this little stream down here. I am trying to find a deeper pocket. It's a good lay down, but it might be deep back there. We'll see if we can find a better access point. Definitely did not plan on doing this when I came up to the mountains. I thought we're going to be purely boat, but sometimes you got to improvise. Got some shrimp flavored eggs here we're going to toss. Very, very small hook. Right into the headwaters. I'll just let that roll around freely down there. Just one little split shot. There's a bite right there. Got him. There's one. Oh, it's a baby. Baby trout. Oh my goodness. You can't even eat that. This is called, check this out y'all. That right there, that's called striper bait or catfish candy. Drop him back in. There you go. Hey, we got one though. Just need them a little bigger. What? I caught a crawfish. Look at that. I caught a crawfish on the shrimp egg. That's outrageous. Dudes, do you understand like how lucky I had to be for that to land by a crawfish and then him to snatch it? You know, we're not letting them go though. Here's what's getting ready to happen. This is some of the best bait that I've used back in my Idaho days right here. That tail meat right there. Look how white that is. Wait, there's a trout in the water right up here. Look, he's swimming right here. Dang. Let me chase him back up this way. I don't have a net or anything. There he goes. Really pretty looking trout. Really green on the top. All right, let's get back to this over here. All right, let's see if we can turn this crawfish into a fish. Oh man, that is money bait right there. Come on, Micah. Don't fudge this up. Got a new spillway here. Still got our crawfish on. There's one. Ha, on the crawfish. That's cool. Oh, he left me the bait too. Oh, did he? Think so. Man, just another small, small fish. Nope, he flicked it off. Cool to catch that crawfish and catch a trout with it. Everything's just super small. Super small, dang. There's one. Another baby trout. And the crazy thing is you could technically keep that because on this side of the river, there are no size limits. There we go. Looks pretty good right here. I actually see a trout way over there. There's one. There we go. Kind of a little bit bigger actually. That right there is actually the biggest trout of the day. What a whopper. Is it bad? I'm tempted to keep it. Ladies and gentlemen, here's the thing. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say, oh, we can do better than that. And then we're not gonna do better than that. See, it's like the reverse psychology thing. So you keep it. So then you know you'll actually get a bigger one. Then you'll feel bad about keeping something this small. See? We're thinking here. We're thinking with our brains. Trying to make a little makeshift stringer here. Right there. All right. He'll bleed out on this too. That's the other good thing about going up through the gills. Here we go. All right. Got our first fish on a stringer. I apologize to trout fishermen everywhere. Got that guy over in that pool over there. Right there. Perfect. We're just dropping it in. Just letting it just swirl around. Look as natural as possible. Getting another bite already. Oh my, here's some thunder. Everybody's under that tree. There's one. Got him. Under the tree. That was cool. Oh, she's working it. Dang it. Again, one of the bigger ones of the day. There's one. Right down there. Nah, it's a little bit better one. Oh, what is that? Wait, that's a brown. Is that a brown? Oh, that's a brown trout. Look at that. We got a small plump brown trout. It's the biggest one of the day. You know the old saying, beggars can't be choosers? We definitely beggars. Begging, begging. All right. Couple of mini fish. Let's just eat that whole kind of a thing, you know? Got him. Over there. Yes. Oh, I've been eyeballing that fish since I got here. Oh, that's another brown trout, y'all. Yes. Oh man. I could see him over there. And finally, I think the rain gave us the cover we needed and we got him. Speaking of the rain, I think it's about time for us to scoot. It's coming down pretty good now. All right. It is time for us to get on back, make sure our camp is secure with this rain coming down. That little hole produced though, I mean, look, listen, the standards aren't high, but you know, it's better than anything we've caught in the last couple of days. So, you know, I'll take it. You know, it's still fun exploring these rivers though. There's something that kind of takes me back to my Idaho days, coming out here, seeing the clear water, catching trout, albeit not as big and as pink-meated as Idaho, but it's still a good time. Moment of truth. All right. Let's see. This guy charging up. He's still charging. How are we looking here? Oh my gosh. It's charged. Look at that. We did it. We MacGyvered it. We've got full freaking battery for tonight and for tomorrow. So, okay. All right, we got that figured out for now. We've got a little rain coming down there, so we got to go get this battery secured up again. Oh man, we're back in the game, boys. All right, we've got a few hours before we've got to be back out. What's this? Correct gate, oh yeah. This is something else that happened last night. Correct gate code 7484, okay. They lock the gates at the park every night. Actually, I need to hold onto that. At like nine o'clock? Well, I roll in obviously at 1230. They gave me the wrong code when I checked in. So I'm sitting there like for 10 minutes going, I'm an idiot, I don't know how to unlock a code, like a lock. And finally, fortunately, they had an emergency line and I called that and the guy was like, oh yeah, sorry, I don't know why they're handing that code out. But got locked out of the park for the night. Something else that just went wrong this trip. But you know what? We're persevering. We're surviving. Here we go. Guys, I have a deer loin or a deer strap of some sort from one of my subscribers, The Bizarre Czar. You guys know him as The Bizarre Czar on my live streams, but his name is David. And this has been marinating actually in maple, a bourbon maple syrup for the last two days. And he gave this to me, you guys may remember, let's see, a couple of months ago when I went up to Tougaloo, I ate some deer for the first time, put it in a mix. But this time we're gonna be throwing it over, actually right into the fire. I also have some timber ridge rubs from another subscriber. We're gonna put this on our strap of meat here. Gotta give your meat a good old rub. I'm looking fancy with that. Now, what I'm also gonna do is we're gonna wrap it in bacon. Because why not? Why wouldn't you? Why shouldn't we? I ask. Shenanigans we do. Now, I have never done this before. So, you know what? Whatever. We're going for it, you know? Sometimes you just gotta go for it. Full send. There we go. Oh, look at that, y'all. Yours truly did that. That's my handiwork. Gosh, I'm good. What we're gonna do, we're gonna close that up, just like that. All right. Got them in our oil. I'm gonna set them right on the fire, just like that. Let them cook inside that foil for a little bit and then we'll probably take them off and throw them on a pan. You know, speaking of stuff I've gotten from subscribers, check this out. Cutting board. High adventure videos. This comes from Mr. Gary. You know, I kind of don't want to cut on this side. Do you cut on this side? That's what we're gonna do. I don't want to mess that up. Isn't that cool? Mr. Gary, longtime supporter and subscriber, sent this to me. Sent it to me a while back. I've just been waiting to use it at the opportune moment. I'm gonna cube ourselves up some potatoes to go along with our deer. There we go. Gotta keep our potatoes covered. Helps them cook a little bit better. There we go. Y'all, I decided last minute, I want some onion and tomato on the side. I'm gonna throw that on there really quickly. All right, that should be done. We're just gonna take that whole... The plate needed a little color. That's what it needed right there. Juices on there. Oh my goodness, y'all. We have created a feast. Thanks to my subscribers. Father God, we thank you so much for the beauty of your creation in the mountains, Lord, that we get to enjoy, and just the vast array of adventures that we get to go on just here in this great state of South Carolina, Lord. We thank you for keeping us in safety through it. I pray you bless this food from our body now, and I pray you continue to keep Stephanie and the kids in safety at home as well, Lord. Through Jesus I pray, amen. Ladies and gentlemen, before we tuck in, I just, I gotta show you, because I'm just, I'm overwhelmed at this skillet right here. I mean, look at that. There is so much juice coming out of that deer. Well, there was. It's kind of evaporated now, apparently. We'll see what it's like. We might just pick this whole thing up like this. Kind of mountain man it here. Definitely should have taken it off about five minutes sooner. It's a little dry, but the flavor is there, so that's good. I mean, you have anything in bacon, you're pretty much in for a treat, you know? Onion, potato, tomato, it's all good together. My goodness. This is only the second time I've had deer, so I'm still kind of getting used to how to cook it, because I think a lot of people like a little pink in the deer, you know, so you can have pink in it. Not like pork, where it's like, you want to make sure it's cooked. Actually, I think now they say you can have a little pink in pork, so whatever. But we'll get it down. We'll keep working on it. It still tastes phenomenal, though. Well, y'all, back out here. Blessed with another gorgeous evening. Look at this. Few storms around the vicinity, so we'll definitely have to keep an eye on that, but got the trolling lines out. I've, in fact, I went and got fluorocarbon line for our leaders, just to see if maybe that was the problem. I don't know. Maybe these, I swear a streak, look at this screen. Look at this. That line right there, that's where my bait was. Does that look like something came up and went after one of those to you? I'll tell you what, I'll believe it when I see it. I mean, at some point, we have to catch something, right? Look at this again, again. That's our line. That's our weight. It's picking up on the death finder. Look, something came streaking up right there. Out of probably 75, 80 feet. Come on. Why are they not taking it? This is getting very frustrating at this point. For the hours I've put in this. Ay, ay, ay. I'm a little worried about this right up here. Stuff can whip up fast up here in the mountains. The next thing you know, you're caught in it and it's bad news. It's gonna be no fishing tonight. I'm just gonna settle in. So much lightning. As you guys can hear, it's pouring. Hopefully the tent holds up against the rain. It's bad out there. I'm just gonna stay in. Try to stay dry. We're just gonna see what it looks like in the morning. I have no idea what we're gonna be up against, but I guess we'll just have to wake up and see. Top of the morning, y'all. Phew, that was a wild night of rain. In fact, I've driven all the way from camp. It's probably about half a mile. And my boat is still draining water. Forgot to take the plug out of it. So just collected rain all night while it rained. I have to say though, that was like the most epic way to fall asleep. Rain, thunder, lightning, right outside the tent. Oh, heavenly. Woo-hoo! Little wet this morning. Pretty out. I'm gonna go find us some fish. Guys, there is a pig swimming. There's a boar swimming right here. Look at him. What the heck? I have never seen a pig crossing the water before. Bro, what are you doing? Where are you going? Dude, that's nuts. Look at him. He's like, I'm getting out of here. Oh, there he goes. Boy, they're fast, dude. Those pigs can swim. Run up somewhere over there. Ha! Dude, that's crazy. I've never seen a pig swimming before. Like he, he must've come from like over there or something. Cause like he was beelining this way. Wow. You don't see that every day. I mean, I knew pigs could swim. I've just, actually that's the first time I've seen a wild hog here in the South. And that's the first time I've seen one swimming. All right, guys, we're going to start with this little fluke, fluke action. I'm going to try to get a couple of fish in the boat just to build a little confidence, you know? See what we can do. Oh, oh dude, I missed it. Second cast. There he is right there. Got him. That was really cool in the clear water. I watched him come up and grab it. That's a good fish right there. Is it a largemouth or a spot? It's a spot. That's a nice spotted bass. Oh, yay. Oh yeah. No, dude, that's a largemouth. There we go. Look at that largemouth. That's a two plus pounder. That'll get your confidence going. That's not, nope, not a rough patch. You can just kind of tell. Pretty fish, real pretty fish. That was fun. Watch her come up in that clear water. Oh, that was sweet. See Trout, that's what you're supposed to be doing with my spoons. The old tree right here. There's one right there. Yeah, came out of the wood. Got it. Oh, that was cool. Woo. I think this is a spot right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll keep that guy. Heck yeah. Oh, there you go. Perfect. Beautiful spotted bass. Good eater right there. Yeah. Felt the rough patch. That's going to be delicious. I'm going to just throw him right here in with the bait. Sorry, minnows. Ooh, way back in the hauler. See some downed trees back there. Ain't no way we're making it out alive. Come on. Work him, Micah. Oh, played him like a bow fiddle. Ha ha ha. Another nice spot. That'll go on the fryer. Indeed. I'm going to make sure he's 12 inches. I don't know if there's a size limit on him or not. Oh yeah, he's almost 13. There might be. I don't know. I think you can get 10 a day. Oh, there he is. Yeah. He came out and destroyed that. Heck yeah, let's do that. Nice. Yep. Boom. Decreasing the population. One spot at a time. Make sure he's 12. Oh yeah, he's 13. All righty, all righty. Back at our favorite spot because we've caught so many fish here. I am giving these trout one last opportunity. I've dropped three lines with live bait down. You can see the rain finally stopped. So I figured, you know what? It's going to be the perfect place to sit up and just see what we can do. Oh wait, we're getting a bite right here. Right here. Got him. Got one. Fish on. Oh, why does that feel like another catfish? Come on. I think that's another cat, y'all. Dang it. Boy, Joe Cassie ain't going to give up her trout easy this trip, is she? Got another one of them white catfish. Is that what that is? Yep. These things are kind of cool looking, I'm not going to lie. She got her a little bit of that minnow. Oh man. Well, we've tried y'all. It has not been for a lack of effort on our part. Look how big the head, like the body is on that thing. It's kind of a funny looking catfish. I believe that's a white cat. I think that's what they call that. I'm almost tempted to eat it. You know what? That one's got a belly full of eggs. We'll let her go. All right, my tender young dumplings. Time for a feast. You know, it occurs to me, if DNR pulled up on me right now and saw the size of these trout, I could very well get a ticket unless I could explain the fact that they came from another area because I'm technically on Jocassee. But these have to be 15 inches. And these are nowhere near 15 inches. Making a few notches in our trout. I should do this on a cutting board, not in your hand. Just for those of you wondering at home. That way the seasoning can get into that meat a little easier. Throw some on. Put a little oil on here, just like that. Slap them right on. There we go. Like to put it on the outside then also open that body cavity up. Put it on the inside as well. That way it just kind of gets all over everything. There we go. Went ahead and filleted the bass up. So that way, get a little bit more meat off that guy. Obviously much bigger. Ouch. That burns. Hot oil is hot. For those wondering. Pay no mind to the fact that the trout are as big as the bass fillets themselves. So it's okay. It's okay. Let's see how these bass are looking. Oh yeah. It's gonna cook fast. Look at that trout though. Oh yeah. Oh, hey. That wasn't as bad. All right. Plate full of fish. We're gonna see which one tastes better. I'm pretty sure I already know, but here we go. Start with the brown trout. Nice crispy skin on that guy. I'm just gonna go and tuck in on. Tell you what, that blackened seasoning. That's where it's at right now. Peeling nicely off the bone. Except for that one. The people are super hoity-toity about their trout. They're like, oh, unless it's been raised in some Arabic high desert mountain stream, only fed by Fiji water, and dined on the most succulent of freshwater shrimp, they won't touch it. I'm like, if you can crispy that skin up, put a decent seasoning on it, I think it tastes pretty good. I'll tell you what though, ain't nothing farm-raised about this bass. It's as wild as it comes. Just had an ant fly onto my plate. Get out of here. Little queen ant. Yep. It's official. Spotted bass tastes better. Both delicious fish in their own right, but spotted bass, heartier, just has more oomph to it. I'm glad we kept the ones we caught. Well y'all, it was a good week to be a trout at Jocassee, because I certainly wasn't a threat. Whenever I fail at like the main quest of a video, which in this case was trying to catch one of these fat lake trout, I always feel like just turning right back around and doing it again. Like if I had the time, I'd spend the next two days out here, trolling, down-rodding, just anything to try to finally catch one of these fish and like conquer, you know, the quest that we set out to do. But I think probably the better idea would be to go do some exploring. There are plenty of other trout waters up here in the mountains. So I think we gotta go find us a maybe nice mountain stream previously unexplored by yours. Truly. In the meantime, thank y'all so much for hanging out with me the last few days. We put some fish in the boat. I'm pretty happy. Hope you enjoyed the video and the recipe. Excuse me while I go try to hunt down some fresh trout waters and I will see you in the next one.