Catch and Cook Fishing - Camping in the Remote Wilderness

We're spending the week living out of my truck, sleeping in a tent, hiking and riding to rivers to fish for salmon. We've just driven 10 hours to a northern remote region on the coast of British Columbia. We knew there'd be some really good fishing once we got near Bella Coola. The only road to this town is a sketchy dirt road on the side of a cliff, only really accessible in the summer. So of course it sounded like the perfect place for a week off work and in the bush. We didn't plan much going into this trip. The first couple of nights we had a general idea of some back roads to check out. Okay the bugs, we are in heavy black fly, wasp, mosquito territory but when we're fully covered it's all right. We found some berries here so I'm gonna try and identify them, see if they're edible. The leaves are in three and there's thistles on the branch there. These are salmon berries, they're edible and delicious. They're pretty common in places like Alaska and northern BC. So Parker got us this bear trip wire and we're about to test it but this is how it works. So this is, this comes separate and then Parker found this little reel string that fits with it perfect and it's 85 feet so you can wrap it from there to there to there if you really wanted to and surround your whole tent. That takes these little 22 gauge blanks so you might know them as ram set bullets if you do construction. So that just slots into here and then there's a spring and a firing pin so you hook it up like that. What's that up there? And when the string gets pulled it'll pull the pin and fire the blank. Okay let's see what happens. We picked some spruce pie needles and boiled it and then made a tea out of it. Pie needles are really high in vitamin C. They have four to five times more vitamin C than orange juice so really good for you. So we didn't time this but we got so lucky we're here during about mid-August which is nearing the end of summer. The beginning season for pink salmon migrating back to their birth river. This only happens once every two years here. They hatch in freshwater rivers along the western coast in late winter and migrate to the ocean spending the next two years navigating through the ocean growing a hundred times their size and then they swim back to their birthplace the same river where their goal is to spawn and then they'll die shortly after and the life cycle starts over. Okay this is two males fighting each other to fertilize the eggs that are there and they are fighting at each other. This is my first time fly fishing in this type of river. I did a guided tour to learn a little bit about fly fishing but that was a really big river. You had to be in a river boat. Oh look at this guy. Fish on. Yeah baby. Oh he's so strong. Wait no I still have him. Oh beautiful. I think he spit it out at the last second so he's clean. Oh my god. We're not eating any more dehydrated meals. We caught our first salmon. Was that your first salmon? Yeah. Kira's just sleeping under the tree while we're fishing. After about an hour of not catching anything else I switched it up and tried Parker's regular spinning reel. Fish on. This is my first spinning reel. It will snap? Should we just bring it in? I did end up hooking a fish which was really exciting but the camera work is not great and my GoPro died but we reeled it in and it was my biggest catch yet. I don't even know if I'll be able to hold it. Is it working well? Uh okay. It's uh the Canadian Tire version. I'm just taking Kiro for a walk. He's been such a good boy sleeping on the river. This morning he did- oh my gosh look at this house and this mountain behind it. I think the small coastal town north is where I'm supposed to live. Maybe not this town in particular but these roads I can- this is what I want to be walking my dog on every day. I've probably moved 10 times to a bunch of different cities across the country from Toronto to BC and I've never felt like any place was home. I don't think it has to be a particular place but definitely just- I want this to be the house- the road that my house would be on. Something like this and anything south where more people are is out of budget of course. So I did catch one with this- I think it's a leech so I'm gonna switch it up. They were trying to get my pink indicator so I'm gonna go with one of the pink guys. Honestly these hooks are not big enough but let's try. There's a hundred salmon right here. Oh it's massive and pink. Bring him closer. He's not even gonna fit in this net. Oh do you feel him still? No you- okay he's there still. Let's get him out of his misery. That's huge. We are staying at an established campsite which I never do. It's on the river and we've been on the road for like five days now so we thought it would be nice to get a shower. We've been using camp suds to shower in lakes but been kind of winging it and there's not a ton of free camping around here. Kara's pooped so we're gonna pitch the tent and cook the pink salmon we caught for dinner. I did refuse to get the five dollar power charge though because I have a new solar system. Got the solar panels charging the fridge and we're keeping the pink salmon in here. Just kind of push that off to access it. Two people and a dog with a bike hitched to the truck living out of this truck. We were able to fit actually a lot in here. We have all the salmon Right now with just a little bit of sun hitting the solar panels we're still getting about seven eight watts which isn't a ton but it surprisingly charges really quickly and this is about a 2,000 watt power station which is an upgrade from what I used last year. What you doing? Making salmon. A bit of garlic, a bit of truffle and parmesan and then some keg spice. Momofuku sent me some seasoned salt and it's so good so we brought that as well. Missing the lemon but that's gonna be so good. I've never had a catch and cook salmon. Just trout. My neck got eaten alive by mosquitoes when we were in the mountains and then for the side we're doing white cheddar macaroni. This smells coming out of this campsite. It smells so good. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. It's really really good. We're gonna try and catch as much as we can fit in our fridge to bring home because I bought this at the grocery store. Went to stock up and Kiro got his own bowl of salmon too. The next day we went back to the same river. It was so peaceful and such an amazing experience. I didn't end up catching anything and I did lose a couple of Parker's catches with some bad networks. I rewrote that. Overall though we were really happy that we had caught enough to bring home and so we decided to pack up and head back to some alpine lakes and do some camping. It's lunchtime. I was getting hungry and we're not eating the salmon yet. We want to kind of save it for bringing back home. We've got some sausages. I just pulled the stove out of the back. We have it nice and handy in this bin here. Slow day for fishing. We're now headed to an FSR road 20 kilometers down. We heard there's a lake and some good camping. Kiro and I are driving a truck. Apparently these will be the most rough roads out of all the trails we've been on in this area. Parker's on the dual sport and it's about five o'clock so let's go. No way! This is challenging terrain in my truck let alone being on a dirt bike. We're going to camp there for the night and then get up and check out one of the coolest hikes in the area. Apparently anytime you're traveling if you're able to talk to a local and they're willing to give you some spots those are the gonna be the best ones especially if someone's really nice and gives you their fishing spot. This is one of the most beautiful backroads I've ever seen in my life. We just got to camp and my face is glowing because look at that sunset. This is a really cool campsite. There is only one other person on this entire lake. We just cooked some dinner and there is so many blueberries. We've identified them as oval leafed blueberries because they have the red stem and oval shaped leaves. They're so good so they're our dessert. It's also a good sign that there's so many blueberries still that the bears haven't been here. They haven't ate them. Flying the drone up has allowed me to gain such perspective of how vast this land is. We didn't even know the ocean was this close to us until we flew the drone over the ridge and watched the sunset from an entirely different perspective. Every time we leave a campsite we make sure Kiro gets an early morning walk in. I drive the truck and Kiro chases after the truck while Parker follows alongside him. So cute. We're headed out on a hike today. We're gonna see one of the cooler lookouts in the area. 360 mountain ranges and ocean. We'll get to swim in some alpine lakes. After this trip I was entirely re-inspired to keep creating especially on YouTube. It is my favorite medium to share stories with you guys and I'm so excited to have you here and I have a lot of fall adventures planned and now that I'm getting the hang of fishing I hope to share more of that journey with you. Thank you so much for being here and we will see you in the next one.