5 Days Alone in the Nova Scotia Wilderness / Fishing, Camping & Cooking

What's going on guys, Noah here with Northern Scavenger. It is proper spring here in Nova Scotia so I am out on a five-day solo trout fishing mission into the backcountry. I'm going to be paddling and portaging through lakes, running rapids on the river and hopefully catching some wild brook trout for some catch and cook dinners. Along the way we're going to be exploring the natural environment, the local geology and breaking down some camp setups that I've been doing over the last few years. Stick with me, this is going to be a good one. There's so many mayflies around here and it's starting to activate the trout. So let's see if we can catch a cheeky trout right off the bat. The boat pulled up so I only got a couple casts in. That's a good reminder I just got to get further in. A few more portages before camp. The deeper I get the worse the portages are getting. Exhausted. All right let's see if we can catch a trout for dinner. Today I literally got like four or five casts in on that one spot so I didn't do the day justice but the portaging took way longer than I expected. It's coming close to dinner time and I'm running out of gas so I'm gonna try one more spot and if we don't catch a trout well we're gonna have to pivot for tonight. All right guys I got to the campsite and it's pretty exposed. The wind's ripping through. I think I'm gonna do one more portage and do a makeshift camp on the other side. Leeward is really important tonight so playing the leeward side is gonna be important for both fishing and camping. Okay this is camp. A little scrubby but we have lakefront property and now I'm about to figure out where I'm gonna set up my tent. Honestly that's not too bad but I will need to clear some of this stuff just so I can set up the tent. I ended up doing seven portages today. All in all I probably portaged about 10 kilometers, double carrying and I'm exhausted. It was a pretty long day to start off this trip. No brook trout though I didn't do much fishing. Between portages I just put the fly rod away. I have four nights out here and I packed for three trout dinner nights so I'm gonna have to start getting some fish. Tonight I'm gonna have to dip into my emergency sardine rations. First day not a good sign. For dinner tonight I'm doing a ready-to-go coconut curry. Pretty good. There's no moose bibbing about but not a bad first meal. I got myself in a great spot for tomorrow to hunt trout. I think I got out of the more popular areas after some of those horrendous portages so tomorrow I'm gonna hunt every nook and cranny. I gotta get brook trout for dinner tomorrow but for camp tonight I got a nice leeward spot. I'm gonna sleep well tonight. We'll see you guys tomorrow. It's nice and early it's about 6 30 and we have a full day of brook trout fishing today. I don't have to go that far so I really want to find some nice holes and break them down. It's still a little early but the mayflies are starting to wake up. The mayfly hatch is the most iconic hatch for trout fishermen. It marks the beginning of spring for a lot of people. When the weather warms up just enough the mayflies hatch in thousands and they're in the bushes around lakes and they drop into the water and they're the perfect snack for trout and if you can line it up properly you can catch the fish on the dry fly which is the best type of fishing. It looks like if the weather works for us today we might get a Alright guys I'm just rigging up my fly rod for the day. Adding a new leader. Fly fishing is a little different than spin fishing as in you're casting the line not the lure. The fly line is heavy and floats and it allows you to cast it far. You then need to add a monofilament leader from the fly line to the fly. This is tapered monofilament line. It's nine feet long, eight pound strength. I'm going to be adding about a foot of tippet which is additional line that you add on the end which is great to have because you know when you're changing flies you're always taking off a little piece every time. Although the mayflies are out I'm not seeing any action on the surface so I'm going to start with my tried and true woolly bugger to start the day and once I start seeing fish rise I'll then convert to a mayfly pattern. Alright let's go find some trout. It's still gusty I can hear it but the lake is definitely calmer than yesterday and this overcast condition might actually help with the fishing too. There's a little mayfly hatch here and I saw a couple fish rise right between those rocks. Right there. Right there. Oh man he's going up. Oh no. Where's the river? Lots of mayflies on the rocks. Nice little pool here. Oh rise out there. Oh shoot. Guys there's some big fish rising out here. Hooked up. That was a challenge getting you buddy. Alright it's 11 30 in the morning. What do you guys think? Do I keep him? No I'm gonna let him go. It's still early. Thank you trout. Oh first fish. The question is am I going to regret letting him go? I'm optimistic now. I feel like the fishing is going to heat up. Sometimes you can just give a pool a little time to rest and it'll restart. Oh my gosh. That's a dandy. Look at this. They're still rising behind me. That's a nice trout. Nice hooked jaw. That's a male. Alright time to carry on. There's mayflies everywhere. Oh yes that's dinner. Look at that fish guys. Oh man I saw him hit it too. It's a dandy. What a fish indeed. I saw him hit the fly. The water was moving faster than I would have expected a trout to be this time of year but I saw him come up, smoke it once, missed. Second time I got him. Beautiful coloring on this guy. He has a lot of pink and dark reds. Sometimes they can be a little more silver but I'm stoked to have dinner locked in with this guy. It is two o'clock. To keep this guy fresh I'm going to clean him right now and then put it in shade in the bottom of my boat. This time of year the water is still about 14 degrees celsius and in the shade as well. It should keep him cool enough that he's fresh tonight for dinner. Man I'm right on him. There's some big ones in here. Oh yeah I'm on. That's a nice one. That's a nice one. Come here buddy. I think I foul hooked him. That's what happened. Still a nice fish. Yes. Flies off. Guys. Oh yeah. Beauty brook trout. Fatty. Nice brook trout. There we go. Look at this boy. All right there you go. All right this is too much fun. I think I gotta keep moving though. I've been here for like an hour and a half just at this spot. I'm gonna paddle another couple lakes and then find camp for the night. Man it doesn't always line up that way. This spot had to have the right temperature, had to be leeward, right time of year. All those things to line up for that trout bonanza we just had. That doesn't happen often. So grateful for that. Got to camp. A little messier than I'd like to see but I know people think they're doing a favor leaving frying pans, chairs, rope, but it ends up just making a campsite look trashy and it just rots away. So if you're in the backwoods don't leave stuff behind. I want to do a quick overview on what I take with me when I'm camping in terms of packs. This is a five-day trip but this is typical to a weekend-long trip all the way to a month-long trip. Other than my canoe gear and my filming gear I take three packs with me. One 115 liter dry bag, a bear barrel, and a day pack. The bear barrel depending on the size of the trip is either 30 or 60 liters and I keep all my food in there. The day pack is for all the essentials that I would during the day. Sunscreen, toilet paper, water filter, fly box, rain jacket. The big 115 liter dry bag is for everything else that I don't want to get access to during the day but I want it to be dry by the time I open it up for camp. Inside the dry bag I have my sleeping bag, sleeping pad, tent, saw and axe, pots, chair, my clothes, and loose items like my puffy and my big fleece. When you're backcountry camping you want to do your best to consolidate gear into carryable items. It's the worst when you get to a portage and it's a yard sale all across the canoe and you gotta you're holding stuff but if you can get into the three bags the portage is going to be a lot easier. For dinner tonight I need a nice hot coal base so I'm building up the fire fairly big so all those coals get nice and hot for a long time. All right let's try the beets. Honestly a little charred but not bad. A little caramelized. Let's add a dollop of goat cheese, lemon and herb stuffed trout with a side of beets with goat cheese, walnuts, and broccolini and then a squeeze of lemon on top. That's good stuff. The brook trout when I grabbed it for dinner was still cold to touch so I feel very confident that I didn't get myself sick. He was out of the water dead for four and a half hours but little did I know I didn't have to save him because we hit the honey hole. It was a good day. It was a banner day. I can count on one hand how many times I've had dry fly action like that in Nova Scotia. Beauty. This is gonna be a day to remember for me. It looks like some weather is coming in for tomorrow. The clouds are looking like rain is in the forecast and also the actual forecast said there's gonna be about 20 mils tomorrow. So I'm gonna batten down the hatch. I'm gonna chop a little more wood, stash it underneath the tent for safekeeping, and organize camp a bit before calling it quits. So on that note we'll see you guys tomorrow. Pretty rainy outside. I'm opting not to have a fire. I'm gonna have breakfast in bed. I wish I could just cook in this vestibule but it's a little too constricted and I'd hate to get the fly melted from the flame. For the moment it stopped raining. I added some extra walnuts from last night to the oatmeal to go with the dates, protein powder, coconut milk, and almonds. The best tip I can give about taking your tent down in the rain is do it as fast as possible and when you pack away, separate the fly with the tent in two separate bags. I always use two different five liter dry bags and that way the wet fly doesn't contaminate the tent. I also don't fold it any single way. I just smash it in there. That's also good because the seams and the wrinkles aren't always going to be in the same place as if you were to fold it, creating potential spots of leakage. So just jam it in there. Two five liter dry bags. That'll keep your dry stuff dry and your wet stuff wet. All right guys, we're set for a pretty cold and wet day today. The last couple days with how windy it was and then all those big clouds coming through, signs that a front was coming through. Today I'm trying to get to the river. I'm going to be sneaking on through a little tributary. Today I'm going to be moving a lot, maybe not fishing as much, and get to camp early. But out here it's the simple things in life and I got a full thermos of hot coffee. I came to a pretty significant drop here that I'm gonna scout. It looks pretty clean. I'm getting cold. My body's starting to get soaked. My rain jacket's not the best. I also lost like 20 pounds in the last year on purpose. But I'm finding my cold tolerance has gotten a little worse. I'm just gonna see the bottom here and this looks good. I think I'm just gonna run it. That's why you scout. I could have ran that first one and then got sucked right into that second one with the sweeper. So this is a portage. At some point where these rivers merge, I'm gonna have to go upriver to get to the campsite. It's not too far but I don't know how strong the current's gonna be. There looks to be some decent flow up here for tracking upstream. Definitely time for the ropes. It's really important for me to keep the nose of the boat inshore because I don't have a second guy on the back. So if the water does pull that nose out I'm gonna lose the boat. All right we've arrived at home for the night. Man it's getting rainier and rainier. I'm so glad I got to camp. Got the tarp set up. Firewood's gonna be tough because it's soaking wet and I'm on a bit of an island. But I'm not gonna worry about that right now. I'm just gonna have some food and maybe put my puffy on. Just warm up. I caught a chill. Peanut butter banana on sourdough. Feels so good to be here right now. I'm just gonna wait it out. It's midday. It's only 1 30. This is my campsite for the night. Might be a pretty slow day. I picked up some bone broth based on you guys recommendations. You guys know I was rocking the chicken broth in earlier season but it's pretty salty. This is instant chicken bone broth. Lemon ginger flavor. Also 10 grams of protein and some other good stuff as well. This will go down pretty nice. There's some leaps in there. That's good. The lemon ginger is at play and hot on this cold dreary day. All right I'm gonna see if I can set up my tent underneath this tarp and get the fly on and set it up just so I have a more sheltered dry spot. Didn't work perfectly but it's set up now. We'll get some water in there. Just gonna use this later to clean this up the best I can. Everything's pretty damp but just the way it is. The rain has died down. I took about an hour nap and my goal now is to get a fire going. Half my stuff is soaked. I gotta reset for the next couple days and it's cold and moving and sawing might warm me up a bit. There's not a lot of wood around this campsite and everything's soaked but I did find some old cut wood. It's a little damp like it's a little green but I'm gonna start with that and see what we can do. Still smells very sappy. I think I'm gonna take my talents across the river. Good wood's essential here. So I'm looking for a standing deadwood. I'm not looking for stuff on the ground. As soon as that tree hits the ground it starts to rot and it gets spongy and wet and you can't burn it. Standing dead is the driest and will burn the nicest. Ideally hardwood but I'll take anything right now. It's easy to think all the wood here is soaked from all that rain but the inside of dry wood stays dry. It's just the bark, the outside that's wet. So I gotta expose as much of that middle stuff as possible and make really small pieces to get that fire going. There's different ways to do this. One of my favorites is lay it down parallel to the ground and hit it this way. See pieces like that? It's gonna be good for starting. I've accumulated the splinters from the wood and now we're gonna build it up a bit. To get this started for tinder I like using birch bark if it's around. If not I could whittle this down a little bit more and make fire sticks but I always bring some fire starter with me. This stuff is super cheap. You can get it at your local outdoor shop and it's good for situations like this. It's beautiful here. There are some blackflies buzzing around. I thought it was too early for these guys but here we are. Blackfly season. All right well looks like no trout for dinner tonight. That's all right. There was one night where I was planning not to have trout so we're gonna do that tonight. Just about to get dinner ready. When I was out fishing I noticed the blackflies started to hatch. That's a great segue because I actually brought a bug shirt. But more just to tell you guys that I have officially collabed with the original bug shirt and you can now get Northern Scavenger branded bug shirts on the website. If you guys follow the channel you know that me and my buddies live in these shirts on our northern trips. Without them we would actually die from blood loss. This is the exact same model that I've worn for the last nine years. The zipper is on the bottom which I find very important when you're eating so you don't get smoked by the bugs. Some of them have it on top but I prefer it on the bottom. Right now we have a limited amount available on the website as well as a full restock of hats and t-shirts with a brand new color. So if you want some merch for spring, jump on the website. But let's get back to dinner. For dinner tonight we're bringing it back. MRE, a fan favorite. You guys said I did it wrong. We're gonna try again. This one's chili and macaroni. Don't know how I can mess this one up. You got a shortbread round, honey mustard and onion pretzels, crackers, peanut butter, seems familiar, electrolytes, cutlery, and a bag of mush. I do read your guys comments. I'm gonna heat up the mush in some water and I'm gonna eat the peanut butter with the crackers separately. I'm finding there's a theme with how they present it. You got the peanut butter and cracker, you got the same biscuit. This macaroni and chili looks a little more appetizing than the chicken chunks. I added the pretzels to there for some crunch, kind of tastes like the canned stuff which isn't bad. Yeah, I haven't changed on the scale from my original review at all. I will say I like the entree style. Having three different things to look forward to, pretty good. All right guys, that's a wrap for the day. I was able to dry most of my clothes so almost a full reset. That was pretty full-on today. That rain was relentless and I got pretty cold several times. The water level of this river is definitely going to be coming up after today. We'll see. This step behind me looks large. It gets larger the further down we get so it's going to be a pretty full-on two days of whitewater to get out of here. I get the question a lot on these solo trips, do I get lonely? Well, not really because I don't mind my own company. Did you say that's true? Yeah. There's a lot of blow-down trees in this area and it's exposing all that rock beneath. Here we have granite which is a pretty common igneous rock around here. Granite comes from the latin word granum meaning grain and that's referring to the grainy texture of granite. You can see the individual minerals like quartz, mica, plagioclase. Mineral size is directly correlated to the cooling rate of the magma. Magma that cools really fast has very small grains and then magma that cools slowly has larger grains. So we know granite is a slow-cooling magma. What we can't see is the elements that make up those minerals. One of those elements in granite is uranium which is radioactive and the radioactive decay of uranium is radon and radon can form radon gas which long-term exposure of is the leading cause of lung cancer behind smoking. In Nova Scotia we have some of the highest levels of radon in the country and the problem with this is if a house is built on granite there's a chance that that basement can have high levels of radon gas. So because of that it's always good to do a simple radon test in your basement if you're building on granite. I have a house on granite. I did this test and if you do have high levels there's some easy fixes. You can install a depressurizing system that can remove up to like 99% of the radon gas. So it's not all doom and gloom if you're on granite. Just double check to see what your radon gas levels are and if they're bad get a system installed. All right guys I think we had the first significant set of rapids for the day. Oh let's go. Oh that was pretty rowdy. Beauty little fish. We're on the board. See that? I know you have my feet. I opted not to run a rapid but I think the portage took more effort than actually running it. It's one I saw online but I'm by myself. I forgot my helmet so I opted. It's not worth the risk. Beauty. Got some dinner. That's called a hole so I'd want to avoid that. So either there or there. The far side looks too rocky. This looks steep into a mini hole and if I had power I could power through. But am I 100% confident in my move? No. I think I might just take the safer option and line around. All right that worked. Now I gotta push out far enough to stay away from this side here. That's the last place I want to be. Ready? Hailing. Right on the portage. Oh another one. That portage took like two hours and I'm exhausted. But we're done. We're done. No luck fishing but we did secure that one trout so I'm thankful that we kept it. There's still some sun left so all that stuff that didn't fully dry from yesterday like the tent and my sleeping bag this is a great time just to let things air out a bit. We have a lemon and herb butter basted brook trout. Garlic roast potatoes with goat cheese and parsley and steamed broccolini. Gotta start with some of that brook trout. I can do a little lemon squeeze. This is a winner. 100% winner. I cooked this one much better than the last trout I cooked and because of that I'm saying this is the best meal of the trip. Wrapping up the day here. It's a good day. The fishing has sort of been on and off with the weather but when it's on it's on. This is the last night of the trip. I have a little lake and river paddling to finish the day tomorrow and it's been an awesome trip out here. My body's a little sore. Anyways guys we'll see you tomorrow. Day five. The final day of the trip. Today the wind is going to be picking up substantially throughout the day so I'm going to head out early this morning. I got some lake paddling. I got some river paddling and I want to make proper use of good weather. The fastest I can get out of camp in the morning with a fire is an hour and a half so I got up at six. If I'm on the water for eight that's reasonable. I get the question a lot about what type of pants I wear when I'm on the river and one thing that I've been doing for the last since 2019 since the Labrador days is I always wear dry pants. If it's not a raging white water river where I need a full dry suit these have booties built into them and they're great when you're going in and out of the water. If the portages have wetness or you're going through a bog I'll wear these almost all year round. On longer trips I always bring a little AquaSeal as well to patch up any holes that might happen in the dry pants and underneath if it's really cold I'll wear a fleece long john but weather like this where it's above eight degrees and I'm moving around I'll wear a spandex long john. I just don't like the idea of having my skin touching the Gore-Tex and then similar to the full dry suits I add a neoprene sock over the booty to limit that amount of abrasion between the dry pant and my shoe. I bought shoes specifically for this type of activity and I got it a size larger than I normally would to fit all these extra layers of material. Got on the water five to eight. Beautiful day. I'm approaching about a kilometer long rapid that flows into the ocean where I'll be finishing this trip. Looks pretty rowdy. And what a way to end it. So fun. Guys that just about wraps it up. Thank you so much for watching this. This was an incredible five days out in Nova Scotia backcountry. This is the longest solo trip I've done to date which is surprising but it's true I usually do the big trips with my buddies and it was a great time. Caught a few trout, had a few laughs and it was a great mixed weather, mixed bag. Everything Nova Scotia has to offer. I'm going to grab my bike and shuttle back to my car now which which will be about an hour but if you like this type of content make sure to like and subscribe and see you guys on the next one.