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Diaries of a Lodge Owner
In 2009, sheet metal mechanic, Steve Niedzwiecki, turned his passions into reality using steadfast belief in himself and his vision by investing everything in a once-obscure run-down Canadian fishing lodge.
After ten years, the now-former lodge owner and co-host of The Fish'n Canada Show is here to share stories of inspiration, relationships and the many struggles that turned his monumental gamble into one of the most legendary lodges in the country.
From anglers to entrepreneurs, athletes to conservationists; you never know who is going to stop by the lodge.
Diaries of a Lodge Owner
Episode 89: From Winnipeg to the Tundra - How Lake Trout Changed My Life
Deep within Canada's Arctic territory lies a world most Canadians will never experience - a place where snowmobiles are purchased at the grocery store alongside milk, where polar bears rip steel doors off community freezers to steal walrus meat, and where lake trout grow to mythical proportions. This is the world Justin Jenkins has embraced, splitting his life between Winnipeg and remote Nunavut communities where he works in mental health.
Justin's journey north began with a childhood fascination with lake trout after watching fishing shows featuring these mysterious cold-water giants. What started as an obsession evolved into a life-changing decision to move to Baker Lake, Nunavut - not for the quick money many southerners seek in northern jobs, but for the fishing opportunities and deeper connection to community.
The conversation paints a vivid picture of life in Canada's most remote territory, where communities exist as islands with no roads connecting them to each other or the rest of Canada. Everything arrives by annual sea lift or expensive air freight. Yet within this isolation, Justin found purpose, describing how working in these tiny communities feels meaningful compared to southern life where one feels like "a grain of sand on the beach."
Wildlife encounters feature prominently, from Justin's strategies for avoiding polar bears (more common in his current community of Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay) to fascinating insights about barren-ground caribou and Arctic char. Particularly compelling is the contrast between southern conservation narratives about declining polar bear populations and the observations of Inuit elders who report seeing more bears than ever.
The episode culminates with incredible fishing stories only possible in the Arctic - catching 70-80 lake trout in three hours, hand-wrestling a massive Arctic char, and landing a 46-inch lake trout that fought for 50 minutes during never-ending daylight. Justin's YouTube channel "Assorted Meats" captures these adventures, including fishing with unconventional items like tampons and sunglasses.
As climate change transforms the Arctic faster than anywhere else, Justin's stories preserve a moment in time while honoring the resilience of communities that have thrived in this challenging environment for thousands of years. Join us for this remarkable conversation that will change how you see Canada's true north.
I can't see myself ever not continuing to go back up there. I just love it, man. I love the slower pace of life. I love being a part of something that's like bigger than my own little bubble. You know like it's just fantastic. It feels like you're genuinely making a bit of a difference in a world where maybe down south you kind of just get like a little bit of a grain of sand on the beach sort of thing. It's very, very different, different and I love it.
Speaker 2:This week, on the outdoor journal radio podcast networks diaries of a lodge owner, stories of the north. Willie busts off them training wheels and takes the helm of the good ship diaries and chats with another fine young gentleman from Winnipeg whose passion for helping people has taken his life north, way north north, to Nunavut, where he works with isolated communities on mental health. This puts him in a place where his other passion has blossomed, and that is massive lake trout and a successful YouTube channel. And now it is Willie's pleasure to introduce to all of us Justin Jenkins On this show.
Speaker 2:Willie and Justin talk about what life looks like for the Inuit, climate change in the Arctic and how it is affecting the people and wildlife who reside there, in particularly the polar bears, and, of course, his passion for the outdoors and chasing some of the largest lake trout on the planet to share with all of us on his YouTube channel Assorted Meats. So if you're interested in extraordinary places on Earth, the people that live there and how they survive, this one's for you. So relax, take it all in, because these two beauties are going to draw a spectacular picture of a faraway place on the movie screen in your mind. Here's Willie's conversation with Justin.
Speaker 4:Hello folks, and welcome again to another episode of Diaries of a Lodge Owner Stories of the North, willie the oil man. Here I'm running a solo show today. Mr Steve is a busy man, as you can all imagine, getting ready for the spring fishing season, and we got a really, really special show today, one that I've been trying to shoot for about a month. It's all the chaos in life, and the man that I'm just about to introduce has been traveling lots, he works lots and he actually is a YouTuber himself, so it's been a little bit of a challenge here to line up with him, but we got him here today. He's in Winnipeg, fresh out of the Arctic. I want to welcome Justin Jenkins to the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, buddy. We finally did it. Against all odds. We're here. Right Felt like Mother Nature just didn't want this to happen. But we persevered, and that's all that matters.
Speaker 4:Man, it was crazy. I can't. We've had some wicked weather and some shitty incidents and lots of traveling and you being half the time I've been trying to get a hold of you. You know you're up in the in the remote arctic and uh, so this is great, that's awesome.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much for coming, my pleasure man, thank you so much for having me so, justin, you, uh, you know we're going to dive into everything here when it comes to the ins and outs of you and your and your, your podcast and your career and your, your the crazy Laker fishermen you've become, um, but I think, uh, let's start out from like I don't really know you. You know I know a lot of the people, you know, I know we know a lot of the same people, but, uh, you know, I don't really know you. Perhaps, where did you, uh, where did you grow up? Tell me, your, me, your story, and uh, tell me how you got into where you're at now. Kind, of?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, for sure, man. Um, so yeah, like you said, my name's justin janken. I'm a lifelong fisherholic, you could say, and now kind of part-time, semi-professional uh, internet fishing, idiot, I think would be the best way to put it. Uh, yeah, born and raised in winnipeg, I kind of grew up fishing the shorelines of the Red River, lake, winnipeg. I spent a lot of time in the backwoods of the eastern region of the province.
Speaker 1:Somewhere along the way, pretty early in the journey of my fishing journey, I developed a pretty potentially unhealthy obsession with lake trout. I remember back in the day as a kid just watching the you know, like the, was it saturday or sunday morning fishing shows um of dudes catching these huge, huge lakers in like the way up north and there's like deep, cold water, such like mysterious fishing, and I just found it so fascinating, you know, um, so some. So, along the journey a little further, this obsession started sinking his closet to be deeper and deeper. It ultimately led to me packing up my whole life and moving to a tiny little town up in Nunavut called Baker Lake about five or six years ago. I think you're pretty familiar with that town yourself Now you know, like a lot of people.
Speaker 1:They move up to the north as like a quick get rich, quick scheme sort of thing. And I certainly could have done that. But just the way that I'm wired I just couldn't not try to capitalize on all the fishing opportunities. So I went and bought myself a brand new ATV from the grocery store, brand new snowmobile from the grocery store. I actually have a receipt man of when I bought my snowmobile. It was like a snowmobile, some milk, a cat, 140, 20 pounder propane that's so awesome yeah okay, hold on a minute, let's back up a minute here.
Speaker 4:Let's back up. So you so winnipeg, that's where you grew up, that's where you cut your teeth, and so um, eastern Manitoba is like. So, folks, all you guys know, I'm in northwestern Ontario, up by the Kenora, which is right on the border there of Manitoba.
Speaker 1:Used to be Manitoba. Used to be Manitoba. You were once one of us.
Speaker 4:I was.
Speaker 1:Was I, and I don't know if I don't think it was in your lifetime, but Kenora, once upon a time, I think, was a part of Manitoba, as far as I know.
Speaker 4:This is new to me. I did not know any of this I really like. I grew up in Peterborough, but I've lived here for a long time.
Speaker 6:Okay.
Speaker 4:My wife has lived here her whole life and I did not know any of this Educate me Fact check, maybe Fact check, maybe Fact check.
Speaker 1:I might be just making things up. I do that once in a while, but I'm pretty sure, let's do it, okay, cool, so yeah.
Speaker 4:So where he's talking about folks is right on the border of Manitoba and Ontario. There's some lakes there, you know. There's Falcon Lake Provincial Park, I guess, or what's the provincial park there? West Hawk Provincial Park.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's all in the Whiteshell, oh, okay, yeah, so the Whiteshell kind of encompasses that whole area. So above, like north of the Whiteshell, there's Nopaming Provincial Park and those are both like two super awesome shield-y areas. Like Winnipeg is a flat, dumpy prairie city, but you go an hour, it's like the armpit of Canada, it's totally the armpit of canada and it's uh. But it's weird because you go like an hour, hour and a half to the east and it's like beautiful canadian shield, coniferous trees, just like it's like a different country, never mind like being in the same province. You know it's, it's wild crazy, crazy.
Speaker 4:well it's, it is a beautiful area there, I know that for sure. Yeah, yeah, awesome. So so you cut your teeth there. You know some bass, I'm guessing, some walleyes, some pikes you know, and then you got into this obsession with lakers. Yeah, did you so? Your first lake trout? Yeah, tell me where you caught your first lake trout.
Speaker 1:Silver Lake, boy Silver Lake.
Speaker 4:Buddy, that's my backyard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that was where I went. I remember I went out with a buddy, like I always had the fascination with lake trout. They were just a little bit inaccessible, I guess, like are harder to access, for sure. I was probably 15 or 16 years old. I went out with a guy who brought us to Silver Lake and I think I caught 10 lakers that day. Nothing huge, maybe like a 30-incher being the biggest one it for me. That's where I started like looking where am I going to go to get bigger ones?
Speaker 1:you know that's awesome and then I fished lots of lake of the woods as well. You know caught some pretty good ones in lake of the woods uh, some big fish in lake of the woods yeah for sure, for sure, and it just, it just wasn't enough. It needed bigger and better. Just chasing the dragon, you know that's so.
Speaker 4:That sounds like my whole career absolutely man that's awesome. So, yeah, up to the Arctic you went, yeah. So what took you? Obviously you were up there and you did your fishing deal and you had a career up there. What do you do for work? Or, sorry, what did you do in Baker Lake for work and do you do the same thing now? Can you tell me a little bit about that, Justin?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I still do it. I work in healthcare, in like the mental health field, so I basically just help people within the communities with mental health stuff and it's it's a lot, it's a big, it's a lot to dive into, but basically just like mental health and lots of like counseling and helping people, you know.
Speaker 4:Cool, nice, nice and you're, that's pretty awesome. And so you're like, you're in the community like an up there it's pretty remote. I mean, everybody in the community knows each other. I know you heard Justin say earlier. You know we kind of chuckled and I have a little relationship with Baker Lake. I drilled up there for like almost three months running around up there and it's a wild, wild place. Man Like I, I've, I know I've told some stories on here before about it was a little West. He wasn't in Baker Lake, it was more towards Cougar Looktuck. You know the, the, what are they? The Wolverines digging the dens and y and geologists putting shitter on top of it. And you know I've had a couple stories I've told on here, the, the diaries family know them. But um, there it's an, it's a crazy place. Is where I'm going with that. You know it's the stories that you hear from people and the things that you see are more extreme than any, I don't think, anywhere else on the world I don't.
Speaker 1:I think so. Like it's honestly, I try to think about it and like people who lived historically in nunavut might be like the most resilient people, like like inuit. They might like how do you survive in a place that's minus 50 all the time, sometimes with like three months of straight darkness, without technology? You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:Like like where else on earth? Because you're?
Speaker 1:close to hudson, like it's not. It's not dry yeah, especially baker lake is is like quite muskeggy and stuff. So it's like it's inhospitable territory, man, and it's just like it's nothing but admiration for a new that have survived how, I don't know how many years, but like thousands to hundreds of thousands sort of thing, right like no for sure.
Speaker 4:And I and I think and that's where I'm going with this conversation is, I think that I personally think, buddy, I know from watching you over your years. I've watched you from the start. I watch everybody because I try and support everybody. I mean, even if I'm washing the dishes, I'll have somebody going in the background just to make sure that they're getting some views right, appreciate it. But I'll have somebody going on the background just to make sure that they're getting some views right, appreciate it.
Speaker 4:But I was really intrigued with you and I, because of the fact that you do so that you decided to stay there. Now you told me the story and you know you had that choice to make your quick money and leave and you chose to stay with that community. That tells me a lot about your character as a human right Like that you're. You're, that's not. That's a very non-selfish thing to do as a young man in his, you know, late 20s, early 30s, when you got the world by the balls. You know what I'm saying as per se. So props to you for that. That's awesome that you stayed up there and helped those communities out, man thank you, buddy.
Speaker 1:I genuinely love being up there, like even so, I lived there for like three years full-time, um, and for the past two or three years or so I've been doing kind of a 50 50 split, so like I can't see myself ever not continuing to go back up there. Um, I just love it, man. I love the slower pace of life, I love being a part of something that's like bigger than my own little bubble. You know, like, like you said, everybody knows each other. People knew me as like that dude with the red beard that fishes all the time. You know, it's just it's, it's just fantastic, it feels. It feels like you're genuinely making a bit of a difference in a world where maybe down South you kind of just get like a little bit of a pebble or a grain of sand on the beach, sort of thing.
Speaker 4:It's very, very different. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1:That's, that's deadly.
Speaker 4:Thank you, and so are you still in baker lake or have you?
Speaker 1:I'm in a different community, another community now. Yeah, I'll go back to baker lake once in a while, but primarily now I'm set up on an even smaller community right on the hudson's bay. It's called chesterfield inlet. Baker lake's about 2 000 people and chesterfield inlet is maybe 350 people. So it's very, very, very different, like slower pace of life. The grocery store is much smaller. Uh, you know, like you're not able to get everything you want to get up there, that's for sure.
Speaker 4:Like so you might not be able to get produce for a week. Let's talk about that. Because you were, you let's bring in the uh. So you were at the stores now in your community, in these communities in the north yeah, you bought a snowmobile or a quad there before I can't remember what you said and your milk on the same receipt. Yeah, you know, we know it's super remote to get things there. Tell me about that.
Speaker 1:So I guess basically they just like they haul in a certain amount of snowmobiles and ATVs each year because they know people are going to buy them. People are like people are hard on machines up there and like how could you not be? Like they drive them. Like people a lot of people don't even own, uh like a automobile, like a car or truck or anything. They just drive to work every day on their atv or on their snowmobile. Like I've seen guys with, uh, do a little ski, do plug. I have no association with them or anything.
Speaker 1:But like those the ace engines, man, I've seen like 40 000 kilometer ace engine snowmobiles the newer ones there that, wow, are brand new. Like like they, they they're running perfectly fine and um see, yeah, they get, they get them up there and people just buy them. Sometimes people you know change them out every couple of years and stuff. So that's kind of the play. They subsidize it a bit so you're not paying a astronomical amount more because it is a lot to like. If you want to pick something that the grocery store doesn't have, it's going to cost you a lot to ship it in.
Speaker 4:Um for sure, right, if the fees to get those? I know our good friend of ours and he's a he's a friend of the show and a sponsor of our show. Uh, red lake or lakeside marine, sorry, up in red lake there, red Lake there, andrew Johnson, the amount of money that it costs even them in Red Lake to get things shipped there he was talking to me about was insane. I couldn't even imagine going to where you are.
Speaker 1:I guess it's important to mention, like just for context, that Nunavut there's no roads that go to or from Nunavut. Everything that gets to Nunavut has to be either flown or boated in on a sea lift every summer. Even that gets to Nunavut has to be either flown or boated in on a sea lift every summer. Even amongst there's I think it's 23 communities in Nunavut and none of the communities connect to each other, so each within Wow, I did not know that. Nunavut's a third of Canada's entire landmass size and there's 23 communities spread across the third of Canada and I think the total population last I looked was maybe 60,000 people, so it's so sparsely populated that it is incredible wow, I didn't know that you couldn't get to I, I and this is my ignorance from down here, right?
Speaker 4:so, like when I was up there drilling, yes, I would never leave town and we would, I would hell you in and out, um, but when I was in the north, to the west, like you know, we would always be sort of yellow knife, obviously, yeah, yeah, and then, um, go north, northwest or east, um, wherever we were going at the time, but like we had roads, yeah, we had ice roads still, yeah. So my, I, I just assumed that that's how it was and I was never, I never would have. You know, when I was a baker, I was downtown, yeah, so I never went outside. I did not know that.
Speaker 1:That's the craziest thing If there's there's a few communities that have like a mine attached to them so there might be like an hour to two hour road going up to a mine, but that's as far as it goes. Like there's trails, like people go amongst like from baker lake to chesterfield to rankin inlet on a like three, four hour snowmobile ride to get back and forth. But it's yeah, it's all boat or fly or snowmobile trails and that's pretty well it.
Speaker 4:Think about this. So if you live downtown toronto and you live on, you know Yonge and Spadina and you're or whatever, and you're going to go to work, you're probably going to get up, go to the sub subway right underground. No, you don't need an automobile every day. Most people downtown Toronto or downtown Vancouver or Montreal don't have cars anymore. You get up, you know your thing, go to work that way. Or you get on your, you know your electric moped or your, whatever they have now, and do the same thing and I guess really, if you think about it, you step back. That's the same thing as what they're doing up there. They don't need cars, a lot of those people. They just use their sled or their quad or their side by side and it's a standardized thing, right, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:And you can't use your like. You can't use a pickup truck to go off in the tundra and hunt caribou to eat. So, it almost doesn't make sense to buy a vehicle. Like it's nice to be in a warm and closed truck, but it's far more practical to get yourself a snowmobile than it is to get a car or truck.
Speaker 4:And when you're up there, do you travel by that means?
Speaker 1:most of the time I did in Baker Lake Working in mental health. They give us a vehicle to use, so I had that, like I had access to that to get to my job and stuff. But I love that aspect of it Like being able to like jump on a snowmobile and go to the grocery store pick up my groceries. Of it like being able to like jump on a snowmobile and go to the grocery store, pick up my groceries, hang them off the handlebar and whip home was just it's like a feeling of like liberty and freedom that I just just can't really explain it. You know, super cool and that's so awesome.
Speaker 4:that's it's just talking to you, justin. It's just, I've thought about so much of it because I, because I've personally been up there and experienced it, uh it, but not to the extent you have and not in the conditions you have. You know I was spoon-fed by an oil company. You know what I mean Lobster in a camp. You know I was pretty much a wimp when I was up there, right, yeah, so cool, so cool. I admire you for that lifestyle. Tell me some stories from town you must have. Like, what about polar bears? Is there? Obviously you have polar bear issues being right on Hudson.
Speaker 1:In the new community? Yes, I certainly do, and that's changed my outlook a little bit. In Baker Lake it's, I think it's 350 kilometers inland, and I've heard one story of a polar bear making its way to town in Baker. But in Chesterfield it's on the bay, like you can throw a rock and hit Hudson's Bay from my office window. First time I went up to Chesterfield I watched a polar bear swim across this little pond from my office window. Apparently there's like while I was there a polar bear snuck into town and ripped like a two-inch steel door off the community freezer and stole all the walrus meat, left the char, left the seal. It handpicked the walrus and took off with it. What it's incredible, it's like a real hazard and I feel it. In Baker Lake I had big old musk ox balls. I could go camp out on the land with just my dog. Worst thing that could happen is like a stray grizzly which is rare or a wolverine coming, but I felt okay with that. But in Chesterfield, right on the bay, it's scary man.
Speaker 4:That's crazy. So hold on, let's stop here for a minute, because you said something that I haven't heard since like 2005. And probably 90% of guests have would have no idea that there's such thing in canada called bear and grizzlies, and they're actually very predominant. So we would have training from the oil company on wolverine safety, polar bear safety and and bear and grizzly safety, um, which is crazy. So you, you guys, do get them that far east as Baker, yeah yeah, not so much in town.
Speaker 1:It's rare to come to town, but there's a lake just up the Kilon River, about 80 kilometers or so, and apparently they get them there and they are huge opportunistic bears. I would imagine that they would be more a risk than your bear that has an abundance of food to eat, right like these bears. What are they eating up in the arctic? I don't understand how you could sustain, sustain such a huge animal with nothing no trees, no like not a lot of you know like berries or food to eat, so like they're probably trying to take down caravans.
Speaker 1:It's not even shrubs to walk around I remember hearing a story.
Speaker 4:This is a story I heard from an Inuit guy. We were in Wrigley, northwest Territories, going up to Kogaluktuk. We had just stopped for a fuel up. The guy was BSing us. We were having a cigarette on the tarmac. He was telling me that there's these people that just got back. The plane couldn't come in and get them and they got stranded. They were geophysicists, oh yeah, and they couldn't get back to get them overnight and there was one little bush within like miles of them. That's all there was.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they somehow they stayed on that bush and they walked around it to try and keep the sanity. So they didn't, because they thought they were going to get eaten. Obviously, right, like in the middle of the tundra, it's crazy tasty white guy, pasty white guy walking around, all smelly, right, absolutely it was nowhere to run to in the middle of the dark, right. So they just huddled around this bush and they walked and walked and they just talked, and talked and kept their and stayed warm, yeah, and they just kept their sanity that way until morning, until somebody came back and I was like fucking thinking that I'm like man. I've been in some really crappy situations, but I don't think I've ever had to talk myself off the ledge to walk around a shrub for 12 hours in darkness.
Speaker 1:Something doesn't eat me alive. It's so different, right, because down here, down in the south okay, I'll just mention this first little disclaimer that if I ever mention the south or the north, anything South of Nunavut, it's the perception in Nunavut that anything South of Nunavut is called the South, and I've said that before around some of you Northwestern Ontario people and some people got pretty pissed with me, got pretty offended, so my bad for that.
Speaker 4:Tell them that this is not the North compared to there I'm not sure what word atlas they're looking up, but they're wrong.
Speaker 1:I know, I know. So if I ever see the South I'm not talking about Texas, I'm talking about like anything South of Nunavut. But that's the deal. Like in the South you get stuck out in the bush or whatever, like there's nothing that's going to sneak up on you in your sleep and eat you to death, like literally look at you as prey, you know, and I think it's weathered me a bit like because now, like before, I haven't gone up to nunavut. I'm sure if I had a machine break down in the bush I'd probably be stressing a bit. But it's like now. It's like might have to walk back 15, 20 kilometers, but I could do that without dying, it's gonna be okay at the end of the day, whereas in nunavut it's like maybe not, though like you might not be okay.
Speaker 4:Like so crazy, so crazy, so in um, like like it's a daily thing or a week whatever. However often they're in town, what do they do? Do they do like they do you see on these shows, or is that all bs? Like like, do they trap them or do they just flush them out of town with like bear bangers?
Speaker 1:it's not, it's not it's not, it's not every week or anything. It's like it's kind of rare ish like okay it's not like you're. You're passing polar bears in traffic on the way you work, but uh, but they don't. Usually it's a that's some hot lead to, if they're in town, that they're pretty problematic, pretty problematic and they're probably a high risk.
Speaker 4:So they they're probably too close at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there are tags too, like like polar bears are hunted by inuit. Like sustainably right. Like they have a certain amount of these communities oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've eaten polar bear meat before and I did not like it. It's pretty rough yeah, it tastes like uh the, I don't know. It's a very fishy, rough red meat.
Speaker 4:I wasn't a fan huh, wow, that is stupid. I've never heard of anybody. I didn't know they hunted them.
Speaker 1:I thought it was I did not know that. It's funny because you talk to anybody from down south and the perception is that there are dwindling populations, that that, and that they're like super high risk. But like you talk to any inuit elder, they say that the populations are crazier than they've ever been and that they are like problematically abundant now. So I don't know if it's like maybe the ice is melting farther out in the bay or in like off, like you know, pushing them closer to shore, or if the perception of the south is just not quite accurate. But you know, who are you going to believe? A science science person or, like a dude?
Speaker 4:that's a group of people that live in the guy that's lived there and right like could weather that and survive survive these conditions for thousands or whatever, of years.
Speaker 1:Right like they, they know what's up. They're pretty, pretty dumb, insightful people that's so awesome.
Speaker 4:and while you said, I remember I heard you say a few few minutes ago, when the polar bear stuck in the freezer and stole all the meat. Yeah, not all the meat.
Speaker 1:It took the walrus meat. I guess it has a fancy for walrus meat Left some delicious arctic char. The community freezer is just like a freezer that everybody has access to within the town and you can just store your frozen food there and people can come and take some if they need or whatever. There was tons of meat in there and it took all the walrus meat and left the other stuff.
Speaker 4:That's great. Now have you eaten, walrus?
Speaker 1:I haven't eaten walrus. I haven't eaten walrus. I've had seal. Didn't love it. I've had beluga whale, which was a very interesting experience. It's like, yeah, it's quite interesting. It's like fishy rubbery, like the skin is like eating like a wallet. It's very, very strong, but the meat, it's okay. You put what do you call that stuff? Soy sauce on it. It's not bad.
Speaker 4:Well, they're known. What are belugas? What else are they known for in the food world?
Speaker 1:I'm not too sure I. What are belugas? What else are they?
Speaker 4:known for in the food world. I'm not too sure there's something. I think the Asians eat them for something.
Speaker 1:Probably. Yeah, it's called muck tuck, beluga vaginas or something Beluga nuts or something like that. I'm going to pass on that one. Yeah, oh man, that's so cool. The primary hunt is caribous and muskox and those are like number one and number two most delicious red meat I've ever eaten in my life, really. Yeah, barren ground caribou is incredibly delicious man, like I know the woodland caribou. A lot of people say they're not a big fan of woodland caribou, but the barren ground caribou are just a different creature.
Speaker 4:Well, it's different. I can see they're eating pine and yeah, exactly the areas of that, yeah exactly exactly, yeah, oh that's awesome. I'm gonna have to try that one day. I'm a big guy I have myself love moose and elk, so I have some steaks.
Speaker 1:Maybe next time you're around I'll hook you up. I got caribou and muskox well, I'm trying.
Speaker 4:I'm trying, I know, for like probably like a year and a half now, we've been trying to hook up a little acre fishing together, but I've got a couple lakes out here I want to take you into next year, let's do it we're at the end of the year now, but yeah, yeah, I'm all in, sweet, I can't wait for that man, uh, yeah.
Speaker 4:So you're up in the arctic now, you're, uh, you know, you're, you're, you're doing any work, you're, you know? You've told me a little bit about the scenario up there and and the adventures tell me about the fishing fishing is it's incredible, man, like it's uh, it's so different, like so.
Speaker 1:Now, now that I'm back here doing 50 50 split, it's a hell of a lot harder to film fishing content when you don't have a giant 50 by 80 kilometer puddle in your backyard that is just full of dumb, hungry lake trout that I've never seen a lure before. It's it's, it's incredible. Like I've had days where I've caught 70, 80 lake trout from the boat in three hours and like average size being like a 12 pounder, just absolutely.
Speaker 7:Yeah, that's insane.
Speaker 1:For a little while there in Baker Lake I did a little I don't know a little theme of fishing with ridiculous items like ice fishing with stuff. So I yes, we're trying to think of the most stupid thing I could use as a lure and see if I can catch a lake trout and I want a pair of sunglasses, pair of sun pit viper sunglasses?
Speaker 1:how about a spoon? A teaspoon I used like a plate of my youtube channel is called assorted meats and that's a long story how that name came up back in high school so I tried fishing assorted meats youtube channel. That's awesome that's's justin jake and assorted meats if you want to look it up but everybody looked that up and like that and that is so awesome yeah, we have to dive back into how you got that name.
Speaker 1:Sorry to interrupt you yeah, I was hoping you were gonna ask um. So I got, yeah, made a plate of meats. I used some pepperon, some steak, chicken drumstick, all sorts of stupid things, and Lakers ate all of it. I used the live GoPro camera. What the hell did? I use A tampon. I posted a picture of a white tube jig and somebody commented that looks like a tampon. So I thought challenge accepted, boy. And I strapped it to a big jig and caught uh, caught a laker with it so like hopefully, pit viper, at least gave you a pair of glasses, oh, they hooked them up.
Speaker 1:They sent me a bunch shout out to pit viper. They gave me a little package of glasses to make a lure and yeah, it worked. Dude, the lure looked insane like the no, I, buddy, I've.
Speaker 4:That's why I was labeled them off.
Speaker 1:I've seen, bro, I've watched all your stuff that means so much, but I think you're funny as shit. That means so much. I'm honored dude no, totally man.
Speaker 4:I remember when I actually know, when brucey was up doing the the flay fishing contest at the first show and I remember him talking about on his episode, you guys hooked up and yeah, when he was up at my lodge having dinner one one time him and him and Brian Gustafson and their old ladies came up just to kind of do some PR stuff and sign some autographs with my people and awesome, um, I just asked him like did you, when you were in Winnipeg, did you meet Todd Jenkins? And he's like that guy is a fucking funny dude. I know I'm trying to accomplish them because I'm like I think me and him would have a lot of good fun, fun together.
Speaker 1:I do think so, man, we're gonna make it happen 100% well, that's awesome, man, that's so.
Speaker 4:You're Lakers, you're fishing with different cool. So the theme of fishing different stuff super cool yeah you're catching tons of fish because they're like they're just and you're a stud Between the two. That's awesome. What's your big like? What's a big like down here? Obviously everyone's like yeah, I want to get a 40.
Speaker 6:Yeah, 40's it.
Speaker 4:What's a big trout up there? Are you hitting? Are you wanting to target 50s?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean yeah, always. So the biggest I caught was actually in Cambridge Bay. It was a 46-incher.
Speaker 4:I'll tell you a little bit of the story, and Cambridge Bay is where.
Speaker 1:They're pretty close to Kukluktuk. Actually it's in the same region. I think it is east, I don't know how far. Pretty decent, yeah. So it's up there. It's in the 24-7 sunlight belt. So I guess for anybody who's unfamiliar, the farther north you go, the bigger the disparity in length of days in summer and winter. So once you get to a certain point, winter can be darkness for like two months and summer can be daylight for two plus months. Um, oh yeah, it's a wild thought.
Speaker 4:I mean, it just brings me back to my oil field days and it makes me want to jump off of Derek.
Speaker 1:Dude, but it's tough. It's tough in the winter. I've never actually experienced full darkness in the winter. I've always stayed south enough but I have experienced full sunlight in summer.
Speaker 4:And it's wild dude.
Speaker 1:When I was in Cambridge Bay I had my work contract extended a week and I went and stayed out in a cabin for like seven days or so six or seven days, yeah. And I bought an ATV from a guy for 500 bucks. It had no suspension. It was propped up by like a two by four. I had to spark the solenoid to start it. It was rough and it was still 500 bucks.
Speaker 1:And it was still 500 bucks. But like, the money I got out of that ATV is like you can't even put a price on it. Like I would go fish as long as I could until I got tired no concept of time. Like when I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. I'd rip back to the cabin, sleep for however long I could, with my eyes covered up because it was still bright as day out, and just do it over and over again.
Speaker 1:I took that ATV up and down the coast of the like of the ocean, arctic ocean. Um caught. I caught a like a huge, almost like 25 pound char with my bare hands. It was so fat from eating. Tell me the story, what? That's? Super cool, bro.
Speaker 1:So there's this. There's this place called Long Point. It's like a big sandy point that sticks out, it's just outside of town a bit and char just like lap the shoreline back and forth, back and forth, and I saw this huge char just kind of like sunning in the shallows. It was just swimming along so slow, so fat, and I cast so many spoons at it and it wouldn't eat, which I later found out was because it was like fat to the point of dying almost. So I wait, so it would just go back and forth all day. So I like it was in july, so there's still like ocean ice pushed up against the shore. So I waited on this big iceberg for it to like swim in front of me and I jumped off the iceberg and I pinned it down to the floor of the ocean like in, like, like maybe like two, three feet of water, and I grabbed it and I wrestled it up you croc wrestling char Dude, honest to God. And it pooped out like five pounds of food, like there's no way it lived after because it was so fat. It probably had some sort of like internal issue. Yeah, pooped all over this iceberg. I posted a picture of it. It took over this iceberg. I posted a picture of it. It took me like two hours to photoshop all the poop out of it because the picture looked horrible. Um, yeah, that was like 25 pounds or something. It was like 36 and a half inch, char, oh, my goodness, absolutely nuts.
Speaker 1:So I caught. I caught. That was like day one, um, maybe day three. I went to this.
Speaker 1:The guy that sold me the atv told me that there's a sandy beach up around this little mountain, that there's a sandy beach up around this little mountain that there's big fish that always follow in like follow baits in, but never eat. So I, uh, I drew on my ice fishing techniques that I learned from fishing lakers down south, using like a piece of cut bait, so I caught a. I caught a like a cisco a little while before and I cut it into stakes and I just bombed it out in this little skinny lake, probably like a Cisco a little while before. And I cut it into stakes and I just bombed it out in this little skinny lake probably like a kilometer long by half a kilometer wide, yeah, yeah, and just like sat the bait there Just like a big octopus hook and a piece of cut bait and caught a 46-inch laker at like midnight in like perfect sunlight, and 30 minutes later I up like a 43 inch laker, do the exact same thing, like back to back. It was absolutely nuts, man that's super cool.
Speaker 4:And to do it there, yeah, from an area where they said they don't eat. Yeah, to have it and to do it in 24 hours of daylight. That's so awesome it was.
Speaker 1:It was such an amazing. It's like. It's like think about how much people would pay to have an experience like that. And I paid 500 bucks for an ATV, you know.
Speaker 4:No, what you said is absolutely true, man. Good respect to you, man. These are things that you're never you know. Your grandkids' grandkids are going to tell about grandpa. I never thought of that, that's so crazy.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely awesome to hear. That's amazing.
Speaker 4:Man, that's so cool, that's fun. So those are your biggest trout. So what do you think those trout weighed?
Speaker 1:The one I did the. I girthed it. I can't remember the. I think it was like 26 inches and I think it was just over 40 pounds, and the smaller one maybe 30 or so. They're like super, super decent fish.
Speaker 1:Um, there's a. There's a place in baker lake that I fished once and I got some pretty big ones, maybe like a 35 pound, 42 incher. It's like a set of frozen rapids that's uh, it's up the thilon river there. I mentioned that a little bit earlier. It's a video that's available on the frostbite channel. So it's these rapids like 13, 14 feet of water that are anywhere else in the world. They'd be wide open year round. But it's these rapids like 13, 14 feet of water that are anywhere else in the world. They'd be wide open year round, but it's so cold there that they freeze up in the winter there. So lake trout, I guess, are probably eating like grayling all winter in the fast moving water and people catch like absolute monsters there. Yeah, on the frostbite channel there's a super. I mean not to toot my own horn who's frostbite?
Speaker 4:I know who frostbite channel. There's a super I mean not to toot my own, but pretty damn good frostbite. I. I know who frostbite is, but I know you're part of them, so you and you know jay's been on here and all the boys have been on here. So, yeah, tell them about frostbite and pump the tires a bit.
Speaker 1:So frostbite is a company started by two guys that basically got their claim to fame from youtube alex parrick and aaron weeb, uncut angling and ap bassing. They uh started up a ice fishing company, put out great like super, super nice ice fishing rods, great lures, reels, accessories, all that stuff. Um, I work with them. Um, they support my channel and I've made a few videos for their channel and one of them was at this setting that I was talking about there. The uh it's called, it's a. I'll try to say it. There's a. You got to use like a use different syllables and like different pronunciations for inuktitut words and the spot's called with your.
Speaker 1:I can't people and people in nunavut are probably laughing at me right now trying to pronounce that. But uh, but yeah, frozen rapids and like people catch like 46 inches all the time. I got three over 40 in like an evening there. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's during the fishing derby weekend too and I decided I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna enter the fishing derby. I'm using these bougie, you know sonars and all this new technology from the southern world.
Speaker 1:I don't want to take money away from an inuit for, like you know who's from there winning the derby I would have ended up winning first and second place and I would have won like eight grand and I like but I mean, I mean giving me the had I known that I might have made a few different decisions but, eight grand's a bit, eight grand's a bit of money that might make me uh, reconsider my morals oh, that's awesome man.
Speaker 4:yeah, that's awesome man. Good for you, that's so awesome.
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Speaker 4:Tight lines everyone find ugly pike now on spotify, apple podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts so when you go up, are you, are you up there for like a month at a time or, like you say that you're on like what's your rotation or what is your lifestyle like when it comes to that time period?
Speaker 1:Nowadays it's six weeks on, six weeks off, which is pretty nice. I don't have kids or anything, so it's super doable. It's honestly nice to get away.
Speaker 4:Are you?
Speaker 1:married. Justin, I'm not married. No, I have a partner, though. She's pretty supportive and awesome. Does she go up there with you?
Speaker 4:She doesn't.
Speaker 1:She hasn't been, but they have a grant, I guess or I don't know what you want to call it, but a program for employees that work with the government in Nunavut that you can bring up a family member, a loved one, and they can come stay with you. So she's planning on it. I'd like to get her out there. Um, just, it's just something that you can't explain with words and I'm sure you can attest to it that like there's something different there and it just I can't even tell you what it is, but it's different, it's just a different world it's magical, I'm sure.
Speaker 4:Right like I mean, I felt that, I know that, I felt that it's.
Speaker 1:It's sad because like what percentage of the population of canada do you think has been to nunavut before? Like what percentage of the population of Canada do you think has been to Nunavut before? Like what percentage of the population doesn't even know Nunavut is separate from Northwest territories. Now it's kind of it's wild and it's like a sportsman's paradise dude, the best hunting and the best fishing, like on par with NWT, or better I would say, like in Chesterfield what do you get there?
Speaker 4:So tell me. So that's pumped their tires a bit for an minute. So like you're getting big lakers, we know that you're getting char, so are you getting regular, like the silver char? Do you get them pumpkins too?
Speaker 1:you get the, so they, they go orange like that when they're spawning in like september, october, sort of thing so the silver ones are typically like the straight chrome ones.
Speaker 1:Those are typically the ones that are in the ocean. I guess maybe char are a weird fish man. They're like a confused salmon. So they spend most of their life in fresh water in like the little lakes and stuff, and then come spring with the ice melt they make their way all the way up from their little their fresh water wintering spots all the way to the ocean. They feed like primarily all their diet for the year in like a two, three month period and they come back from the ocean back up to the freshwater areas spawn in the fall and then just winter out all winter. So, uh, when they go to the ocean they're silver like chrome, super powerful, crazy like the craziest fighting fish I've ever caught in my life and in the fall they're bright orange, super, super deadly looking Wow.
Speaker 4:That's so beautiful. I saw Jay just put out. One of you know him and his cooking buddy there did a video there when they went up to Alaska. I've never seen that before. I didn't realize they went that color.
Speaker 1:Dude. So there's a weird thing Like the char from like Tree River and Alaska and stuff. They look very different from the char in Nunavut, like they look like a Dolly Varden but people swear they're not Dolly Varden, they're char. But they look like a whole different species.
Speaker 4:You'll have to send me a picture of one, let me see what they look like. I will picture one let me see what they look like. I will, I will. Yeah, so you got. So you got these char. Yeah, you got insane grayling fishing, I'm assuming yeah, so the best in the world probably um and big, like like what's an average grayling to a big grayling?
Speaker 1:just so folks know um, I, I honestly it's so hard to want to fish for grayling like I learned how to fly fish there, I did it. Um, but it's like when you have big lakers and char around, it's like, do I really want to catch this little purdy purple thing with a big long fin? Yeah, it's cool, but uh, well, I mean I don't like fishing for lake trout food, you know, it kind of feels wrong. But I would say a big grayling's like 16, 18 inches and a huge one is like maybe 20. Hard to say, like I never really looked at them like I would a lake trout like measuring every inch and trying to get the weight of it and stuff.
Speaker 4:What about walleyes?
Speaker 1:Nothing, not a. Thing.
Speaker 1:No walleyes no pike, no pike. I thought there'd be pike still. So there's a lake west of Baker Lake called Gary Lake, and it's several hundred kilometers west of Baker Lake called Gary Lake, and it's several hundred kilometers and that's the only pike that you can get in that region of Nunavut, I think. In Arviat, which is the southernmost community in Nunavut, I think, you can get pike on a bit of a jaunt, but for the most part there's no pike. They should call them like Northwestern pike, not Northern pike, because they don't come our way anyways.
Speaker 4:Crazy, crazy, crazy. I didn't know that. I thought that. I know that when I was in my portion of the territory well, not over by Baker but to the west portion and up they had pike over there Because I'd get them. I'd get them in Wrigley in that area, like we'd fish them out there.
Speaker 1:Like that's nwt though yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Nwt has great pike it's weird though, like they kind of seem to stop where the trees stop like, at least in terms of like the nunavut area, like where the lakes that have them near nunavut is kind of like where trees are poking out. Interesting. Huh, yeah, it's strange. It's strange I don't know why they wouldn't like, maybe lack of like vegetation or something, I don't know. Like I'm strange. I always thought that there would be because, like casbah and stuff have great pike and that's partially in new nevette and yep, you know it's super magellan I I remember we were.
Speaker 4:We were on our way up there and we stopped. This time we were flying from Saskatoon up to Yellowknife, we were coming across and we had to stop in Stoney Rapids Black Lake area.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Black Lake.
Speaker 4:Northern Saskatchewan. Right by Uranium City in Northern Saskatchewan.
Speaker 4:Yep, yep yep, and we had stopped there and we ended up getting weathered in for a couple of days and I decided to go walking. You know, I just went bushwalking and there was a few times where I was like like you couldn't hear, you couldn't hear nothing. You know what I mean. Like a mosquito would flap its wings and you'd be like whoa, what is that? Right, like it's really majestic once you get that far north and it's hard to describe. You know how beautiful it is.
Speaker 1:I'm super jealous, buddy, that you get to be up there all the time a super big trip is go, look, go to like a community in nunavut or northwest territories, zoom in on it and then zoom out and see how long it takes you to find something like another civilization. Literally they say the final frontier, quote unquote, and it is that there is nothing. You are plopped into the middle of nothing. It's incredible that people survive in little communities like that.
Speaker 4:When in the summertime do the lakes get semi-warm, like I mean, or not always 50 degrees?
Speaker 1:it's, it's. It doesn't get like baker lake gets a little bit warmer, being a bit more inland and stuff like you'll get 25 high, 20 low, like high 20 degrees celsius days, but it's just such a big lake and that it's so cold like ice is on the lake till part, sometimes till july, like early july, so you only get a very short summer, um, and it's not enough to like cool, like to warm up the huge lakes.
Speaker 1:I'm sure the smaller lakes will get yeah yeah, you know a little bit warmer, but for the most part you can catch lake trout in under 10 feet of water all year long is it.
Speaker 4:Do you prefer um fishing lakers, open water, or do you prefer doing it through the ice? I've seen you do it both, but I really have only known you to be, you know, the laker ice king in the north.
Speaker 1:That's what I call you that's the biggest, that's the best. I couldn't wish for a better title. Man, that's what I was.
Speaker 4:I've been waiting, I've been thinking about that the whole time I appreciate that so much. I don't think I've ever seen you put a small fish on the ice, even when you were down in lake of the woods. You're screwing around those few times. It's always 30 plus inches. I'm like man, this guy's got a talent like you get spoiled or get weathered.
Speaker 1:I don't even know if you want to call it spoiled, because like now, it's like fishing down here. It's like like, oh, a 33-incher, oh, that's unfortunate. Like it's almost like although, to be fair, in northwestern Ontario those Lakers fight pound for pound, harder than any Laker I've ever fought in my life.
Speaker 6:Like a 33-incher down there Straight up man.
Speaker 1:I don't know what's the deal with them, but they are like juiced up, like you get the odd one from Nunavut in northern Manitoba that fights like that, but for the most part, dude, it's not even comparable.
Speaker 4:Like a 40-incher up there. I sent you those two pictures of those. I'm not going to say the lake, just I want to keep it Lake X for my boy, kyle, but those two pictures I sent you were back-to-back days. Oh, yeah and yeah. So we got that. That one was a 39 and a half, one was a 40 and 40 and change amazing dude, that's a big anywhere, like when it came to fats, 40 like lakers.
Speaker 1:Lakers hit a certain point where, like even down here, like you can get 45s and stuff occasionally in northern manitoba and a 45 up there is a freak. You know, like I said, my biggest I've caught is a 46. So like it's all relative, you know it's just Sure.
Speaker 4:Well, I know that that those. So Kyle recorded those catches and I remember watching the video. So one was a lady from Texas and her husband that are clients of mine. The other one the next day. His name was Mark Eastlings. He was a buddy of mine. He's actually one of my investors. Great dude, you know, big country artist, guy and dude. His fight was like 23 minutes man.
Speaker 4:Like it was just like that sounds longer. I was catching a giant white sturgeon out in BC after my wedding this fall To say that a Laker can put up a fight like that is pretty wild.
Speaker 1:It's absolutely crazy and I'd say most Lakers in northwestern Ontario are like that. They're all so charged up. I've had a handful in Nunavut. My biggest one that I caught through the ice was 43.5 inches and I caught it just an hour north of Baker and I fought it. I was recording it. There's a video of it. It was 50 minutes long the fight. I thought it was like a 90-pound lake trout because it fought so hard. Every other one is like 15 minutes might be like a long one. This one took me for 50 minutes.
Speaker 4:Dude the whole time, listen. I've caught some big fish in tournaments and I've lost some big fish. I know there's been a couple times in my fishing career my semi-amateur fishing career that I've had big fish. Where I in the fight, you're like fuck, I just closed my eyes and I'm just like please just make this happen hey god, you're like hey god, it's no matter how talented you are like, you still always have the the factor.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, dude. Tell me when you're catching a 43 and a half pound Laker and it's your fucking PB through the ice oh my God man there has to be a point after 50 minutes where you're like, oh my God, that was insane.
Speaker 1:So of that 50 minute fight, I probably could include five minutes of it, because the other 45 minutes were cringy me freaking out like shaking and saying absolutely embarrassing things and that's coming from a guy who doesn't get embarrassed by anything. It was, it's incredible, it's uh, it was horrifying. I was so afraid. Um, it was big, but I thought it was a lot bigger just by the way it fought compared to other lakers. But yeah, yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1:It's a dopamine rush that like maybe hunting. Where are narcotics like where else do you get something like that in this world? You know?
Speaker 4:no for sure, I agree, man, it's man. So I'm a big, I'm a. I like finessing big walleyes. That's my thing. I don't care catching big walleyes that's my thing. I don't care if catching big walleyes to me trolling. I like finessing them. I like to know consistently you can catch a walleye between 28 and 31 inches. Oh, hell, yeah, that's the key or muskies.
Speaker 4:That's my big thing right now and I just started getting on the muskies. The last you know, I put a 51-inch tiger on camera, ryan Bonin, actually. So Ryan Bonin, the guy that kind of helped Jay get going there. Okay, he shot my video with his family up at my place at Nordic when I had it, and the fourth day I ended up putting a 51-inch tiger on camera.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 4:And it was like, buddy, it was crazy. It was like the Babe Ruth, you know I could see it coming and I'm like it was crazy. It was like the the babe ruth, you know I can see it coming and I'm like get the net. Kyle, kyle's like man, you don't even have it hooked. I'm like get the net. This is coming in the boat, you know, and it's like four inches from me, flared its gills and I just gave it two pops, I hooked it, turned its head, it was in the net in like four seconds that's so but you know what I mean.
Speaker 4:Like it's those big fish seeing, I love that.
Speaker 1:Oh, I feel like that's the only thing that can compete with laker ice fishing in the summer version, you know?
Speaker 4:yeah it's the only thing that I was going with. That is that's my two things.
Speaker 1:Yours is the lakers, but you know they really compare like in it, like in terms of, like the effects on your mind and your like brain and stuff, the dopamine, the like sheer excitement of catching one fish or even seeing a fish you know it's. Uh, they're very close to like. I haven't done a lot of musky fishing but I'm thinking that it's the play for me come summertime you got to get out here and I'll take you out my 205 dude and we'll go put me in coach, I am so in a couple man on me put me in coach, I'm all in yeah, we'll do that for sure.
Speaker 4:You have to let me know one time when you're getting back from the, from the grind up there when you go back up.
Speaker 1:You gotta be, gotta be going soon eh, so I planned this perfectly, this, uh, the schedule for this year. I um caught like I'm right in the middle of like ice fishing primetime here in the south, uh, and I'm going back up april 15, uh, april 13th, the monday, whatever it is around there, and I'm up there till the just after the may long weekend and that's basically like mid-april is when it starts hitting primetime for noon of it.
Speaker 1:Like we'll still, I'll still be fishing if into june, if I end up staying a little later but uh so yeah, april 15th till May 20th, whatever the long weekend is- Then you'll come back here and it's just Wally opener. Absolutely dude, exactly. And then Muskie's next, and it's a dream.
Speaker 4:That's awesome. That's deadly what I was going to ask you. So we talked briefly about your YouTube channel, which I followed. I think it's amazing. I think it's super cool. I love your logo. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:I made that thing.
Speaker 4:I think it's so I love your logo Assorted Meats. I love the name.
Speaker 1:Here it comes, here it comes.
Speaker 4:How long have you been up and running now and what's your plans for the future? What do you got coming out? Tell the people what they can expect.
Speaker 1:So I have. I think I started it in 2019. I'm just kind of dawdling at first and you know I work a full-time job and making content is a grind. Um, so I wouldn't say I've done it anything close to full-time yet, but the plan is to just, you know, keep, keep, keep, keep doing it, keep showing, partially Nunavut, partially down South. Um, you know I want to start traveling around North America. I've had like it's, it's wild. I don't have a huge YouTube channel, but the amount of people that reach out and ask me to come fishing with them is just amazing, amazing and like, if, like, I could genuinely come back from these six-week trips and go a couple places in the six weeks and, you know, experience different parts of the country or the continent and, like film, cool variety of stuff. That's so awesome.
Speaker 4:It's real man. It's honestly, you'll be single by the time you do that, but I'm probably you know, she's pretty good girl.
Speaker 1:Aja, shout out to aja, she's pretty fantastic lady. Aja, shout out to Aja, she's a pretty fantastic lady. She's so supportive, she helps me with.
Speaker 4:What's your significant other's name?
Speaker 1:Aja, that's a beautiful name, isn't it right, isn't it? It sounds almost like Indian or something, but it's not.
Speaker 6:She's Polish, so I don't her parents must have just really liked the name.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's a keeper man. Good for you, buddy, good for you. Does she fish with you? She's not an outdoors woman, but she'll come and she does it once in a while, which is nice. It'd be hard to have a significant other that always wants to come every time, because that's where I go. I like fishing alone a lot, that's where I do my best work, that's where my best thinking does and reflecting and like self, self-care and stuff. So it's nice having once in a while some companionship, but like it's nice to also have my own thing and that's the problem I have is krista.
Speaker 4:So I started out when I met krista she was like she thought that's 100 and no ignorance to her, because this is I understand. She wasn't around fishing, so she just thought you know a jig and a minnow or a pickerel rig and a minnow was fishing, that's all there was right, no matter what kind of boat you had or what, yeah, that was fishing it's so wild like she's. She's sitting there doing shows, she's doing podcasts, she's selling this. She's. She's like this is a lot bigger than I ever thought.
Speaker 1:The depth and complexity to fishing that people don't really understand. I feel like fishing is becoming such a popular thing. It's the cool thing to do these days and it certainly wasn't when I started, but it should be. It's so complex and such an amazing thing to do with your time Exactly, and I just don't think people understand it.
Speaker 4:No, they don't. And well, that's. The problem I have is, every time I want to go do it and she's like, oh, now I've created a monster because now she wants to do it right, just tell her you're going pickerel rigging and throw a jig I'll tell you a quick story here.
Speaker 4:So we, uh, I told her I'd tell you the story because you're the when we watched. You know you're our Laker guy that we watch, right, I appreciate that. I remember the first Lakers she ever caught we were in Corkscrew Channel. Oh yeah, just past Clearwater where you can actually start fishing. The buoy Past, that red buoy, yep, yeah that was my first spot too.
Speaker 1:First make it a good spot.
Speaker 4:You swing to the left of that red buoy and there's two little islands right, yep, right out in front of those islands there's a reef that comes up from like 50, 60 feet to like 38. We were sitting right on the side of that reef and I had my little pop-up out there. We were, you know, we had a bait out for lakers, in case one come by, but we were perch fishing because there's a massive perch in Lake of the Woods, right? Oh yeah, so we're jumbo perch fishing and I don't know we must have caught like 15 or 20. They were on the ice and we're gonna have a good feed at fish tacos kind of thing. And yeah, and I'm like, okay, babe, reel up, and she like whips her bait. So we're using, like I'm talking like uh, 13 fish and tickle sticks kind of stuff. Oh yeah, she just starts cranking her little bait up. Well, it must have had enough flash that. This, like man, it was a good size.
Speaker 4:It was, like you know, 29, 29 and a half inch yeah but it grabbed it right at the bottom of the hole, like, like right before it came out and oh and she had never even seen this. Yeah, so she just looks at me and she wants to throw the rod because she has no idea what's going on.
Speaker 1:It's malfunctioning.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's a Russian submarine. She grabbed my bait and it's swimming away, totally so. Anyway, she fought it and fought it, and fought it. We finally got it up and then her hands got a little sore so I uh, so I took over. We ended up getting this thing out. That was close 30 inches and man, it was a you know, it was a beautiful lake trout and a great fight. And that was her first experience and ever since then, now she's laker hook. Like every time we go out on the ice road, it's like we're gonna go down to clearwater bay yeah, dude.
Speaker 1:Honestly, though, if you if like, have you never had you never experienced fighting a lake trout before, or see one on the fish finder, you'd think this, this can't be right. Like walleyes, don't do that, perch, don't do that. But like the way they charge up out of bait and the way they just dog, it's like they're not like any other freshwater species at all.
Speaker 4:Let's explain, explain it to the to our diaries fans out there, justin, what you? The crazy thing that, what you because I know what you're talking about when you're watching them on the garment or not, or you're just your flasher or whatever, you're fishing with them. You know, like, tell them how they feed and tell them what they're, you know how they chase and maybe give some details there if you don't mind, like with, with laker fishing.
Speaker 1:It's just like it almost looks like. If anybody can like, like, think of a time where they've experienced like, like interference on their flasher, where those lines are just like flying up, a laker will chase a bait like that fast and you think that's what it is like at first with an untrained eye. But it's a laker charging. They'll charge like 60, 70 feet sometimes to come in and smash a bait which is sickening when you're fishing other stuff. It's like this walleye won't move 10 feet. What do you?
Speaker 4:mean, and a lake trout will charge like 80 feet.
Speaker 1:I know like come on, man, you can see this. I know you're called a walleye.
Speaker 4:It's so amazing how they fish vertically through the column or they feed vertically through the column.
Speaker 1:A lake trout will pick up a one foot piece of candy on the bottom of the lake, or you can catch it 90 feet above you in the same cast at the surface like like, yeah, like you, you can fish lakers directly on the bottom, and there's been more than five, I would say, times where, like you know, you drop a new lure down the hole and you want to see the action of it right below the hole. Do like. You go to do that and a huge laker comes and smashes it, like with its, with its dorsal fin, scraping the top of the ice. Like what are you doing there, bud? They're just, uh, they're. They could be anywhere. They can charge so fast. I'd like to get a reading on like the mph they're. They're putting down charging after bait, because it's probably faster than I can run.
Speaker 1:That would be a really cool thing to know probably like maybe you could calculate that with like a filament of a sonar or something. See how many feet it travels upwards at your bait. That would be challenge accepted. I'm gonna try to do that there you go, I'm gonna.
Speaker 4:You know what now I'm gonna. I'm gonna talk to angins. I know he introduced me. So I have silver pike in. I'm sorry I had when I had nordic. I had silver pike in my lake, oh nice yeah, but they were like they were starting to breed in the abundant. They kind of I'm not sure if they'd slowed down or dissipated a bit, but regardless. Anyway, we got one that was really big and I took the pictures that the sportsman showed it and I'm like you know what do you think this is? Because it looked like a grayling.
Speaker 4:I'll send you the picture this is because it it looked like a grayling. I'll send you the picture. The whole body looked like a gray. It wasn't like a pike at all. It looked like a stub nose pike but a grayling skin and super it was all purple and blue, um silver underbelly. So, anyways, he took me to this fish biologist and, uh, he told me that it was a skin pigmentation issue, basically a DNA issue. And if they were breeding, then it's like an albino moose breeding with another albino moose. They would just continue. So we were really hoping to push that. Anyways, it died off, but a super cool thing you know to be able to do. So I'm going to talk to Ang and see if he can hook me back up with that guy. Yeah, ask him if they've ever studied that before. See if he can hook me back up with that guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ask him if they've ever studied that before. Man, we could do it. We could do it. Record the flasher fish finder whatever device you use, and you could calculate if it traces your bait up 100 feet in.
Speaker 4:However, many amount of time, however long a time, it's just the speed too right Versus the distance, exactly, exactly. That's wild man. This is a project. See, there you go, heck. Yeah, put me in, coach, I'm on it, brother. I want to say you know, I really want to have you back on the show. I want to hear some more stories about the Arctic up there. There must be some more crazy things. I know we've talked about lots, but I'd like to hear more someday. I'm going to have a million questions for you, I know.
Speaker 1:Hey, I got notes here. I didn't even come close to getting through all of them. I took a couple notes of stories and stuff, so I'd be happy to come back.
Speaker 4:I had a great time bud, I would love to get you back on the show. Let's do that. Let's get you up north for your six weeks and then, when you get, you know what we up there to do one while you're in the Arctic. I think that would be super cool for our fans. They would love to hear that.
Speaker 1:Sounds good, man, I'm going to break 48 inches lake trout this year. There's a lake that's 50 kilometers west of Chesterfield Inlet and I've seen three confirmed 48 inches in the last maybe five or six years Pictures and everything. 48 inches, 48, man.
Speaker 1:I don't know, this lake is like a little, I guess it's a lake that char used to winter and these Lakers are just eating char. And you know char like salmon or like rich, fatty, high calorie fish. But he caught a like a 44, I think it was, and it had like a five, six pound char, half digested in its gullet it. So we're going there, we're going to camp out and uh log some content and stuff.
Speaker 4:So I'll have some 48 inch stories for you hey, the diaries of a lodge owner, stories of the north family want to hear about them. They want to uh, they want to be there when you, when you break your record, your pb imagine, imagine on air hey brother, I, uh, I appreciate everything.
Speaker 4:Um, folks, I want to thank you to getting this point in the show. I want to reach out to Lakeside Marine, our friend Andrew Johnson up there. I know right now they're smoking busy getting ready for spring. We're going to have Andrew on here right away to go, you know, do a little spring episode on some openings and some boat openings and, you know, quad maintenance and so on and so forth. But uh, get online, take a look at them at lakesidemarinacom. Uh, get on over to the fishing canada website, folks, and take a look at all the giveaways they have there. You know garmin is always putting up a panoptix. You know it's, uh, it's, it's still unbelievable to me. If I, if I was able to, I would be on those things every week putting in filling out um applicator forms to be able to win that contest, like for a brand new garmin live scope. Get in there, folks. Fishingcanadacom. And I think that's it. Mr jenkin, it's beena pleasure having you here. I really appreciate it it.
Speaker 1:Pleasure's all mine, buddy. I had a great time. We'll talk soon. Do it again.
Speaker 4:Awesome For everybody out there. Diaries of a Lodge owner. Families and friends. Have a wonderful rest of your day. And thus concludes another episode of Diaries of a Lodge Owner. Stories of the North.
Speaker 2:Stretching my life. Someday I might own a lodge, and that'd be fine. I'll be making my way the only way I know how, working hard and sharing the north With all of my pals. Well, I'm a good old boy. I bought a good old boy. I'll buy the lodge and live my dream. And now I'm here talking about how life can be as good as it seems.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right Every Thursday, ang and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm, now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week?
Speaker 4:Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 5:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 7:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes, All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the. Russians would go fishing.
Speaker 5:To scientists, but now that we're reforesting and letting things breathe, it's the perfect transmission environment for limestone.
Speaker 3:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 7:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal use by Indigenous peoples all over the globe.
Speaker 6:After nearly a decade of harvest use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of the strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people. That will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. Find Under the Canopy now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts.