Seeking The Wild Within: Flint and Steel, Trout Bush Meal.

Recently I was offered a challenge on an internet bushcraft forum by one of the members there to catch at least a 10" trout and to cook it in the field with out using a pan of any kind, plus the fire that will be used to cook said trout must be created via the the flint and steel method. Not to be confused with the ferro rod method, which is often referred to as a "fire steel". It was to be done by using the real deal...a piece of hand forged steel striking a hard stone edge to make a spark, which hopefully will ignite into a flame. The process is a little more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it.

With only days left for the inland trout season, time was of the essence. The upcoming forecast didn't look good either with the threat of a week long series of thunder storms, and I didn't know how much free time I'd have after work so I decided to head out.

The weather the past two weeks here in the Northland have been unusually hot. We almost always get a warm spell in September that we call an "Indian Summer", but we've had a couple of weeks of temperatures in the high 70's and even a number of days in the high 80's. Today it was forecast to be in the mid-80's with moderate humidity so I woke up before sunrise to pack up my gear and drove out to my destination in hopes to beat some of the heat. I decided to wear my light weight nylon shirt and pants to help with the cooling effects of my perspiration that I knew would be soaking me throughout the day. This is the same clothing set up that has worked well during time I spent in the various jungles I've been to. Top it all off with the classic boonie hat and I was ready for some hot weather adventure.

I figured this was supposed to be a challenge so I chose to fish an area that was new to me. I had walked past this stretch of small water numerous times during past bird seasons but I have never fished it. Last year while grouse hunting, I witnessed a father and son pull a few trout out of a hole right off the small bridge that crossed the stream during the final day of that year's trout season. I wanted to see what this stream had in store for me, so I figured this would fit right in with the challenge to fish some new water and scout it out for future trips.

With grouse season in swing I decided tote along my compact "tacticool" .410. It's probably one of the most ridiculous looking guns I own, but it's great as compact hunting/ survival type weapon. I've have taken numerous heads of small game with it and often tote it on camping trips. Grouse weren't my primary objective, but I knew if I didn't take a gun I'd see at least six birds just sitting around looking at me. You know how that goes. Besides, the little .410 would be nice and compact compared to my other shot guns. This would be a huge benefit because the foliage around this stream is ultra thick and I knew I would be navigating through a tag alder jungle the whole time.

I arrived at the bridge and parked my vehicle on the side of the old railroad grade. No grouse were spotted on the way in and that didn't surprise me. It was early yet and a lot of foliage was still up. Plus with this heat, the birds were probably still deep in the swamps.

I'm normally not a bait fisherman when it comes to trout, but on this trip I was going to be using the ever reliable garden hackle. This stream is too small and brush choked to effectively fish it with lures so drowning worms was the way to go. Besides, I figured I'd add to the challenge and see if I could catch some trout on a small, hobo style fishing reel kit gifted to me by a friend. His kids make them and he gave me one to field test. I used it earlier in the year during a hike in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness and caught a number of small trout with it up there. I rigged up the reel with a small aberdeen hook and one BB sized split shot. I lobbed the line into the pool just off the bridge to see what would happen. In seconds the line started to move unnaturally cutting across the current so I knew a fish had taken the bait. I set the hook and played in a creek chub. Not what I was after, but the little survival reel/fishing kit did it's job.

I hooked a few more chubs over the next 10 minutes and was beginning to wonder if any trout were active in the pool. Or if there even were any in it for that matter. After about 2 more chubs I hooked into something that fought completely different and I knew it had to be a brookie. I seen it darting around as I pulled the hand line in and I could make out the white the edged fins which told me my hunch was correct.

Smokey the Bear told me it was only 8" so back in the water it went. The first trout of the day was a couple inches short of my goal but I knew they were here so maybe I could pull it off. Being a small stream most of the fish are probably going to be in the 7" to 9" range. I have found this to be true in almost every small stream I have fished up here. Of course there could a be a monster lurking in any small creek but that's the exception, not the rule. That was another reason I chose to fish this river. I knew getting a trout 10" or better might take some time. Sure I could have hit one of my big fish spots on another river and maybe pulled out a foot long brookie or bigger brown if I was lucky, but I wanted to push the challenge theme and see what I could pull off.

A couple of drifts later I was rewarded with another little brookie. This one was smaller than the last. Even though the fish was small it was nice to catch such a little gem. I know these are probably pure native strain and that's a rarity in North America now and days. You usually have to fish tiny water like this to catch these beautiful little natives. I'm fortunate to live in an area where such fish still exist all over in abundance.

Soon after releasing the above fish I hooked another little trout. I tried to get a photo of it in the water as I pulled it in. It's quite difficult to get decent footage like this by yourself and even more so when using this hand line, so I apologize for the some of the shots being out of focus. Fish are always flopping about and the camera is usually being held at an awkward angle, often over drop off and above water most of the time. This makes action shots dicey most of the time.

At this point I was getting nothing more other than some tiny chubs and I basically covered all the water that was with in reach of what I could toss out using the hobo reel. The little survival fishing kit sure did the job. I caught a few trout and about three times as many chubs. If I was lost and needed food, I would have had a full belly in little time. I packed away the hobo reel and took up my Berkley Cherrywood ultralight, decked out with a Pflueger reel. This is fine small water trout set up.

I walked back to the car an get my pack, hip boots and the gun. It was time to walk the stream. This is what It was like once you were off the road. You had about 4 feet of visibility. Usually I don't mind being in thick vegetation if that's the case, but a couple of years ago a lady was fishing near this spot and had the uncanny feeling that she was being watched. She couldn't shake the feeling and decide to walk back to the road, and as she did she looked up and there watching her from the bridge was a mountain lion. This is the very spot I'm at now. Of course this story keeps playing through my head as I walk into the tag alder thicket hemmed in by tall grass.

My view of the river.

What you see is what I have to navigate through. Thick brush and grass everywhere. Fortunately there were occasional openings along the bank created by beavers. I spied once such opening and made way toward it, snaking myself through the foliage. The opening was on a nice bend where the stream starts to meander. The bend looked deep and held the promise that there could be some trout hidden under it's banks. Like all banks, they were hard to break into, but I managed to flip a cast exactly where I had hoped and waited to see what kind of treasures I could haul out of it's tangled vault. It didn't take long for the line to signal the tell tale movement from a fish. I set the hook and felt some good resistance. This was a keeper. I played the fish and lobbed it up on shore as it got close.

Smokey said it was 10" on the nose.

Phase one of the challenge completed.

I re-baited the hook and casted to another spot on the far side of the bank. It didn't take long for a second trout to hit. This one fought well and I was happy to see another keeper on the end of my line.

The humped backed male measured out to 10 1/2". Phase one of the challenge was accomplished, times two!

With two trout in the bag I was wondering how many more I might encounter now that I was off to parts where few people, if any tred. I flipped in a few more casts and caught a few more small trout and chubs that I released. I could hear the gurgle of running water so I left the bend to seek out some new turf.

The Bend

I made my way through the tangle and seen much of the river was too shallow to allow for any decent fishing attempts. I kept walking along to reach the source of the running water I could hear when suddenly I fell. As in, "fell through the earth". My brain locked up and I was confused because I didn't notice anything but solid ground, and surely not this hole that I was now thigh deep in. I expected to be sloshing in water but the bottom was oddly dry. I clambered my way out and took another step and as I stood up... the earth started to collapse all around me! I jumped and ran, then made sure I was on solid ground. It was weird. That whole section of ground I was on seemed to be over some kind of small sink hole. Perhaps it was the remains if an old muskrat burrow? So now I cautiously walked along the river bank expecting to fall into a pit every few steps.

Pitfalls aside, not much of the rest of the river looked very fishable. I found the source of the running water and it was a small beaver dam. I was hoping it was going to contain a decently deep pool behind it, but it was rather shallow and only yielded a few creek chubs to me. I made my way back to start phase two of my challenge.

I walked back to my vehicle, ditched my hip boots and dropped off the larger trout into a cooler. My pants were soaked with sweat but I knew the nylon material would dry out quickly. I gulped down some water and decided to walk to trail I knew was near by. I'd cook the trout up somewhere off to the side of that trail. I didn't want to cook, let alone make fire in all of that thick, suffocating vegetation along the stream.

The walk to the trail was uneventful and no game birds were spotted. It was starting to get windy and when I was putting my boots at the vehicle, my SUV's dash display had told me it was 85 degrees out. I was roasting, and was thankful for the breeze. I hadn't noticed it while along the river.

Many times over the years I have shot grouse along the tops these ridges that line the defunct railroad grade I was taking to the trail I had in mind. But there would be none on the tops today.

I reached the trail and started down it. I soon began looking for a suitable place to make a fire. I wanted something sheltered from the wind and in a spot that offered me all the fire making resources I needed. I soon found what I was looking for and set up my "lunch camp".

Just look at those classic lines on that fine upland shotgun.

On this trip I took along my Buck 119 Special. One reason I took it, is that this year happens to be the knife's 75th anniversary. I have had this blade for about 20 years and have used it on two different continents in a range of environments that include jungles, frozen boreal forests, mountains, deserts and plains. It has served me well in all these places. The other reason it tagged along on this trip is due to the fact that big, toothy critters roam in this area and a decent sized knife seems to give me some degree of psychological comfort, if nothing else.

To get a fire going by using a flint and steel requires two critical components. The first component is a suitable material to catch the spark created by the steel when struck with the sharp edge of a hard rock. Finding a such a spark catching material that is unrefined in nature is almost impossible. So to facilitate this need, one packs in some char cloth or other charred material with their steel striker. Char cloth is just the carbon remains of a cotton based fabric. You can make it by super heating the cloth within a tin that doesn't permit much oxygen to get at the material causing it to partially gasify, and leaves behind only the carbon that was contained in the material. This process sounds all high-tec but it's funny to think that people have been doing this for over a thousand years. Once a spark hits the charred material it grows into a sort of spreading ember.

The second critical component is making a proper tinder source that the ember will ignite. Though the ember gets hot, it just doesn't burn like a flame and wont readily combust materials like a lit match would. Much care is needed for the proper tinder nest to be prepped to accept the embers heat, that will hopefully lead to fire. The heat of the day will help with this step. The humidity in the air and materials will be the wild card.

I got busy making my tinder nest from some thin, dead grass and crumbled dead ferns into the center. There was one component that I was hoping to find above all else. And there it was, right behind my set up.

The yellow birch. Nature's tinder store.

I constructed my tinder bundle with a core made of the yellow birch bark and staged up some different sized kindling. The base of the fire lay was made of some balsam boughs to keep the tinder bundle off the moist earth. All materials were gathered within about a 12 foot radius of my fire lay.

Firesteel and tinder all prepped and ready to go

I grabbed the fire steel striker along with the piece chert I gathered from the shores of Lake Superior, and placed a piece of char cloth right along jagged edge of the chert. I struck with a with a couple of deft blows and a spark quickly took hold onto the char cloth. I gently blew on the spark and the glowing lines of the moving ember traveled like crimson lightening along the material.

I placed the char cloth into the center of the tinder nest and blew on it to enhance the ember in hopes of igniting the center of the nest. I'm not sure if there was too much moisture in the center nest material, or I just took too long to insert the char cloth due to taking a photo, or a combination of both, but the first attempt just yielded a little smoke and didn't ignite anything before the char cloth was spent.

With the camera down and all my focus on the task at hand, I struck a spark on another square of char cloth and folded the nest around it. I started to concentrate some blown air to the center and could feel the heat building up within my hands. Soon a thick cloud of smoke was building up engulfing the nest and I knew I was on the home stretch. With a faint "poof" the material combusted into flame, and I piled on the remainder of the birch bark on to help it along. Fire had been made just as the mountain men had done nearly 180 years prior, and Phase two of my mission was complete.

With the fire now established, I got to preparing my lunch. I gutted and rinsed the brook trout and added some slashes on the sides. I do this to help expedite the cooking process and it also gives access to more of the actual exposed flesh to absorb the wood smoke flavor and seasoning, of which I added a few dashes of Cavenders. No need to be too uncivilized when cooking in the bush. In my opinion, Cavenders Greek Seasoning makes the best camping seasoning you can take with you. It goes great with everything I have ever tried it on and it's a staple in my cook kit. Try it if you have never used it and tell me what you think.

One of the stipulations of this challenge was no pan could be used to cook the fish so I went the paleolithic route and just utilized a black cherry sapling in the green to act as a skewer.

My coal bed was now perfect. One doesn't need to make a huge blaze for this kind of bush cooking. I find I can effectively make a micro fire like this to cook everything I need with very little hassle. You get a quick, hot bed of coals, and you don't need to scrounge forever to find fuel. Plus the fire is easy to maintain and extinguish if you need to leave in a hurry.

I stuck the skewer into the earth and adjusted the trout over the coal bed. As I watched the fish cook I sat down and took in the days events and felt a sense of accomplishment at completing this challenge. I quite enjoyed the quest and it helped to get me out in nature to enjoy all of it's splendor.

It's the little things in life like this that I find very satisfying. When a man focuses in on such endeavours in the wilderness all of the issues and clutter of the modern world melt away into the ripples of a quite stream or become faded by the brilliance of the autumn leaves.