Ask the Pond Guy

Aaron Schock Clay Pigeon Shooting

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:06:51 +0000

I just wanted to let everyone know there is a clay pigeon shoot Sunday, August 15, 2010 at Oak Ridge Sportsmans Club. The event is being put together by the people in support of Aaron Schock for Congressman. Aaron is a good friend of mine, we grew up together in the same sunday school.

Sign up and event information is below. Aaron’s mom used to teach me and my siblings piano lessons a long long time ago. We used to play crow kay in the yard while waiting for everyone to get done with their lesson. That just doesnt look right- crokae, crokay, crowque oh well. Anyhow I grew up with Aaron but haven’t seen too much of him lately. The shooting event will be fun.

I shot at the Midwest Food Bank clay pigeon event last week and have another shooting event coming up this friday. All at the same place in Mackinaw, so I should be practiced up for this event in August, but more importantly practiced up for the dove season opener in September. Here is a pic of the course:

YOU ARE INVITED TO MACKINAW, ILLINOIS
FOR A SPORTING CLAY SHOOT

IN SUPPORT OF
CONGRESSMAN
AARON SCHOCK
18th District, Illinois

SUNDAY AUGUST 15, 2010
4:00 PM – 7:00 PM
(dinner will be provided)

OAKRIDGE SPORTMAN’S CLUB
Weishaupt Road Mackinaw, Illinois

The Sporting Clay Shoot will be followed by
a dinner reception at the Sportsman’s Club.

CONTRIBUTION LEVELS:
PAC Sponsor: $1,000
Platinum Sponsor: $500
(Includes Shooting, Dinner and Sponsor Signage posted at event.)
Shooter & Dinner Ticket: $175
Dinner Ticket: $100

If you have any questions regarding this event, please contact
Tania Hoerr at (309) 693-9393 or tania@aaronschock.com.

Big Fish and Bigger Deer!

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:19:13 +0000

I actually don’t have that many words to write at the moment. I think I did pick a fitting title though- Big Fish and Big Deer.

This deer is from one of my clients properties in fulton county. He just got it back from a taxidermist this weekend. It was 221 inches and some of his relatives are still hanging out on the farm (the deer’s relatives, not the clients).

We are putting in some trail cams, deer stands, and strategic fall food plots to help his relatives (the clients’ this time) get some more deer like that one!

Chef Todd catered a dinner for me at Otter Creek Preserve Saturday night. He cooked Blueberry Bluecheese Elk burgers and tomato something salad. It was delicious. We were showing some clients around the farm for the evening. Otter Creek is perhaps one of the nicest recreational farms in Illinois. Here are some pics:

These lakes will produce state record muskies and I have never ever said this before about any lake, but these lakes will eventually produce state record largemouth and even have an outside shot at the state record smallmouth bass as well. I have worked on this 147 acre lake since it was a puddle and we are on pace to produce double digit bass here in central Illinois! I have never intensively managed a lake to this degree.

Moving on, Chef Todd also catered a dinner for me Sunday evening for 40 friends and family of my parents. He cooked sweet chili glaze chicken, barbecue pork chops, bacon wrapped stuffed chicken tenders, and all the fixins. Folks if you havent caught on yet, the man can cook! Get ahold of me if your interested in having a great meal of any kind catered by the chef. I will be his booking agent and only loan him to others when he has some free time.

He took some of the kids fishing on the dock after dinner and made sure they all caught fish. He then caught some nice fish of his own. Here is the biggest bluegill and biggest smallmouth bass he has caught from my lake to date: (not lake records, but Chef records).

Hot Crappies- Cool Deer Stuff

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:12:38 +0000

Sunset at the lake on Saturday evening:

Well, I can’t believe its Wednesday already! Been a very eventful last 5 days to say the least. Saturday Chef Todd and I took some people fishing and cooked up a fish fry feast in the evening. Sunday we had a whole bunch of friends out to the lake for a cookout. Monday I diagnosed pond problems in the office from Montana to Texas to Maine and pretty much every state in between. Then I headed out for an electrofishing survey and some deer management stuff monday evening. Tuesday I finished up some lake management reports, caught up on emails and phone calls, and then headed out for a consultation near Trivoli. Wednesday I diagnosed several fish kills, had my back and body worked on, looked at a lot to potentially build my future house on, and headed out to a large property to work on some deer, quail, and waterfowl management stuff. When I got home tonight I played Wii fit with Mae and Noah and then fell asleep on the couch for awhile. Now here I am wide awake and early tomorrow morning consultation just a few hours away. Here are some stories and pics:

Saturday morning I got all my fishing gear ready, hooked up a couple fishing boats, and met up with Chef Todd with enough food for an army, and we headed out. Our agenda for the day was to take some clients and their friends fishing and then cook them up a feast. It was sunny and 92 degrees outside, but surprisingly the fish were biting and we managed to stay cool enough to have a great time fishing.

Before we headed out to the Big lake in the boats we were all fishing off the covered dock when one of the ladies hooked into a nice channel catfish on some catfish bait. She was realing it in when the catfish got itself snagged in a brush pile about 15 feet deep on the bottom. I could feel the catfish on the line but it was all wrapped up in the tree.

Here was my moment- the kind of moment when you can accomplish something that will stick in the minds of city folk for quite awhile. I jumped in the water, swam out to right above the tree, took a deep breathe and swam down to the bottom of the lake to meet up with the catfish. He was wrapped up alright, and not happy. I knew there was no way I was coming up without that catfish so I cornered him into the tree, dug my fingers into his gills with all my might, broke the lines wrapped in the limbs, and headed for the surface giving this beast a bear hug. I knew the moment I swam down there was no way in the world I was coming back up breathing without that catfish.

I made it back up with the beast and I felt like one of those crazy guys on tv doing stupid stuff in the wild that most people would never even think about doing even during survival situations. The only kicker was that I had a live audience with no room for error or any signs of weakness. Anyhow that was my moment, and it was alot of fun. We ate that fish for dinner.

We then headed out to the lake for some crappie fishing. Chef Todd took out a couple ladies, I took out 4 ladies, and there were two other boats of guys. We all caught lots of fish, but there was one boat with 4 ladies who caught a good majority of the fish, and especially all the fish fo dinna. Brook absolutely hates it when I talk or write about anything good that I do or accomplish or brag or boast about, but this is my fishing blog and by golly I am gonna very biasedly tell the story like it is! For her sake I wont name any names of the amazing fishing guide or of the 4 ladies.

Here are some more pics from the fishing trip. The northerns actually are reproducing in this 31 acre lake. Northerns havent been stocked since 2002 and these two fish were yearlings hatched in the spring of 2009:

We let the guys take a few pics with our fish:

Here is what the fish looked like about an hour later. This fish was with his school in the morning and hanging out with Chef Todd in the afternoon:

We cooked up some bruschetta and grilled some stuffed bacon wrapped prawns for appetizers.

We also fried up some crappies, mixed up some salads, grilled some sweet corn and chicken, and grilled peaches with ice cream for dessert. Lots of fun! I was too tired to drive all the way home at 11 pm when we finished so I stopped in at Norris for a few hours of sleep. The sun really zaps the energy out of me.

Sunday we had about 25 friends up to the lake for a cookout and lots of swimming. Very fun, I was too tired to fish so I dont have any pictures. I only take pics of fish, food, or deer stuff. If we can integrate kids and friends and such into those pics even the more better. I guess I could of taken pics of the mozzerella burgers or sweet chili glaze chicken…....

Monday here are some pics from the electrofishing survey. This 6 acre lake is stacked up with lots of 2.75 lb largemouth bass. Not many smaller and none bigger, interesting…. Brought the kids out to take some pics of the catch.

Then we went around to check all the food plots, trail cameras, and new deer stands. This has been a very fun property to work on and come deer hunting season will be even more fun for the owners! Spring plots of beans and biologic are doing good, trail cameras are picking up lots of deer patterns, and fall plots will be going in in a few weeks, and new deer stand and box blind locations are going to pay off big time!

This baby is getting a nice staircase and electricity. It will be overlooking a fall planting of 3 acres of beans and other tasty stuff:

Here is the view looking out of the Texas Hunter double blind:

Here is one of the new cuddeback cameras:

And here is the plot it is overlooking:

Tuesday I went to a pond consultation to one of the coolest places to live on the planet. This guy has a beautiful log cabin with 5 or 6 stall garage overlooking a one acre pond which overlooks 85 acres of intensively managed timber. Pretty much my dream home and land. I was telling Brook that I just came from my dream home and she said “so the pond wrapped around the house” I had to correct myself- almost my dream home. Brad, if you are reading this far down, the only thing your missing is the pond wrapping around the house. Except for that tiny little detail your place is the ultimate.

His garage is full of every kind of wood working tool imaginable. He makes bows, duck and goose calls, turkey calls, coyote calls, knives, inkpens, and other outdoor stuff from wood and antlers and bones from his property. Real cool stuff.

I brought some pond stuff along hoping to trade for some of this stuff. Here is what I came home with that Brook doesnt know about yet. This stuff doesnt pay the bills, but it does help put meat on the table so there you go- justified. I don’t have Brad’s email address with me tonight, but if for some reason I forget to add it later just give me a holler if your interested in getting a hold of him. He has a huge collection available, but also custom makes anything too.

Today I did a whole bunch of dumb not noteworthy stuff, but this afternoon I went out to a 550 acre farm to start working on a complete deer, quail, and waterfowl management plan. Timber Creek Land Company is helping me design this plan for my client. This property sits in a major goose flyway and there are already lots of deer, and tons of quail running around everywhere. Our goal is just to tweak everything in just a way to bring the people and the animals just a bit closer together. We are strategically planning the food plots, the deer stand locations, trail cameras, goose pits, etc. Land management stuff is pretty neat and lots of fun.

Lots of fish dying right now in Central Illinois. Most of the time the cause of death is suffocation (lack of oxygen) but that can be caused by a variety of different things. I could not for the life of me figure out one fish kill earlier today. I went over everything with the owner and his wife and it just didnt all add up. Finally after a couple phone calls he forgot to mention they applied copper sulfate the day before but didnt think anything about it since they have never had trouble in the past with treatments. There is always some piece of the puzzle that gets tucked under the rug only to be found a bit later. Thursday monring I will try to figure out another one near Metamora.

Pond Hippo and Tough Fishing

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 03:19:45 +0000

Ever watch an infomercial and just want to order stuff because the idea just seems so genius? Sooo many As Seen On TV items out there that I have always dreamed of owning….. Anyhow here is the ultimate infomercial type item for small pond owners with chronic duckweed: The Pond Hippo.

Here is the kicker though, this baby actually works! Its not magic, doesnt solve all your problems, has some limitations, and requires some effort, BUT we successfully used it today for our trial run and were sort of impressed with what this contraption can do. It sucks up duckweed and algae very good and deposits it right into these neat filtration bags. We filled up several bags with 100’s of pounds of duckweed and algae in just a few hours today.

For folks who live in coves and are the recipients of all the lakes floating junk this would work perfect to suck up leaves, watermeal, algae, duckweed, etc. Up to 2 inch solids and it also sucks down big tadpoles, frogs, and other unfortunate items who got a little to close to our experiments today.

Also for small ponds with chronic duckweed and watermeal this contraption will work great. We didnt have any help from the wind today so we had to use our duckweed boom to bring the duckweed to the pump, but strategically timed and placed pond hippoes will work awesome! I will be selling them online shortly and also if anyone out there with the right application wants to get their pond hippoed just shoot me an email or give me a call.

Moving on, we had the toughest fishing bite of the year last night. We took 9 high school boys from Morton AC Church and their Bible Class teacher fishing last night and we actually had to work very hard for the few fish we caught.

We had to catch fish too, because that was what was on the menu for dinner! We squeeked out some hybrid striped bass, some bluegill, and a couple small catfish (enough to eat) but the fish just seemed like their mouths were sewn shut. Even though the fishing was bad we still had a great evening playing in the water and cooking fresh fish and mushrooms for dinner:

The rest of the week was spent working on some cool spawning bed projects. We shot thousands of pounds of pea gravel into strategic spawning areas to help produce lots of baby fish. For those non fish people reading the blog, we basically set up these lakes with several honeymoon suites with soft sheets, scented candles, romantic music, and full blown nurseries all geared for making and raising lots of fish. Here are some pics of the process:

Last bit of exciting news is that I have started a program to get my body and back healthy again. I have worked out a deal with Benningfield Chiropractic (exchanging some tiger muskies and such) to fix my lower back, get me back in shape, and teach me what to eat and what not to eat. Back in 2002 I was extremely active and athletic. Swam a couple miles a week, played volleyball one night a week, basketball one night a week, and worked 50 hours of construction every week. I ate about 10,000 calories a day and weighed 205 lbs. Since then I got married, changed careers, had 3 kids, and haven’t excercised or really done any sort of physical activity at all. Instead of swinging a hammer and climbing on roofs I sit behind a desk or in a boat. Instead of playing sports after work, I come home and sit in my chair with 3 kids climbing all over me. Pretty big lifestyle change and now 8 years later I have a bad lower back and weigh 280 lbs.

So Dr. Bob is fixing my back, Dr. Chad is teaching me nutrition, and Amy is my personal trainer. I asked her if it was normal to be out of breath during my initial evaluation??? I think the process of everything is going to take about 10 weeks. I will keep updated as yet another form of accountability on making the lifestyle change. I find out on Monday if Casey’s pork tenderloin and white frosted cookies will be on my new diet….....

Fish Pictures from the Weekend!

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:45:11 +0000

This weekend I went on one big long fishing trip at some of my featured properties that started friday evening at 6 pm and ended Sunday about noon. My good friend Bruce Condello from Nebraska came up to visit and we spent just about every minute of his quick road trip fishing, talking fish, taking pictures of fish, eating fish, or scuba diving with the fish. Soo much fish that by the time I got home Sunday night I had to clip off a few freshly sprouted fins from my back….

Anyhow I will let the pictures finish this story and if I feel so moved (have some extra time) I will expound a bit more.

So there ya go, lots of different kinds of fish. Anyhow, Bruce is the owner of bigbluegill.com and he also writes for pond boss magazine and a few other publications. Here is some online content from his fishing trip with us: Pond Boss Article and Big Bluegill Blurb. He runs his own dentist practice down in Nebraska, but he also has a specialized fish farm raising his own strain of aggressive bluegill as well. Bruce was just featured on the cover of In-Fisherman magazine a couple months ago for a story on the qwuest for a 2 lb bluegill. We didnt get any 2 lb bluegill this weekend, but we did get close with a couple fish. We caught over 100 various kinds of bluegill between 12 and 24 ounces and also a nice mixed bag of rainbow trout, northern pike, hybrid striped bass, smallmouth bass, walleye, largemouth bass, catfish, crappie and a muskie.

Chef Todd cooked a wild game feed lunch at the fishing park that consisted of blueberry bluecheese buffalo burgers, elk something or other, pheasant poppers, and venison. After the game feed he came out and cooked dinner for us at the lake. He cooked the fish whole and added all kinds of spices and vegetables:

Let me just say that if you have any fish or game sitting in the freezer or you would like to eat some of the best fish or game on the planet, you need to get ahold of Chef. He will either get you some recipes or come out to your place and cook you up a feast!

Guided fishing, horse riding and more

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 03:47:24 +0000

This weekend was pretty much as good as it gets. I still had to squeeze some work in here and there, but spent a majority of the time just playing with kids, friends, and family. Also the work wasnt so bad either, cause it was just a handful of fishing trips and also catering a big fish fry. More on that later on.

Here are some pics from a 2 hour fishing trip friday evening at my best and favorite fishing lake. We were drop shotting night crawlers on the bottom in 25-40 feet of water and caught an amazing mixed bag of fish that included lots of walleye, rainbow trout, and bluegill with a handful of yellow perch, black crappie, largemouth bass, hybrid striped bass, smallmouth bass, and a catfish:

Saturday morning I was up at 4:45 am and headed out onto the water for an early morning fishing trip at 5 am. We fished shallow water this time hoping to catch some fish still up along the banks before the arrival of the hot sun. We caught some really nice big bluegill and a few bass up close before moving back out deep for the cool water species.

The move out deep in the last hour of the trip paid off big time. Fedi Davidovics, the Hungarian Handyman landed a 10 lb rainbow trout which we didnt get a picture of in order to get a quick release in the summer heat. That fish was an absolute monster consider it was stocked as a 1.5 lb fish back in 2008!!! We did get some good pics of this nice 4 lb rainbow and 8 lb hybrid striper that he caught though. We caught alot of fish out deep, that is an absolute blast dropping bait down to the bottom and having a big striper or trout come and slam it! We can locate the schools of fish pretty easily these days and just drop bait right down in front of their face!

We were back in by 7:30 am and decided to just grill up trout for breakfast.

After breakfast I had to get my gear in serious order. I had to be in Cuba by 1 pm to coordinate some fishing trips for some guests of a client and then cater a fish fry if we were so lucky as to catch enough fish to eat for dinner. Usually I am super prepared for stuff like this, but I had a crazy week leading up to this weekend and just didn’t have anything ready. Chef Todd helped me get the food prepared with a quick trip into the Canton and both him and I were off towards Cuba on time.

So its the middle of Summer, middle of the afternoon, super sunny and 85 degrees outside upon arrival at Cuba. Chef was worried that we weren’t going to catch anything and just worried and a bit nervous in general. I on the other hand wasn’t so worried. There are 10 lakes on this world class property and they are all being managed just a bit differently with an emphasis on their main attributes and unique characteristics. Basically what I am getting at is 24/7 365 there is (and especially will be in the near future) a lake and place and species of fish that will be biting.

We decided to have a little fishing tournament on the big 31 acre lake. Chef Todd’s fishing partners were, man I cant believe I forgot their names already, but they were two very nice young ladies ready to do some serious fishing. Even though they lost the fishing tournament by a mere 4 fish, they were dedicated and hardcore fisherwomen. Here are some pics of their catch:

Todd and his crew fished pink bodied road runners that he called funky chicken or something obscure like that. They did alot of casting and some trolling and caught 40 really nice crappies and 15 bluegill!

My fishing crew was called team Awesome! And let me just say that they kicked some major ......... in this fishing tournament. With four young lady anglers and myself out in the boat I had to come up with some serious creative fishing techniques to not only put fish in the boat, but to keep their attention, focus, have a great time, and win the tournament too. I made sure we had plenty of drinks, doritos, sunscreen and snacks for the 3 hour tour…. I knew I wouldnt remember their names so their new names for the fishing trip were #1, #2, #3, and #4.

We drop shotted minnows and nightcrawlers in 6-10 feet of water and hit the motherload of fishing spots with our very first spot, and we never moved from it. Sometimes when I would get busy removing fish or untangling a pole, #2 would start pointing back to where we needed to be. It didnt take them long to figure out exactly where the fish were and what they needed to do to keep plopping fish in the cooler.

The technique was very simple, I had 3/8 ounce weights tied 16” below their hooks and all they had to do was simply drop the weight to the bottom and wait a few seconds for a bluegill or crappie to gobble up their bait. We didnt care about swallowed hooks because the tournament was just as many fish as you can possibly catch for the fish fry. We didnt have to worry about catching many weeds with this rig either because the weight goes down to the bottom and sits in the weeds, but the bait stays up off the bottom and fishing vertical doesnt get caught up much.

Usually I like to take pics out in the boat, but with this being a tournament and me taking off fish, tangles, and baiting hooks nonstop while running the motor I just didn’t get er done. Then once we got back the girls headed out swimming and I headed out to meet the excavator to talk about the wetland project for one of the lakes. Anyhow once we nailed down a gameplan with the bulldozer guy we counted our fish and snapped a couple quick pics. We ended up catching 33 crappies and 26 bluegill to win the tournament with a total of 59 fish in less than 2 hours on the water! If you do the math, that is exactly one fish in the cooler every 2 minutes of the trip.

Here is a cooler filling up pic:

#1 and #2 holding up some crappies:

#2 with the biggest crappie:

#2 with #3 in the background

Same fish, but this time you can get a glimpse of #4 in the background

There was another boat of 3 high school boys who ended the tournament with 6 fish and one other boat of 4 people who were kind of on pace to contend for the title, but got called in an hour early to take care of some stuff. Altogether we cleaned 90 crappies, 40 bluegill, and 3 catfish for our fish fry. Chef whipped up a big batch of his special cole slaw, french fries, some breads, and of course all the fish. Another fella also fried up some chicken legs and some other people made some other stuff to compliment the feast.

Here is a pic of Todd winding down after all the food was cooked.

I got back to the lake about 9pm and just sat by the fire and scarfed down some big chunks of fire roasted bacon and then finished off the whole bowl of puppy chow.

Sunday we woked up bright and early and just played the whole day. First thing I went out fishing with my dad, brother chad, sister amy, and her husband Jared. We just fished for an hour quick before church and caught lots of big bluegill, a couple goldens, and several rainbow trout.

After fishing we had a big breakfast and then had a church service. The kids sang some fun songs and then headed out for an adventure around the lake while about 30 of us adults just talked in depth specifically about the events of Acts 27 and 28.

Not even many of my friends or family know this, but I am actually a very deep thinker. I have trouble with speaking words and really conversation in general, but thinking and comprehending in depth is something that I do very well. The Bible has me fascinated to say the least. I am so intrigued that here is my challenge to anyone with enough spare time to be reading this far down in a blog post from the diary of a lake nerd: Just take a half an hour some time to close out the entire world, everything. All of your thoughts, ideas, beliefs, assumptions, schedules, this, that, and the other thing. Just simply open the Bible up to the new testament or to Acts 27 if you want and read for awhile. If you can get to a moment where you can close out the world and simply read I think you will be fascinated with what is documented in that book.

So after the kids got back I took em horseback riding (with much help from Rebekah and Annie). Mae, Noah, and all of the herd of kids running around everywhere absolutely love the horses. My Aunts and Uncles have been boarding, raising, and training horses for 27 or more years and they brought out some kid friendly horses for the weekend. They started breeding fresian horses a few years back and have a whole herd of all kinds of different horses out in Middle Grove and Hanna City. They kind of turned their hobby into business just like I did with fish.

After horseback riding we played lots of volleyball, swimming, and just relaxing all the way till dark.

Once the sun went down we watched Canton’s fireworks from the top of our hill, and just did alot more of the same- eat, relax, eat relax. I might not have mention this, and there is no way I am going back through to find out if I did, but we had about 100-150 people up to the lake everyday from thursday till monday. Some people camped, others just comed and goed. On Saturday afternoon while I was gone fishing 93 out of the 96 children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of my grandma meister were out at the lake and took a family picture by my Uncle Sparks fire truck. They actually saved me a spot on the truck and took my picture in that exact spot sunday afternoon to crop me in.

Shocking, Catching and Killing Fish?

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:27:44 +0000

Wow has this ever been quite the week! Lots of cool stuff happening. It is Wednesday evening and I have already logged 49 hours of work since monday morning at 5 am and spent this evening at the swimming pool with the kids. I got lots of pics and stories, here goes.

Monday morning I got to the office super early to get ready for the week, cause I knew I wouldnt be in again till friday. I answered as many emails as possible and then headed out to treat some ponds with Allen. About 3 pm we were headed out to Tremont to apply some algaecide for Lake Windermere to look purdy for 4th of July when our hub went out on our trailer. The only place we could find with the right hub was actually gander mountain in Peoria. So off we headed to get the right part as fast as possible. We obviously didnt make it back in time to spray the lake before our scheduled electrofishing survey in Secor at 7 pm. Not to dwell on the broken hub, but that wasnt fun nor easy. Anyhow we shocked the 4 acre secor pond and found some really cool big albino white catfish:

Got home about 10 pm and spent an hour catching up on puter stuff. Then up at 5 am tuesday and off to Quincy, IL for an electrofishing survey and install a 1 horsepower HB fountain. The owners of the 1 acre pond just bought the place and wanted to know what was in there. I knew immediately before even putting the boat in the water or seeing a fish that this pond was full of channel catfish and hybrid bluegill. I knew because there was millions of tadpoles and frogs, super muddy water with no recent rains, and absolutely no YOY baby fish swimming around. I had a pretty good hunch there was no bass and bluegill. Anyhow the survey we found lots of big catfish and really nice sized hybrid redear sunfish and the surprise find was 1000’s of 4-6 inch black crappie. Interesting, new stocking plan in place for the new owners.

From Quincy we head over to Tremont to finish up Windermere and also a private 6 acre pond a few miles away. Then at 5 pm we make it over to Metamora to drop off some lake supplies and check on some smallmouth bass and albino white catfish we stocked for a 3 acre pond that is 70 feet deep. All is going great there. Then over to the snack bar at Jubilee foods in germantown hills for a quick bite and off to White Oak Lake for our second electrofishing survey there. I have a real good handle on all of the fish in there, we just got blown and rained off the water last week. Here is a pic of a big channel catfish, but what was interesting is they actually have a reproducing population of flathead catfish, but the channels are not reproducing.

That place has serious potential for producing big fish, just needs a few baby steps in the right direction. We finished up after dark and then home at 10:30 pm to do some more puter work to keep the online store and such running smooth.

BTW, while Allen and I are out making hay and holding down the fort, Justin is at Lake Chetek in Wisconsin catching crappies, northerns, and riding dirt bikes. He found a school of crappie suspended in the deepest part of the lake and has limited out on them every day of his trip so far. Here are a couple pics he texted over:

His family is either going to have to move their family vacation to another time of year or go without him from now on….....

Nowadays with autodrive, gps, cellular phones, and blackberry internet we can run our entire office, schedule new work, answer emails, and update store listings all while driving thru construction zones going from one place to the next:

For those of you with no sense of humor and ready to turn us in for breaking the law (yep there is people out there with nothing better to do apparently), the above photo is just a made up scene while trying to find a hub for our broken trailer. I did however get a ticket for talking on my cell phone in a construction zone last week. I was at a stand still on war memorial and pulled out my phone to call my client and let them know I was going to be late when I looked over and a police officer was looking right at me. The van behind me graciously allowed him to pull right out into our lane and pull me over. I am just glad the officer was cool. He gave me the ticket I deserved, and let me on my way.

So anyhow Wednesday morning I headed out before the sun again and went out to Princeville to investigate a massive fish kill. This pond we had stocked and hopping with some of the best fish in the county! Big bass, big catfish, and big bluegill all dead. There were still some small fish gasping for air at the surface yet this morning, but all the big ones were toast (more like rancid bloatedness than toast, but you get the point). I have the fish kill pinpointed to the nasty water that was pumped into the pond on Sunday. The silt pond above the main pond was being renovated so they broke the dam and pumped the rest of the water into the main pond.

Something in that water caused some sort of reaction in the pond that sucked all the oxygen out of the good water and actually is still causing all the oxygen to be depleted in the pond. This pond has a very good aeration system rolling and yet all the big fish still suffocated to death. I can tell the cause of death is suffocation and not from toxic substance, because all of the small fish are still alive and gasping for breath at the surface, but all the large fish are deader than a doornail.

From the fish kill I was off to deliver some hybrid striped bass, hybrid bluegill, and 300 lbs of fish food to a goose hunting club near weematuk. From there I headed out to meet Steve Cicciarelli with Pipco for an afternoon meeting that turned into a fishing trip. The weather was just too nice to not go fishing. With the high pressure, bluebird skies and plenty of sunshine we decided to fish jigheads tipped with nightcrawlers down on the bottom. We caught a dozen nice hybrid striped bass in the 20 foot zone, and caught 10 really nice rainbow trout down in the 40 feet deep zone. Steve had a huge trout come up from 40 feet down like a kamikaze rocket and jump literally over his head and 6 feet into the air- one of the coolest things you will ever see. Anyhow that fish ended up breaking the line, but he did manage to land this nice 8 lb rainbow later on in the day:

We only planned on fishing an hour, but that turned into an extra hour when we found the schools of stripers, trout, and a few bonus bluegill, smallmouth, and walleye. All down deep on the jigheads tipped with 2-3 inch night crawler chunks.

From there I headed straight home and into the pool with Mae and Noah. Brook brought us some Mcdonalds to eat poolside. The kids hadnt seen me since Sunday evening and needed some serious dad attention. We finished off the evening with some ice cream and Robin Hood the cartoon.

Thursday will be another fun day of delivering 12 Texas Hunter Fish Feeders and 10,000 lbs of fish food to a client, then off to a consultation in Lewiston, and delivering forage fish to Cuba. Friday we are gonna kill some weeds for a couple people and then off to the lake for the afternoon and overnight. Saturday I will be delivering some big hybrid striped bass to Cuba and then will be guiding some guests for a client at his property for an afternoon fishing trip and then lord willing fish fry if we are so lucky as to catch some dinner. Chef Todd is gonna help with the collecting of fish and especially the cooking of dinner. Gonna be fun and then back to the lake to finish camping with lots of family until Monday!!!!

Does anyone know where June went?

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 10:08:21 +0000

Hey June, whats the deal? First off, its already rained 14 out of the 26 days. I mean come on, is that much rain really necessary? Its not like just little bitty rains either, every week we got damaging winds, torrential downpours, and my parents hot tub even got struck by lightning last week! I can’t complain too much though, every time I look over towards elmwood from wherever I am at, its like a dark cloud of nastiness just lives there.

Second bone to pick with this sloppy precipitation flooded month is where in the world did you go? Sheemanelly, next weekend is the 4th of July already! Sheemanelly: nate’s new made up word he thought up super early this morning to take the place of more boring yet commonly known phrases like ‘my goodness’ and ‘holy cow’.

Well kids, with June gone you only have July and 1/2 of August left before putting those chains back on for the winter. Might as well start the back to school sales already. To this day, I still dont know how I ever made it all the way through school. I can vividly remember being in third grade and just counting down the days of torture that I had left. I hated school with a passion. In fact my dislike for school was so strong that too this day I am contemplating just taking my boys to work with me starting about 8 years old. My daughter, who sometimes I question if she is really mine, actually likes school so far???

Anyhow, for those of you still reading and obviously questioning my sanity, I woke up at 4:15 am this morning. My curse in life is that the very moment I wake up in the morning is the very moment I wake up in the morning. I absolutely can never fall back to sleep on this side of midnight. In the morning my mind is racing a million miles per hour in anticipation of the upcoming day. I think it starts gearing up even before I wake up, because most everything gets figured out in my mind while I am even still sleeping- kinda weird huh? Anyhow I have been told repeatedly that I am pretty much kinda weird. Now on the other side of midnight, if I even so much as sit down or try to turn my crazy thoughts down even one notch, I am sleeping instantly. Once the sun sets in the evening I physically am not capable of staying awake. I pretty much routinely doze off anywhere I sit down.

So now that I have confirmed in most folks minds what they already had been wondering- that I really am not normal, I might as well finish up this dear diary with a recap of the week…..

Monday it rained, Tuesday it rained with damaging winds, lightning, hail, Wednesday it rained, Thursday this little yellow circle way off in the distance actually came up in the sky and was surrounded by this funny looking blue haze, on Friday the same yellow circle and blue sky again. The yellow circle was incredibly powerful and actually gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, along with the warm sweaty feeling on the outside. I had seen it before, but very rare to see it up in the sky on consecutive days. After two days in a row of watching this yellow light, I actually felt rejuvanated and surprisingly happy. I can only imagine how good the feeling inside will be if today for the third consecutive day I would be so lucky as to see this magic light?

Big Bass, Boys Camp, Cranky Flu!

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:37:34 +0000

Every year during high school boys camp I push the extreme limits of my ever aging body. Even with growing just a bit more padding every year to protect my bones, muscles, and joints I still come out of the boys camp weekend barely able to move.

Boys camp weekend consists of bringing together about 120 high school boys from our churches across the midwest and about 75 counselors and helpers to make sure things run smooth. On friday we played football, basketball, soccer, dodge ball, ultimate frisbee, some other extreme games and of course had the 2x4 throwing competition. To just come out and say it bluntly holding nothing back, I actually am the 4 time reigning 2x4 throwing champion. This year I threw the 8 foot chunck of wood a whopping 76 feet! Probably my combination of brute strength and all my years cutting and nailing 2x4’s is the key to my success there. I have to admit I was a little worried going into this years competition and even at one point had determined not to enter just to avoid losing. You see I am getting a bit soft and realize that with each hour sitting in a boat or behind a computer I just simply am not as good as I once was at physical activity.

One thing I found out this weekend though is that I am still as good once as I ever was. That country music song by whoever sings it just kind of became my theme for the weekend as I was dodging dodge balls and getting tackled in 2 hand touch football. Let me just say that by the time Sunday morning rolled around I could barely move. Simple activities like scratching, itching, and eating would just cause all sorts of pain in places I didnt know pain existed. I think I pretty much was so wore down that I actually couldnt fight off the stomach flu or some sort of food poisoning or something that now has my stomach all tied up in knots. I also have a fever that comes and goes and makes me freezing cold and then sweating hot.

I havent been able to eat real food since gorging on all kinds of fathers day meat and desserts sunday evening and actually had to wear a coat just to stay warm as I attempted to work this morning. Basically I still feel like I got hit by a train and then fed poison and then kicked in the head after being punched in the stomach.

I have yet again vowed the same vow as usual. Next year I will be in shape for boys camp.

So moving on, the week leading up to boys camp I spent traveling all over the place helping people learn about their lakes and ponds and fish. I remember being in Decatur, Congreville, Canton, Fairview, and East Peoria. Justin and Allen were in Princeton, Tiskilawa or something like that, Chillicothee, Tremont, East Peoria, Canton, Metemora and Congreville. Basically we spent like $600 in truck fuel just last week alone.

We do have some fish pictures from last week that are kind of cool. I am still waiting for a big bass pic to be emailed over from my client from our electrofishing survey in Fairview. She was a PIG! (the bass, not the client) {insert big bass pic here once client quits procrastinating}

Also was sent these pics from a lake I have been working on outside of Princeville for a couple years. I cant really take credit for growing these big bass, cause the lake is just a big fish producing machine, but can take credit for helping sustain the fishery a few years down the road. I expect good things (and more big fish) from these lakes.

I think I would rather fish with Tony than with Chris. On a trip with Chris it looks like I would have to just keep taking pictures the whole time. With Tony I can handle just snapping an occasional pic for him and then having a good photographer. Whats the deal Tony, 5 to1?????

Over time these lakes will overproduce and the average size fish will actually go down, not up. They are managing one of the lakes for Huge bass and one of them for Huge bluegill. The plan is fairly simple, it is to move all the small bass out of the trophy bass lake and into the trophy bluegill lake. Then move all the small bluegill out of the trophy bluegill lake and into the trophy bass lake. I like to keep trophy bass lakes overcrowded with small bluegill and trophy bluegill lakes overcrowded with small bass. Doesnt make sense to most people and isnt really natural balanced, but quite frankly it works.

On Sunday Justin took out his grandpa fishing for just a few minutes. It was hot, the lake was still stirred up pretty good from boys camp on saturday and a whole slew of people on sunday, but they managed to catch a couple real nice fish. With just a couple casts from our VIP dock they were able to get a nice hybrid striped bass and a nice golden trout for dinner. We named the dock the VIP dock, because the only people allowed to ever fish from the dock are quite frankly VIP. Justin’s grandpa by marriage, a life long fisherman, but first timer out to Norris definitely qualifies as a VIP. Here are a couple pics to remember forever:

Here is a video of boys camp:

(Judy, the music is a bit too loud on the video and way too old fashioned for high school boys, and the video is a bit too long to keep my attention) Remember this is for boys camp, not grandma camp. A four to five minute boys camp video with a bit of funny and lots of action would be much easier to watch than a 9 minute video.

I do apologize if I am a little harsh in this post. I havent eaten in exactly 24 hours and am just a tad bit cranky at the moment. You can count on one hand the number of meals I have missed over the last 10 years, and in general after about 6 hours of not eating typically tends to be my crankiest time of life. Not my usual chipper self. I am actually going to eat dinner tonight just for old times sake and quite frankly I dont care which end it comes out or how fast it comes back out. I need to EAT!

Boy Catches Big Bass!

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:29:10 +0000

Lucas Rask caught this huge largemouth bass out of his grandpa Johns pond last night. Here is an exerpt from the email I was sent: “Lucas and his dad went fishing last night!! Lucas caught this one all on his own. I’m not for sure which one was more excited about it.!!”

If it was my boy I know I would have been more excited! My boy is only 2 years old though and he would rather catch baby fish than the big ones though….

Knox County Public Land Auction

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:11:36 +0000

On Saturday, July 31st there is a public land auction for what is perhaps one of the finest chunks of recreational land and deer hunting that has been created in Illinois. North Creek Preserve is 1371 contiguous acres that is being auctioned off into 24 different parcels. It is located just a couple miles west of the 600 acre Oak Run Lake in Knox County.

I have been working at North Creek for several years and am always just amazed at how awesome the place is every time I go there. The deer herd has been managed by Dr. Grant Woods and local legend Kenny Russel has created an amazing smallmouth bass fishery on the streams that meander through the property.

Here are a couple pics to try and help describe the amazing improvements that have been done here. Here is a complete profile of pictures from the property: North Creek Pics

Here is a map of the parcels for sale and here is a link with very detailed info and pics of each individual parcel- North Creek Auction Parcels

There are ducks, geese, turkey, doves, pheasants and deer living on this property like I have never seen before. If you create the habitat, the wildlife obviously flourishes! Here are some pics- North Creek Wildlife

The auction starts at 11 am on Saturday, July 31st. Here is more details of the auction- North Creek Auction Details This piece of property just hasnt been equaled when it comes to the location, genetics, improvements, and wildlife management. The parcels are perfectly divided and I think this is a once in a lifetime chance for someone to pick up their perfect piece of outdoor paradise that will actually be a huge potentially very rewarding investment as well. Trust me, its way more gratifying to be able to actually use your investment as opposed to just having pieces of paper as an investment.

Here are some videos of the property, deer, etc. Here is a page of more North Creek Videos

Road Trip, Pizza, Smallmouth Bass…

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:55:36 +0000

I guess I will work backwords since I can remember the second half of this week much better than the first for some reason? Funny how that happens, its like I can remember yesterday and the day before so clearly but things start fading out fast as I move farther back into my memory files.

Sunday we skipped church and headed out to State Farm Park over in Bloomington to spend the day with some family and friends. My cousin works for state farm and once per year is allowed to invite a large group of people out for the day. I am telling you that place is really kind of cool. Its only for state farm employees, but has like the coolest water park, volleyball courts, soccer fields, mini golf, basketball courts, baseball diamonds, etc in the state. We got rained on of course, but still had a great time. If I lived in bloomington I would get a job with state farm just to become a member there.

Saturday we got the lake and everything whooped into shape in anticipation of a couple hundred junior high girls, counselors, etc that were scheduled to come out and swim for the afternoon. We got done with everything about noon and just as the busses started pulling up the rain started coming down. They all came into the pavilion in hopes of waiting out the storm, but after an hour of singing songs and performing skits and terrential downpours they decided it best just to head back to camp. Plus it had cooled down about 20 degrees and even if the rain stopped it really wasnt warm enough to swim any longer.

So if finally stopped raining late Saturday afternoon and a couple of our friends and their children were out for the evening. Tea and Kenzi had never caught a fish before, so I knew just the spot to take them fishing and catch that first fish fast enough to keep their attention spans. They each caught a 2 lb smallmouth bass on their first casts:

So even though they both caught super awesome fish in less than 45 seconds of fishing, I realized I made a mistake with the first time fisherwomen. We actually caught too big of fish for their first ones and they didn’t like that as much as you think they would of. Looking back they would have much rather caught a 6 inch bluegill than try struggling with those prized gamefish.

Friday must have been horribly boring, cause I really cant remember it at all. Must have all the office crap and phone calls blocked from my memory.

Thursday we were down in Galatia, Illinois building a floating dock for a client. We took a little road trip down south and stopped at several places for various reasons. This floating dock was a 12x12 main dock with a 6x11 gangway. We had the floats and hardware direct shipped to Scott and he picked up the lumber locally from our material list. When we pulled up to his amazing property at 7 am we scarfed down some eggs, blood sausage, regular sausage, and pancakes and then went to town on the dock. Six hours later and we had the dock completely built and installed.

Scott’s lake is going to produce some monster bluegill over the next couple years. Seriously remember this post about one year from now and you will see some pics of some mega bluegill.

At 2 pm we were on the road and headed for Brownstown, Il. We dropped off some materials to a client and then were treated to a fried chicken dinner at the local diner! I have known Fred and Connie for a few years now and they are just simply good people. 7 pm and we were on the road headed for home.

Wednesday, man this is kind of weird working backwards, but its too late now to stop and change things up. Anyhow wednesday we headed out super early in the morning with a load of smallmouth bass for a guy in Altamont, Illinois. Aaron built his 3 acre pond 2 years ago and stocked it with fathead minnows. I am telling you there are so many fathead minnows in there that as the smallmouth swam out of the bucket they started opening their mouths and attacking baby fatheads of all sizes. That was the coolest thing ever to watch. Look for great things from that pond as well.

Then we headed out towards Carmi, Illinois for a consultation with a private subdivision 20 acre lake. Its a fairly shallow lake, but produces lots of fish. The lake is so shallow that they actually are going to put in a few fountains for aesthetics, but also to move some water. Typically I dont recommend fountains for aeration, but this would be just one of those situations until they do some dredging in the future.

From Carmi, Allen and I headed over to Harrisburg and a rendezvous with the comfort inn. The monotony of the evening was broken up with a visit from Morelli’s pizza delivery man and some youtube videos of the elmwood tornado. That tornado is like something that you see on TV all the time, but nothing like you ever think happens to our town sort of thing. After we watched several of the home videos of the tornada I actually had some time to kill. I didnt have my computer so there was no work to do and no kids to take care of and just really plain and simply for the first time of 2010 I had absolutely nothing to do for 2 whole hours before going to bed. That was a weird feeling, and I didnt know what to do. I did find out that oil is ruining my favorite fishing spots, the cubs are well below 500, and Nebraska joined the Big Ten Conference, and our government is trying to force universal healthcare and all kinds of other stuff that wont apply to them onto us????? Despite all the doom and gloom out there in the real world that I would have been much better not paying attention too, I still enjoyed my free time of nothingness.

Tuesday again I dont really remember, but I can probably just make something up like it probably rained a whole bunch and everything was a muddy mess.

Monday I did a consultation for a guy in Fulton County looking to transform his mucky, weedy backyard one acre pond into the gem of a fishing hole it used to be back in the day. His property is pretty unique, because there used to be a drive in movie theatre with concession stand there long ago.

Then I headed over to Herbst Landing in Canton for a pond consultation. The folks the own the Farmington Pizza Company have renovate the old country club and turned it into a really good place to eat! They have like 10 lunches for less than $10 and less than 10 minutes or something like that and also have a nice menu of steaks and seafood and stuff for dinner. Oh yeah, they also have a 3 acre pond that the restaurant is overlooking. I taught their maintenance folks how to maintain the pond for the year.

I havent eaten there yet, but do know that farmington pizza company is actually Brook and my favorite place to eat. The Herbst landing menu is different, but still has to be good. I probably will still like the pizza company better though, because I am more of a pizza and beef sandwich type of guy rather than a steak kind of guy. If anyone eats at the landing, let me know how the food is and also what the pond looks like!

Northern Pike

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 01:59:11 +0000

We have 5 northern pike in this 33 acre lake and so far we have now caught all 5 of them this spring. (or at least we have caught 5 so far). Anyhow this particular northern was stocked as a 24 inch 3.25 lb fish back in October of 2009 and was caught last night while trolling a deep diving perch rapala.

It weighed in at a very impressive 8 lbs and 30 inches.That is almost 5 lbs of growth in just 9 months! I think she has been gorging herself on trout is the only way I can think of to grow that much that fast.

Behemoth Redear Sunfish

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:22:01 +0000

Friday afternoon we sampled a 7 acre pond 20 miles north of peoria and shocked up the biggest redear sunfish I have ever seen in this region of the country. I know redears grow huge down in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, but around here a one pound fish is considered very big. Well this redear measured in at 12.25 inches long with an unbelievable 16.5 inch girth and weighed in at 37 ounces. That is about 2.30 lbs!

For those wondering, a fish’s girth can be defined as the distance around the fattest part of the fish. This redear was 7.15 inches tall, but the total girth measurement around the fish was 16.50 inches!!! Could you imagine catching a 37 ounce bluegill?

The rest of the pond was completely full of 12-16 ounce monster bluegill. Here are just a few pics, but we counted more than 20 male bluegill over 16 ounces!

The average bass in this lake is 13 inches long and about 18 ounces. There is no rooted vegetation due to the white amurs stocked 30 years ago from arkansas which I believe are actually reproducing to a small degree. I dont think they where sterile from that source back then. Anyhow there is a combination of factors attributing to such an amazing natural bluegill fishery. The pond hasnt been supplementally fed or treated or really managed much at all except for a few family fishing trips and fish frys. A true gem with a whole world of potential!

So anyhow working backwords, I spent thursday electrofishing in Indianapolis. Was a fun road trip and met some great people. Their 10 acre lake was one of the most scenic and fishy looking lakes you could ever imagine. I am talking the kind of lake that would make any diehard fisherman drool at the chance of casting a line into. The fish on the other hand were about the worst I have sampled this year??? I guess that is why I was hired. The owner wasnt catching many fish and really hasnt caught much for the last few years. He completely and accurately described the fishery to me before I even put a boat in the water. A few things didnt really make sense why the fish were so small and why there really werent that many of them? Was it because of retarded genetics from only being stocked 80 years ago with a couple sibling fish, was it a fish kill of some sort, water quality, PH, soft water, otters, trespassers, bullhead, carp, fish disease, etc. Trust me I was doing some major head scratching for this one while there at the property and was able to finally pull together a management plan on the best way to address some of the limiting factors and put some big fish on the end of his line. Definitely not the normal situation to deal with, but the solutions and suggestions arent the norm either. Fast forward to one year from now and that lake is going to be hopping with big fish if they follow through!

Wednesday I went to Otter Creek to check on the feed trained bass lake, the smallmouth lake, the wetlands, and mainly to electrofish the big lake. This is a 145 acre lake that is stocked with the absolute best fish genetics on the planet. Pike river strain walleyes, leach lake muskies, keo hybrid striped bass, missouri bluegills, blacknose crappies, jumbo yellow perch, arkansas clear creek largemouths, and millions of golden shiners, gizzard shad, and threadfin shad. This lake is going to be on fire over the next several years. Kind of like so good that it gives me some chills just thinking about it.
While at Otter Creek I met up with harrison fish farms and loaded up a few thousand albino white catfish. Justin and Allen went around and delivered them and I headed over to Trivoli for a pond consultation. Brand new 6 acre and 1/2 acre ponds that are gonna be gems as well.

So working backwards, this was a really fun week. Sat I will be fishing a bluegill tournament near Victoria, Sunday we have the 7th and 8th grade Sunday school classes with their families coming out to the lake for the afternoon, and then next week we are headed to southern illinois to do some consulting and dock building for most of the week.

Smallmouths, shiners, walleye, bluegill…

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:23:35 +0000

Friday morning up at the crack of dawn and off to a 5 acre smallmouth pond west of Peoria. This pond was stocked with fathead minnows, smallmouth bass, hybrid redear sunfish, bluegill, and walleye. The smallmouth took off real fast and grew like crazy the first couple years, but than ran out of preferred forage the last couple years. We stocked yellow perch 2 years ago and last year the owner bought golden shiner fry and raised them in his 1/3 acre wetland up above his lake. In the fall he opened er up and flushed 250,000 3 inch golden shiners into his lake! It was an incredible forage stocking experiment gone right! His entire 5 acre lake is completely full of these little tasty morsels and his smallies are gonna put on some serious weight over the course of the summer. Here are some pics from our electrofishing survey:

These golden shiners are everywhere!

Walleye are growing nicely

These smallies are nice fish, but just wait 3 months and they will be obese!

There is a little bit of smallmouth reproduction going on:

This hybrid redear is an absolute monster!

Then we headed straight over to Oak Run for round two of the electrofishing surveys. Our main goal was to try and get a good sample of the carp population so we focused on looking for carp, but it was like everywhere we went tons of nice walleye, big bass, and awesome crappie where eveywhere:

Surprisingly there is a nice population of golden shiners in Oak Run as well! They are just an awesome forage for gamefish!

We did eventually find some concentrations of carp, but we had to work alot harder at it than I expected.

After the survey I did some carp research and found out that actually electrofishing for them during the spawning season is not a good time to get them. The nations leading carp guru from South Dakota State University said that during the spawn, carp swim around chasing each other all over the place and that makes em hard to electrofish. They should be done spawning in most places, but at Oak Run they were still full of eggs. Anyhow once the spawn is done the fish dont move around as much and are much easier to dial up.

Moving on, I headed straight for the lake Friday evening and did just a bit of fishing with my uncle Spark Meister. Spark is an electrical genius and I am guessing his nickname has stuck with him his whole life. Anyhow he puts in big wind turbines to generate electricity as kind of a hobby I guess. So we just went down to the dock and threw some big 5 inch golden shiners out for bait in hopes of catching a big hybrid striped bass, but all we got was a catfish, one walleye, and this huge bluegill. Yep, this bluegill ate a 5 inch shiner!

Then on Saturday we worked like crazy fixing the road, beach, boat docks, rope swing, waterslide, landscaping, spring cleaning, etc to get the place ready for summer camps. We will have 200-300 people and kids up at the lake every weekend in June.

Sunday I went scuba diving with my brothers around the lake. We checked on all the fish structures, the fish populations, and did a little catfish fishing for fun and dinner. Here is a pic of our two biggest catfish:

Monday morning I went out fishing with my dad out in the boat for an hour. I knew where all the fish where from scuba diving the day before so we didn’t have to waste anytime looking for them. Here are some really big bluegill we caught:

We also caught a 7 lb rainbow trout and a handful of smallmouth and largemouth bass. Then we started working again for the day. Over the weekend we had well over 100 people coming and going and helping get everything accomplished for the upcoming camp schedule. Chef Todd came and took some guests fishing for me and had a couple big muskies follow his lure up to the boat. Justin also caught a 5-pound muskie and my nephew caught a little muskie as well. People fished off the docks and such off and on all weekend and caught a whole bunch of hybrid stripers, walleye, yellow perch, and of course bluegill. I was too busy to take pics.

By Monday evening I was exhausted. I think it will take till about Friday of this week to fully recover from the weekend. It was hot, but the water sure felt nice.

Tuesday I spent in the office just calling people back and answering emails from the weekend and then I headed out to a consultation in Pekin at 4 pm. Then straight to my softball game for a doubleheader.

Building Floating Docks

Fri, 28 May 2010 01:45:36 +0000

This week was a race against Memorial Day weekend to get 3 floating dock projects done. Like usual we battled the rain, but this week a new dimension of heat and sun was added to the mix. Whew boy was it ever hot!

So Monday we headed out towards Secor bright and early. We finished up a floating dock, added a sliding board and jump platform to the swim platform and built a platform and staircase to the rope swing. No clouds in the sky for this scorching hot day, but of course we got rained on, even without clouds??? The rain was welcomed though with the heat, and the jump platform and rope swing got several trial runs….You know just to make sure everything was working smooth for the season. Doesnt this just look like the absolute perfect pond setting:

Then tuesday we headed out towards Henry, Illinois to convert a stationery dock into a floating dock. We met up with my food plot guys out at the property as well. They have been hanging deer stands, trail cameras, and put in several food plots on this property for our client. They finished planting the last food plot just as a thunderstorm came rolling in about 2:30 in the afternoon. Here is a pic of the clover plot:

We also put in a couple acres of round up ready beans, and disked up and prepared some fall plots for late season planting as well. A couple Texas Hunter tower blinds, several ladder stands strategically placed, and a handful of cuddeback cameras and this property is ready for some serious hunting this fall!

So anyhow Allen and I worked with Ed Reed Excavating to pick up this massive dock and put floats underneath it. Was a much bigger project than anticipated, but even with the hour long thunderstorm and several turkey spottings we were still able to get er all done. Once put in the water we built a big gangway, some bench brackets, and anchored er home onto some big 6x6 posts. While Ed was there we had him dig out the beach, place a few loads of sand, and even dig out about 100 foot of shoreline from the dock to limit the weed growth and attract some fish! Let me just say that Ed I think is part tractor. Its like his brain is operating that machine like we move our hands and fingers!

Wednesday Justin and Allen delivered a whole truckload of feed trained smallmouth bass to Ipava, some feed trained largemouth and hybrid bluegill to Fiatt, and some walleye, hybrid bluegill, and smallmouth bass to Washburn. I had the pleasure of sitting in the office and trying to answer some emails, voicemails, and other crappy office stuff. Then I headed out to pond consultation at 4 pm over near Mapleton. This consultation was a bit different than most. The 3 acre pond was built rock solid 14 years ago, the fish were big and plentiful, the vegetation was native and diverse, and the homeowners around the lake were generally tickled pink with their little gem of a pond. The reason I was there was well I guess just to reassure them that their pond was perfect…..a very rare thing these days.

Thursday we headed to Mapleton to build a fun floating dock for Troy. His 4 acre pond is well aerated and boasts some serious fish potential with his aggressive stocking strategies over the last 2 years. Cast a line out and you could catch any one of the 10 different species of well fed fish! Anyhow we started building the 16x16 floating dock with 7x12 gangway at 8 am. I headed out to Drakes appointment with the Ear, Nose, Throat specialist at 9 am and returned just in time for lunch. Justin, Allen, and Troy were going to town the whole time and by 4 pm we had the dock done, mounted, and even a nice little jump platform finished for Owen by the time he got home from school. Even with the chilly temps he just kept jumping off!

Friday hasnt come yet, but I will be electrofishing a 5 acre smallmouth bass pond at 6 am, and then heading back over to Oak Run for some more electrofishing and fish management work. Straight from Oak Run I am heading out to the lake for the entire weekend!!! Got tons of work to do out there, but if I can keep my eyes open I will be fishing after dark! Hopefully I will get some good fish pics. Texas Hunter fish feeders is looking for some kids fishing pictures for their 2011 catalog and I could use some for some stuff as well.

Electrofishing, Rain, Electrofishing

Mon, 24 May 2010 03:19:57 +0000

This week can be summed up with two words repeated over and over again: Electrofishing and Rain, electrofishing and rain. I guess I could throw a few other keywords into the mix like fish stocking, rain, consulting, rain, carp, rain, and you guessed it: RAIN! I mean come on is it ever gonna just stop raining?

Despite another soggy week here in Central Illinois, we were still able to get out and get most of our work done. Every day started out before the sun came up and every day ended well after the sun went down. I just might have bitten off a bit more than I can chew, but some way some how I am going to get everything done- eventually. Here is just a recap of the weeks highlights:

Monday I took some clients to go see the new golf course in Metamora. My dad and older brother are building the clubhouse and I am hoping to stock some fish and come up with some management plans for all the ponds throughout the golf course. Lots of water, gonna be neat! Then I headed over to Dallas City to meet up with Dan Molsen and talk about his ponds on his fairly new property. Turned out to be a pretty good meeting for me, Dan is the president of a fundraising firm for non-profit organizations. I have a non-profit organization called Hooked On Fishing Park and am always looking for ways to raise funds so we can take even more kids and seniors fishing. Last year we took 800 folks fishing and this year we have over 2500 kids lined up to come and catch fish at the park. Needless to say Dan provided me with some real good advice on how to get volunteers and support! Gonna be an awesome summer at the park, anyone looking to help teach kids how to fish or help out in anyway please let me know.

Tuesday Allen and I headed out super early to Vermilion Fishing Club near Oakwood, Il to kill some nuisance vegetation and electrofish for their 120 acre lake. The lake is very unique to say the least. It is actually a private power plant cooling lake that fluctuates quite a bit depending on the water needs of the plant. Boasts a world of unlimited potential for growing monster fish, just needs to start turning the trash fish biomass into something a bit more desired. The lake is full of these pesky yellow bass, gizzard shad, and common carp.

I would estimate that 3/4 of the fish biomass in this lake are not desirable species. Currently working on the management plan to convert that biomass into something a bit more desirable.

Wednesday Chef Todd and I went out shocking a couple lakes while Justin and Allen went out killing nuisance weeds for a few clients. Chef is surprisingly good at electrofishing whenever I need an extra hand. We started out a 4 acre pond in Metamora where we dialed up some real nice bass, redears, and crappie. Chef called that little scenic pond a gem!

The kicker to that story is that the new owner was told the pond was 60 feet deep, but in reality it had an average depth of 7 feet and a max depth of 13 feet.

Then on Wednesday afternoon we headed out to Oak Run Lake near Dahinda to electrofish. This 600 acre private lake is completely full of fish, and some big ones to boot. I am sure there are still some memberships available and actually would recommend one if you like fishing big water. We are working on a plan that is going to transform this lake back into a World Class fishery as opposed to just the really good fishery it currently is.

There are a few changes happening in the lake as it gets older, but one of the main ones is that most of the original structure in the lake is gone. The lake really didn’t have much structure to begin with. Because of this, the fish have moved around a bit, but they are still there you just need to search around for them. Crappie, Bass, Bluegill, Catfish, and Walleye all had good size and numbers. Here are some pics of some monster walleye:

There are quite a few real big bass, but a vast majority of the bass are about 11-12 inches long. In all honesty, the average size of a mature adult bass in Illinois is 11.75 inches long. Most folks dont realize this, but to grow a bass past 15 inches long is not common, very very few bass ever grow bigger than that. The biggest limiting factor to growing bass bigger than average is overpopulation. If you want them to get bigger you need to thin them down just abit. Kind of hard to talk bass fisherman into killing bass, but it is a very necessary evil. Back in the old days folks were meat fisherman and fish grew big, nowadays folks are tournament anglers and recreational fisherman and sure there are more fish around, but they have been caught multiple times, are overcrowded, and they just dont grow in these big lakes like they used to. Here are some good pics of monster bass though:

Catfish is another species doing real well at Oak Run. Lots of real nice 3-8 lb fish!

Crappie and Bluegill are very plentiful and just average for their sizes. Lots of 9-1o inch crappie, in fact there were so many 9 inch crappie that they are going to need to eat lots of them! For the bluegill I was actually surprised with the numbers of 7-8 inchers. Ideally I would love to protect all the bluegill for 2010 and give them a chance to really get going, but that probably isnt realistic. Bluegill are the backbone to growing big bass, crappie are not.

Here are some nice carp pics. I would rate the lake as one of the top carp fisheries in Illinois. Size and numbers are both real strong. Keep in mind these are 250-300 lb men holding these fish:

Obviously there is quite a bit of Carp biomass in the lake, but we are all working on a plan to start reducing that annually and the fishing is only going to get even better as the carp biomass gets transformed into something a bit more desirable. There is no fish that ruins bass, bluegill, and crappie more than the common carp. They just absolutely devastate habitat and take up precious biomass. I estimate that half of the lakes fish biomass is being wasted in the form of common carp. We have some ideas for a longterm management plan.

Thursday the heavens opened up and it really rained. I was able to squeeze in a lake consultation super early thursday morning before heading to Drake’s Easter Seals appointment, but had to cancel my afternoon plans due to the rain. Mon-Wed was just scattered rain workaroundable, but we had to reschedule our electrofishing surveys planned for Washburn Thursday afternoon and Northern Illinois on Friday because of this downpour. So instead I took a load of big male only bluegill to a new pond up near lacon (in the rain).

That pond is going to be the best one acre ice fishing pond ever come winter. Here is the ice fishing stocking plan: 500 big male only bluegill, 500 hybrid bluegill, 200 big female yellow perch, 100 walleye, and 25 smallmouth bass. Sounds interesting doesnt it?

Friday I had a Hooked On Fishing Park meeting, worked on office stuff, and then went to Canton to plant some white water lillies, yellow and blue iris, and some other plants for a pond turned wetland. Got wet and muddy with the rain, but was gonna get wet and muddy anyways. Then off to the lake to spend the night. Before going to bed I worked a bit on our VIP dock. This is where we film all of our underwater videos and have trained the fish to eat from our hands. Rainbow trout, smallmouth, stripers, largemouth, crappie, walleye, and bluegill will come eat right from our hands. We filmed some real good footage that wont get edited for a long time.

Saturday Justin and I headed out at 5 am towards Cuba. We had 9 lakes to electrofish for a client. Bill lives up near Chicago, but found his dream fishing property down here in God’s country. His lakes are full of trophy fish of all kinds of species. Here is a pic of the biggest fish we found on the property:

Anyhow, Bill had some of his employees come down to get some time out of the office and help sample the lakes via angling. All the rain and flooding and fronts moving through didnt make the fishing easy, but they still caught some real nice fish. We were able to catch some real nice fish as well. By far the best redear sunfish fishing lakes I have ever seen! One pounders are just everywhere and occasional beasts like the second pic below are not that uncommon:

One of the lakes was completely full of these monster redear x bluegill hybrids. These arent stocked fish, but since the water is pretty murky the male redears just get kind of mixed up when fertilizing eggs. The resulting natural hybridization is just really cool and those fish just grow abnormally large!

With 9 different lakes, we are coming up with specialized management plans for each one to focus on each lakes potential, existing habitat, current fish population, and Bill’s goals for each one individually. The lakes range in size from 4 to 31 acres. Some of the lakes will be managed for taking guests fishing for lots of fish, some of them will be managed for experienced anglers to have a chance at catching a monster fish, and some of them will be managed for toothy critters like tiger musky, pure musky, northern pike, and walleye. Here are just a few more pics. Electrofishing 9 lakes in the same day is not an easy task by any means so we just didnt have much time to take pics, but here are what we got:

Sunday I actually had trouble waking up in the morning. We were a bit late for Church and had to come home early cause I couldnt keep my eyes open. I literally crashed for 3 hours until Brook made me get up to head out to a friends cookout. I could of kept sleeping all through the night. Anyhow we went out for the evening and had a great time and ate lots of great food. I am actually not a very social person, but Brook enjoys spending time with regular people and not talking about fish for a change.

Looking forward to this upcoming week! We will be building a dock in Secor with a waterslide on Monday, building some bench seats around a dock in Henry on Tuesday, and building a dock in Mapleton on Thursday. The rest of the week will be spent killing algae, watermilfoil, and curly leafed pondweed. Gonna be hot, but bring it on, I am ready for swimming season and Memorial Day Weekend!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Sun, 16 May 2010 20:38:08 +0000

I am very uncomfortably sitting here during my 2 hours of rest (kid nap time) on this lazy sunday afternoon. My back aches and my legs still hurt from a long day of work (fishing) on Saturday; and I just had to take my belt off and unbutton my shorts to see if that helps alleviate some of the pressure being caused from devouring a few too many donuts and sandwiches from lunch at church…...

God sure did know what he was doing when he created this day of rest. By the time Sunday afternoon rolls around, it takes about all the energy I have left just to stick the pacifier back into the boy’s mouth when needed and also to switch between the Cubs game and the PGA during commercials. Multi tasking at its finest….. Here is a typical Sunday afternoon picture:

All the rain this week sure made things a bit more complicated than needed, but we worked around it and were still able to keep checking things off the list and get some stuff organized as well. All of our office duties have been officially turned over to Holly and she is untangling the mess I have created over the last 6 months. She works Mon-Thurs 8-4 so if you need to pick up anything you dont have to try to track me down anymore.

Anyhow at the crack of dawn on Monday Allen and I delivered a load of fish to a client’s 20 acre lake in Fiatt and then headed over towards Cuba for an electrofishing survey for a 35 acre lake. This lake was completely full of 3/4 pound bluegill and one pound bass.

The owner graciously donated 240 of his surplus 13 inch bass to the Hooked On Fishing Park’s handicapped pond. After the survey Allen ran them over to the fishing park, and I headed out to meet a guy from Southern Illinois who came all the way up to get some smallmouth bass and yellow perch for his new pond. Casey called the next day and said the seniors from skyline drive and an AC nursing home from Eureka already started catching those bass the very next day!

Tuesday I think I have completely blocked from my memory because I most likely was stuck in the office all day long due to the rain. Oh yeah, in the evening I headed out past Metamora for a consultation with a nice couple who’s new one acre pond just filled up. They wanted to learn about water, weeds, fish, aeration, and docks. They now have a gameplan in place.

Wednesday we were supposed to Electrofish and Trapnet at Oak Run, but it was too cold and rainy. Instead I went to a meeting that evening with the sport and fish committee to gather all the information about the lake as humanly possible. We have rescheduled the surveys for Wednesday afternoon of this coming week. Once we gather all the data about the current fish population, go through all the data about the history of the lake and the fish population surveys we had them fill out, we are going to combine all that info with the direction they want the fishery to move towards to come up with a 5 year management plan. The plan will help them determine annual fish stockings, daily fish limits, vegetation control options, and habitat enhancement improvements. Very fun project!

Thursday I had a pond consultation in Princeville, and put together a vegetation management plan for an association near kickapoo. The rest of the day is a blur cause I cant remember anything else. (must have been working on some tax stuff and other office organizing junk)

Friday we installed some fish feeders in Lewiston, put in an aeration system in Hanna City, and then I delivered smallmouth bass to Cuba. Here is a pic of the smallmouth bass going into this awesome lake.

After delivering the smallmouth I headed out to stay at our lake for the night to get ready for my fishing trips on Saturday. I ate dinner and spent some time with the fam and rigged up some more rod holders on the pontoon boat and got all my gear together.

Saturday at 8 am I met up with Jeff, Chuck, and Ron. They donated a bunch of money to the Children’s Advocacy fundraising auction and in return we took them out on a guided fishing trip. They really wanted to catch some crappies, but instead the only thing we could catch was some bluegill, trout, smallmouth, largemouth, yellow perch, and a whole bunch of walleye. We still had a lot of fun and caught a ton of fish, but was disappointed in not being able to get them boys some crappies??? Hey, take notice that only 2 of the 3 fishing in the group are in the following photos and also take note that the majority of the photos are of Ron. Ron came into this trip with absolutely no fishing experience or equipment. He just simply learned how to use the fishing rod, listened to all of my instruction and just did exactly what he was told to do.

After lunch I took out Matt, Kent, Zac, and Jesse Snyder. They purchased their guided trip from the Peoria Christian School fundraising auction. Both Zac and Jesse attend PCS and they were fish catching machines. Especially Jess, she outfished all of them boys put together!

We had a handful of broken lines on some huge fish, and also lost a 30 inch northern at the boat, but still managed to fill up the livewell with a bunch of walleye, trout, perch, giant bluegill, and naturally of course the crappie decided to cooperate as well- go figure.

By the time I got everything cleaned up it was dark and I still needed to load up the electrofishing boat to pull back into town. The trailer ball hook up thing was about 8 inches lower than the hitch receiver thing on my truck and the jack that raises er up was broken. I tried lifting that trailer with all of my might but couldnt get it up high enough and over enough. That boat is just too heavy. I broke two 2x6’s trying to use them as leverage to lift the trailer up and over as well. I was sooo close to getting that hooked up myself, and sooo determined as well. Eventually that determination turned quickly into frustration and I realized I just needed to give up before I did any more damage to my back, pulled a hamstring, or threw something unnecessarily!@#$%!

Next week we are putting some miles on the truck headed to Metamora, Dallas City, Metamora, Champaign, Dahinda, Secor, somewhere in northern Illinois, and then south of Cuba. Working on some really cool projects next week! Might be another lazy Sunday afternoon on the 23rd.

Huge 2-pound bluegills

Sat, 08 May 2010 02:04:37 +0000

I haven’t been able to do much fishing lately, but Thursday evening I just had to take the fish guy from Missouri fishing. We had just got done stocking fish into about 25 lakes over the previous 2 days straight with absolutely no sleep. When you have a semi load of thousands of fish, sleeping is not really a priority. Especially when the truck is full of fish that cost $1, $5, and even $10 each! Special feed trained largemouth bass, hybrid striped bass, and big hybrid bluegill from Arkansas were on my truck, while Justin and Allen were making their rounds unloading feed trained smallmouth bass, jumbo yellow perch, pumkinseed sunfish and fathead minnows from their Wisconsin truck.

Anyhow after we were finished we went down and sat on the dock at my fulton county fishing lake with a couple fishing rods and a bucket of night crawlers to just unwind. I asked Rex the fish guy what the biggest bluegill he had ever caught was and I smiled when he replied 1.25 lbs. I may not have been fishing in a while, but I sure knew there were some monsters swimming down below and he would have a great chance to break his record.

Rex not only broke his personal record once, but he managed to break it 3 times in our 45 minute fishing trip. The biggest was this 30 ounce monster bluegill:

His second biggest was this 26 ouncer:

Third monster bluegill was this 23 ouncer:

I have this 33 acre lake in central Illinois completely full of huge bluegill and all sorts of bonus fish. You just never know what your going to catch on any given cast. Rex was surprised when this feisty rainbow trout grabbed his bait:

I managed to catch a couple good ones too, but was more focussing on the relaxing portion of this fishing trip. Besides Rex kept catching a fish about every five minutes that needed a picture taken of. It was fun, but next time I want to relax while fishing I’m not giving him any bait. You know your in a good spot when the small 10 inchers get chucked back in with no thought of a picture.

This gal may not have been the biggest, but I was the most proud of this fish. She is a very young broodstock female with a world of potential!

This spring has just been crazy awesome except for the fact that I really haven’t been fishing much and I never once got a chance to go out mushroom hunting and my knox county turkey tags are just collecting dust. All the things that used to be so important (and most likely will be again at some point in the future) just don’t get any time slots anymore. My 3 kids under the age of 4 years old kind of need me at home, and I would like to stay married to the most amazing woman in the world. (its mothers day Sunday, so I figured I could score some early bonus points, except for the fact that it will be probably a week or so before Brook reads the blog, but nonetheless future bonus points still have value). Actually all of my bonus points just went down the drain and some when she reads my thoughts I put into parenthesis, but thats the story of my life: one step forward, two steps back.

Last bit of news, I updated our Fish Management page on our website with about 30 good fish pics from the last year or so. I am going to be updating and flooding my website with cool pictures from out on the job.

Ok, for sure this is the last bit of news, but may interest some. Hooked On Fishing Park fellas are hosting a Euchre Tournament on May 22nd. Anyone is invited even if you don’t play and just want to hang out and all proceeds will go towards summer fishing activities at the park. Here is more information:

Euchre Tournament Flyer PDF

Victoria Fishing Club with Monster Fish

Sat, 01 May 2010 02:10:51 +0000

So Justin and I headed to a fishing club in Victoria, IL to electro shock 5 of their lakes. They have a total of 18 lakes on the property, but wanted to come up with good management plans for their main five.

These lakes ranged in size from 5 to 10 acres each and they all had super healthy populations of large pan and gamefish! Each of the lakes had its own unique characteristics, depths, water clarity, aquatic vegetation, and of course fish populations. For once in my life I really didnt have any drastic recommendations or suggestions for managing and maintaining a natural balanced fishery. Their lakes were not broke and didn’t need major fixing. Just a bit of tweaking and direction. We are working on a gameplan that includes implementing some bonus walleye and a handful of northern pike as well as channeling future fish stockings to be a bit more efficient and effective. Check out some of these fish from electrofishing today:

These lakes produced lots of fish, members fish in them, catch fish, and take some home to eat. Some of the lakes had great crappie, some had great redear sunfish, some had good bluegill, a few had big catfish and a couple had some monster largemouth bass. There were sizes and numbers to please any angler (member).

Table Rock Fishing and Family Trip

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:14:15 +0000

Wednesday evening we loaded up 11 kids and 16 adults and headed down to Branson, Missouri for a mini 5 day family vacation. We stayed at The Cliffs at Long Creek Resort overlooking Table Rock Lake. Let me just say that Johnny Morris, Bass Pro Shops, and the Big Cedar Lodge know how to build and develop the best vacation properties in the United States. This is their newest project that is just 3 miles from the Big Cedar Lodge. Here are some pics of our 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 3500 square foot luxury houses we stayed in. Each house has a full theatre room in the basement, 7 large flat screen tv’s, pool table, poker table, downstairs bar/kitchen, is completely furnished with all kinds of luxury furniture and decorations, and comes with its own boat slip on the lake as well. Basically nothing in this place could have been done any nicer, bigger, or better.

The story of this trip actually begins back in Sept of 2009 when I was down here at the Big Cedar Lodge teaching at the Pond Boss Convention with Justin. We were in charge of the hands on seining demonstration for the conference. Anyhow on our way home from the conference we stopped in at Bass Pro Shops in Springfield and happened to be in the right place at the right time. They had just opened up this new resort and were looking to fill it up with people this spring. Justin and I didn’t come close to meeting the financial requirements to sign up for this promotional trip, but we were lucky we had my dad and older brother along…. They each signed up for the 5 day promotional trip and were abit apprehensive about doing so, but oh my goodness did that ever work out great! We hit the jackpot with this one.

These houses regularly cost about $1000 per night ($1500 or so during peak season) and here we are virtual white trash compared to regular guests who visit these sort of places, being treated like kings. They had free movie rentals, nintendo rentals, drinks, coffee, etc 24 hours per day. It was great (at least for this trip). I still envied the folks camping at the state parks I drove through. I would actually rather camp most of the time given the choice. Nothing beats a campsite overlooking some water, bathing out in nature, sleeping by a campfire with real wood, campsite hot chocolate, and preparing a huge campfire breakfast. But needless to say, experiencing this sort of luxury vacation is at least an experience to chalk off the list.

Let me just say we made the most of every minute of our visit here. We swam at the heated swimming pools and hot tubs nonstop, played shuffleboard, volleyball, pool, card games, and watched movies. Here are some pics of these amenities:

Anyhow we also got good discounts from the resort on many of the area attractions and even $100 Bass Pro gift cards. We went into Branson for the Noah’s Ark Musical, Branson’s Landing Shopping, Bass Pro Shops, Dogwood Canyon Adventure, and of course had to spend an afternoon fishing too! We rented two fishing boats from Cricket Creek Marina about 8 miles south of the resort, because I had a hunch the fish would be down in the shallow creek channels towards the bottom of the lake. I figured it was easier to drive a car 8 miles than drive the boats that far down. We actually were in Arkansas so we had to get Arkansas fishing licenses.

We get to the marina and had 7 fisherman with a 7 passenger fishing pontoon reserved, but when we got there the first thing the marina guys pointed out was the weight limit for the 7 passenger boat! We exceeded the weight limit with our first 5 guys, not counting gear!! Anyhow they had a nice fishing boat we ended up renting along with the pontoon. We got loaded up in the boats, the marina guy said folks were catching fish North, but I still wanted to head South. So we headed out South looking for fish in this 40,000 acre lake that averages about 50 feet deep. Let me just say I didn’t really expect to catch many fish without a guide or any knowledge of this lake whatsoever, but was intrigued with giving er my best effort and figuring something out. The task of finding some fish became even a bit harder with a dead trolling motor battery, generic in the dash depth display and only 6 hours till the boats had to be back to the marina.

The first 3 hours of our trip, this is what we were able to bring in the boat by fishing around the obvious shoreline structures. We caught a handful of bait sized bluegills, a couple 10 inch smallmouth bass, and a 15 inch largemouth.

Anyhow we were getting somewhat discouraged (and rained upon every 30 minutes or so) and then we decided to start shaking things up a bit. In order to eat fish for dinner we needed to figure something out in a hurry. We started trolling around from point to point and focussing on offshore structures and contour changes. Thats when things started happening and fish started flopping on the bottom of our boats! The last 2 hours of our trip we caught tons of short smallmouth, largemouth, spotted bass, longear sunfish, bluegill and small crappie but we also caught the following huge crappie, nice walleye, and flathead catfish.

We had to have the boats back in at 7 pm, but if we could of stayed out for another 1.5 hours of fishing light we would have filled up our coolers completely with fish! Before we left the marina I found out that there was a $150 charge per hour for being late, which wouldnt have been too bad in a situation such as this, but the marina guy caught onto my inquiry pretty quick and said that along with the late fee the lake patrol would be out looking for us as well. Needless to say we were back in at 6:59.

So anyhow there was this guy fishing from the bank on a sandbar and I could see some fish flopping from his stringer. We eased up and started talking to him a bit and had to find out what he caught this monster flathead on. He said he caught it on a 10 inch piece of carp. He graciously allowed me to take a pic to document this beast. When he help up the fish the first time to show us, he had lots of veins and muscles bulging. When I help up the fish, you cant really see any veins or muscles bulging??? (just an extra layer of chin insulation) All I can figure is that I guess I just must be alot stronger than this muscular looking fella was?

Anyhow, here is the rest of the story from our Branson trip April 2010: Dogwood Canyon

Huge Smallmouth Bass and Nice Muskie

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:16:54 +0000

Monday evening I went out fishing with Cheff Todd and Mike Steffa. I was throwing a number 3 mepps with brown hair and caught this 21 inch smallmouth bass in 6 feet of water on the edge of a big drop off. It is our biggest smallmouth of the year and actually one of the biggest smallmouth bass I have ever caught.

Chef Todd and Mike Steffa were fishing with me and actually caught nothing in our little 45 minute mini fishing trip. It was great, normally I try my best to make sure the people I am fishing with catch fish, but on an occasion such as this and after 30 minutes of them not catching anything I almost was rooting for the total skunk. It was great…..Nate 13 bass, Chef and Steffa 0! I offered to let them both real a fish in, but they graciously deferred. (normally I dont write about this sort of thing, but I just had to put this one down into the archives).

Anyhow, Chef redeemed himself and his ugly pink lure with these muskie from Banner Marsh:

Electrofishing Has Officially Begun!

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 03:25:07 +0000

This is the week I have been waiting for all winter long. Shocking lakes and ponds is my absolute favorite part of my job. We started the year off working out some kinks with our electrofishing boat on monday late afternoon at one of our clients lakes out near Middle Grove. We were installing his fountain, buglight, and fish feeder and needed to make sure the boat and gear was all working properly before our road trips South and West.

After 15 minutes of some minor repairs we had her working perfectly and drawing fish right up to the annodes. We only shocked for about 10 minutes, but dialed up this pair of nice bass among some other crappie and bluegill. As you can see in the pic these bass are working on getting back to their plump summer time weights and I need to get working on working off my winter time reserves. I guess that has to be the difference between being warm and cold blooded. Warm blooded creatures get fat in the winter and cold blooded creatures get fat in the summer. (I didnt learn that one in school, that would be one of those things you just learn by experience).

Then Tuesday I headed over past Astoria, past Vermont, past Table grove, and finally made it over to the city Industry. I have never heard of that city before, but there is some real nice land for sale over there. I met with Will Engelburt Peabody Coal’s land specialist and one of my clients who was looking to purchase a very nice piece of property with a couple lakes on it. My mission was to make sure the dam’s looked good and the lakes would be good for fishing with a feasible future building site.

The lakes definitely would be great fishing lakes, but the building site needs to be investigated a bit further. There is a tremendous watershed draining into those lakes and some signs of potential flooding could take place into really the only feasible building site on the property. An emergency spillway would need to be built before I would be comfortable building.

Anyhow on to much funner stuff. Wednsday morning at 5 am Justin and I headed down to Kinmundy, Il to shock 3 lakes for a client. This was the first of many Electrofishing surveys for this spring. The first lake was 17 acres and really awesome looking. Completely full of 13 inch bass, big bluegill, and big crappie. We are working on a plan that will grow those bass average up into the 15-17 inch range. They really arent too far away, but this is a scenario where time isnt going to make those fish bigger. Without changing up some of the limiting factors, those fish arent growing another inch.

Thursday I stayed much closer to home and went to a pond consultation in Germantown Hills. 1/2 acre spring fed pond in the backyard with no watershed or overflow. Water is coming in, but it aint going out (through an overflow pipe anyway). Really cool setup thats for sure. We put some lake dye in just to see how much water is transferring daily and how long it lasts in the pond. I want one of those ponds some day, just really cool with lots of potential. Water level doesnt fluctuate much and is obviously connected to a whole bunch of clean cool groundwater.

Friday we hit the motherload! We traveled over to northeast Missouri and electrofished a newly acquired 40 acre lake for a client. Oh my goodness did this guy ever hit the lottery with the purchase of this lake. Hands down the best crappie lake I have ever seen and the overall amount of fish in this lake is quite frankly overwhelming. In the first 10 minutes of electrofishing we filled our holding tank up completely with 14 inch crappie and 14 inch largemouth bass. The boys up front were filling their nets with 4-6 fish per scoop. It was unbelievable. Here are some pics from the first haul:

After weighing and measuring each of the fish, we already had enough data to prepare some real nice charts. That data is important to hold onto because relative weights tell the tale of the lake, and also are a great starting baseline reference point when implementing a management plan. Relative weight can be defined as a fish so long should weigh so much. A 14 inch bass should weigh 23 ounces. If it doesnt than something is very wrong or very right! Anyhow if it doesnt weigh 23 ounces than that fish is not currently growing any longer until it does.

After getting side tracked with that little relative weight science lesson, back to the survey at hand. Around this whole lake we kept electrofishing, but stopped scooping. There were so many fish everywhere that we seriously could have filled up a couple pick up truck loads.

We spent some time analyzing the water quality and surrounding habitat. We are currently devising a plan with many options that best suit Richards preferred management style, goals and budget for this lake for 2010. His goal is to protect the mammoth crappies, help build up the bluegill population, grow more 2-4 lb bass, and also introduce a few bonus species into the lake without messing everything up. All very attainable and well within his reach fairly quickly. He has many options and hopefully a big appetite for 12 inch crappies and 12 inch bass.

Can you imagine having to cull the small crappies at 12 inches long! I am not kidding when I say I have never in my life seen this many crappies of this caliber in the same day. 1000’s of crappie over 12 inches and 100’s of them over 14 inches. I was talking to him on the phone a couple days ago and he said he had been catching monster 13-15 inch crappies on a big pig n jig bass bait and I was just thinking something didnt quite add up too well. Many times fish stories that are too good to be true are, this one actually was not.

Night Fishing Has Begun!

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:23:57 +0000

During the summer I actually spend more time fishing after dark than I do during the day. Not only do I spend more time fishing then, but it is also my favorite fishing as well. The lake is quiet, the people are all gone, kids and pretty much everyone else are all in bed and I just sit on the dock sightfishing and catching monster fish like this all night long! BTW, for those of you who dont know me, I am a very large 280 lb man. Big guy, big Nate, big boned, and husky have been my nicknames and clothes sizes since I started out the 4th grade well over 100 lbs and nearly weighing twice as much as the other boys in the class. Anyhow my point is that its not too easy to make a 1 lb fish look big with me in the background.

So moving on, I mentioned sight fishing during the middle of the night? You did indeed read correctly. I have green monster underwater lights 45 feet out from the end of my dock and they light up the water like nothing you have ever seen before. I can see every fish that swims within casting distance of my dock all night long. Not only can I see the fish, but the light also attracts tons of microscopic phytoplankton, aquatic invertebrates, and insects. You know what happens when you congregate such delicious food items, so I wont even waste my timing describing the cycle of small fish, medium fish, and large fish that come to visit this favorite midnight snack shack. Here is a pic of a green monster, it is very hard to take a pic of it glowing with a cheapy camera, but here is the closest resemblance of what one looks like.

Two years ago in July I was eating dinner with Bob Lusk and Ray Scott down in Arlington, Texas and we were talking about Ray’s personal fishing lake down in Alabama. Supposedly its pretty good bass fishing there. (BTW, he kills 100’s of bass from his lake every year). Anyhow I let him know how badly his catch and release theory for bass has messed up private water bass fishing! He completely agreed, anyhow again the story I wanted to tell was about how I traded him a green monster underwater fishing light for some of his fishing rods. When he got back to Alabama he had a new green light waiting for him to install and he actually did. He liked the light so much, he bought 5 more and actually set up a meeting with Ronnie Dennis my good friend who makes the lights. He wanted to put his name on the lights and market them for Ronnie, but he wanted just a bit too much money to do that, so the green lights name remains Green Monster Fishing Light.

Anyhow, most nights I actually dont even fish by the lights, I just sit back till well past midnight just watching the fish eat each other and the bugs. Friday night though we stayed out at the lake and saw some big gills cruising around about 10 pm. Justin and I decided to try and catch a few. Even though all the pics are of me, Justin did catch a few. His pics just didnt turn out too good. (I wonder who took those shots?) Its not easy taking pics in complete darkness. Here are a couple more of the big boys. This was a 12 inch, 18 ounce bruiser.

Just a 10 incher.

We also caught several small crappie, a couple trout, and a hybrid striped bass. This was the only other decent pic that turned out. I am going to have to learn how to take pics better in complete darkness. I dont think the auto setting on my $50 camera is going to cut it after dark.

We spent the weekend working on all kinds of projects out at the lake. Docks, fish cages, bathroom additions, spring cleanup and organizing, etc. I am beat. I did take Tyden down fishing for northern pike with a number 3 blue fox spinner for about 10 minutes. He thought he had a pike on and was super excited, but it turned out to be this giant bluegill. (its fun to have a handful of pike in the lake just for the slightly remote chance of hooking into one. Makes fishing with a 9 year old boy just a bit more exciting for him)

Then later in the day we were doing some work on a dock half way down the lake and Tyden and Noah tag teemed this big 5 lb Hybrid Striped Bass. Tyden caught it all by himself with a fire tiger rapala shad rap and when I looked over to check on the commotion he had Noah helping him reel it in.

So Mae and her cousins thought they were pretty big stuff on Saturday. They packed their lunches and went for a hike and picnic with no adults. It was great, they walked about a 1/2 mile to the other side of the lake, ate their lunch and didnt come back for over an hour. This was their biggest unsupervised adventure to date. I do say I am looking forward to many more unsupervised adventures, seems like the last 4 years have been complete dependance and supervision.

Land Management Timber Work

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 02:21:53 +0000

This spring we have been doing some awesome land management projects and consultations for folks looking to buy a particular piece of property as well as for folks looking to spruce up their piece of property. Anyhow, this latest project is definitely one worth talking about! This particular father/son owned piece of property in Fulton County has been carefully and meticulously manicured for raising, holding, observing, and harvesting trophy deer. For this project, we were not hired for our knowledge but rather our backs (and equipment).

The land management plan in place on this property is like 5 levels past any land management program I have seen implemented to date. The owners have more knowledge of whitetail deer (and more trophy deer hanging on the wall in their cabin) than most of the professional fellas you see on TV. Every square inch of this 600 acre property is being managed and maintained for raising and harvesting deer. It goes way beyond just planting food and hoping the deer will come.
Many people think that simply feeding deer is the key to harvesting them, just the same way they think that simply feeding fish is all the management it takes to grow trophy fish. Let me just say that there is just so much more than simply planting a food plot or merely setting a timer on a feeder. Regardless of how much food is available naturally or supplementally, consistently growing fish and deer takes paying attention to all of the many very tiny details, instead of just focusing on the one big detail.

For this property, 5% of it is planted in various annual and perennial food plots placed strategically throughout. Here is a clover field overlooking the big timber.

1/2 acre to 3 acre plots are spread out everywhere. The food is strategically planted and the focus is on year round nutrition rather than just hunting season attractant. 12 months out of the year, the deer living on this farm have more than enough food, water and shelter and never need to leave. Oh yeah, water holes like this one have been strategically placed throughout.

On top of the supplemental food that is planted every year, the property is managed for providing optimum natural forage as well. Every year, certain trees are hinge cut and they provide great forage for a couple years and then once they die they turn into great shelter. Also a wide variety of shrubs and nutrition producing trees are maintained as well. Approximately 20% of the property is planted and harvested annually as well. These row crops provide quite a bit of food too.

I would estimate that about 50% of this hunting farm is deer sanctuary. Humans dont go in these places ever. Thick native grasses and big knarly timber make up the majority of these man forbidden areas. The forbidden areas are never hunted, walked upon, or messed with period. Never give the big boys a reason to leave, and they simply will stay put.

Not only is the land managed for raising deer, but hunting the deer efficiently and properly takes quite a bit of effort as well. Stand sites are picked and then funnels and pinch points are then man made to make sure the deer walk within shooting distance of the stands. Here is a pic of a spot where we piled up thick brush completely blocking access to this popular food plot from the wrong side of the timber.

Deer can come in on only one side and they have to walk within 30 yards of this stand not only to get into the food plot, but more importantly for the bucks to see who is in the food plot. They have to walk by this stand. I cant quite describe this to really do it justice, but they have done a tremendous amount of thinking, planning, observing, and work over the last 10 years to create the absolute perfect hunting stands. Here is a deer stand in this huge white oak tree right on a trail between two different types of food plots. Trees like this are very easy to stay hidden in!

The entire property is divided into sections on a map. There is a written management plan for each section. We have until the second week of May to get as many sections done as possible. Once the does start having fawns, all the work on the property is done for the year. Having the fawns born and raised on the property without any human distractions is pretty important to keeping that deer on your property forever. Justin and some of our part time help have been performing the selective tree cutting and hinging, brush pile making, and various other labor for the last week. They finished 5 sections and hope to get a couple more done by the cutoff date.

I cant quite describe this management plan enough to do it justice, and realize that this isnt possible for everyone in every situation. But for this Father/Son duo, this is their goal, passions, and dreams all coming true. I cant say that I would manage my property like this if I had some, because I love mushroom hunting, 4 wheeler riding, camping, and exploring, but to each his own. The many deer hanging in their cabin would make any professional hunter or Deer and Turkey classic attendee jealous and asking questions.