Perfect Boat Dock, Redneck Blinds, Horses....

For the most part I stayed pretty local this week! We finished up what is perhaps the perfect floating covered boat dock. Very practical, with tons of usable space:


The front of the dock we still need to fill in the dirt on the retaining wall, but other than that she is ready to rock n roll for the year! I would love to have one of these for myself, the crappies are already starting to stack up underneath her....



Oh yeah last weekend fishing guru Steve Ryan and his buddy Jim came down fishing. They caught quite a few different species of fish:









I take the kids to Wildlife Prairie Park just about once per week! They absolutely love it. The place is so huge we just head out in a new direction each time.


Dad and Tyden did a little fishing this week in between chores:




So then our big shipment of hybrid striped bass came in Tuesday night about 6 pm from Arkansas. I delivered stripers till about midnight and the guys spent the next 30 hrs pretty much driving around central Illinois delivering fish to lakes and ponds all over the place...

Baby deer are being born. Lots of sightings when out and about. This little guy was very curious as Jared was planting food plots up near Victoria, IL


Now that fish stocking season and food plotting is winding down its time to start getting deer towers assembled and installed. Oh yeah and time to get back to that monster waterslide project!! We spent Friday changing out some old Stump deer blinds with new Redneck Blinds.


These new redneck blinds are designed for both gun and archery hunting and they are by far our favorite deer tower out of any blind on the market today! We have a demo model set up along Taylor Road just 1/2 mile down from Wildlife Prairie Park. If your in the neighborhood just stop by and climb up it see for yourself how awesome these deer hunting towers are. The best all around visibility and shooting windows by far! We have been selling tons of them, these are all going out, but we will be getting more in again next month, so just holler and we will get yours comin'.


Saturday morning I headed to Fiatt to check a trapnet and also to tag some fish. The trapnet was full of 8-12" bluegill.... yes I said 12" bluegill, not one but several. This is just a 4 year old lake too, here was the biggest:
My helper for the morning was up bright and early! This girl popped out of bed before the sun we she was told Nate was coming check the traps and do some fish stuff. She was a little disappointed when we went out in the boat without fishing poles, but we made up for it with a little dock fishing. She learned how to catch tiny bluegill and then toss them to the big bass lurking below....

So Friday night and then again Saturday afternoon Junior High Girls Church Camp came to our property for Bonfire, Horseback Riding, and Water Activities. Very busy time, but the girls all had a blast! Of course so did all of our kids too.







Both my boys Noah and Drake just love riding horses. (I have found them to be very passionate with just about anything and everything to do with the animals....hmm fancy that)... But anyhow Noah has decided he is going to be a horse vaulter. He is begging to do vaulting instead of playing soccer.... He couldnt go to sleep last night until he had his lifes plan of horseback vaulting all figured out....



You want to talk about making a junior high girls dream come true, put her on a horse and let the horse walk in the water:



There most definitely is alot going on in this picture! What's amazing is the person taking this pic is about 1/2 mile away....wow....I need a new camera!


A very special thanks to team HorseMeister for literally making those girls dreams come true riding horses (in the water). My aunts and uncles own HorseMeister, they specialize in Friesian horses, but they also have lots of other horses and do stuff like vaulting and such.

Next week is high school girls and the following weekend is High School Boys camps. Summer is here..... Sunday morning is always a nice peaceful morning I look forward to, but dont get me wrong, I love and thrive on the chaos of summertime!

Waterslides, Zip Lines and Fun Pond Stuff

The last two weeks we have been working on alot of very fun pond activities for clients from Chicago to Henry to Williamsport, Indiana and many other cities in between:

Karen up in Marengo, IL has alot of dogs.... So we built this dog jumping dock for. Her dogs will run full speed down this 8' wide and 35' long dock and leap into her pond!


Mindy in Lacon got this fun zip line for her young kids to enjoy at the pond. Her pond doesnt have an overflow (yet) and never has needed it until now. We dropped the level back down to normal and also took care of the watermeal growing on the surface as well so her little swimming hole is ready to rock n roll for the summer!!


We started this 154' long waterslide out in Henry, IL for Steve and his family. It is gonna be fast, stay tuned for more pics of this one...Oh yeah the Oak trees at this property are nothing short of amazing!






Last Friday Chef Todd and I went up to Plainfield and electrofished a large 100 acre plus subdivision lake. We got some nice fish, but overall was left scratching my head out how bad the overall fishery actually was.



These guys right here are most definitely part of the problem- JUMBO gizzard shad galore:


This lake has huge potential, but the large gizzard shad and common carp make up way too much of the overall biomass of the lake. I am currently working on a plan to convert that biomass into something much more desirable. There pretty much is no hope for the fishery to rebound in such a large lake without reducing those populations of fish.

I spent last Tuesday in Williamsport, Indiana electrofishing a lake with Bob Lusk the editor of Pond Boss Magazine and Blaine Hession the owner of Pond Life Consulting! Awesome to spend time with those two guys!! The 20 acre lake was full of thousands of white crappies...


The day before Memorial Day weekend, it didnt rain and I taught my 5 year old Noah how to drive a mower and mow the whole lawn!!! Brook couldnt watch, but after 30 minutes of curving and swerving he was good to go!!! He was grinning ear to ear for the opportunity! My neighbors already think I am crazy for all the things I teach or allow my kids to do, but the boy is hungry and eager to learn- He will be 1000 times more capable than his peers throughout all stages of life.



Saw this huge snake trying to take down a bluegill one early morning. Its a bad pic, but it was early in the morning....


Memorial Day weekend it obviously rained alot, but we still got some food plots planted and a bunch of lake work done at our own places... My youngest Drake was up and at em at 5:30 am with us prepping some plots and planting others. This boy is in heaven when he is on a machine:



Oh yeah we caught some fish Memorial Day weekend as well... We had some guests Sunday afternoon. Chef Todd brought the Lampe boys out for some fishing between the rain showers...



This smallmouth decided to eat some chicken liver along with the stripers:




We have been finishing up our yellow perch stockings and just have channel catfish and stripers and some brown trout to stock next week and then some BIG bluegill the following week and stockings will be done till fall... If you want some stripers or any species of fish, I more than likely can scrounge em up over these last two weeks of fish stockings.

Speaking of fish stockings, Presleys Outdoors is having a fish sale this summer, taking orders for fall! You can walk into Presleys and buy Muskie, Pike, Walleye, Stripers, Trout, Perch, Smallmouth, Bluegill, etc etc etc, pretty much any fish you can think of! Typically at a fish sale you can just buy small bluegills, catfish, and bass....This is a fish sale! If you are a store or a county SWCD who would also like to add some additional species to your fish sale, call me up!

Friday night I went to a wedding....Im pretty much not a social being and avoid these and similar type of events like a plague. However this event I pretty much knew all along I would be attending, so I put on some clean clothes and got er done.  (I wasnt allowed to eat in my clean unstained clothes before the wedding because Brook knew I would stain them instantly... I made it half the evening before dropping some sort of sauce onto my right shoulder)....


So anyhow its been a very fun last couple weeks. Last night I fell asleep in my chair at about 6:30 pm with 3 kids sitting on my lap watching Wreck It Ralph. About an hour or two or three later I somehow was lying on the livingroom floor with a stiff back...The house was dark and quiet and after regaining my senses a bit I pretty much crawled into bed.

Now that Im all rested up, lets hope for the sun to start shining this week!!!