Sunday Fishing Trip

Went out fishing after church with my dad at his 3 acre pond. We had a few minutes to kill before the Bears game started up so we headed out on the pond to catch some dinner. I figured the fish would be jumping in the boat on such a nice day, but boy was I wrong. We had to work hard for our measly catch of 2 perch, a crappie, a bass, and a bluegill. Dinner was delicious, it just had to be supplemented with a couple dozen hot wings from the Buffalo Wild Wings down the road!

Now that I think about it, the electrofishing boat was parked up at the barn. I should of been using about 1800 watts of DC current for bait!

Albino Golden Rainbow Trout for Sale

I have a limited number of golden trout available for sale this fall. They average about 1-1/4 lbs and cost $100 per 10 of them.



They are the most awesome fish to add to a pond for the cold open water fishing and especially winter ice fishing months. They make just an awesome bonus fish to catch while out icefishing. They are very aggressive and readily eat small rapalas, jigging spoons, minnows, and wax worms through the ice.

Check out this video from last season ice fishing trout in illinois. The golden trout gets caught at about 5:20 in the video.





I also have plenty of rainbows available as well. We stock 1000's of them in small ponds and lakes across central illinois for Ice Fishing Bonus'. Typically they will live until the 3rd week of June and grow to about 3 lbs each by then, but this year due to the cold summer we had tons of lakes and ponds carry their trout all sumer long. Our average carry over trout is 4-5 lbs, but we have several of them grow to over 7 lbs in just one year!!! It is unbelievable how much these fish will eat and grow.

State Record Longear Sunfish!

Electrofishing a huge lake near Champaign, Illinois last week we came across a huge population of longear sunfish. The largest we captured was 6 inches long and that my friends is an Illinois State Record for Longears!

Longear sunfish are absolutely beautiful:

Electro Fishing Lake Audits and Pics

Here are some pics from shocking some lakes and ponds the last few days. We will be doing a lot of traveling over the next few weeks performing Full Lake Audits and Electrofishing for BIG lakes and pond across the state of Illinois.

We are pretty much booked solid for the rest of this season, but get your favorite fishing lake, club, campground, etc signed up for next spring!!

John Sauders Pond Pics:




Lake Wildwood Fish Pics:

Wilmington Recreation Club pics:

Redear Sunfish Stocking program to combat zebra mussel infestation has been working!

Doug Oberhelmans Fish Pictures. This is a lake we have been stocking heavy with northern pike, tiger musky, and walleye in order to combat the infestation of carp, gizzard shad, and yellow bass. It is working, and the LMB are getting fatter and larger (albeit not quite as many of 'em):

Leisure Times Pictures:

That is definitely the end to a very eventful week! I am stuck in the office all day today trying to catch up on voice and emails and write up some reports before our next round of electrofishing kicks off at 5am Monday morning. Next week we are headed to Shelbina, Mo; Fiatt, IL; Lisle, IL; and the Quad Cities for electrofishing surveys and also gonna squeeze in a Sonogram for our little bun in the oven as well as attend the Lyle Finch Memorial Clay Pigeon Shoot that benefits the Easter Seals. Then on Saturday we are taking a family guided fishing out at the lake that they purchased from the PCS benefit auction. About next sunday I will have another round of really cool fish pics for sure!

Senior Citizen Fishing Trip at The Fishing Park

Before heading off to the Pond Boss Conference at Big Cedar Lodge, we took some residents at the Skyline Drive Nursing Home out for a fishing trip at the Hooked on Fishing Park

Everyone had a BLAST! We are looking forward to our next fishing trip with these guys for sure!!! I will let these couple pics finish off the rest of the story.

Pond Boss Conference Update

We headed down to Branson, Missouri on Wed morning for the Pond Boss Conference and Expo. When we got to Branson we checked into our log cabin and then headed for the Bass Pro Shops on the white river!

Over the next few days we listened to some incredible fish and pond experiments and case studies, hung out with a lot of good friends from all over the country, ate tons of food, did a seining demonstration on the Big Cedar Pond, Fished a tournament on table rock lake, and hit up the Bass Pro Shops in Springfield on the way home.

A more detailed account of the conference along with many pics can be found at http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=183880#Post183880

OH yeah, let me just say that the Big Cedar Lodge in Branson is quite simply AMAZING!

Spendin' time with gma: Must See Video!

After church we headed out to the lake to spend time with friends and family and celebrate a birthday party for Ariya. My grandma is 77 years old and decided to go for the grand slam of activities that the lake has to offer! My aunt Judy Sceggel happened to have a video camera to film the afternoon activities- seining bait, feeding fish, kissing fish, fishing, water slide, rope swing, high dive, and mule ridin' were all on the agenda and grandma conquered them all. The video is fairly long at 8 minutes, but let me just say that if you have 8 minutes available, watch the video now. If you dont have 8 minutes available, save the link and watch the video when you get the time. You will laugh at some point. At 3:39 of the video she gets bit by a smallmouth bass and the impact leaves a nice smallmouth lips imprint as a souvenir on her face!!!

wedding was great

yeah, yeah, yeah, the wedding was just beautiful. My plan of clogging my nose and breathing through my mouth did indeed induce a bit of a sore throat, and I stayed up awfully late and woke up super early trying just to look and feel like crap and it worked........ I felt like crap, but I still wasnt able to get out of the wedding and reception!!! Next time I will just have to go all out and break a bone or get some stitches I guess.

Week Review and Upcoming Schedule

Quarter till midnight and I am sitting here trying to make a game plan for the next 6 weeks. I just spent the week electrofishing and delivering Hybrid Striped Bass across the state of Illinois, all while trying to juggle about a million or two other things as well. I managed to squeeze in a Hooked on Fishing Park meeting, a house showing, an onsite consultation, 400 answered voice and emails, and two chiropractor appointments (I hurt my back playing football in June, lived with the pain for 4 months and finally went to the Dr. Bob Benningfield and am completely pain free after 2 weeks!!!!!) Also got the kids to bed every night before getting back to working on something and even managed a trip to the park with them on thursday night for a couple hours.

Looking ahead, I will be delivering Hybrid Striped Bass saturday morning, hopefully will be just sick enough to not be able to make it to Brook's friends wedding sat evening, but yet still able to watch a few football games! Then Sunday we are heading to church and then to Ariya's B-day party (its at the lake, so that will be a good time). And then Monday and Tuesday are going to be SWAMPED trying to get everything done before I leave for the National Pond Boss Convention in Branson, MO on Wed. Monday we are going to squeeze in a fishing trip with the skyline drive nursing home down at the fishing park, tuesday will be spent just getting everything ready for the convention. Thursday I am fishing in a "celebrity" fishing tournament so to speak on Table Rock Lake and then friday afternoon Justin and I are in charge of the seining demonstration at the Big Cedar Lodge Pond and also are setting up displays and talking about the Green Monster Fishing Lights, Bojo Buglights, and the Porcupine Fish Attractors!

When we get home from the conference I left monday open on the schedule, but then the rest of september is booked solid with lake audits, electrofishing surveys, and consultations in the Quad Cities, Wildwood, Champaign, Wilmington, Fiatt, Camelot, Middle Grove, and a big aeration install in Shelbina, Mo! All of our summer help is back to school and Justin and I are going to be working like madmen trying to get everything done, not to mention packaging up and shipping out online orders everyday. Oh yeah, one minor detail I forgot as well is that it looks like I hopefully will be signing some papers next week to sell my house and will probably be moving out in a month and still need to find a place to live! I have already seen everything that is available online in the peoria area, but just need to get out and start checking some places out. Life is definitely in the fast lane, but as long as I can stay somewhat sane over the next 6 weeks things will be shaping up pretty good for the winter!

Now I just need to stay up a bit longer, figure out a way to clog up my nose completely, get a little sore throat started, wake up super early in the morning without much sleep and then I just may be in a great position to get out of this wedding sat afternoon! Its a good thing Brook doesnt read my blog very often....hehe. If for some reason someone is still reading this far down the page without any pictures or videos to break up the monotony I will report back later this weekend with results from the operation wedding ditching project! There is not any single event that I dread more than a wedding and a reception.

Simply HUGE Trout and some other pics from the weekend

We spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday at the lake last weekend for Labor Day. The weather was cold so we did more swimming in the hot tub than in the lake:


You may not believe me after looking at the pictures, but the fish really werent biting that well over the weekend. The cold front and east wind shut off the bluegill, crappie, and bass completely; but we were still able to muster up a few fish!

Tribute to The Hybrid Striped Bass

I stocked my first hybrid striped bass on May 5th 2007. I was very skeptical mainly because I had never heard of anyone in my area stocking them and really knew absolutely nothing about them except that some pond boss guys were growing them really big in small ponds. I could not believe how fast these fish grew that first summer and was even more shocked at how fast they grew the next summer and still am blown away with how fast them things have grown this summer!!!

The original HSB that I have left in the lake are 6-9 lbs and just BEASTS! We typically use 6 lb test on medium/light fishing gear for open water fishing, but the big boys have spooled 5 rigs completely this summer and easily broken off another dozen. People I take fishing typically arent very experienced anglers, but they typically have no problems landing catfish, smb, and lmb on this same gear. The big stripers are only just 3 years old and in a whole nother league! Here are some pics documenting the HSB growth!

2007 class pics:



2008 class pics:



2009 class pic:


Anyhow, I have since stocked about 20,000 hsb in lakes and ponds around the area and they are definitely growing faster in the lakes that artificially feed, but they are still growing really good even in the lakes without the additional supplements!

Here is a video of the girls feeding the 2009 year class of stripers on the beach:
Striper Feeding Video

Girls Feeding Hybrid Stripers on The Beach

My daughters and her cousins absolutely love helping me with the chores at the lake. Feeding the fish is one of their favorite activities and this school of hybrid striped bass has learned over the course of the summer that its dinner time when the girls hit the beach! 

Pond Boss Conference at Big Cedar Lodge!

This years pond boss conference is at the Big Cedar Lodge near Branson, Missouri on Sept 18-19! I am pumped up and excited and actually going to be running the hands on session about Seining Your Pond, as well as taking care of some Porcupine Fish Attractor demonstrations.

This conference is jam packed with information about ponds, aquatic vegetation, and fish stuff from the who's who in private fisheries from across the nation!

If you have any pond or fish related questions this is the place to get all the answers! The price of admission is a small price to pay for the information you will walk away with. I have several clients and many friends from across the nation who will be attending this years event, not to mention many celebrities who are pond enthusiasts usually show up as well!

Here is the agenda for the weekend and a link to more and better info:

Thursday, September 17, 2009
1 - 5 pm Fishing Tournament - Call 800.687.6075 to register!
2 - 5 pm Conference Registration
3 pm and after Hotel Check-In
6 - 10 pm Poolside Icebreaker (light hors d'oeuvres and cash bar)
7:30 - 8:30 pm Speaker's Dinner

Friday, September 18, 2009
8 am Registration / Expo Opens
9 - 10:30 am Session I - The Nuances of Ponds
10:30 - 10:45 am Break
10:45 - Noon Session II - Practical Pond Management
Noon - 1:30 pm Walking-Talking Lunch in Expo
1:30 - 2:45 pm Session III - What's New
2:45 - 3 pm Break
3 - 5 pm Outside to the Pond!!! Hands-On Demonstrations!!!
7:30 - 9 pm Dinner on the Lawn (Ticketed! See registration form!)
9 - 10:30 pm Small Groups in Conference Center Foyer or your Lodge

Saturday, September 19, 2009
8 am Expo Opens
9 - 10:30 am Panel Discussion and Questions - The Pros Evaluate Friday's Data
10:30 - 10:45 am Break
10:45 - Noon Workshops - Aquatic Vegetation; Pond Building; Habitat Management
Noon - 1 pm Box Lunch in Expo (Ticketed! See registration form!)
1 - 2:45 pm Session IV - Do-It-Yourself Pond Management
2:45 - 3 pm Break
3 - 5 pm Hands-On!!! Inside the Expo
7:30 - 9 pm Banquet (Ticketed! See registration form!)

Fall Fish Stocking Pricing and Info

Now is definitely the time to get fish orders in for the fall fish stocking season in Central Illinois!
Peoria, Fulton, and Tazewell county Soil, Water, and Conservation Districts are all having fish sales this fall and they have their delivery dates set. They are the best place to pick up regular bass, bluegill, and catfish.

Herman Brothers have been delivering fish to clients all summer long, but it looks like this fall is going to be busier than ever stocking fish! We specialize in stocking all of the not so regular fishes of Illinois! This year we have the best selection available to date. Walleye, Pike, Muskie, Albino Catfish, Smallmouth Bass, Hybrid Striped Bass, Feed Trained Largemouth, Hybrid Bluegill, Black Crappie, Yellow Perch, Fathead Minnows, Golden Shiners, and Rainbow Trout just to name a few of the other species we have available this fall!!

We stock fish of all sizes and can pretty much find any size of any species of fish! I work with the very best private fish hatcheries and fish haulers in the nation! Here is our 2009 retail fish stocking price list We deliver your fish right to your pond and make sure they are acclimated correctly. I also will not sell the wrong type or size of fish to anyone- if my name is on something, it will be the best!

Saturday Fishing and Sunday Fun City

Rainbow Trout fishing is starting to heat up!


Dale Weiss of Goodfield with a big catfish:

Bluegill caught on a 4 inch berkley shad!


We celebrated Noah and Maes birthday party on Saturday out at Norris, then headed to Fun City in Iowa on Sunday and Monday. Now its tuesday morning and I am ready for a vacation! Them kids can wear me down fast!!