Huge Two Pound Monster Bluegill

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