Good times and great weather!

Trying to finish up another lake management season by November 20th, but the weather is 70 degrees outside in the middle of November! Squeeking a few extra days out of the year is always a good thing. The last week has been great with all kinds of stuff happening.

I met with Martin Mcdonald the conservation director of Bass Pro Shops down at the hooked on fishing park in East Peoria. He loved the park and we spent an hour talking about all kinds of stuff. Turns out they are going to need some fish for the new 25,000 gallon aquarium going into the new store down the road. Anyhow got a few things in the works with Bass Pro that I am super excited about and definitely looking forward to working with them. The new store is scheduled to open in October of 2011. Here is a pic of what a Bass Pro store looks like:

Here is a pic of what the aquarium could look like. Pretty neat eh? I have the list of fish they are looking for to start out the aquarium!

So Martin invited me to the ground breaking ceremony with all of East Peoria's finest and even called me up to the front and gave me all of the fishing gear that they had on display at the ceremony! A whole bunch of Johnny Morris signature rods and reels that I will auction off at the fishing park's fundraising dinner. I tried one out this week, it is nice!

Then Wednesday evening I had to speak at the St. Philomeno's mens group wild game feed. It was a great time and made a lot of good contacts. Here is a pic of my plate for dinner: walleye, bacon wrapped and stuffed duck, various venison, dove, and pheasant something or other. This was my first plate, and it was delish!

Also last week I put in some trout feeders for a client, here is a pic of a really neat floating one:

We checked on some trail cameras and food plots for a client. Here is a nice turnip, we got lots of turnips ready for the deer to come dig up!

We also put in a waterfowl aeration system to keep the water open in front of a goose pit. Here is the air bubbles bubbling up from the bottom:

Saturday we stayed at the lake and got everything winterized and cleaned up. Here is Justin making sure the Argo is all ready for ice fishing this season.

Of course we had to check on the fish while at the lake, the trout and stripers are ready for ice fishing season!

I am in charge of the kids from time to time, they usually are very good when I watch them and we always have a good time. I am sure Brook will enjoy these pics some day when(if) she reads the blog!

Then I took some friends of one of my clients trout fishing. We had a blast!

This week is nice and jampacked as well with a handful of last minute electrofishing surveys, an evening with 2 of the best fisherman of all times Larry Nixon and Luke Clausen, and a truckload of thousands of walleye and tiger muskies and perch coming in that needs to be delivered.