Mike Iacanelli Recap with Pics

Lets just start with the food eh? Chef Todd and Chef Kevin cooked all weekend. Their specialty was blueberry, bluecheese gourmet elk burgers! If you like blueberries, blue cheese, and elk than you loved their conoction. If you didnt like that stuff, surprisingly enough they convinced quite a few people into trying it out of curiosity sake and a good majority of those people will now be serving blueberry, bluecheese burgers at their cookout this summer. Let me know when you next attend or attempt a cookout with that combo!

Just want to say that Mike Iacanelli didnt eat his blueberry elk burger. Not that he probably didnt like it, he just actually is a pretty small guy. He didnt even taste it as far as I know. He was too busy speaking, talking, and signing autographs. I offered to sign a few autographs, but didnt have any takers for some reason? Mike however had a line that stretched through the whole 40,000 square foot store waiting to get his herbie hancock....

Here are some pictures of Mike's seminar. He used our trout pond for some demonstrations:

Here are some pictures of kids fishing in the trout pond. We had over 400 kids fishing in the pond over the weekend. Probably 75% of the kids on Saturday caught fish, but only about 40% of the kids on Sunday caught fish. The trout were worked over pretty good the first day.

Here is a pic of filling the pond from Thursday night.

At the end of the day Sunday, we were all pretty tired from standing around, talking, and eating all day long. Everyone helped take everything down and clean up which was much appreciated! I also want to give a shout out to the limestone high school bass fishing team!! They helped kids fish in the pond from sunup to sundown both days! Here they are draining the pond.

Here are some pictures of burning prairie grass last week. We do this on these fields every 2-3 years. On large properties we rotate fields so that we end up burning 1/3 of the grass every year. This helps create amazing year round habitat.

You definitely need to be careful when playing with fire. We start alot of back burns like this one below to help keep the fire from getting too large. Just use the wind to your advantage to start fires that will eventually put themselves out.

Its about 5:45 am on Monday morning. Justin and I headed down to Southern Illinois for a mini road trip. I am actually using his wireless card and typing while he is driving. Pretty cool! Anyhow our first stop is in Chesterfield, IL to install a Vertex Air 3 aeration system, fish feeder, and teach the property caretaker how to maintain the pond for the upcoming season. We are unloadin a years supply of fish food (500 lbs) and some herbicides and algaecides and bacteria to kill the watermeal, duckweed, and algae.

Then from there we head down to Norris City to electrofish a 5 acre lake that wants to grow bigger bass. Then we go a few miles down the road to consult for a brand new filling 3 acre lake that wants to focuse on an intensive plan to grow monster crappies. From there we head to a hotel near Harrisburg.

Tuesday we are electrofishing for a newly acquired 2 acre pond near Carmi to find out whats in there and come up with a gameplan for growing better crappies and walleye. Then we probably head for home or maybe make a stop through Brownstown to check on some clients if time and schedule allows.