Electrofishing- Shocking Lakes and Ponds

Been out electrofishing lots of lakes and ponds the last week. While each body of water is unique from the next, even more unique is the owners who own them. I know a thing or two about raising fish in general, but what I really have been focussing on learning and what is the key to success is learning owners. Learning who they are, what they like, and what degree they are capable of managing is way more important than just knowing fish.

I give everyone a very customized management plan that is easy for them to not only understand, but very easy to implement based upon THEM. Here are just some pics and descriptions of places I have been in the last week:



Mark Rocke's pond above is 40 years old and has lots of duckweed and algae. Recently he had a pretty big fish kill, but not all fish were lost. He is going to experiment with a new product called clipper for this year, and start putting together a game plan for renovation that includes some muck removal and possibly raising up the overflow for extra depth.

Luke Rocke has an amazing swimming hole in his back yard. His mission is to maintain optimum water quality while growing some mega boone and crocket bluegills. His problem is too many pesky big green carps.....Most people would kill for that good bass in there pond and Luke could care less, he wants boone and crocket gills!



Mark and Luke grilled up some antelope brats and I helped em disappear. After eating we headed over to Lisa's place to design a dock for her with a rope swing similar to Luke's. That will be a challenging yet very exciting project!


Dr. Bob has a real nice place out in Knox County! Check out the cabin and soon you will be checking out some pig fish as he starts to implement his new fish management plan!

Steve Bertschi just bought a pond to build his future home near and he just wanted to find out whats in there and how to maintain the pond for good overall fishing that includes many fish frys in the future. We found some mega redears in there!

Ed Sauder has a smallmouth bass, yellow perch, hybrid striped bass pond that some really awesome lake management company stocked 2 years ago as an experiment. The fish are growing rapidly with pretty much all of em in the 10-14 inch range! Just some basic maintenance needed for the swimming beach. His other pond needs a little bit more help in order to grow some bigger bass. They max out at about one pound, but that is going to change very rapidly as he gets out all the catfish and thins out the herd of bass too.

Then Saturday I spent the day at Otter Creek taking more than 25 guys fishing from 5 am to 10 pm. More pictures of that day to come in a future post!!!!! Sunday I spent at church and then headed to the lake with the kids and family for some swimming, fishing, and burgers! Here are some pics, the walleye were on fire and we caught bunches of them! Also we caught a nice rain shower while out in the middle of the lake!

Today the guys built a big dock with a 10 foot second story to jump off of for Troy in Mapleton. I spent the day showing some properties to Peter and Cindy Maffei from South Dakota. Of course while showing properties its a must to sample some fish. Pretty nice for about 15 minutes of fishing in a couple of the lakes eh?

Also got some guys in the field planting bunches of food plots and warm season prairie grasses. Grabbed a pic of Brandon and Ryan working the ground as we drove by this afternoon:

Tuesday we are electrofishing at Lake Wildwood, Wednesday shocking a 35 acre lake in Rapatee and spraying a half a dozen ponds for algae and duckweed around Tremont. Thursday we are stocking two ponds in Bloomington and then shocking a pond in Ellsworth, and shocking a pond near Downs. Friday I am meeting a guy in Oak Run about building a big dock and the guys are installing an aeration system in Trivoli and then we are meeting up at Norris to build a mega jump dock for the new BLOB! We will work and play out at the lake all the way through Monday!!!