Big Pike, Catfish, and Hybrid Stripers

Jared Plattner with huntplots.com took his parents and their friend Bill and Janice Russell fishing on Friday evening. They were going for monster hybrid striped bass and they caught several really big ones!





Bill, where is the picture of your big fish? Oh wait, let me see if I can dig one up so you don't feel left out.....


I can't sleep any longer this morning, been laying awake in bed writhing in pain since 4 am. Can hardly move and finally mustered up enough strength to make it over to the computer desk and start typing. I didnt actually get hit by a train, but I bet it doesnt feel quite this bad! Every movement shoots pain all over my body.

What actually happened was at high school boys camp this weekend I forgot I was 50 lbs overweight and severely out of shape. My body knew better but my mind for some reason got caught up in the good times of physical competition and before I knew it I spent the whole day Friday playing football, dodgeball, and basketball with about 200 high school and college athletes.

We played until 11:30 pm and I could physically no longer walk, was getting stiffer by the moment. I went and sat in the hot tub and went to bed. For some dumb reason I decided the next day to play in the basketball tournament at 8 am. What an idiot. Anyhow, throughout the weekend I had my moments of glory, although they were short bursts of energy followed by several minutes of gasping for oxygen.

Back in the day I used to be a 6'3" 210 lb brick wall and could compete at a high level all day long. Now I have scientifically developed several layers of high tech muscle protection and natural insulation and tip the scales at about 280 lbs. I think I am evolving into the ultimate ice fisherman and now can sit on a bucket in 10degrees all day long!

I have a decision to make at this juncture of my life- either give up all competitive physical activity completely and be content watching from the sidelines comfortably in a nice chair for the rest of my life or actually physically get myself back into better shape. I think I am fine with either choice, its just you cant mix the two together is the reason why I am in the condition I am today.

Every single muscle and I think maybe even several bones ache this morning. After the basketball tournament we went out to the lake with all 200 guys and we played hard there too. We also caught bunches of catfish, hybrid striped bass, and even this monster pike. Then we cleaned all the catfish and had a big fish fry.




Last week was a great week! We got tons of stuff accomplished. Rocke Brothers are laying the stone at the big lodge we are building in Fulton County. Here are some pics, that project is moving along at a rapid pace:




We also built this dock for Lisa in Congreville in just 7 hrs on Tuesday:




Lisa's dock still gets a diving board that Cornerstone Architectual Concepts is making from White Oak this week and she also is getting a huge rope swing that we are gonna start putting in right after the 4th of July. Will definitely have pictures of the rope swing process, it is going to be an awesome rope swing!

This dock for Todd Staley in Farmington took our crew just 2 hours to build!


We have built lots of docks this spring and still have a half dozen very big docks to build yet this summer. Monday we are building a big dock for Butch in Cuba. It will have an 8x16 boat slip and a roof over most of the dock! Gonna be a neat one.

Hope everyone has a great 4th of July coming up this weekend! As of right now it kind of looks like there is sun forecasted this upcoming week, that sure is gonna be a weird feeling if that happens.

Fathers Day Fishing

Spent most of Fathers Day on or near the water. Was great!!! The times we were away from the water we were eating, so all in all was about as good as it gets....

Here are a bunch of pics from the weekend. For all of Brooks friends out there (both of you know who you are), check out these pics of her cleaning some fish for dinner!! We seasoned the fish and grilled them in tinfoil with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and butter.

Also had a couple hundred high school girls out to the lake on Saturday. They had a blast riding horses, swimming, fishing, rope swinging, and especially blobbing! Here are a couple pics of the horses, and the blob pics and videos I am sure will trickle in. Especially the video of Hanna, we double blobbed her into outerspace and caught it on video.

What Day Is It Anyway?

Last Saturday I headed to Otter Creek at 4 am, then ran back to Norris at 10 am to supervise water activities for 150 junior high girls, then ran back to Otter at 5 pm to finish up the fishing trip. Chef Todd cooked up a feast and of course I made it back in time to eat fresh walleyes on the grill from the Canadian Lake! Unfortunately I made it back to soon and had to help clean all the fish.....It was worth it though, Chef really hit a homerun with seasoned walleye tinfoil packs with all kinds of vegetables.

The guys we took fishing purchased this fishing trip from our hooked on fishing fundraiser. They really helped us out so we returned the favor by putting them onto one of the best days of fishing you could pretty much have! Here are the pics I was able to scrounge up. Oh yeah, Chef grilled up some peaches with all kinds of goodness on top.














This pic is kind of out of order, but Mae decided to get some sort of infection in her stomach so we had the priviledge of spending some time down at OSF last Sunday.






The guys are out everyday traveling from Secor to Lewiston treating beaches, ponds, and lakes. Here was a cool pic they sent me of killing some sort of nasty algae on a beach.


Back to some more fishing pictures





Days start before 5 am for me and end when I can't physically keep my eyes open any longer. Working on some of the most amazing jobs on the planet and not a free moment to talk about them or post pics online! The next 3 weeks are gonna be about as busy as humanly possible, blog posts are gonna be very few and far between.

In between working about 75 hrs through the week, we host camps for hundreds of kids at our lake on weekends, run the hooked on fishing park for hundreds of kids per week throughout the week, and spend time chasing around 3 young kids every day for at least an hour or two before they go to bed. While I am on the fishing park topic, I am gonna need your help on July 30! Community Day 2011 with a free fishing derby and lots of food. Will post more information in the days to come.

Also on top of that Brook and I are designing a house to build in Cobblestone Estates maybe even as soon as starting this fall! We built a house back in 2005 and sold it in 2009 and now are making plans to do er again. Here is a pic of that house we built from scratch:


Will post tons of pics of the new house during construction for sure! When I say build a house, I mean physically build a house. Brook will be pounding nails, feeding shingles, making dinner, and flinging paint for the next year. After work we will just head over to the lot and work on our house until bedtime! Sure beats watching TV.

My sister and brother-in law are just finishing their house in Cobblestone, my older brother and sister-in law just started their house in Cobblestone, my other sister and brother-in law just purchased some land across the street from Cobblestone, so by golly we pretty much have no choice but to live there. Gonna really be neat.

Gonna build a dock tomorrow, host 200 high school girls Saturday, fish with my kids for Fathers day Sunday and then try to get a million other things accomplished before the fourth of July. Probably the only other post that will be happening in the near future is about the Fishing Park Community Day!