Aquarium Fish, Deer Videos, and Consulting

Its a million degrees outside, July has been extremely unusually HOT. I got home early from work this evening and was feeling pretty terrible from working out in the heat. Mae is having a slumber party tonight so I needed to get home early anyhow. Girls are everywhere and they pretty much never stop talking for even a moment. Anyhow we tore out an old dock today out near Congreville. Putting in a brand new dock and rope swing next week to take its place.

Yesterday we were up at 2:30 am and headed on a long one day road trip. We started out electrofishing and consulting with an Oral Surgeon near Springfield, Missouri. We gave him an intensive management plan for turning his worn out 3 acre pond with a few small fish into a pond full of life and mucho 3-5 lb bass! Also came up with a plan for converting his unused 1 acre pond into a world class catfishin hole. Then toured his 500 acres of thick cedar trees and helped him devise a plan for growing bigger and holding more whitetails.

The closest agriculture field is 20 miles from his property. Can you believe that? Imagine having the only mega food source through 20 miles of cedars and nasty wilderness!!! Lots of clover and beans and going into the new clearings.....

Once we left the docs place we headed over to a meeting in Springfield with the directors of the Bass Pro Aquariums. We toured the quarantine and behind the scenes facilities and came up with a list of fish species and sizes to stock the new East Peoria store aquariums! Yep, thats right, your gonna be looking at our TROPHY fish inside the mega aquarium!!! We are super excited.

Then back through a couple hours to St. Louis, quick stop at a Jack In the Box for a really big chicken sandwich and in bed at home by 11:30 pm. 750 miles round trip, long day. That pretty much sums up how life has been this summer. On the go from well before the sun comes up and in bed just short of midnight. Working on some amazing projects right now. The last couple weeks we have been figuring out a way to make a monster 80 acre lake for a client, building docks, killing lots of vegetation, and consulting all over the midwest. Not to mention swimming with Mae, Noah, and Drake every moment possible! Not enough time in the day.

Here are some pics of a new road and boat ramp we put in for a client. Next month we will be building an awesome boat dock next to this new boat ramp with a big boat slip for a 24 foot pontoon. I actually bought an old used but sturdy pontoon boat from Hennepin Marine and am taking it to AAD custom welding tomorrow to get completely stripped down and customized. It will be the ultimate fishing machine! We are putting 10 swivel fishing seats around the perimeter and custom building a center livewell that will also have a bench seat top with all kinds of bait and tackle storage. Definitely will be posting pics of this boat once completed! Here is a pic of the new road going in:

Haven't been able to write nearly as much as I like to and also almost missed the deadline for my article for Heartland Outdoors Magazine for August. The article is about Largemouth Bass Relative Weights and it had potential to be a great article, but I only had 25 minutes to write it, in fact didn't even get a chance reread it after finishing it. If you dont get a subscription to the mag, your missing out! (not missing anything special for August, but next month I am going to make up for this one!)

Had some friends from Indiana stay out at the lake last weekend. They caught tons of fish and supposedly have some awesome pictures, but I have yet to receive any of them. Rumor has it they caught a 9 lb hybrid striped bass and lots of big bluegill. I did pop in one evening and snapped this pic of a smallmouth bass with my phone:

Speaking of Striped Bass, Justin and I are headed out this weekend to Cape Cod near Boston to do some commercial Striped Bass fishing and harpoon some Tunas. We fly out Sunday and fly home Wednesday! Look for many pictures and videos hopefully next week!!! That is going to be quite an experience.

Just got this video from the QDMA field day at Otter Creek. It was made by the boys from Dominantpredator.org. I expect great things from those guys this fall! Here is the field day tour video:

Here is a video they made from watching some bucks in early July:

I will be posting their semi-live hunting videos weekly, once hunting season starts. These guys are very interesting, educational, and entertaining. They are very passionate about whitetail deer hunting; but much more importantly they are passionate about glorifying and praising God through His Creation. God has indeed given those guys an amazing talent to share, I think you will enjoy their videos this season.

The last tidbit of news is that on July 30 we are having a fishing derby at the hooked on fishing park in East Peoria. The event is free and open to all supervised children under the age of 16. I could still use about a dozen more volunteers to help make the day run smooth. Please email me at hookedonfishingpark@gmail.com to help out. The fishing park program is going awesome this summer. This year we have already taught more than 500 kids how to fish free of charge! The fish in the park have definitely been given a workout so far. After the derby I am going to need to replace lots of fish and could use some help financially with that if anybody or business wants to step up and get involved. We raised enough money at our winter fundraising dinner to pay for most expenses to operate the park for the whole summer, but special things like extra fish arent in the current budget.