Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Planting Wildlife Orchards (for people too)

This spring we will be planting several wildlife orchards for clients around Central Illinois. I myself have more gill-like tendencies than a green thumb...but the other guys at HB spend most of the year enhancing recreational properties for not just people, but wildlife as well...

Anyhow we will be getting lots of fruit trees shipped in at the beginning of March and if anyone is interested in tagging along on the order we can add on to it no problem over the next week or so....just call or email me nate@hblakemanagement.com for pricing, but most of the trees I am getting in are 5-6' and each cost in the $25 range...

The orchards for the most part break down into 1/4 acre sections or packages....we will be planting 8 apple trees, 4 crabapple trees, 8 pear trees, and 4 persimmon trees per 1/4 acre. The trees will all be of several different varieties of apples and pears...each spaced about 25' apart...

We do this for several reasons, cross pollination being one, diversity for at least partial success, and also to provide ripe fruit basically from July thru December!! Keep in mind the animals dont have to eat all the fruit, you can eat some too...

Anyhow the varieties of apples we will be planting are Honeycrisp, Arkansas Black, Deer Gold, Gala, Honeygold, Empire, Northwest Greening, Autumn Rush, and Enterprise.

The varieties of pears are Ledbetter, Kiefer, Senator Clark, TS Hardy, Gate Pear, Galloway, and Dixie Delight.

Crabapples will be Callaway, Dolgo, Transcendent and Dozier.

The complete 1/4 acre wildlife fruit tree package costs $600. It does require some maintenance, but I can have one of the guys walk you through that completely or they can help you with it or even do it for you if desired...While it does require maintenance, the fruit tree wildlife orchard is one of the most fun longterm projects you can do on your property and it benefits not only just the deer, but the turkeys, humans, and most other forms of wildlife....

So then another optional 1/4 acre permanent food plot we plant next to the fruit tree orchards consists of several species of dogwoods, wild plums, and dwarf chinkapin oaks. 30 of the dogwoods, 30 of the plums and 15 of the dwarf oaks costs about $200 for them and they dont require nearly as much maintenance....

These permanent food plots initially cost more than traditional annual food plots, but actually in the long run are much cheaper! Once established, they provide 30 years or more of wildlife food and add a nice flavor to every property! For some reason I am craving an apple grown from my own piece of land!!

Monday, February 18, 2013

Ice Fishing Whitefish Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin

The cold dry weather has me itching to go ice fishing. This is supposed to be the heart of my ice fishing season here in Central Illinois but the lakes are anything but safe for walking on... so to scratch my itch I headed up North to Sturgeon Bay with my older brother and my dad...

We left Peoria about 1 pm on Friday afternoon and arrived at the Comfort Inn in Sturgeon Bay at 8 pm...after checking in we headed to Woldt's Corner right by the hotel and feasted on the Friday night fish fry....they had a bluegill special which I cant say I have seen at a restaraunt before, but I stuck with the perch...


We then headed to Walmart and got our fishing license and off to bed....The next morning we grabbed a waffle and some eggs in the hotel lobby at 6 am and met up with Brett Erickson and Tom Brown III and also Steve Ryan and his buddy Bob...by 6:15 we were headed to the boat launch to gear up for the day of whitefish fishing!!

Brett brought his 4 wheelers, but we also took the truck out about 3 miles onto the bay....kind of eery, but very cool....had to get a pic of the truck in 80' of water....




It was much colder than the weather forecast had predicted, but we had some good big shelters to fish in...the day started at 2 degrees, and warmed up to about 12....


Whitefish is what we were after, and we fished for them anywhere from 50' to 100' deep!! Just basically used jigging rapalas and bounced them off the bottom imitating gobies....also about 10 inches above the rapala we had a swivel and a single hook with a wax worm on it...about 50% of the fish came on the wax worm!!

It took a couple hours to get the hang of the jigging technique, but once we got the hang of fishing in deep water we started putting some very nice fish onto the ice in a hurry!! Here is Chad's first one:


When I went to check on Bob and Dad and bring them a 10 am pre-lunch sandwich, they already had a pile of fish on the floor:


So that prompted Chad and I to kick it into gear and find a hot spot...we drilled quite a few holes and finally found a zebra mussel colony in 60' of water that had a pile of fish on it...



Brett and Tom were bouncing around all over picking off a few fish at each spot...




Steve was bouncing around alot too, we all stayed withing a couple hundred yards of each other looking for the whitefish highways...you see there was alot of depth variation and there was whitefish in just about every spot, but when you found a highway they were traveling through you would find 100's of them....


Joe caught the first Burbot...they were a very nice bonus...very cool!


Then we feasted on jalepeno deer brats and sirloin burgers for lunch!! The sun came out and there was no wind so actually 12 degrees felt real nice and we had a blast just hanging out on the ice... the rest of the afternoon was alot less serious and alot more casual ice fishing...the limit is 10 whitefish per person and we were fast approaching our 8 man limit....



Not only did we catch alot, but we caught some absolute monster whitefish!! I dont usually post pics of myslelf, cause Im usually the one taking the pics, and I definitely dont like posting pics with such a cheezy smile, but this whitefish was just too big not to showcase....


Here are some group pics from the day.....




We  cleaned all our fish out on the ice and headed in about 5 pm...We headed up to Egg Harbor and feasted at Casey's Smokehouse BBQ....I stunk pretty bad like fish, and Chad was wearing sweat pants and Bob his heavy boots, but we were hungry and smoked BBQ was just a few miles away and way too close to go to the hotel first....


The next day we did it all again, but didnt catch quite as many whitefish, but did get several more burbot....




We cleaned up the fish and were on the road back to Peoria by 3 pm....by 11 pm I was showered and fast asleep in my own bed....I still stink of fish though, I dont smell it, but everyone I was with today asks me if I been fishing recently....haha, kinda funny....

This was our guide Paul Delaney... He runs Late-Eyes SportFishing Guide Service and fishes all of Door County waters year round!!


Let me just say the Paul is first class top notch fishing guide... He not only knows how to fish, but he knows how to teach and have a good time while doing it!! You book a trip with Paul and I guarantee you wont be disappointed and you will learn tons....

Ice fishing Sturgeon Bay is on my mind.....I can't get it out of my head.....I am hooked and definitely going back every year, but might even try to sneak back in March of this year yet! Potentially they will be ice fishing for another 6 weeks up there....

So anyhow everyone has told me how good whitefish are to eat and I just simply had to find out for myslelf.....this morning while scaling 35 whole fish to take to the smoker, Brook cooked me up some blackened whitefish in the skillet for breakfast....That sealed the deal for me, I am going back ASAP...I know I will run out of whitefish meat within 2 weeks and need to go back and load up on some more....Anyone want to go?

Oh yeah, Echo Valley meats in Bartonville is smoking and packaging 35 whole whitefish for me and it only costs about $60....I had to scale and wash them first, but I cant wait to get them back on Friday....I also prepped and vacuum sealed 30 whole whitefish for grilling and filleted another 20 or so for frying....

Saturday, February 9, 2013

More Ice Fishing Pics and Dead Deer

Here are some pics from an ice fishing outing from a 1/3 acre pond we are helping Roger intensively manage over near Goodfield. Small ponds across Central Illinois are producing some of the biggest fish in the state these days.....




Chef Todd, Tom Brown III, and Brett E hit a good pile of fish at the Cemetary Lake just a couple days ago...The ice isnt safe anymore though....



Tom Brown III has set up shop over near Washburn and is gonna be teaching his world famous survival and primitive wilderness classes this summer- his website isnt updated yet with new info, but should be soon: http://primitiveac.com/ I'm definitely gonna be poking around at some of the classes this summer and hopefully y'all will be too!!

While filming with InFisherman TV a couple weeks ago, local artist Doug Sherman came out and took a bunch of pics:











So anyhow, I had several more outdoor shows scheduled to come and film ice fishing this season and had to cancel em all cause we only had safe ice for about 5 days......I have always been a very shy, unsocial, terrible in front of a camera or a crowd person my whole life, but over the last couple years have been pushing myself to come out of my shell and now am getting to the point where I look forward to public speaking and even can think straight somewhat with a camera in my face!

So Doug S brought all those pics by my office this week and I asked him to also bring some sample of his wildlife artwork....I was absolutely blown away with the quality of his paintings...a 10 minute meeting turned into the whole afternoon talking about art.... Here are some pics of Doug's artwork, he paints pictures for companies and they turn his paintings into T-Shirts and other cool stuff...In fact many of you guys have probably worn a tshirt with a whitetail or other animal he has painted originally.....




Im telling you I was never more impressed with anything than I was with the detail on the paintings that he brought in....I just took these pics with my phone to show my brothers but just had to share em....






So I am not really that into ART and paintings and stuff, but for the last week can't get those paintings out of my mind and can't stop thinking about having some hanging on my walls!! Especially I want a painting of a fish with my property in the background!

So this week I spent a couple days up in the Dells at an indoor mega waterpark with Brook's family...We had a blast:



We got back about midnight last night and then spent the day looking for sheds at our hunting property....we didnt find any sheds, but we did find 13 dead deer and 2 of them were very large bucks:



So anyhow, It's mid-february already and even though this winter has flown by, I am now ready for SPRING!!! Since the ice isnt safe down here, I am headed up to Sturgeon Bay this weekend to ice fish for whitefish, brown trout, and northern pike....If all goes well on this trip, I hope to plan a trip up north like this with a bunch of guys every year!! I have talked to lots of people about whitefish fishing up north and everyone who has gone has loved it!