Hooked On Fishing Pizza Party

On Thursday, May 23rd at 5 pm at the Prairie Home Alliance we are having a meeting to brainstorm and discuss our new plans for the hooked on fishing park this year. We would like to thank all the volunteers who helped clean up after the floods and would like to invite all to come and learn about many opportunities to help at the park this summer!!!!


So with the record floods we ended up losing alot more fish than I originally thought. This late in the game we are scrambling to find enough fish for the kids to catch. The state of Illinois still has very useless VHS laws that prohibit us from transporting excess fish in from area lakes that need the fish removed from anyways....

Please email hookedonfishingpark@gmail.com or call 309-219-3560 for more information or to help us with our restocking program for this season....The fish we need for the park for this season we have located in Missouri, but just need to raise some extra funds to purchase them. Any help for the restocking fund is greatly appreciated.

So anyhow come on out to the Prairie Home Alliance on Thursday evening for pizza and to learn more about the park...

Fish Are On FIRE

If you didn't get out fishing this week, make plans to get out fishing as soon as humanly possible. I spent the week building a dock and shocking lakes up in Wilmington and Canton, but on Saturday I took people fishing from 7 am to 9 pm.....

First here are some pics of fish we shocked up this week with the electrofishing boat. One of the properties we were on is 1000 acres with lakes everywhere. Lots of big fish of pretty much every species! Oh yeah, this place is just 2 cornfields over from my place near Canton, IL and it actually is for sale! Let me know if you want to be neighbors and catch these fish!! Check out these fish pictures:










So here are some pics of the cool floating boathouse dock we are building in Fulton County:

Tuesday at 4 pm:


Wednesday at Noon:


Wednesday we headed home about 5 pm:


Also we shocked a nice lake up in Wilmington, IL this week. The bluegills up there were just starting to make their nests...

 

Here is a zipline we put in near Astoria:
 

Then finally Saturday comes along...I took a group of guys from Rock River Arm company fishing Saturday morning. We caught about 15 nice walleye, lots of small bass, lots of really nice bluegill, a couple big stripers, a big trout, and lost a huge walleye and big pike at the boat.






Then after fishing with the Rock River Arms guys, I took the Mamer boys out fishing for the evening. They purchased this fishing trip from a Hooked On Fishing Fundraiser. We had an absolute blast!

Started things off with this nice walleye:


Caught a bunch of huge bluegill:



Caught a monster rainbow trout:


A spawned out smallmouth bass:


Some small catfish, this one was albino:


Our limit of hybrid stripers:


We lost a pike and two big muskies, but overall we caught a ton of fish and had a blast! Hunter will be dreaming of his first pike that got off literally at the boat....Here is a group shot of our harvest:

Big Fish and Big Mushrooms This Week....

Lets go all the way back to Saturday.....About a million things have gone down since then, but lets see what all I can remember. Very vivid memory is of a first class top notch highly recommended to duplicate event that one of my clients put on over in Victoria...

The annual bluegill fishing tournament...events such as these serve so many purposes its hard to describe em all here. First off just plain good fun to have a bunch of family and friends out to fish. Second its just awesome way to help manage the lake by selective harvesting the right fish and by observing the overall health of the fishery. Third the following fish fry is just an awesome way to enjoy eating the fruits of the land...nothing cooler than producing your own food...And the last main point is a little friendly competition- to the winner goes the spoils....

Here is a pic of everyone helping to clean the fish:



I have helped set up and organize 100's of lake management themed fishing tournaments, but rarely do I ever get the opportunity to actually partake in them. (Especially on a Saturday during our busy season). It was a blast and a great opportunity for everyone involved. Chef Todd and I actually won the tournament which was pretty cool. The winning weight was 13.29 lbs for 15 bluegills....not bad at all for a .9lb average on bluegills.....

So anyhow Mothers Day was spent at church in the morning and then wildlife prairie park and yard work for the afternoon...I only live .25 miles from wildlife prairie park and have an annual family pass so any chance me and kids get we head over there to kill time. We absolutely love it!! Eventually we will find the time to do more volunteering over there as well!


Monday I was out the door by 5 am and headed towards Geneseo to investigate a fish kill and teach a client how to treat his lake for watermeal...the fish kill was 99% crappie, we scooped up 100's of them....


Then off to an 11:30 consultation in Alpha, IL. There my client is building a 10 acre lake...not just any 10 acre lake, but perhaps the coolest 10 acre lake on the planet....The entire perimeter of the whole lake will be lined with a concrete seawall.



Yep, several thousand feet of footing, concrete pad and then mega seawall...The shallowest depths in the pond will be 4' deep...This actually isnt ideal for the best ecosystem, but we are figuring out ways to overcome that.... Completion is scheduled for fall 2014, you will definitely be seeing more pics of this project as they progress...

So from Alpha I drive across the state to pick up Mae from School in Peoria and then on to Henry, IL to layout a 150' waterslide and 400' zipline.... we will start building that next week. I cant wait to get rolling on that project, it is gonna be AWESOME!! Then while filling the feeders on that 7 acre lake Mae, Steve, and I are driving on a trail through the woods and stumble upon a really nice mess of morel mushrooms.....


Speaking of mushrooms, many folks are having their best year ever!! I get pics and texts daily of awesome mushrooms being found all over the place....









While Im out driving around like a chicken with my head cut off, the guys are also out working like crazy getting food plots in the ground, building docks, stocking fish, and maintaining ponds...


I met up with them at 4 pm today to start this mega floating boat house dock. For the next 30 days we are pretty much working around the clock...these are just some of the floats that will be holding up this awesome dock:


Oh yeah, not only are the big morel mushrooms popping out like crazy, so are the big fish! These are just some of the pics I have been sent by clients and friends this week:









I have a hunch that this weekend the fish will be absolutely on FIRE!!!! Also mushrooms will still actually be around so If I were you I would hit the woods and the water!!!!

Fishing with Doug Stange and Infisherman TV

Tuesday morning at 7 am I met up with Doug Stange at Otter Creek to film some fishing shows for Infisherman TV to air on the sportsmans channel!! The goal was to start with a couple bass segments, maybe squeeze in a walleye, crappie, muskie, or even hybrid bluegill segments... well well well, things didnt quite go anywhere close to what we hoped...we wasted the whole day chasing after bass that just didnt want to bite....This is what we were after for the show:


The crazy thing is 95 times out of 100 we could have filmed most all of those shows of different species on any given day....For whatever reason we could not get a decent tv show worthy fish to open their mouth on Tuesday... Finally at the very end of the day they were able to squeeze out a trick worm bass segment with 3 largemouth in the 3 lb range, a hybrid striped bass also in the 3 lb range and a 9 inch hybrid bluegill...

To say I was dissapointed is an understatement for sure...Here was my chance to showcase to the world some Central Illinois bass that I have spoiled with a life of luxury and they decide to close their mouths when I needed them the most...

So anyhow Wednesday morning we travelled across Fulton County closer to Canton to fish my next two secret bass lakes...the goal for an Infisherman Segment is to educate anglers by showcasing a particular lure presentation for a specific time of year and species of fish....Its nice to have some nice big fish to prove out the theory/presentation....

Well on Wednesday morning we had the same problem as all day Tuesday...the big females we were after were in lockdown mode...water temps in all 5 lakes we bass fished were all right near 65 degrees and big bass were nowhere to be found...

So by 10 am we decided bass just wasnt going to happen so we headed over to my lake to do a bluegill segment featuring some small crazy looking spoon tipped with 1" berkley gulp...The theme was to use this bait to find the biggest male bluegill acting aggressively during this time of year. Also the versatility of the bait is such that you have a great chance to catch other gamefish species while also bluegill fishing...

Well right off the bat the first fish for this show I caught an awesome 6 lb walleye...Seeing as the segment needs to start with a big male bluegill, we came up with a script while fighting this fish for it to be the third fish of the segment... You see the openings, closings, and middle portions are all pretty much filmed out of order... Here is the opening where Doug welcomes the viewers and sets the stage for this bluegill segment... (it actually was the last fish of the day)



So also since we didnt get a shot of the hookset for the walleye, we just filmed a couple hooksets on the next few fish so they could get something to match up and actually just be the hookset for the walleye....Believe it or not, it is super fun creating a fishing show!!! That segment didnt go perfect, but we wrapped it up in about 2.5 hrs with everything we needed and headed in for lunch.

 After lunch we set out to do a Hybrid Striped Bass segment featuring flukes for the presentation. Also since Hybrid Striped bass typically bite best during lowlight situations we used the flukes for the beginning and end of the segment, but switched to cut bait for the middle segments and even talked about how popular hsb were becoming for stocking into lakes and even ponds!!! That was just awesome getting to talk on National TV about cutting edge lake and pond management!!!

Here is the opening for the Hybrid Striped Bass segment. Its just Doug on the screen for the openings, and then for the rest of the show, I am standing on the front of his boat casting and catching and talking about these fish!! Yes I was nervous, but after awhile that kinda goes away...


Chef Todd came Wednesday night and cooked us a feast. This was fresh asparagus and morel mushrooms in some sort of eggs and cheese....



Chef has pretty much seen every show Doug has ever filmed over the last 30 years and spent quite a few hrs reminiscing about all the memorable ones....Chef also talked to Doug about local guys like Paul Clay who make quality lures that will now be featured in the coming pages of InFisherman Magazine!! If you are a local lure maker, you are a fool to not have Chef promoting your baits...


So the plan was for Todd to take Doug fishing Thursday to the Rock, but the rain kinda put a kabosh to that plan. We were able to film 3 complete segments in 2 full days of fishing which is very good for TV fishing show standards, but really disappointing for my standards. Oh well, we will get them next time! The company who owns InFisherman has moved their headquarters to Peoria, IL so their cameramen are stationed right here in our backyard!!

After we were done filming for the evening, Justin pulls up to the lake and heads out and catches this nice plump smallmouth bass just to prove there are some bass biting...


Also while we are out fishing, my buddy with a 15 acre intensively managed lake in Nebraska texts me this pic of a fish they just caught:


So anyhow, the rest of the week I spent running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to catch up and get everything done for everyone before Memorial Day... The next 30 days are by far the busiest time for us for the year...