Sunday, June 2, 2013

Waterslides, Zip Lines and Fun Pond Stuff

The last two weeks we have been working on alot of very fun pond activities for clients from Chicago to Henry to Williamsport, Indiana and many other cities in between:

Karen up in Marengo, IL has alot of dogs.... So we built this dog jumping dock for. Her dogs will run full speed down this 8' wide and 35' long dock and leap into her pond!


Mindy in Lacon got this fun zip line for her young kids to enjoy at the pond. Her pond doesnt have an overflow (yet) and never has needed it until now. We dropped the level back down to normal and also took care of the watermeal growing on the surface as well so her little swimming hole is ready to rock n roll for the summer!!


We started this 154' long waterslide out in Henry, IL for Steve and his family. It is gonna be fast, stay tuned for more pics of this one...Oh yeah the Oak trees at this property are nothing short of amazing!






Last Friday Chef Todd and I went up to Plainfield and electrofished a large 100 acre plus subdivision lake. We got some nice fish, but overall was left scratching my head out how bad the overall fishery actually was.



These guys right here are most definitely part of the problem- JUMBO gizzard shad galore:


This lake has huge potential, but the large gizzard shad and common carp make up way too much of the overall biomass of the lake. I am currently working on a plan to convert that biomass into something much more desirable. There pretty much is no hope for the fishery to rebound in such a large lake without reducing those populations of fish.

I spent last Tuesday in Williamsport, Indiana electrofishing a lake with Bob Lusk the editor of Pond Boss Magazine and Blaine Hession the owner of Pond Life Consulting! Awesome to spend time with those two guys!! The 20 acre lake was full of thousands of white crappies...


The day before Memorial Day weekend, it didnt rain and I taught my 5 year old Noah how to drive a mower and mow the whole lawn!!! Brook couldnt watch, but after 30 minutes of curving and swerving he was good to go!!! He was grinning ear to ear for the opportunity! My neighbors already think I am crazy for all the things I teach or allow my kids to do, but the boy is hungry and eager to learn- He will be 1000 times more capable than his peers throughout all stages of life.



Saw this huge snake trying to take down a bluegill one early morning. Its a bad pic, but it was early in the morning....
Photo

Memorial Day weekend it obviously rained alot, but we still got some food plots planted and a bunch of lake work done at our own places... My youngest Drake was up and at em at 5:30 am with us prepping some plots and planting others. This boy is in heaven when he is on a machine:



Oh yeah we caught some fish Memorial Day weekend as well... We had some guests Sunday afternoon. Chef Todd brought the Lampe boys out for some fishing between the rain showers...



This smallmouth decided to eat some chicken liver along with the stripers:




We have been finishing up our yellow perch stockings and just have channel catfish and stripers and some brown trout to stock next week and then some BIG bluegill the following week and stockings will be done till fall... If you want some stripers or any species of fish, I more than likely can scrounge em up over these last two weeks of fish stockings.

Speaking of fish stockings, Presleys Outdoors is having a fish sale this summer, taking orders for fall! You can walk into Presleys and buy Muskie, Pike, Walleye, Stripers, Trout, Perch, Smallmouth, Bluegill, etc etc etc, pretty much any fish you can think of! Typically at a fish sale you can just buy small bluegills, catfish, and bass....This is a fish sale! If you are a store or a county SWCD who would also like to add some additional species to your fish sale, call me up!

Friday night I went to a wedding....Im pretty much not a social being and avoid these and similar type of events like a plague. However this event I pretty much knew all along I would be attending, so I put on some clean clothes and got er done.  (I wasnt allowed to eat in my clean unstained clothes before the wedding because Brook knew I would stain them instantly... I made it half the evening before dropping some sort of sauce onto my right shoulder)....


So anyhow its been a very fun last couple weeks. Last night I fell asleep in my chair at about 6:30 pm with 3 kids sitting on my lap watching Wreck It Ralph. About an hour or two or three later I somehow was lying on the livingroom floor with a stiff back...The house was dark and quiet and after regaining my senses a bit I pretty much crawled into bed.

Now that Im all rested up, lets hope for the sun to start shining this week!!!

3 comments:

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  2. That looks like some good family fun there. My family and I just got back from West Virginia where we were visiting extend family. We all went on these zip line tours and they were great. It was our first time, but it will not e our last, that's for sure. I really recommend doing something like this if you are in the area.

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