Fishing Shows and Fish Stockings

Monday we had quite the little snow and sleet storm pop up while we were filming an ice fishing show with Midwest Outdoors and Bob Gillespie with Custom Jigs and Spins. We perservered though...


We filmed the first episode at Double Cluck Farms and a couple other area lakes. We couldnt get much to bite during the storm, but once the storm passed the last 1.5 hrs of daylight was the ticket. The fish woke up and decided it was time to feast!








Then Tuesday morning we started out another episode in search of big bluegills at my lake. Well we pretty much got skunked. Yep, we couldnt get the fish to bite to save our lives and our feable attempts at snagging and dropping in dynamite didnt work either. Altogether we caught 4 fish, only 2 were good enough for the show.

So about 10 am we headed over to the heart of fulton county to fish "the honey hole"..... Well, we drilled 400 holes all over that lake and we fished with 10 professional guys from 10 am to 5 pm and we caught a grand total of 9 fish....  the good part of the story is that 6 of them were very big and perfect for the show! Here is one of them:


So when this second episode comes out on Midwest Outdoors this fall it will look like an awesome day of fishing and that we caught a bunch of big fish all day long, but really with a total of about 100 man hours fishing we caught a total of just 14 fish...

Now the fishing was tough, but we had a great time. Chef cooked up a feast for lunch on the show with his cute chef apron and we did some fun bits with hot chocolate from a gun toting special guest. Oh yeah and the weather felt like we were down in Florida with the warm temps and bright sun!




So Monday and Tuesday we filmed 2 shows that will air this fall. Then on Wednesday we had another fun fish adventure stocking 2000 brook trout and 3000 rainbow trout thru the ice out at the Giant Goose Ranch.






These trout are the beginning of the quest for the double digit largemouth bass here in the Midwest! Our goal is to not just grow one 10 lb bass, but to become the only Midwest destination with a legitimate shot at catching the elusive double digit fish! The big lake is the perfect storm to pull this off.

The big lake at the Ranch is 121 acres with lots of depths in the 60-80' range. These attributes are hard to come by here in Illinois, and the fisheries mgmt plan is going to be taking pages from the California fisheries. Those fisheries out West are producing monster fish by creating cool and warm water fisheries together.

So the quest has officially begun, don't think that simply stocking a bunch of trout is going to magically turn 4 lb bass into 12 lbers. Semi-annually stocking trout are just one piece to the puzzle. In order to grow a trophy bass we need it to be eating good food from the moment its born all the way until it heads to the taxidermist. Most lakes have good food for one or two sizes of bass and most fisheries mgmt practices are geared towards adult fish, when in reality the most important pieces of the puzzle occur at birth. Very few lakes have perfect habitat for bass of all ages, that my friends is the true key to growing big fish!!