Nate's Fishing Blog

Tuna Fishing Venice, LA!

2012-01-29T16:01:00.005-06:00

This upcoming weekend we are heading down to New Orleans for a family cruise on the Carnival Elation with all 25 of my brothers, sisters, kids, and parents. Well, we finally talked the ladies into letting us head down a day or two early and go out fishing for Wahoo, Tuna, Sharks, and Amberjack! That means we are headed South Friday morning as opposed to Sunday morning!!!!!!

I looked at every fishing website in Venice and talked to pretty much every captain who answered his phone getting the scoop on exactly what the fishing scene is like down in Venice this time of year! Out of about 20 captains I narrowed my choice down to what I thought were the best 4 and then I hounded them for 3 straight days before finally getting an opening for Sunday morning! I talked about their boats, their experiences, their preferred method of fishing, read all their blogs, websites, photo galleries, facebooks, outdoor forums, articles, videos, tv shows, etc, etc. Basically when it comes to researching a fishing trip I dont sleep until I have all of my questions answered. I now know more about the guides down in Venice than all the guides down in Venice know about themselves and their peers....

So anyhow, this upcoming weekend the moon phase is going to have the Wahoos and Tunas feeding a bit more than normal and all the good captains were booked up. Thats where the whole 3 days of pestering comes into play and finally we were able to work out a deal with the best guides that shuffled some things around and we are headed out on this 36 foot yellowfin with Captain Trey! I dont know if you know much about yellowfin boats, but they cost about twice as much as my new house going up... Here is the boat we are fishing on:

If your looking for more information about offshore fishing in Venice, these are the guys I would recommend talking to first! Deepsouthcharters.com and Voodoofishingcharters.com. We booked Trey through Captain Josh Howard with deep south. Josh has an awesome fishing blog via his website where you can research in depth the archives of what he fishes for during the time of year you would be able to head down to Venice!! Captain Trey texted me this pic of a big yellowfin they caught last week:

Captain Josh caught these 9 yellowfin a couple weeks ago:

Here is a pic of a wahoo we hope to run into first thing in the morning:

So we fish Sunday morning lord willing and then I am going to UPS ground the fish meat back home Monday morning in New Orleans before getting on the cruise ship. When I am somewhere not able to take meat home, I use my UPS account to save about 30% off retail shipping rate and get insulated boxes that usually hold around 40 lbs of meat and some dry ice. Hoping to send about 10 or more of those boxes home with fresh Wahoo, Amberjack, Tuna, and maybe mako shark, grouper, etc!!!!

So I definitely am going to be posting pics after the trip either Sunday night from the hotel or Monday night from the cruise ship! Also we will be filming the trip, but that video will take a couple months to turn around.

Anyhow, the forecast wasnt great for this Saturday here at home, so I took Friday off work and set the trusses on my house then instead of Saturday. We got em all up on Friday afternoon and then Brook and I headed downtown Peoria at 6 pm to volunteer on a work project at the renovation of the Family Core Foster Care center. Got home about 10 pm and spent the rest of the night researching Venice fishing and then back out to the house at 6 am Saturday morning. The house is starting to take shape:

By saturday night I was pretty tired and I fell asleep a couple times in church this morning. Getting home from Church I conked out for a couple hours and now am ready to rock and roll for this upcoming week! Gonna be one of the more hectic weeks, since I have to get friday and saturdays work done in mon-thurs now due to the last minute fishing trip. If this week wasnt jam packed though, I would go crazy waiting in anticipation of the vacation. Instead its gonna fly by.

Actual Ice Fishing Update w/ Pics

2012-01-25T20:35:00.008-06:00

On Saturday I was putting up walls at my house all day, but my dad and Steve Ryan and his buddy Doug were out at my lake ice fishing most of the day!! I knew with the warmer weather in the forecast all of this upcoming week that the safe ice was only gonna be around till Sunday, so I actually skipped church Sunday morning and went out ice fishing! That perhaps could be my only ice fishing trip of the entire winter????

Here are some pics from the weekend ice fishing:

Reports around the area said fishing was generally good on Saturday, but very inconsistent on Sunday.

The ice is not safe any longer, so dont even think about ice fishing this upcoming weekend. Speaking of this upcoming weekend, I will have a crane at my house on Saturday setting trusses. Anyone out there with nothing to do come on over and get some fresh air. Last weekend my brother in law's parents Barb and Tony came out and helped us set walls all day long. They were invaluable! I can't thank em enough for helping out!! (Their new 4 acre pond over by wildlife prairie park is gonna be extra awesome, I can tell you that for sure!).

Here are some pics from Saturday:

We were able to get all of the walls up and straightened on Saturday! It was a looong but very productive day! We figured out a way to set the exterior walls with the skid steer so that helped tremendously!! Justin has been going to town on the new skid steer. It is a 90 HP beast! This winter he has been pushing snow, planting trees, grading lots, and he has a couple big timber clearing and trail clearing jobs for hidey hole food plots with the new machine. Already have over 200 hrs in just a couple months which is awesome!

This week I have been finishing the remodel of a cabin at Oak Run and the rest of the week I will actually be setting trusses at a big new house we are also building at Oak Run. We custom design and build the coolest lake houses and cabins on the planet!

Just 9 more days and we are heading to New Orleans for a cruise to Cozumel! I should have been a travel agent because planning action packed trips on a dime is my forte. I found a 5 day cruise from New Orleans for $209 per person and with taxes, etc. it came to $247 each. My parents and all of my brothers and sisters and all of their kids (25 of us in all) decided to head down and cruise to Mexico! It is about a 12 hr drive to New Orleans and we are staying just a couple miles from the port. All food is included and let me just say that the Herman family will eat their moneys worth in 5 days on that ship.....

I found every fishing opportunity from New Orleans to Venice to Cozumel to Progresso and every patch of water in between, but the women said absolutely no fishing on this vacation....Is that possible to be that close to the Ocean and not go fishing??? Seriously, the full moon is gonna have the Wahoo's and Yellowfin Tuna feeding like crazy off the oil rigs the day before the cruise leaves! Amberjacks which are my favorite are piled up near Venice in February.... Spearfishing in Cozumel looks sweet, and the only Captain in Progresso who speaks english is available to go to the big shipwreck bottom fishing the day we are in that port. Then on the way back some backwater redfish fishing near New Orleans would have topped it off on the way home......I just dont know how I can be so close but with no cigar......

Otter Creek Ice Fishing Update

2012-01-19T06:05:00.003-06:00

Well, as you all already know, the ice just isnt safe yet.
I am going to have to postpone/cancel the big Ice Fishing Derby/Workshop scheduled for Otter Creek on Saturday the 21st. Also if the 10 day weather forecast is accurate we definitely wont be ice fishing by the 28th either and who knows what exactly will become of this ice fishing season altogether.

With the event being canceled we definitely will refund or credit everyone who signed up. I wont be in the office the rest of this week, but will get that done early next week. This week me and the guys are working on a very cool lake house renovation out at Oak Run. We have to get er done by May, pretty much tearing out most of the inside and putting in lots of very large wood beams, gonna be incredible.

Speaking of construction, this Saturday instead of fishing at Otter Creek I will be putting up walls at my house in Cobblestone Estates over near wildlife prairie park. Since there is nothing else going on outside, you might as well come on over and hang out for a bit to get some fresh air and get some exercise.........

I have heard of two people that made it out onto the ice last weekend. One group near Washburn caught a bunch of rainbow trout from a 1/2 acre pond and the other group near Victoria had one of their members fall through the ice and my cousin on the rescue dive team was called out Sunday to try and find his body...

Hooked On Fishing Park Update 2012

2012-01-08T18:02:00.008-06:00

Lots of stuff happening at the fishing park right now! Many volunteers have spent the winter building/remodeling a new volunteer clubhouse, putting in bathrooms, and even Presley's Outdoors is building a new Presley's South Side Wormranch II tackle storage shed down at the park!

2012 is shaping up nicely to be the best year yet for kids and seniors down at the park! We could still use lots of help for the upcoming season! We still need some good used furniture for the volunteer building and also some good volunteers to hang out in that new building between helping kids how to fish!

Also we need volunteers of all shapes and sizes to help finish up construction of that building along with volunteers for the upcoming season for all kinds of routine maintenance at the park.

Here is some updated print information for the new year. Hope you all can help us with this mission in some way shape or form!

Ultimate Ice Fishing Derby/Workshop!

2012-01-01T07:25:00.005-06:00

Otter Creek Preserve Ice Fishing Day 2012!
"Illinois Best Multi-Species Fishing Lakes!"
Ice Fishing Workshop and Derby
January 21, 9 am - 5 pm
Must Pre-register by Jan 16th, limited to 200 guests.
Click Here to Register.

Finally, here are the details for an amazing opportunity to ice fish at world famous Otter Creek Preserve! Otter Creek is a private 682 world class hunting and fishing property and is perhaps the best fishing in all of Illinois.

Here is a short, cheesy, but fun video Chef Todd and I put together about the event:

So you must pre-register and then on the day of the 21st we will start signing in at 8 am at the Main Lodge. Then at 9 am we will have a short introduction. By 9:30 am we will head out to the lakes and start fishing! At 10 am we have hands on demonstrations at each lake that you can attend if desired. Noon is a gourmet lunch prepared by Chef Todd and his crew. (definitely a highlight). Then one more optional workshop about using electronics for those who want to learn and back to fishing where we will have guides and prostaffers to help anyone and everyone. About 5 pm we will have the final weigh-in for all the crappies and will award the prizes!

8 am- Registration
9 am- Introduction and Orientation at Main Lodge
10 am- Walleye and Muskie Techniques on Prestigious Canadian Lake
10 am- Introduction to Ice Fishing on World Famous VIP Lake
10 am- Catchin Suspended Crappies over the Flooded Timber at Big Lake
Noon- Lunch at Main Lodge
1 pm- Ice Fishing Electronics 101- Big Lake
1 pm- Open Fishing World Famous VIP Lake (Guides on Staff if Desired)
1 pm- Open Fishing Prestigious Canadian Lake (Guides on Staff if Desired)
1 pm- Open Fishing Big Lake (Guides on Staff if Desired)
5 pm- Big Crappie Weigh In, Shoot the Breeze in Main Lodge.

Here are more details:

Main Lodge Overlooking the Big lake is heated and comfortably seats 200. Chef Todd Kent and his staff have a world class lunch and snacks prepared! All Food, Sodas, Hot Chocolate, Coffee and even Bait is provided and will be available all day long in the Lodge. Bring your own ice fishing gear. Rods and Reels and Vexilars are not provided, but Contact Nate in advance if you need anything. We will have plenty of Augers and Jigs and Bait on hand for the event!

$110 per adult
$50 per child less than 16 yrs
Group rates apply for parties greater than 8, high school fishing teams, fishing clubs, bunch of friends coming together, etc. contact Nate for details. Any topic for small group workshops can be accommodated if desired!

From the basic intro for first time ice fisherman and fisherwomen to in depth technology and technique for experienced anglers, this Otter Creek ice fishing workshop has something for everyone! Professional guides and prostaffers from across the midwest will be on staff at each lake to make sure your ice fishing experience is first class and educational! No better
opportunity to get started ice fishing or to come and enjoy fishing some world class lakes.

Otter Creek Preserve is a private property created with Herman Brothers Lake and Land Management to be the best recreational fishing in the entire state of Illinois! The VIP lake boasts lots of large 1 lb+ bluegills, the Canadian Lake features schools of large walleye, muskie, and smallmouth bass, and the Big Lake is a monster crappie factory that also showcases 13 other species of trophy fish!

While out on all three of the lakes, we will be keeping all crappie caught as part of our management plan for 2012. You can take them home for dinner or put them in designated fish baskets for others. Right now we have a huge surplus of 10-12 inch crappies and we need help thinning them down.

At the crappie weigh in at the end of the day, The person with the most crappie caught wins $200 gift certificate to Presleys Outdoors! The person with the biggest crappie of the day wins $200 gift certificate to Bass Pro Shops and the person with the smallest crappie of the day wins an all inclusive guided ice fishing trip for 2 with Nate Herman and Chef Todd!

These fishing lakes are intensively managed and fish quotas for certain sizes and species are inventoried and tracked annually. There will be additional fish species and sizes to be harvested, but they wont be determined until the day of the event.

Many hunting and fishing shows featured on the outdoor channels have been filmed at Otter Creek, and now here is your chance to come and fish these same private waters with some of the best ice fisherman in the industry. An awesome opportunity like this does not come along very often!

Hope to see you all out at Otter on Saturday, January 21st! Food, Fun, Fishing, and Fellowship. Get the gang together and come on out. I am excited for this, if your an ice fisherman you better be there. If you've never ice fished before or just learning, come on out and I will teach you a few tricks of the trade!

Click Here: Otter Registration to Register Online or for more information/pictures.

Visit hblakemanagement.com for more details.

Not Enough Time in The Day.......

2011-12-29T19:26:00.006-06:00

.....Bring out the lights! As usual I have bitten off a bit more than I can chew and I run out of daylight pretty much daily. A little honda generator and some sets of jobsite lights have remedied that problem! I actually got a head mounted flash light for Christmas.

Got the underground plumbing in on Wednesday evening and am getting ready to set the floor joists maybe even this weekend if I can get caught up on everything else. (Theres no hope of getting caught up, but such is life).

Every spare moment has been working on my house. During the days I have been to really cool places like Brownstown, St. Elmo, and Tolono. This week was extra special because on Tuesday morning down in Southern Illinois before a new lake consultation I was fed the best breakfast on the planet by Connie from Brownstown!

Yep, the highlight this week isn't fishing (there isnt a whole lot of that going on...) Gourmet French Toast, Homemade Biscuits and Gravy, Ham and Potato Casserole, and Cinnamon Rolls so good I keep dreaming about them several times per day.

Anyhow after I get done writing this blog post I will be putting together a lake stocking plan for Jim over near Burlington, Iowa. He has a brand new 6 acre lake that he wants to grow trophy largemouth, smallmouth, and bluegill. He doesnt want to wait so he is getting a heavy dose of shiners and fatheads and superior genetic bluegill first thing this spring, and then wants to go the route of stocking feed trained largemouth and feed trained smallmouth bass in advanced sizes just a couple months later. 50 LMB and 50 SMB per acre which is a bit more than what I normally stock for a trophy bass pond, but since all the bass will be feed trained we can support quite a few more than typical. He is gonna have a very fun fishing pond and a full fledge feeding program!

Ryan down in Southern Illinois has a brand new 5 acre pond that I will be posting pictures of next week. The habitat he has created on the bottom is unbelievable, stay tuned for those pics. Anyhow he also wants a trophy largemouth and smallmouth pond, but is going at it from a different approach. He is going to stock less fatheads and shiners initially and give them more time to populate on their own. Than we will stock fingerling not feed trained LMB and SMB. Ryan is still going to feed the bluegills which in turn will produce extra forage for the bass to eat. His feeding program will be way less intense, but he is going to have an unbelievable awesome fishing pond.

Every lake stocking plan I do is completely customized to the owner and their exact situation. I have been setting up lots of crappie ponds lately which is super fun!

Anyhow, there will be a wedding at this little pond in June for a clients daughter and I need to build a big removable dock and figure out how to do some awesome floating candles for the pond for the wedding/photos.

Also we are tinkering with the idea of fishing gear/fishing for them for some of the wedding photos as well. Here are some photos from my sisters wedding where I got the idea for them from. (these are printed photos that I snapped a pic of with a cell phone so the quality isnt too great, but you get the concept).

The thing I love about my job is the diversity and being able to be very creative. When I started the pond management company full time back in '07 I could only visualize killing algae and lake weeds and stocking some fish.

So right now I got quite a few different things on my mind, the bulk of which never makes the pages of the blog. First off main thing right now is those cinnamon rolls, and well none of the other stuff really matters...I'll get er all done. It was a shame how there was quite a bit of the icing left on the bottom of the cinnamon roll platter. I sneaked a couple scoops of it off when no one was looking, but really just wanted to pick up and lick the plate off clean. Brook's been trying to teach me table manners, but all bets are off when some really good icing could potentially go to waste....

I actually made some homemade egg nog on Christmas Eve. I read a few recipes online and then kind of took the best attributes from them all and created the best egg nog on the planet! I cant wait for New Years to make another batch.... I made a gallon and a half and it all got gobbled up pretty quickly. I never realized how many eggs were in egg nog, I am gonna have a whole shopping cart full of eggs this weekend!!

Drake got a stuffed fish for Christmas, among a million other things from grandparents, cousins, etc. Anyhow the fish is his favorite, booyah! Thats my boy. Brook got a pair of muck boots and some flannel lined jeans (for working on the house).

Hey, if we ever get ice, make sure to save the date of Saturday, January 21st. I will hopefully be posting the details soon, but make sure to SAVE that DATE! You dont want to miss this event, gonna be so much fun with super good food.

Jim is gonna have to wait till next year for his fish stocking plan, cause I got real tired finishing this blog post and my whole body is sore and getting stiffer by the moment from all the digging and grading of my basement floor. Only two days left of 2011! Happy New Year!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2011-12-23T16:40:00.003-06:00

Fishing Blog is Back!

2011-12-20T21:20:00.009-06:00

Gonna try to catch up on the pictures from the last month. Got quite a few deer pics, fish pics, food pics and such.

First off I was pretty excited to find my pic on the cover of Fishing Facts January issue! I didnt have a clue until today. Be sure to pick up a copy at your local sporting good retailer!!

That pic was actually taken at Otter Creek Preserve last year while filming with InFisherman TV for the Ice Fishing Guide Series airing this season. Fishing Facts has been teaching people how to fish since probably before I was even born!

Speaking of Otter Creek, right now Chef Todd and I are putting together an ice fishing event of epic proportions on Saturday, January 21st at Otter Creek. Mark your calendars and save the date! More details about this event to come very soon, stay tuned. We actually filmed a commercial for the event this afternoon so definitely stay tuned for this one! Lots of fun!!

Chef Todd cooked a company Christmas Dinner for Lone Wolf Concrete. He had a special 10 lb lobster flown in and then he bacon wrapped the cubed lobster chunks, cooked em and then put the lobster bites back into the prepared shell and used it as a serving dish....Here is the before:

So here is a new way we found to cook loin meat and all kinds of stuff for that matter. Edwin introduced Jared who introduced me and now I am hooked! It is a Himalayan or Siberian or some sort of amazing miracle salt stone. Just heat up this stone made of salt in the oven or on the grill and then place it on the counter and put your meat on the stone. Less than a minute on the stone and your ready to eat fully seasoned meat. This thing is my new favorite contraption of all time! (I dont even own one yet, but am hoping to get one of my own for Christmas, hint hint, wink wink!)

Thursday was my 9th wedding anniversary. Nine years! Yep we got married very young, not too long after graduating from high school and still a teenager. I actually had no plans of getting married and most people had me pegged as lifelong mountain man, but when Brook came along it was game over for me...

So anyhow to celebrate our anniversary we got to spend some quality time together shoveling mud off of our footings and footing tiles until well after dark. We already had a baby sitter lined up for the evening... The rain the day before caused quite a bit of mud to cave in the sides of our basement and this time of year we can't afford any setbacks when trying to get the rest of the foundation in place so there we were scooping mud under the lights of my F250 which we also managed to get stuck and had fun getting out. Picture perfect anniversary!

We got er done and got the footing tiles in and covered with pea gravel and now are hoping to pour basement walls at the end of this week! As bummed as I am about not having ice for fishing, I am pretty thankful for the mild weather for building this house. Here are some pics of the boys watching the basement get dug:

Another story about Brook is that her birthday was last week as well. She got a new tool belt, tape measure, hammer, spead square, utility knife, push broom, and garbage can. The kids thought it was the best gifts ever and helped me wrap em each individually! She was definitely surprised!! Can't wait to see what Santa brings her for Christmas this year....

Here are some long overdue deer hunting pics. I only made it out for one morning deer hunt this year and actually just carried a video camera. Once my kids are old enough to deer hunt (....next year....) I will be able to get back out into the woods!!!

These ladies are my nieces holding up the deer their daddy shot!

Greg Grimes shot this knarly buck out at Otter Creek:

Client from western Illinois emailed this pic of a snake from her pond eating a catfish.

Buddy Tyler shot this monster Fulton County 9 pointer earlier in the season!!!!

Ella and her younger sister (sorry Rachel and Drew, cant think of her name right now and Brook is already sleeping) holding up a 10 pointer that Jay shot.

My mom holding up a Fulton County buck. She wont admit it, but she was pretty excited to be on that hunt!

My friend Neil's son shot this beast earlier this season as well!

Good friend Steve Ryan has been catching some awesome fish this fall. About every weekend I get amazing pics from Minnesota, or Michigan, or Thailand, or somewhere crazy awesome to fish. He will be at Otter on the 21st snapping photos, but in the mean time here are a few recent pics from him this fall:

I still have a ton of Colorado trout fishing pics to post, but again will have to wait for another chance. I got to get to sleep. I just might have a few too many things happening all at once to function normally. Hey, any chance you get to email over some good hunting, fishing, trail cam or outdoor photos please do! Checking out cool photos is a nice break!!

Nate's Construction Blog

2011-12-11T07:09:00.002-06:00

Unless we get some ice soon, the name of the blog will probably have to be changed to Nate's Construction Blog, as opposed to Nate's Fishing Blog.

On Monday, I am digging the basement to my house and man am I ever excited to build a house on nights and weekends during the dead of winter! I am excited, but its gonna be a pretty busy winter, even without building a house, but for anyone who knows me, I pretty much always have a few too many irons in the fire all at once. Business as usual I guess....

Keeping with the construction theme, the last few weeks I have been working on a poolhouse addition for a client in Morton. On top of that been working nights and Saturdays on building my brothers house near Wildlife Prairie Park (just two blocks away from where I will be building).

Also this week on Thursday I traveled to Tolono, IL to help an association come come up with a renovation plan for their subdivision retention pond. Tuesday I was in Havana going over some projects with the landguys.net I am very excited and will announce some of that coming up in the next week or so! Last week I was near Camden, IL consulting with a guy who just picked up a new 300 acre farm for deer hunting and fishing! Very neat project!

Every other spare moment has been spent getting house plans, permits, writing articles for several outdoor magazines this month and playing with the kids. I have to say that I am only home one morning per week when they wake up and my 30 second long Sunday morning hug from Drake when I get him out of his crib has to be the highlight of my week. Changing his soaking wet diaper 1 minute later definitely isnt a highlight, but hey I guess it just comes with the territory.

The weather forecast doesnt look to good for ice fishing anytime soon, but it actually looks great for getting my basement dug and foundation put in. I don't know what type of weather to pray for this winter? Most of you are probably thinking duh, no brainer- cold weather for ice fishing, but the thought does cross my mind, maybe a 60 degree winter wouldnt be so bad just for this one ice fishing season.......

Black Friday Fishing Today!!!

2011-11-25T18:53:00.006-06:00

I still have more Colorado trout fishing pics and recent deer hunting stories to post, just been busy finishing up some projects for the year and helping my brother build his house every spare moment, plus getting ready to dig the basement to my own house to build in about a week, lets hope for some good weather eh? I pretty much have a million things happening at all times, this winter definitely is going to stretch me a bit further than usual.....the last house I built took me 8 months of nights and weekends, but it sure wasnt during the dead of winter..... but anyhow here is a fish story from today.....First a quick pic of a cool Colorado trout:

I was standing 8 feet in the air on a ladder this morning nailing concrete siding onto my brother Chad's house when my mom and dad pull up to check on progress and drop off some supplies. They were headed out to the lake to finish winterizing a few things...We got to talking and dad said he sure would like to sneak out on the water this afternoon and try to catch a few fish before she freezes up solid.

Well it took him alot of persuading, begging, pleading, and convincing but finally after he literally dragged me down the ladder by my ear and carried me into the truck I decided to head out for one last fishing hurrah. Honest Chad, he really needed me today and forced me to go.

Anyhow we grabbed some minnows at Kersch in Farmington and were on the water in no time. It was windy, but warm enough to endure the stiff breeze. We found some crappie and bass hanging in the tree tops in about 14 feet of water. We had to anchor to fish them effectively. Just dropping jigs and minnows down onto them.

Then we went to the striper hole and sure enough they were still there, only hanging a bit deeper than where they hang in the summer. About 20 feet down and we hooked up with 7 stripers using half nightcrawlers slow bounced on the bottom. Man are they fun to catch!!!

We ran out of trolling motor battery about 50 yards from shore and ended blowing down a few hundred yards farther than the boat dock....

To be honest I really dont fish too much in November, but I always know I am missing out on some incredible fishing. I missed a couple very large fish today trolling out to my fishing spot today and last November I only fished like twice and caught these following BIG fish:

I might just have to start fishing more late fall, it just seems the changing of the seasons and cold weather turns our minds toward hunting and such. Anyhow, next year you can bet I will be doing quite a bit more November fishing. Today we only fished about 2 hours and last year probably only 6-8 hours for a grand total of less than 10 hours of November fishing over a 2 year span. Next year I am going to try and fish for 40 hours in November and see what I can get figured out and catch, gonna be interesting........

Elk Hunt Finale

2011-11-21T16:37:00.007-06:00

So last night Dean spotted a mega herd of Elk grazing up near a place they call the Saddle! He figured they would mill around there all night and then head up the mountain early in the morning. Our plan was to get me and Jared posted into strategic positions well before sunrise. Supposedly there were only a few good places for the elk to pass through en route to their bedding zones. The wind direction that morning narrowed down the two best places to sit and wait!

So again I woke up this morning and couldnt move. I was basically paralyzed in my bed with internal chemicals locking up all my muscles. I needed some WD-40 or something to loosen up all the rusting joints......... Anyhow we ate some breakfast, I attempted some yoga like exercises and we were out the door.

We needed to get into position in the dark and had a couple miles of atv driving and a couple miles of intense hiking ahead of us. Adam, Rand, and I headed out one way and Jared and Josh headed to the other spot. Even though I am writing this in hindsight, we had a pretty good feeling about today being the day! Rand was coming along to film the adventure and he did a phenomenal job!! TV quality stuff he took, I will have the video hopefully ready in a week or so!

The intense hiking started out great, but when we realized the elk herd was already on the move before sunrise, our hike turned into a jog! Our trail was on a bluff overlooking the saddle and we could hear the elk milling about below us as, very very cool experience. A 300 lb man jogging at full speed and trying to be sneakily quiet on snowy icy trail in the dark along a cliff up in the mountains. This kind of thing you basically can only do in the dark, because in the daylight you can see and are much more cautious. It always amazes me how walking through thick timber and terrain is easier in the dark......if you spend time in the woods I know you have experienced the whole how did I make it through there once it gets daylight and you can see.....

Anyhow, we finally make it into a good position and there were already a handful of elk making there way through the pass. A small herd of 9 elk were just 250 yards away and coming into the perfect clearing for a shot. If you look at this pic, right in the center there is white snow covered opening in the brush halfway up the hill. The elk were moving from the bottom right of the pic up the trail to the left in a single file line. The first 5 elk had already made it past that opening and were in the thick brush. The other 4 elk were in the scrub brush near the center of the pic heading right into that opening in the center!

There was a big cow, a calf, a spike bull, and a yearling cow still to come out into the opening! I was huffing and puffing and trying my best to send oxygen evenly throughout my body! I got my gun up on the sticks and put the crosshairs onto the big cow in the scrub brush. I was pleasently surprised to find out that my scope was 50% frozen around the edges with only the center not frosted over.......not cool.

The cow steps out into the opening and the calf decides to come up and walk right behind the cow. They would take a few steps and the gingerly graze for a bit. They werent in a hurry. Just a waiting game that probably was only a minute or two and finally there was the cow in the middle of the opening with a clear shot. This was it, they didnt have a clue that we were there and I knew that this was the time.

It wasnt easy finding the cow in the frosted over scope, but I held er as steady as possible and gently squeezed the trigger! I put the 180 grain bullet from my 300 win mag right into that elk's heart at 218 yards! You can see in this pic that she ran a few steps down the hill from the clearing and then just died in stride and slid down the rest of the hill. She is laying at the bottom only 30 yards from where she was shot!

Man I was so pumped up, what an unbelievable feeling and also sense of relief to drop an elk in plain sight! Dream of harvesting an elk just came true! Big game hunting like this is something I have dreamed about my whole life and is one of those things that you just never know if you will ever take the initiative to make it actually happen.

When it became reality I just stepped back and thanked God for amazing experience and opportunity! There is something about the mountains that seem to draw you closer to Him. I also can't thank Edwin enough for turning the dream into reality, he made the whole trip possible for Jared and I! Putting together a big game hunt is kind of an intimidating task, the experiences I learned from this trip will stick with me and be an asset to me forever!!

So it turned out that we only spooked the first 9 elk coming through the pass. 3/4 mile away we could see a mega herd consisting of 79 elk and a big herd 1/4 mile behind them that was about 30 or so. They were headed this way too and we were fortunate to have an awesome front row seat for Jared's hunt!! The elk were headed our way and Jared and Josh were getting set up!

We watched Jared and Josh sneak into position about 1/4 mile behind and below us. By the time they got down the hill into a good position, they actually spooked the mega herd. In this pic, the mega herd is down along where the tree line meets the snow covered saddle. They made it through the pass while Jared was getting set up down in that pinch point.

Here is a zoomed in portion of the above pic showing the mega elk herd.

So the 30 or so elk bringing up the rear didnt get spooked by Jared and when they came through the pass Jared took aim and dropped his cow right in her tracks! A perfect 247 yard shot. So nice not to have to track elk through the mountains.

We were able to film his hunt from our location which was super awesome, but unfortunately we were zoomed in on the back part of the herd and he dropped a cow from the front. Oh well, not easy to film a hunt from 1/4 mile away, but still very cool footage to have both hunts on the same film with the camera rolling!

We both waited for the perfect opportunity and let me just say that how this hunt went down couldnt have been scripted any better! For this to come together so smoothly was no easy task! If I was just 5 minutes later getting into position I would have missed my opportunity at the elk headed up my trail. If Jared would have been just 2 minutes later getting into position he would have been too late as well.

Jared and his nice Cow! These animals are HUGE compared to whitetail deer. Unbelievable how big they are and how they move and live in the mountains!

Dean and his brother in law Dave pretty happy on this fine day!

The whole team dives right into the field dressing of the elk! (except Dean and Dave, they have passed on those duties to the young bucks!) Jared's elk dropped just a 1/4 mile down the saddle from mine! Very nice and convenient, especially since we could get the ATV's right up to each animal!

After we got done field dressing both elk, we decided to hike back heart attack hill as opposed to riding back on the atv's. Kind of like our last hurrah with the mountainous terrain, kind of like our we kicked some serious mountain rear end, kind of like marching back from war victorious, kind of like 30 more minutes of pain just because riding back on the atv's just didnt seem right. (sending the elk back on the atv's seemed perfectly appropriate though....)

We knew we could conquer the hill, because just about the time our own adrenaline would wear off, we knew Edwins energy beans would start to kick in!!

We finally, eventually made it back to camp and ate some lunch and took some more pics! Jared and I posing with our freshly hung elk meat!!

We got some fun photos with our whole hunting group!

After we got done taking care of the elk and eating lunch, we headed out to the only 2 ponds not frozen over to do some trout fishing! I ran out of time and will be posting more trout fishing photos in the next post!

One of the better days of my entire life. The sun was shining and I got to enjoy the fruits of some of the most remarkable lake and land management on the planet. What Dean and his family have put together over the last 100 years is simply uncomparable to anything I have ever seen to date. Definitely inspiring to see land being intensively managed by the same family for over 100 years! What I learned here will stick with me forever!

2nd Day of Elk Hunting

2011-11-16T19:53:00.007-06:00

So this morning again I woke up way too early, but this time was different when I went to get out of bed....yep, you guessed it, every muscle in my body ached. Oh my goodness, it took me 15 minutes of stretching to get loosened up. I got the fires blazing and was chomping at the bit to get the day rolling!

We headed out before the sun this morning and were greeted to 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground. Jared and I headed up the mountain. We walked together for about a mile and then split up to make a huge couple mile loop. The plan was to meet back up together in about 1.5 hrs or so over by some ponds. If you look close you can see Jared heading out:

I didnt have nearly as much ground to cover as Jared, so I moved very slowly and sat up at the first real good elky looking spot. Wouldn't you know that 10 minutes later I turned to the right and there was a cow elk staring me down only about 100 yards away!!! We stared at each for what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was about 6-8 seconds. I didnt move a muscle, but she took off back into the thicket real quick.

Here is the kicker, back in the thicket there obviously were plenty more elk who didnt see me, but who new it was time to get moving as well. Man are they ever loud crashing through the brush! Anyhow 3 of them took a path up a hill that was in my plain sight and decided to stop halfway up and look around. I raised my gun and put my crosshairs right onto the biggest cow and believe it or not, my heart actually wasnt beating like I thought it would be. I had a good 10 second window to take that shot, but for some reason I knew I wasnt quite ready yet to harvest an elk.

Those 2 cows and a spike buck eventually ran up the hill and out of sight and I just sat there in pure amazement and complete awe. Having that opportunity to harvest an animal and not taking it was actually an experience I will never forget. It was like I was a now a mature elk hunter even though I still basically don't know a thing about elk. I sat for another 10 minutes and just thanked God for that experience. I just can't even describe with words how great that was.

With the very fresh snow, I was so excited to meet back up again with Jared to start tracking where the elk came from, how many there were, and obviously were they went! I slowly made it to our meeting point and actually tracked Jared down a few minutes early, because by then my excitement was escalating.

So as we went back and started tracking the elk, we found out that there were waaay more than just a handful of elk in that zone. There were tracks coming and going all over the place back in there and we found a major bedding zone with well over 40 visible elk beds in the fresh snow!! We thought we were really onto something and we started following tracks to track down our elk!

Here is what the elk beds looked like. They were everywhere and many of them had piles of poop turds nearby. Apparently they do their business while resting:

Well, what we found out real quick was that we are pretty much the worst trackers on the planet. We would be following an elk highway only to basically lose the trails into the thickets. Those elk knew they were being followed cause they would just disappear off the trails and jump into the thicket up or down hills all the time. We tried going into the thick stuff once, but after getting stuck numerous times and falling down a time or two, we realized that every track we followed lead to a dead end! They just disappear......

Here is a pic overlooking the elk valley with the big mountains in the far background:

Kind of disappointed at our tracking and walking abilities we headed back for lunch. I actually forgot what we ate for lunch, but do know for sure it was delicious! We didnt have a bad meal the whole week!

When we got back to camp we found Edwin and the guys hanging Edwins elk. He was out hunting with Josh and harvested a big cow! Josh took this phenomenal photo:

For those who don't know Edwin, he is a 17 year old trapped in a 53 year old body! He is borderline crazy, and always the life of the party. This elk skin was just a few minutes removed from the elk and still nice and warm:

Here is a pic of our guides Adam, Dustin, Josh, along with Dave, Edwin, and Rand.

While we were eating lunch, and having fun taking pictures of Edwin, the guides went out glassing key areas for elk. Josh, Adam, and Dustin found a small herd just bedding down, so we knew exactly which direction we would head after lunch. Thats kind of nice to occasionally skip the whole wandering around aimlessly for a few hours process. It was time to put on the stalk!

The snow was lightly falling and we quietly sneaked in about 1/4 mile to get into position on these elk. It was so cool to get in and set up, the setting was picture perfect! The elk were bedded down in a small clump of scrub oaks about 290 yards across a small crick valley. We were at the top of a ridge hiding in our own clump of scrub oaks.

We waited about 20 minutes and finally some of the elk started stirring. The started walking in a single file line out of the brush and into the open valley. Jared put his scope onto the second cow in line and just as they got to the fence they stopped. Here was a decision....take the cow at 255 yards or see if they will keep on coming right on in. That opportunity only lasted about 10 seconds and we all decided to watch them and see if they would keep coming. This would be just so perfect to get a good clear shot!

Well wouldnt you know that instead of coming on down to the crick valley they decided to turn around and head back into the brush.....ugghhh. It wasnt 5 minutes later and they sniffed us out and all 9 of them hightailed up the mountain into the abyss.... Josh was kind of surprised it took them that long to sniff us out.

We took a gamble and this time it didn't pay off, but again just knowing we could of potentially harvested an elk was a great sense of accomplishment. Both Jared and I were not interested in just flinging bullets. Even if we didn't get another opportunity the rest of the week, we did not regret passing on elk today!

That whole stalk took about 3 hours. We still had about an hour of light left, so Adam and I headed out on a polaris to a new zone. We drove a few miles away and started up a hill. About 30 minutes of hiking and we come up to an opening and sure enough there were some elk. By this time I am thinking man there are elk everywhere. I never dreamed there were so many elk in Colorado.

Anyhow we were about 60 yards away and a little too close for comfort. We never had a chance to get the gun up cleanly. They busted us and headed out. We just simply were too close before we realized how close they were to us. Light was fading fast and we just decided to head back down to the Polaris and head back to camp.

I was so tired I could hardly stay awake for dinner. My legs were feeling alot like jello and I was already getting stiff as we settled in for the evening. I am pretty sure I fell asleep on the couch and I vaguely remember listening to everyone plot various tricks to play on me as I slept. If my hand actually did get placed in a bowl of hot water thank goodness I didnt end up wetting the bed that night.....

With scenery like this, I couldnt wait for the night to get over and get back out into God's country!

Colorado Elk Hunt Begins!

2011-11-15T18:28:00.005-06:00

I wake up about 3 am with loud wind and rain beating on the old cabin tin. Agh great, just two hours from my first hunting trip up in the mountains and it sounds like a hurricane outside! Everyone else is sound asleep and I just sit on the couch for the next couple hours. Dean strolls in about 5 am to stoke the fires and I already had em rollin! I bet you they went through twice as much wood as usual the week I was there!

Day in and day out, I think I am probably the only person in the history of elk camp to consistently wake up at least an hour before Dean came in to put some logs on the firs. Yes, I am a freak who for some reason cannot sleep in the mornings. I sleep great at night, but for some reason am always up before the sun every stinkin morning. Brook is extra grateful for our kids to have the same curse as me.....not!

So anyhow by the time we all ate our bacon and eggs, the sun had come up and the rain finally started to turn into snow! We got a late start out of the gate, but by 7:30 am we were headed out into the mountains looking for some elk.

Dave dropped me off onto a 2 mile long ditch and told me to take about 2 hours to walk the ditch and look both up and down for elk and he would meet me at the end of it. It was very thick with scrub oaks and there werent nearly as many clearings in it than I had envisioned. Anyhow after about 30 minutes of walking and I come to nice clearing and just sit and wait. Picture perfect setting and wouldn't you know about 5 minutes later and to my complete disbelief here comes a big bull elk just meandering along!

I watched that elk for about 10 minutes and then he scooted off into the thicket. It is snowing pretty good out by now and I just sit there in awe of seeing such a majestic animal out in the wild up in the mountains! No other elk came out and I moved on to see what was around the next corner. The reason the bull came out, was because I had a cow tag! Supposedly 3rd season in these parts is mainly cows everywhere, but there I was looking at a big bull!! Oh well, next year I go for a bull tag and mule deer tag and cows will be all over the place......

As I get close to the end of the ditch I could see lots of Mule deer tracks in the fresh snow which was super awesome, but then all of a sudden I realized I was up in the midst of a herd of about 15 mule deer scattered all around me. The 4 bucks in the group scampered up the mountain and out of sight, but the ladies and youngins just played the staring game with me for about 15 minutes. Finally they decided to bounce up the hill in unison. For some reason they just seem alot dumber than whitetails...

So while I am having this incredible mountain experience, Jared is having quite an experience of his own! Dave and I dropped him off at supposedly a really good elk crossing for him to just sit and wait and try to catch some elk headed back up into the mountains. They go down at night to feed and up during the day to bed down. Anyhow after a few minutes of looking out for elk, Jared gets an up close and personal encounter with a herd of cows...not cow elk, but actual cows.

When Dave and I went back to pick up Jared, we found a huge herd of cows hanging out right were we left him! Jared had the gps unit and was able to pinpoint the ranch and ended up walking back the 4 miles! That was after he got side tracked from trying to sneak up on a herd of 4 elk the next ridge over.

So anyhow, where we were at there are lots of irrigated cow pastures in the mountains. The elk sneak down into the cow pastures to feed at night and we try to set up in there paths headed back up the mountains in the morning hours. Then during the day we head up the mountains looking for bedded down elk. Thats where Rands elk hunting story begins....

Rand and Edwin were out with Josh glassing at the top of a hill. They spotted 4 elk headed up a path and they took off to sneak into position for a kill. They played the wind perfectly and got within 200 yards. Rand layed down to shoot, but when he was laying down he looked over and saw two different elk just 140 yards away to the left. He quickly changed gears and picked out the cow who was with a spike buck.

His first shot hit a little far back and while the cow was trotting away he put another shot in her hind quarters. His third shot missed and his 4th shot probably over 300 yards away put her down! Rand is 14 years old and this is his second elk hunt!!

Rand was about 8-10 miles away from us, so we were pumped up when we found out he connected on the first morning! He spent the rest of the week looking for black bears and filming our elk hunts!!

We all met up for lunch at noon and gobbled down some of the best chili on the planet.

The snow just kept getting harder as the day progressed and by the time we went back out at about 3 pm it was really coming down!

I went out by myself again that afternoon and walked 1.5 miles up the most scenic old trail you can imagine! About every 150 yards I would come across a clearing littered with beaver dams and small ponds. By then the wind had come to a screaching halt and the quiet heavy snow was just breathtaking unbelievable.

At 5 pm I spotted four cows still bedded down about 500 yards away, but didnt have enough light left to make it worth stalking into position. You have to remember that this was still the first day of the hunt and my legs had already put on some serious miles! So instead of enduring more pain for an iffy chance at a shot, I was blessed with two monster mule deers just staring at each other about 60 yards from me.

Its mule deer season, I just didnt get mule deer tags. Both of them were shooters, but the one on the left was an absolute monster!! They knew I was there watching them, and they didn't care one single bit. Again, they just seem dumb to me, but who knows maybe they are smarter than I think. Anyhow I was blessed beyond what words can describe to experience this day alone up in the scenic mountains.

With the calm and quietness of the heavy snow, there isn't a better way to blot out the world and work back home to just meditate, pray and think. Even though I walked mucho miles, I was completely rejuvenated and will never forget this particular day.

Dave picked me up at our meeting spot at dark and we headed into the lodge for some ribs and taters and finished er off with some chocolate cake!

The cake was the only thing Rand didnt put hot sauce on today:

We all told our stories from the day and I took most of Rands money playing a dice game supposedly called Polish Craps. I bet it wasnt but 8 pm before most all of us were crashed out for the night....

Jamaica Work Trip January 2012!

2011-11-14T09:04:00.003-06:00

January 6th 2012 we are coordinating a work team to Jamaica and we still need some more guys to join us for this project! For a little background, from 1994 to 2004 we headed down to Jamaica every January to work on building the Montego Bay campus for the Caribean Christian Centre for the Deaf. When we finished that campus, we just kind of stopped heading down there.

Well, anyhow out of the blue my dad gets a phone call from the Jamaica Deaf Village (which is a few hours from the Montego Bay Campus) last month saying that one of their buildings desperately needs a roof put on it and he was told we were the guys to get er done. Somehow he tracked down my dad's contact information from the Montego Bay people and anyhow now we are assembling a work team and headed for Jamaica! Here is a pic of one of the buildings we built back in the 90's:

Currently we are putting together the roof design and coordinating all the logistics, materials, food, etc for the trip. With a few phone calls and emails to all the folks who used to head down there with us, we have put together a rock solid work team so far, but what we need is still at least 10 more guys to make this possible!! Ladies we will put you to work as well! If you are interested get your passport expedited immediately and give me a call for more details! 309-303-5691 or shoot me an email to nate@hblakemanagement.com.

The cost of the trip is roughly $850 per person which includes airfare, lodging, food, materials, etc. But don't let that inhibit you from coming. We have some folks (and we definitely are looking for more) who cannot make the trip, but will sponsor others to go in their place! Any help is greatly appreciated in making this project possible. The dates are January 6th-13th, but that may possibly change up or down a day.

We will be building the trusses, and setting them onto this roof. Plenty of up in the air work for young adventure seekers and plenty of ground work for the old and wise. The weather is usually mid-80's in Mobay that time of year, but the Deaf Village is up in the mountains so if I remember correctly lower 80's and without the humidity!

The Montego Bay Campus is a 7 acre school facility for deaf children. While attending that school they live on Campus. The Deaf Village (where we will be heading) is a 100 acre village for deaf families to live and work and attend church! Really an awesome place up in the mountains!!

Colorado Elk Hunting at Bar ZX Ranch

2011-11-13T20:04:00.007-06:00

So the second day of our adventure had us leaving our motel just after sunrise. It was dark when coming into the mountains the night before so we didn't see much. This time it was light and we were glued to the wildlife and scenery as we traveled through the mountains. We saw lots of big horn sheep, some sort of scrub goats, mule deer, and even some elk! Here are some sheep:

We stopped into a outdoor themed gas station and had some famous Colorado Santiago burritos for breakfast. Lots of other hunters were pouring into Colorado traveling this route as well. The gas station clerk said he would sell more than 200 of those burritos that morning! Anyhow, this truck in particular caught my attention while driving and provided a little chuckle:

Also we hit a traffic jam cause this UPS truck decided to catch on fire:

Finally about 2 pm we met up with Edwin and the gang at a shooting range just outside of Hotchkiss, Colorado. They flew into the airport at Montross about noon. The place we shot at was called Stengels Gun Shop and there we sighted in our guns and took turns trying to ring the gong at 1000 yards.

About an hour of shooting and we headed up to the Bar ZX ranch near Paonia. This place is pretty much one of the coolest places in world, but not because of technology or fancy structures. Pure natural scenic beauty, combined with tons of good ole fashion hard work, ingenuity, and of course home cookin all by the same family for over 100 years is what makes this place uniquely amazing!

The history and the people of the Bar ZX ranch are unlike anything you could dream up or expect from a hunting or fishing outfitter type of service. Dean and his wife Kathy own and operate the ranch and are the most hospital, funny old people you could ever meet. They are down to earth real hardworking people who enjoy sharing their slice of heaven with their clients. While your there, your not a client, your family!

The Bar ZX ranch consists of 640 acres of main land that is owned by the ranch, but then it also has the leasing rights to over 20,000 acres of adjoining land! While the 20,000 acres sounds very impressive, the 640 acres of owned land is actually the gem of Colorado! Dean grew up right there on that mountain and got his education from a little one room school house that still is standing about 2 miles down the road from the ranch entrance. Believe it or not, it actually is uphill both ways to and from that school!! And usually snowy too....

Anyhow Dean started building trout ponds on his ranch back in 1985 and now has 29 of them spread across the ranch and they are all piped together with fresh supplies of glacier spring water flowing in and out of each year round! Simply the most amazing set up on the planet and he built it all with his own two hands and some old used equipment! He has 17 species of trout on the ranch and every year several trout of several species over 20 lbs are landed from his flyfishing only ponds! 10 lbers are very common as you will see in some pictures coming up in some later posts, and 5 lbers are the norm! Unbelievable how he created and learned all that thru trial and error and driving passion for raising trout! Here is a sneak peak pic of fishing with Dean:

So throughout the week of my visit, I was so in awe of everything I was seeing that I pretty much never stopped asking questions about everything. (Chef Todd definitely influencing my normal shy behavior) but anyhow Dean and his crew not only answered my questions, they actually participated 100% with our humor and told lots and lots of stories. Here is a fun photo of Dean and Kathy we spruced up with a pitch fork. I tried to get a serious shot just like that old fashioned painting, but everyone was smiling too much...

Here is a bunch of fun photos of Dean mostly telling his stories....

The Bar ZX ranch is world reknown, world famous, world class, hunting and fishing! But with that being said again its unlike what you would normally think. The main bunk cabin that we all stayed in was built with mostly wood from the property, heated with wood burning stoves, and supplied with water from the local stream. No cell service anywhere close, no long distance phone, no computers, and pretty much no technology from the last 10 years whatsoever. This is the total authentic out West mountain experience! Here are some pics of the living room, also you can note all of Edwins stuff laying around everywhere!

So for those of you wondering how to book a hunt at Bar ZX, it actually usually is filled up every year. The same groups pretty much book the same hunts year in and year out for the last 20 years. Jared and I were fortunate to be invited along for the hunt this year. Occasionally there are some openings, but you would need a good reference or two and would go on a waiting list in order to come and hunt here. Just call me up or email me if you would like Dean's contact information, good luck finding it online!

I took tons of pictures of the ponds, fish, elk, etc, I just will put them in the corresponding days ahead as they were taken. Can't jump the gun too much, got to stay organized so my kids can read this stuff someday! Drake, if you happen to be reading this at some point in the future, about 40 minutes ago you threw up all over my bedroom floor and just 10 minutes ago you puked all over yourself in your crib. Looks to be a fun night at the Herman's tonight...

So anyhow, Kathy cooked us up a Lasagna feast once we got to the ranch. That meal was the perfect opportunity for Rand to start downing his bottles of hot sauce! There we met the hunting guides Josh, Adam, Dustin and Dave and went over game plan for the next morning which was opening day of Colorado's third rifle season!!! My exhaustion eventually overcame my excitement and I was actually able to fall asleep pretty quickly that night!

Snow was in the forecast for the morning (and pretty much every other day)!!

My First Colorado Elk Hunting Trip

2011-11-11T18:09:00.007-06:00

Early on Thursday morning November 3rd, Jared and I headed toward the middle of the Colorado Rockies to go Elk hunting. This was my first hunting trip West, and one I definitely will never forget! We did not have cell or internet service while up in the mountains, but now that I am home safe and sound, here are some of the stories, details, pics, and video of our adventure West!

This first pic is just a sneak peak into the type of scenery we encountered up in the mountains! I just felt like I should at least have some sort of cool pic up near the top to break up the monotony of lots of words to get this trip started....

Colorado's third rifle season didn't open up until that Saturday the fifth, but we headed out a couple days early to bring all the gear for the hunting party. We met up with our hunting partners Dave, Edwin, and Rand near Paonia, CO and we brought lots of guns, ammo, camo, 4 wheelers, and pretty much every other gizmo and gadget you could potentially need on a hunting trip in Colorado. All those guys are gear junkies, but Edwin goes way above and beyond with stuff like energy jelly beans, 8 different walking/shooting sticks, several elk cannons and packs and packages of who knows what! I only brought a small duffel bag with clothes, a gun, boots, and a backpack!

Anyhow, by 3 am Jared and I were driving his Ford F250 diesel and pulling Dave's big covered trailer full to the brim. We realized driving down I-80 that gas stations were few and far between so we bought a diesel container and filled it up at our second gas station. Wouldnt you know it was needed before we found our next fuel station!

My good friend and perhaps the best bluegill fisherman in America lives near Lincoln, Nebraska. He owns the website bigbluegill.com and has caught several bluegill over 3 lbs in just the last year! (He did classify my personal lake as the second best bluegill fishing lake in the nation, but I don't have 3 lbers yet!). Here is a pic of him with a 3 lber from Richmond Mill:

Here is a pic of an almost 2 lber from my lake last year. His arms are extended way out, but nonetheless a very nice special hybrid bluegill!

I texted him about an hour away from Lincoln that I was rolling through town and he insisted on buying us lunch. Since it was lunch time it was perfect timing!! A 1.5 lb burrito later and we were back on the road.

We rolled through Denver and about 8 oclock or so we pulled into a little mining town called Idaho Springs for some dinner and a hotel. Or should I say motel... We found a restaurant called the Buffalo Restaurant and Bar.

Click the link above the picture to read more about the history of that place. Kind of amazing really to be that old and to have regular patrons back in the day like Billy the Kid, etc. The food was a bit overpriced, but to experience that atmosphere and history was totally worth it! We downed our $15 buffalo burgers in no time:

Snapped a couple pics because this place was just like eating back in the old time westerns. Lots and lots of really old memorabilia:

There were tons of motels in that historic old mining town in the heart of gold country and we finally settled on one along the banks of some pretty sweet little river. It was about 10 pm by the time we reached the Argo Inn and Suites and it took me 10 minutes to talk the reception lady into giving us a discount for the room for the night. Jared walking in with his Marines shirt on sealed the deal! Here is a pic of the Bear that was guarding our room all night:

I slept great! Just plopped into bed and fell asleep right away with What About Bob playing on TV in the background. We were only in the Hotel about 8 hours and then off towards Paonia....

inFisherman Ice Fishing Critical Concepts

2011-11-03T03:06:00.002-05:00

Last winter I filmed 3 ice fishing shows with Infisherman TV's fishing show Critiical Concepts! Well that series has now started running for this new upcoming season and I know for sure you can check it out on Thursday mornings at 6 am on the sportsmans channel!!! I am sure that series runs on other channels and other times as well, I am just only aware of that weekly broadcast thanks to an early morning phone call from Chef Todd last week! He did the cooking for the weekend we filmed last winter and he made a major impression on all the film guys!

I have filmed quite a few fishing shows with smaller outdoor companies on smaller markets and local channels, but the InFisheman Ice Fishing Critical Concepts is the biggest and most popular ice fishing show in the entire nation!!!! I am pretty excited. The three shows we filmed are on different segments that will be aired several times throughout the season!

AAD Custom Boat

2011-11-02T13:27:00.003-05:00

This summer we went out Bowfishing on the river in this sweet boat custom made by AAD Custom Boats. TONS of fun!

Anyhow, one of my clients is sacrificing this pretty much brand new boat. If anyone is in the market for a big, fast, built like a tank, boat. Now is your chance to get the deal of the century.

I dont have many more details about the boat, but he said he would sell it for 40k or best offer to try and move it fast. That is almost 40% off the value of this boat. Contact easton1717@gmail.com for more information or to go check out the boat.

Easter Seals Boat

2011-11-02T12:35:00.006-05:00

I never knew what Easter Seals really was until last February when my son Drake was born. He was diagnosed with CMV and we didnt get to leave the hospital with him for a couple weeks. During that time in the NICU, Easter Seals stepped up and helped out TREMENDOUSLY. They assigned a person to us who has been helping coordinate, organize, and set up all the necessary doctors appointments, therapies, insurance meetings, etc. Kind of amazing really how they helped keep everything on track for Drake!!!

Right now Drake is 21 months old and pretty much finished with the Easter Seals program! Really is amazing how they helped us out for the last year and half! Would have been a total nightmare to go through all that withough their help. I can't thank them enough for their help, organization, and support! Hopefully you guys can help them out before you or someone you know needs them!!

So for a Drake update, he has lost his hearing in his right ear, but still can hear out of his left!!! He is much smarter and stronger than we thought he was gonna be and is learning to talk, sing, and is pretty much happy all the time except when there is candy nearby that he cant eat!

I can't say that he is a normal child, because he is my son AND more completely obessed with fish than I am or ever was. His favorite thing to do in the whole world is carry around a real fish. He gets poked and spiked and slimed and it doesnt deter him a bit! He will show everyone for literally hours his fishies:

Visit winaboatforkids.com for more details!!! Great opportunity to help out Easter Seals and a great chance to win a very awesome boat!

Gulf Shores Trip Conclusion

2011-10-29T09:44:00.004-05:00

This Gulf Shores trip was supposed to just be a long weekend trip, but the weather was so nice and the kids were having so much fun, we pretty much decided to neglect all responsibilities back home and ended up staying 5 extra days.

When we return home early Sunday morning, its pretty much going to be cold and November. The nice weather of summer and fall are pretty much gonna be done.

So anyhow the last couple days down here on the coast we have just spent swimming, boogie boarding, shell collecting, and movie watching. Kids have been super active, having the time of their lives!! Last night we went souvenir shopping and ended up getting hermit crabs from souvenir city, that was always a highlight of mine as a kid, and it definitely is still a highlight these days as well! Those hermit crabs will be loved to death, literally....

Here is a pic of Neiko and Drake riding one of those quarter rides, that probably cost $.50 or $.75 these days....

We will leave about noon today. Our last day of fishing was Thursday morning. Not nearly as much action as Wednesday morning, but we still caught some nice fish.

Tyden holding up a nice speckled trout we caught early out in the surf!

These two gals from church came down with us as babysitters for the group. When you got tons of kids running around everywhere its nice to have extra hands helping change diapers, put kids down for naps, watch kids for going out to eat, and just to help play with kids on the beach.

Basically its these two girls who help make the vacation an actual vacation! Special thanks to Maddie and Livie for helping out so much!! Bringing multi-talented babysitters is a must for any vacation to the beach!!!

We use live shrimp for bait everyday, and we bring our own aerators down to keep them alive for the week so we always have fresh bait. Well at the end of the week there was a couple dozen live shrimp left, so since we were done fishing, on Friday instead of using them for bait, I fried them up for lunch!!

We stayed right on the beach at Lani Kai Condominimiums right in the heart of Gulf Shores. We fish alot right on the beach in front of the condo, but also love to fish at the Little Lagoon Pass about 2 miles west, the Gulf State Pier about 2 miles east, the Perdido Bridge and Beach about 10 miles east, and back in the backwaters of the lagoon on windy days. Occasionally we will head to Fort Morgan and go for monster Bull Reds and Sharks, but not that often cause its a 30 minute drive.

I have been fishing these waters on the coast since I was born and know all the people at the local bait shops, the local fisherman and charter captains. Also I know all the good restaurants, places to stay, and things to do as well. If anyone is headed to Gulf Shores for a family or fishing vacation and would be looking for some additional information beyond what the internet can provide, just shoot me an email or give me a call. I would be glad to point you in the right direction!

Gulf Shores Day Six

2011-10-26T20:16:00.009-05:00

We headed out to the Little Lagoon Pass right at sunrise and started fishing in the newly dredged holes right where the lagoon water pours into the Ocean on outgoing tides. Well this was an outgoing tide, and the big redfish were stacked up in there thick!

For 2 hours we caught one after another after another after another!!! The third hour we only caught a couple, and then we headed out to relax the rest of the day. So here are some pics I snapped of everyone enjoying all the action! We were drifting live shrimp and ghost shrimp out the current and the redfish were slamming them! Also as the track hoes were digging, they were dislodging all kinds of ghost shrimp, sand fleas, crabs, etc and the redfish were right there feeding hard!

Everyone got in on the action:

So here is Drake carrying around fish again:

We got back around 9:30 am and cleaned all the fish. Redfish are phenominal for eating and we have a special heavy duty fillet knife for penetrating their dinosaur like skin and bones! The daily limit in Alabama is 3 redfish per license and we LOVE eating redfish! We loaded up on them today! While cleaning them, their stomachs were just chuck full of ghost shrimp, baby flounders, artificial soft plastic baits, minnows, and all kinds of crazy stuff:

So we played on the beach for quite awhile and then headed to the Gulf Shores State Pier for a couple hours of fishing. Before heading to the pier, a school of Ladyfish came in on the beach while we were swimming so I quick got a fishing rod and let the kids real one in:

So at the pier in the afternoon, Justin went after sheepshead along the pier columns and I went after Spanish Mackeral for my secret Mackeral recipe.

The fish werent biting great, but we ended up with a nice cooler of fish and we were back by 5 pm to wind down and prepare for an early morning of redfishing at the pass again! We are going to get there about an hour before sunrise this time!

Gulf Shores Day Five

2011-10-26T19:20:00.006-05:00

So the water is crystal clear and the waves are pretty much flat calm. Actually that is not usually the norm on the beach at Gulf Shores this time of year. To be honest fishing is typically much better with a little chop and some clouds, but we will take the ultra amazing weather!

We headed to the little lagoon pass today just a couple miles west of Gulf Shores to do some exploring and fishing. They are doing some construction dredging work on the canal that leads to the Ocean and that is going to lead to some dynamite fishing! Here is Drake playing in his heaven! On the beach he either has a tractor in his hand or a live fish. Literally he carries around live fish and loves them, more on that later, for now the tractor:

So basically that has us changing up our normal fishing tactics and we are starting to get a few things figured out. First off is that we are figuring out how wade out to locate and sight fish for giant sheephead right out in the surf. Can't say we have ever done that before, and may not ever get the opportunity to do that again, but that was the only way to catch a fish today and that was so much fun!

Here is the biggest sheephead we have ever caught in over 45 years of fishing the beaches of the gulf. I am only 28 years old, but my family has been vacationing down here since my parents were kids.

So there is a pretty cool story to finally catching this fish, plus another story that could have developed had we realized how special this fish really was. Turns out the Alabama state record sheepshead is 12 lbs 15 ounces caught by Drew Parrish in 2001. If we didn't top the state record with this sheephead, we were really close! Typically the sheephead we catch are about 3-5 lbs with a 7-8 lber being really big. We caught a handful of nice sheephead and also got this other giant that wasn't near the state record, but getting real close to double digits.

So back to the story on how we caught the near state record Boone and Crockett Sheepshead... So I spot this giant sheephead about 100 feet from shore and was casting live shrimp to it about 20 feet away. He came charging in and demolished my shrimp, but I failed on the hook set. Justin came over with his ghost shrimp and hooked up and fought the fish for a bit before it broke his line. We were pretty bummed until the fish came back to the same spot about 10 minutes later.

Justin goes for it and when the fish bit again he actually bit down so hard he smashed his hook closed with one chomp. I have never seen that happen before ever! The fish's jaws were so strong they bent the hook inward! So I go to the fish with my shrimp and get bit and he was off before I had a chance to set the hook. I real in and he had bitten my hook in half!!! Unbelievable what this fish was doing to us and our gear. His jaws just have superfish power.

So the fish is gone again and after 15 minutes of searching around for him I finally give up and head out for another fish. Justin on the other hand hung around the same area and finally the superfish shows up again and this time Justin and his gear performed flawlessly. Bamm and the battle was on. Now if any of you can imagine fighting a 13 lb bluegill you can relate to reeling in a double digit sheepshead on fairly light tackle.

When we finally landed the fish, I found the other half of my hook lodged in its jaw, and Justin removed both of his hooks from its mouth! So anyhow while we were chasing sheepshead, the kids were playing on the beach and Drake was playing with his new best friend:

The boy is completely obsessed with fish, so much so that even I think he is weird. He has to have a fish in his hand most of the time while on the beach:

We catch a lot of trash fish like bluefish, ladyfish, remoras, lizardfish, pinfish, etc. We found this little isolated pond that fills up with water at high tide that we release our trash fish into. The kids LOVE it. Here is Tyden giving this bluefish a new home:

Some more trash fish:

Here is photo that shows a little bit of our fishing setup on the beach:

Ty catches most of the fish!

Was a great day at the Little Lagoon Pass! The kids had a blast and so did the fisherman. We are headed to the Pass again tomorrow morning cause the tide is going to be flowing out hard and the construction workers have dug some very deep holes that will be loaded up with redfish in the morning!

Gulf Shores Day Four

2011-10-24T22:21:00.004-05:00

We started out the day by heading out to the beach in front of the condo about 7 am with the kids. We walked a few hundred yards down and found a little hole that had some whitings in it. We fished about 2 hours and caught about 20 whitings and some pinfish. Nothing big came around, but the kids had a blast.

Here is Mae and Tyden fishing away. They have to do everything themselves now.

Noah has to do it all himself as well. He is only 4 years old and can fling the bait out with spinning tackle. I fished alot as a kid, but was like 8 years old before I learned how to do what he does!!

Then it was playing on the beach for the rest of the day. I thought yesterday was as good as it gets for weather, but today is the only day that could ever beat yesterday. 81 degrees, flat calm, and sunny.

We headed out fishing late this afternoon and this time werent just joined by my kids, but all my sisters kids and my sisters friends kids as well. Made for an interesting evening, but boy did they all have a blast. All the kids got to real in fish and the guy down the way caught a shark that had em all excited. We caught some really awesome fish. Here is Tyden holding up a couple of the flounders:

Sarah and Katy holding up some giant sheepshead:

Justin and Katie with a big black drum:

Drake playing with a croaker. He loves fish and isnt scared to pick em up! When they poke him he just say OWW and keeps right on picking em up! He carried a dead minnow around with him all night, it was great!! He is so gonna be the biggest fish geek on the planet....

Amy with a Monster black drum:

We fished till about 7:30 and headed in for the night. Tomorrow the tide is goingto be just right for beach fishing and I think the whiting will be biting on the beach all day long so I plan on fishing while the kids are playing. Then will go out to some spots looking for some Mackeral and Sheepshead in the afternoon and hopefully some big redfish in the evening.

Gulf Shores Day 3

2011-10-24T21:30:00.007-05:00

Sunday was calm, sunny and 79 degrees. You simply cannot make better weather than that! We got up early and headed out fishing. We actually didnt catch much, but we did manage enough to make fish sandwiches for lunch!

Check out the teeth on this Mackeral! Tyden sure had fun catching this fish. He was using fresh dead shrimp for bait.

So Spanish Mackeral is a phenominal fish to eat, but you have to eat it the same day you catch it. It does not keep very long at all. With that being said, we only keep mackeral if we can eat them the same day we catch them. One of the days this week we will keep a dozen mackerals, clean up the fillets real good taking out all the red meat and will actually cook them in the microwave. Doing this makes the pure white meat real stringy and chewy almost mimicking the texture and flavor of crab meat perfectly! Dip in butter and enjoy a feast fit for a king. Will hopefully have those pics tuesday or wednesday.

We didn't stay out fishing long, and headed back in about 9 am. There is like 30 of us down here and we had a little church service out on the beach with all the kids. The kids are all playing great, they spent the whole day playing on the beach making sand castles, catching kokinas, sand fleas, and little crabs. I absolutely love watching them explore!!

So back to the food for a minute, we have been eating alot of fish sandwiches which I don't have pictures of, but I do have some pictures of Sunday afternoon dinner. These pics are pretty much soley for Greg's office manager Miriam. She makes fun of me for taking pics of food, so here you go. Chicken and Macaroni and Vegetables for Sunday dinner!!

Here you go Mirna, this is what the feast looked like all put together:

Then back out fishing after dinner and we brought the family out for the evening. We caught quite a few trash fish, so that kept things interesting for the kids, but we didnt manage to catch very many fish for eating. Sunday was the last day for neap tide so the fishing should get much much better the next few days! My prediction is that Wednesday will be dynamite!! Anyhow here are a couple pics:

We stayed up pretty late, but the kids had a blast.

Gulf Shores Day Two Fishing State Pier

2011-10-23T01:22:00.004-05:00

We headed to the Gulf Shores State Pier at 7 am Saturday morning. Neap tide and very calm seas so we knew the only hope of catching a fish would be first thing in the morning. Katy connected on this big bull red on her first cast!

She was using a dead shrimp tipped with a hard piece of my dad's special home cured shrimp for bait and casted underneath the pier and bamm!! We thought maybe just maybe the fishing would be good, but we only ended up catching three sheepshead over the next 2 hours.

We headed in about 9 am and spent the rest of the day swimming, walking, playing and laying on the beach. Fresh Sheepshead sandwiches for lunch! It was 76 degrees and sunny with not much breeze. Absolutely perfect day.

Here is a pic from the pier looking back:

Oh yeah, also along on this trip are my sisters and all their kids, several of their friends and all their kids, and my good friends from Georgia, Greg and Wendy Grimes and their kids. Everyone had a blast today! Drake is basically in heaven. He explored all day long, never cried once, even when he got lots of sand in his eyes, mouth, ears, hair, etc. Even after I let him fall down in the waves a few times to learn a tad bit of fear, never a peep. He is rock solid and total MAN!! Noah is 100 times more girly and fearfull than Drake is. (Sorry Noah, but some day when you can read this blog will probably no longer exist).

So all the girls have cameras out taking pics of their kids doing this and doing that and doing the other thing. My camera only comes out when there are fish or animals or food involved.

Here is a pic of me and Drake feeding the seagulls our leftovers:

Tonight we went to De Sotos Seafood restaurant with Greg and Wendy. The ladies gobled up paneed grouper with Bernice sauce and the boys gobled down shrimp. Shrimp is pretty much my favorite food on planet earth. Greg pops into my blog every now and then, and said his office manager was reading my blog the other day and was very impressed with all the food pictures and descriptions. OK so maybe he didnt use the actual words "very impressed" but basically that was what he was implying that she was saying........Needless to say no food pictures for Greg's office manager tonight!

So originally this trip was planned as a quick getaway from Friday to Tuesday. Basically that was how I could justify going, but we and the kids are having such a good time and the weather is forecasted to be 80 and sunny for the rest of the week. Anyhow I am making the necessary arrangements to stay through Friday cause this would just be a shame to go home so soon.

Plus the neap tide of Saturday and Sunday will turn into the best tides of the year for Tuesday thru Thursday.

Gulf Shores Alabama Day One

2011-10-23T00:41:00.006-05:00

We finally left at 2 am on Friday morning headed for Gulf Shores! It is a 14 hour drive and me and the kids were so anxious to get there we drove straight through. At one point in the trip, Mae was so excited to get to the beach she said please don't go inside to get food that will take way too long, lets just go through the drive thru! She wanted to make the beach before nightfall!

My parents and Justin and Katy went down a couple days earlier so as I am driving down they kept sending me picture texts of fish they were catching right off the beach in front of my Grandma's condo and also at the Gulf Shores State Pier.

So one thing you will notice is they may catch some nice fish without me present, but the fish photo quality will at least go up tremendously once I show up with my camera.

Anyhow we pulled in about 4 pm and headed straight for the beach!! Mae, Noah, and Drake headed right for the water! Man did it ever feel good to be on Vacation!!! I know the area pretty good since I have been going there pretty much every year since I was born.

Fishing is great right off the beach. Naturally we got done swimming and started fishing as the sun started setting. Drake is really into all things outdoors and he especially loves fishies! He wants to be outside 24/7 even when its dark. He just hates inside and always wants to be out. Gets kind of annoying to always have to deal with him wanting to be outside everytime he hears a door open or close, but down deep my heart beats happily knowing outdoors is where he truly wants to be! This boy is gonna far outshine his daddy someday...... I was so proud I had to take tons of pictures:

So we went in at dark and ate the fresh whiting we caught. The fish was accompanied nicely by some Shrimp and Crayfish appetizers from Bahama Bobs just down the road!

Saturday and Sunday the fihsing wont be very good, because it is neap tide. That means not much tidal movement at all. Neap tide is basically God's gift to all the little fish in the Ocean. When the tide doesnt move, big fish dont chase after little fish. Little fish can take a couple days rest, but come Monday we are going to start filling up our coolers with fresh fish!!!

We will still fish on Saturday and Sunday, because we are addicted, but we wont fish much or hard. Fishing is sooo much better when the tide is moving. When the tide isnt moving we will swim and sleep and watch football. Oh yeah, we will consume lots of freshly caught fish and also lots of local seafood like Cajun Crayfish!!

Big Bluegill Fishing Video

2011-10-17T19:39:00.004-05:00

Here is a bluegill fishing video we made with Hook and Hunt TV this summer at Otter Creek Preserve.

For those who don't know, bluegill fishing is my favorite freshwater fish to fish for. Next on my list is crappie, then yellow perch, walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, hybrid striped bass, trout, salmon, catfish, carp, rock bass, white bass, drum, suckers, creek chubs, then finally at the bottom of my list is muskie and largemouth bass. Anybody else feel that way too or are you all muskie or bass fisherman?

Anyhow here is the bluegill fishing video:

Also this summer they made a bunch more videos while fishing out there:

David Reyes Tequila and Fish Stocking

2011-10-16T15:59:00.003-05:00

On Friday, I was working on figuring out a very intensive fish mgmt plan on a very interesting lake up near Victoria, Il. The goal of this 15 acre lake is to carry world class caliber fish of multiple species. Typically its very easy to create a trophy fishery of one or two species of fish with a couple bonus species here and there, but this lake is different. The goal of this lake is to create trophy fisheries all in the same body of water for Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass, Hybrid Striped Bass, Walleye, Tiger Muskie, Crappie, Bluegill, Catfish, and Rainbow Trout.

Not an easy task, but possible. I've been scratching my head the last couple nights thinking about the exact ways to achieve this specialized fishery for this exact situation. I do my best thinking when I am about 70% sleeping and 30% partially conscious.

Anyhow, the lake we have been working on for a couple years and the backbone infrastructure is in place with some big fish already, but now the plan is to go way beyond natural management strategies and capacities and really create a showcase lake.

Here are some pics from this lake over the years:

So while I am there I meet an interesting fella in town from Mexico. The guys name is David Reyes and after a few minutes of conversation I found out he grows Agave's down in Mexico on his families land and they produce the finest Tequila in the entire world!

I actually have never tasted Tequila before so I wouldnt know what is good tequila or what is bad tequila, but I figured this had to be good tequila if it costs $100 for just a small little glass full. Anyhow, here is a picture of one of his aqave fields down in Mexico. Supposedly the agaves are farmed organically and grow for 8 years before they can be harvested for this tequila.

Here is a picture of David Reyes himself explaining to me the tequila making process. Some day when people are singing songs on the radio about David Reyes tequila like they do Jose Cuervo and Jack Daniels, I can tell my kids and grandkids that I actually met the man himself!

So moving back into the week, we stocked lots of fish into lots of lakes and ponds all over central Illinois and Missouri. We finished most all of our trout stockings for the year, and gave thousands of smallmouth, largemouth, catfish, and hybrid bluegills new homes as well.

That brings me to another interesting story from the week. I was putting in some special strain of pure genetic bluegills I had raised for a fishing club that has 8 lakes on it when the guy said, hey you gotta come up here and check out my lake that you stocked 3 years ago. He said that he guaranteed me that he would catch 3 big yellow perch in the first 5 minutes right from his dock.

I figured the moment he said that we would see exactly zero perch, but low and behold on his first cast he reals in a 9 inch perch. Second cast a 10 inch perch, third cast nothing and 4th cast another 9 incher. I was pretty excited as we talked strategy for this lake. He said he regularly catches 30-40 perch per outing with the biggest well over a lb each and 12-13 inches long!!!

Back to the fish stocking subject, we will be stocking tons of walleye, pike, perch, and muskie in the next coming weeks. We still have pretty much every species still available, but what I have a surplus of and really need to find new homes for is northern pike 16-24 inches long. Right now I have 50 extra pike that are 2 years old and that have an average weight of 1.5-2.0 lbs each. The absolute most perfect sizes for stocking into lakes with existing predators!

Send me an email to nate@hbpondmanagement.com or call me up at 309-303-5691 if you could find a home for some of these fish for me.

Missouri Conservation and Illinois Youth Season

2011-10-13T05:40:00.002-05:00

A short breakdown and apology for this past weeks questionable events on DominantPredator.org

Brian Sutter hang and hunts with his Lone Wolf set on a new property in Illinois, in attempt to figure the deer movement out for rut. Then tag along with Blake during the Illinois youth season as he looks to pull the trigger on a big buck or a doe. The Dominant Predator crew is ready for a cool down in the temperature!

Mission Oak Inn Electrofishing

2011-10-08T07:06:00.008-05:00

On Wednesday Chef Todd and I headed out to Mission Oak Inn to electrofish their 7 acre lake and snoop around to see exactly what kind of food they prepare for their guests, etc. For those of you who have been keeping tabs on Chef and I for awhile, you know full well that FOOD and FISHING is what we do. Well we kept hearing bits and pieces about great food and fishing coming from this place out in the middle of nowhere near Henry, IL and when the Innkeeper Denny emailed me a couple weeks ago about needing a little help with his 7 acre lake, I knew Chef would be needed to help scope out their entire facility.

Chef and I are fairly similar (but with different techniques) when it comes to trying to learn everything humanly possible from every place we ever visit. For those who don't know Chef, he is a tad bit inquisitive in all things fishing, food, and turkey hunting related. The plan worked about as perfect as any premeditated plan could ever work and by the time we left at about 1 pm we were served egg florentine casserole, sticky cinnamonny caramelly buns, pumpkin delight cheesecake, and a chocolate encrusted pie so rich that Chef said he was gonna enjoy his sugar buzz until about 8 pm tonight!

Overall we drove out of that place and quite simply were in awe of every facet of that little bed and breakfast. Their entire 100+ acre facility intensively landscaped with walking trails, etc is about as nice as it gets anywhere in the entire midwest. Denny didn't need my help to turn 6 inch bluegills into 9 inchers or 1 lb bass into 3 lbers or 8 inch crappies into 12 inchers. He wanted my help to maintain and improve on 9 inch bluegills, 3-5 lb largemouth bass, and 12-15 inch crappies! Simply fantastic world class fishing already in a perfectly designed and very manageable 7 acre lake.

Chef and I often talk when leaving a place we just electrofished that we wouldn't go back fishing there if they offered us a free membership......Not the case on Wednesday!!

We designed a management plan to provide year round 365 days a week fishing opportunities for guests and created daily creel limits that will allow guests plenty of trophy fishing and meat fishing opportunities that overall will enhance the lake when they fish as opposed to draining from or harming the resource as they fish.

Rainbow Trout are going in on Tuesday to allow great angling opportunities for open water and ice fishing in November, December, January, February, March, and April when other warm water species wont be nearly as active.

Here is a picture of one of the two suites at the Inn. To be honest, I have never been to a bed and breakfast before, but definitely will be back at some point in the future when Brook and I need to get away for a night or two. This option will be WAAAY better than going to Chicago!!! Brook was even excited when I showed her the pics and spent 5 minutes telling her the story of stuffed french toast with homemade strawberry sauce and pumpkin cheesecake....

Handcarved wood carvings decorate the place:

Dining Room Pics

On Friday morning at 5 am, Cole and I headed to Arthur, Illinois to electrofish a pond and then drove on over to Casey, Il to electrofish a couple more ponds. The first pond is about an acre and is going to become a trophy bluegill fishing pond. The second pond is about 1.5 acres and is well on its way to become a trophy largemouth bass fishing pond.

The third pond I actually am the most excited about. It is about 2 acres and we couldnt find a live fish in that pond anywhere. This pond is going to be a future crappie and walleye fishing pond. When someone owns multiple bodies of water, I absolutely love outside the box fish stocking experiments. High risk, but high reward potential! Watermeal has taken over the pond recently and that will need to be remedied next spring with Clipper and White Cap. Also I am going to have my lab tell me exactly what nutrients and elements are bound up in the water column and we are going to zap them out with a custom bacteria concoction to clean up the water and give us clear water all the way down to the bottom! Then the fathead minnows go in the spring to start the forage cocktail. In the fall goes the crappie fingerlings and the following fall goes the walleye and northern pike finglerlings.

Very cool old burrow pit tucked back in the woods and some point in the last year or so all the fish died out of it. The reason I think the fish kill was recent was because there werent many frogs or tadpoles. Ponds void of fish usually teem with other forms of life that fish like to eat...Also the owner said he saw some fish swimming in it last summer...

Cole came along for this survey, cause he helped the owner with his deer management program. Fine tuning his food plots, prairie grasses, and deer stand locations! We didnt get home till 9 pm Friday night, just in time to watch the end of the Cardinals stunning victory over the Phillies!

Food, Fish, N Fun Stuff

2011-10-02T20:04:00.008-05:00

Saturday morning it was freezing cold outside, but Tyden, Noah, Grandpa, and I decided to see if anything was biting down at the dock. Not much activity, but we did manage a few good ones. This time of year I prefer to fish in the afternoons to let the water warm up a degree or two, but we had a brief opening in the morning for fishing and we took it.

We had some very special guests in from Lincoln, Nebraska on Friday and Saturday and our mission was to show them the time of their lives with a focal point on outdoor activities. Shelby and Ann were up for a weekend they will never forget. We jampacked as many cool things into those two days as humanly possible. We rented very warm wet suits and took them scuba diving, high dive jumping, rope swinging, clay pigeon shooting, handgun shooting, archery shooting, heavy equipment operating, Chef Todd cooking, and hit the Spoon River Drive!

On their way up I texted them to see if they liked meat. On an extreme outdoor weekend you pretty much need to eat meat and with high school girls nowadays you just never know anymore. Anyhow when meal planning with Chef, my text went like this- Bacon or Sausage, Turkey or Ham, Steak or Chicken, Livers or Gizzards....

We ate well: Sausage Bagels

Bananas Foster French Toast

Chef and the crew getting an early start.

Chef then took Bruce out fishing for a bit while I took care of a few things on land. They caught some nice fat fish!!

Some pictures of the activities. We also filmed the entire weekend, including underwater scuba footage of feeding the fish. I am sure those videos will surface in the weeks to come.

This is a random picture of a Pony from the flavor factory in Cuba, Il. A pony is a mini version of the classic Horseshoe.

Monday we had subcontractor appreciation lunch on a big project we are working on. Mark Rocke and Lee Esslinger cooked up a feast consisting of Venison Cheddar Brats, Elk Burgers, and Andoiulle Sausages.

Justin and Cole have been cleaning up the edges of our lake and making a walking path all the way around it right on the waters edge with rip rap. I am so pumped to eventually have good shoreline access all the way around the lake!! Makes it way more usable!

My older brothers pond is finished. We still are burning some of the leftover tree debris and are going to put in a sweet beach, but pretty much finished. Now we need some rain so we can stock the smallies and perch!

Saturday evening we went to the coolest bonfire ever at a clients place near Brimfield. The logs were stacked 30 feet high and the flames light up the whole 10 acre field! Sweatshirts and blanckets before lighting the fire and Tshirts and sunglasses after lighting the fire.

Also for entertainment they had fire dancers, balloon clowns, face painting, and all sorts of games and tons of FOOD. Lots of fun with the kids.

This weekend we are gonna film a youth deer hunt, so hopefully some deer will get out and about with all the warm nice weather forecasted this week. WOW, this weather is as good as it gets, nice and cool in the morning and calm and sunny in the afternoons!!! Hope you all get outside as much as possible during this changing of the seasons! Looks to be an awesome month ahead.

First Blood

2011-09-29T05:54:00.002-05:00

I have been a bit preoccupied lately trying to finish up some projects for the year. But here is the latest dominant predator video from bow hunting in Missouri this past weekend.

With limited stand options because of a North wind, Zach and Cole Sutter attempt to hang and hunt a new location. After it's all said and done, they end up sitting on the ground where Zach harvest a doe. At the end of the show, Zach sets up a trail camera on a new property that the guys will be hunting in Illinois.

Super Cool Projects

2011-09-22T21:37:00.004-05:00

Been working on some super cool projects keepin the guys busy and electrofishing some awesome lakes the last couple weeks.

This project is connecting two lakes together that are about 1200 feet apart. Making a canal that will be 6 feet deep and creating some hatchery ponds with the excess dirt that will drain into the canal.

Been renovating this outpost cabin for client. The porch was poured last week by Lone Wolf Concrete and we are putting in the cedar posts and beams for the screened in porch!

Been electrofishing in Kingston, Paris, Secor, and consulting near Ipava, Illinois for new clients recently. Coming up with some really awesome custom management plans! Here are some pics, one lake was full of carp, suckers, buffalo, and all kinds of river fish. Gonna turn that lake into the best bass lake in Northern, Illinois. Not an easy one, but the owner is motivated so it will be accomplished!

Here are pics of my brothers pond filling up. Its going to be a smallmouth bass and yellow perch pond as soon as we get some rain.

Front door of the hunting lodge we are working on. Pretty cool wood carved scene!

Got a few things happening, very exciting. Every day is jampacked and we are very thankful to be busy working with some great people on some very neat projects! The rest of this year until ice fishing season is booked out to capacity.

Filming with Midwest Outdoors

2011-09-22T20:18:00.004-05:00

Saturday and Sunday we filmed 6 fishing show segments with Midwest Outdoors. They have been filming weekly hunting and fishing shows for the last 25 years and can be seen on Fox Sports Midwest, the Sportsmens Channel and many local markets all across the nation.

The hosts of the shows we filmed were Larry Ladowski and Steve Ryan. Steve has been fishing with me several times with various film crews like InFisherman TV and to catch fish for promotional photos, etc. Larry I just met for the first time, nice guy! So anyhow while talking with the camera guy Dennis Saturday night I found out that they have never before filmed more than two complete segments in a days time of filming.

Well, they showed up at 11 am Saturday and by 7 pm they finished filming their 3rd complete show of the day on 3 different Herman Brothers managed lakes!!! First show was bluegill and redear sunfish fishing in an old jon boat on a 6 acre pond highlighting some new jigs by Custom Jigs and Spins while using Frabill gear, nets, etc.

Second show of the day we filmed with a clients' friends and family on a custom made fishing pontoon boat by AAD custom boats on a 40 acre Herman Brothers managed lake! This pontoon boat is perhaps the most thought out, innovative and comfortable large family fishing boat on the planet. (I can say that because I helped design it). It is a fish catching machine! Here is a pic of a nice bass from our maiden voyage:

The theme of this show was family fishing suspended crappies for a fish fry. Slip bobber techniques, crappie behavior, and family fun were the focal points. 2 hours and we had 40 crappies in the livewell!! The fish actually weren't biting great across the lake, but we did finally find one spot where they were stacked up off a main lake point. Here are some shots of the boat.

Third show of the day was topwater bass fishing at dusk on a 16 acre Herman Brothers managed lake! Didn't land any lunkers, but filmed a fun segment with lots of topwater action on buzzbaits and frogs. Then we feasted on burgers and fresh crappies!

These shows will air on Midwest Outdoors next spring and summer so make sure to tune in for them! But that wasnt it. We went back and stayed at my place for the night and got up early Sunday morning and headed out to one of my favorite fishing properties in Illinois- Otter Creek.

So we pull up to Otter Creek and are greeted not only by Ryan Pudik but by a stiff east wind and light rain. Perfect day for filming eh? So anyhow after waiting around for an hour the rain died down enough to get out in the boats and film a bass segment on the big 120 acre lake. Justin and I were in a seperate boat crappie fishing and we went through 6 dozen minnows in our 1.5 hrs on the water!!

Wrapped up that segment which was showcasing some soft plastics I think and headed to the 18 acre VIP lake. That segment should have only taken about 20 minutes to film in entirety because that lake is so good of bass fishing for 3-5 lb bass, but it actually was tough fishing. Took two hours to film that one, but they got some real big fish.

Then the Midwest Outdoors crew had about 1.5 hrs left before heading down towards Kinkaid Lake and eventually Kentucky Lake but we decided to put in at the Canadian Lake anyways to try for a multi-species segment. This lake is a very special 53 acre lake with obviously a Canadian/Boundary waters themed fishery. Let me just say the fish in this lake were on FIRE. 11 tiger muskies, 40 walleyes, and a handful of real chunky smallmouth bass later and they wrapped up their 6th complete segment in 2 days of fishing!!!

This was my only pic from Otter Creek fishing. It was raining most of the day and not convenient to take pics.

Was an extremely fun and informative weekend. Very encouraging to see that what we are doing with fish and lakes around here is cutting edge stuff that stacks up and ranks on the national radar! These guys fish around the world regularly and are excited about coming back to do some more fishing!

Dominant Predator Open Season

2011-09-22T20:15:00.002-05:00

Opening weekend for the guys at Dominant Predator.

After getting the beat on Homse a few days before season, we where excited about going after him. We where able to sit the blind we set up for him two times but he never showed his face. It was a slow opening weekend for us but even so it is hard to beat being out in God's creation with a bow in hand.

Setting up for Homse

2011-09-14T19:54:00.002-05:00

Would be very cool if they end up getting this buck on opening weekend!

The Dominant Predator crew heads out to find Homse, the whitetail chosen to go after for Missouri's opener. Homse is a stud of a 4 1/2 caught heading to the corn field just under a week before the opening day of Missouri's bow season. The blind is in place for Homse to make that same mistake.

VIP Dock Fishing

2011-09-10T21:27:00.003-05:00

At our lake we have a special dock called the VIP dock. The dock and the surrounding area is a fish santuary on a very heavily fished lake. We feed the fish bluegills, fatheads, shiners, and fish food from this dock, and actually visiting the VIP dock is one of the most popular activities at the lake. Lots of BIG fish live there.

Anyhow, it was Tyden's 10 year birthday party this afternoon. We surprised him with a bucket full of 5 inch bluegills, a circle hook tied onto a shimano medium action rod and reel, and headed over to the VIP dock.

We had the line broke twice, but managed to land a few good ones!

Happy Birthday Tyden, you just made Chef Todd extremely jealous!

Deer, Bear, Elk, Airplane

2011-09-09T20:19:00.007-05:00

My Aunt Rachel Sauder is a photographer out near Hanna City, Il. Anyhow on Tuesday I sent her up in an airplane to snap some aerial photos for a client to see some progress on his lake and land renovation project.

I was amazed at how reasonable it was to rent an aerial photography airplane from Canton Airport! We will be doing a bunch more aerial photography in the very near future, just let me know if your fairly close to Canton, IL and I am sure we can snap some pics of your place too.

Here are some cool trail camera pics sent to me recently from the tri-county area.

Coming through, get outta dad's way!

On Wednesday night I made it out to Edwins place just before dark to start sighting in our rifles! Their pond is perhaps the best trout fishing pond in Illinois come October, but not this year. It is getting completely drained, scooped out and enlarged....... Edwin, Rand, Dave, Jared, and I are headed to Colorado this November to hunk Elk!! My first trip out west hunting and I am very much looking forward to it! November 5-11th. We only had enough time to get our guns sighted in about 2 inches high at 100 yards. Next week or two we will start zeroing in at 200 yards!

Thursday night I finished up near Lewiston and was in the mood to snap some photos. Here is the backyard of a new cabin a client is building on his awesome pond.

If you walk in the cabin and turn to the right you are greeted by this amazing grizzly bear and mountain scene!

Here is a pic of the cabin from the front:

Earlier in the week Allen and I finished building this sweet dock out near Congreville. Still some landscaping to do leading up to the dock, but man is this ever a cool lake with a little island off to the right. This lake has got boone and crocket gills, great crappies, catfish, walleyes, perch, stripers, walleyes, tiger muskies, and rainbow trout. You know, the typical midwestern pond gamefish!

We are building this pond this week as well. This is actually for my brother Chad behind his house. It is going to be 1/3 acre swimming and smallmouth pond. Just wait about 2 years and I am gonna have a bunch of 3 lb smallmouth bass and 1 lb yellow perch swimming between your legs when you jump in! (his wife Julie doesnt read the blog, I dont think she has an idea how many fish are going to be in this baby!). Should have some updated pics of this project early next week it will be filling with water hopefully. I already have been raising the smallmouths for this pond all summer so I cant wait for water!!!

Looks like we are finally getting some rain! We might have a chance at actually growing some deer crops this fall! Speaking of that, I was in Paris, Illinois electrofishing a 6 acre pond today and the guy had some of the most amazinhg food plots imaginable!! His 9 acre bean plot and 4 acre clover plot looked tasty even to me....I was thinking about some ranch dressing and a fork for a nice salad, they looked delicious. Unfortunately his fish and pond wasnt in such good shape. They need some help, but with just a few tweeks like a bunch of harvesting, some fresh genetics, a winter drawdown, an aeration system and a bit of bass structure and his pond will be hopping in no time.

Are You Ready for Deer Season?

2011-09-07T22:08:00.003-05:00

Dominant Predator boys are for sure! They have spent the summer prepping deer stands, food plots, scouting deer, and shooting their bows. Lets see if it pays off for them once their Missouri season opens September 15th and their Illinois season opens October 1st.

Here is another video about them talking about early season hunting strategies going into small bedding areas for big bucks!

With the season closing in we are thinking strategy. Zach talks about hunting bedding stands early and Shane breaks down one of our new stands. Jimmy closes up with our scouting plans for the up coming week.

What do you think about their strategy of hunting bedding stands early in the season? I will let you know what I think about 2 weeks into the season after I see how it works for them.

Bob Lusk The Pond Boss Visits

2011-09-05T19:17:00.012-05:00

On Wednesday afternoon I had the privelege of picking up Bob Lusk at the Peoria Airport. Bob has been designing lakes and growing monster fish across the United States for the last 32 years and is the pioneer of lake and pond management! He is the editor of Pond Boss Magazine and the owner of the world famous Pond Boss Forum. If you have any pond, fish, weed, or wildlife question you just pop on the forum and ask your question and within a few hours some of the smartest people in the nation will have some answers or advice for you. Let me just say that if you are a pond owner, land owner, hunter, fisherman, or wildlife enthusiast, you absolutely are missing out if you do not get Pond Boss Magazine sent to your home or office. It is the best resource on the planet for learning about your outdoor passions. When I stumbled across Pond Boss in 2005 I became addicted to learning from their experiences.

So anyhow flash forward a few years and the pond boss himself came to visit and help me with a big project. Basically the magnitude of this visit can best be described as a basketball player working with Michael Jordan, or a race car fan hanging out with a famous driver (I dont know which ones are or were good), or a football player training with Jerry Rice or Walter Payton.... Basically you get my point, but just in case you dont I will keep going like an ice skater skating with Kristy Yamagucchi, or a hockey player slapping a puck with Wayne Gretzky, or a gymnasticker gymnasticking with Mary Lou Retton.....the list can go on and on

Straight from the airport we head to Jim's Steakhouse to hang out and feast on some of Chef Todd's food! The man can flat out cook and I have a bunch of pictures a few paragraphs down to prove it. Anyhow this pic of some steak and crab from Jim's will have to do for now.

So Thursday and Friday I spent with Bob designing the best fishing lake in Illinois for a client complete with its very own state of the art fish hatchery for raising forage minnows, crayfish, and occasionally gamefish like muskies, stripers, smallmouths, etc as needed. This lake is going to flat out be the best fishing lake anyone has ever seen or can even imagine. We are putting alot of thought into this design!

Saturday morning I loaded up my boat and fishing gear at 4 am, took Bob to the airport at 5:30 am, called up Kelly Presley to let me into his bait shop at 6:30 am and pulled up at a clients place in Fulton County at 8 am.

Chef Todd and Chad and Lee helped us take a bunch of people fishing and we caught some awesome fish with some monster crappies for it being the 95 degrees outside. I only was able to snap a couple pics and it will be weeks before all the other pics start trickling in so this is all you get:

Then we cleaned and cooked up the fish along with some bacon wrapped scallops, crab rangoons, shrimp skewers, oysters rockefellar, Ahi tuna, apple cinnamon chicken breasts, and filet mignon. All I can say is WOW, Chef was able to pull all that off in the midst of a big thunderstorm with lots of mud, basically out in the great outdoors with some make shift shelters and a leaky roof.

Then on Sunday and Monday I stayed out at the lake and played with the kids. Was different than usual though, the big storm brought in a massive cold front so we didnt swim or fish, we just made fires and actually wore sweatshirts! I can't say the cold weather felt great, because I was uncomfortably cold and the wind was blowing. But was a nice much needed relaxng weekend nonetheless.

Justin, Lee, and Dave started our shoreline rehabilitation project over the weekend. To prevent erosion and to make a nice patch around our lake, we are putting in a trail that will be rip rapped around the entire lake. I can't wait to be able to walk around the lake and catch fish hanging out by the rocks!! Just an FYI for those of you thinking about rip rap, we found a source for reject concrete that will be our base layer and will be putting it out quite a ways in the water, then we will cover it up with this nice rip rap stone for looks! The concrete costs about $15 per ton and the stone about $20 per ton delivered. Semi trucks can hold about 20 tons. In this picture, the reject concrete is on the right and the stone rip rap is on the left.

My lake has never been good for fishing from the shore because of no good access and lots of overgrown erosion. With this path around the lake I will be able to easily fish around the whole lake without needing to get in a boat!! This will take lots of pressure off our docks and create awesome fishing opportunities for lots of people who just want to fish for a few minutes and not get in a boat! Here is the beginning of the creation of the trail, I will update with more pics as we complete this project!

Just as I was leaving the lake this afternoon, Justin and Allen came up with this monster catfish:

Also I found this snake out sunning itself on the top of our dam, anyone know what kind it is? I am terrible at snake ID.

Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend! Looks like the hottest summer ever has officially lost its grip and now hopefully we can enjoy 2 months of perfect 70 degree weather!! Fatten up fish, you only got a few weeks of good eatin left!!

Killable Hit List Bucks 2011

2011-09-05T15:48:00.002-05:00

Here is the first weekly segment from the Dominant Predator guys! I will be posting their semi-live hunting videos every week on the blog from now until the end of the hunting season. Sometimes I may be a few days late in posting the video, like I was with this one, but you can always watch them every wednesday night on their own website dominantpredator.org

After a summer of velvet footage, hanging stands, planting food plots and running trail cameras the Dominant Predator crew is ready for September 15th! Shane, Jimmy, Cole and Zach Sutter put together 4 very killable bucks for the 2011 season. These bucks are labeled as killable because of encounters, daylight trail camera pictures, and the area they live in. Looks to be a very promising year!

Interesting Week Fishing and Fire

2011-08-29T20:30:00.006-05:00

Way out in the boonies of Fulton County there is a guy creating the ultimate back yard pond. Not just any pond or the typical backyard, but a 37 acre intensively manicured back yard along the spoon river! Lots of prairie grass, wetlands, trails and this new pond! Very cool, here are some pics of pond under construction:

How cool is this fish condo!

One thing very interesting about this guy is that he is a big time hunter, but not really a deer hunter. He is a coyote hunter and has an amazing rifle range to practice taking loooong shots. Can you imagine regularly taking 400-500 yard shots with the occasional 800 yard take down? Thats insane. Anyhow here are some pics of his office:

So back on subject, once the pond fills it will be a dynamite fishing and swimming hole! Catfish, Bass, Crappies, and Walleyes! We are gonna really think outside the box with this stocking and management. Dont try this one on your own.

So another interesting twist to the week was I spent some evenings helping my brother set second floor walls and then trusses on his new house. That is where we snapped this spider web pic:

So then the weekend came and we did some fishing. Noah, Chef Todd and I caught a bunch of catfish:

We also caught a ton of bass on a mid-day topwater bite over deeeep water which was fun and we caught and ate this muskie: Seems kinda crazy to eat a muskie, but I have too many in that particular lake and am harvesting about 10-12 per year. I had to get a pic of Todd cleaning a muskie!

So then we had a large group of friends and family out from Church for a cookout Sunday afternoon. We made sure all 27 kids caught a hybrid striper and accomplished that in about 45 minutes!!! That was awesome for them to battle big fish and try to hold onto the rod. We kept them all and cleaned them up for each family to take a package of fresh fish home. Here are some pics:

So while cooking burgers for dinner one of the most interesting and terrifying events of my life occurred. Jared and I were flipping burgers on our big grill when one of the propane canisters stopped working. It was a big 4 foot tall industrial tank. I switched it to the other side of the grill and it still didnt work, we assumed it was empty. My dad went and found a small tank to exchange it out with.

So when I went to undo the big tank again and in a hurry to get the new tank on, I neglected to turn off the main shut off on the big tank. Dumbest mistake of my life and it almost cost me my life and many other peoples lives. Keep in mind that I already switched the tank out once. Well it turns out that the big propane tanks do not have check valves on them like standard ones do and it turns out that the tank wasnt empty, just clogged. Usually the small propane tanks do not let gas out unless they are hooked up and pushed in, unfortunately the big tank didnt have that safety feature.

Well, while I was undoing the regulator it blew off the tank and the propane started blowing directly into the grill and Jared and I were completely engulfed in flames with a load explosion. It kind of blew us back several feet and the big tank sounded like a jet engine with flames 20 feet across pouring out of it while it was spewing out gas. We had 3 other propane tanks right there in the flames and the main gas line to the building hooked up to the other grill all right in that fire zone. Flames burned the walls and windows and screens 25 feet across the porch all the way up to the ceiling.

That is when the whole world slowed down into slow motion but yet all I can remember was that this was the end and I couldnt let the whole place blow up with everyone and their kids playing in and around the pavilion. I was seriously in the fire yet felt no pain, I kinda remember being in the flames and figured being burned to death would hurt alot worse. So anyhow a few moments before the whole place blew up, and after I had already made it out of the fire, I was told (but dont remember) that I went back into the fire, somehow found and grabbed the big propane tank that was spewing fire and dragged it out of the building.

Everyone was terrified and thought I was going to be severely burned or even killed. I thought I was being severely burned and that this was the end, but yet I felt no pain, in the fire and not being burned was a miracle that I will never forget.

This isnt a story about what I accomplished, because if it was I managed to set the place on fire and nearly killed quite a few people while burning my brother in-laws arms from his finger tips to his biceps. The rest of the story is where God took over and miraculously saved us from a very terrible disaster. Why he spared me from any injury? Not even a minor burn or singe. I should be dead with skin oozing off my body and instead I am typing a blog post about being in an explosion engulfed in flames and not harmed. To God be the glory!

So Jared got back from the emergency room late that evening sporting some stylish new sleeves:

He called several times from the hospital just to make sure that I was ok and to let me know that he was fine. He was in good spirit and realizes that everything happens for a reason and that good will come from this catastrophe. Praising God when his arms are second degree burned! Its good to know that I can burn a guys arms off and he still loves me and is more concerned about me than him.

This morning I slept in a little longer, I drove a little slower, I prayed alot more, and I lived life very thankful that no one else was injured! I am still shaken up a bit. Hope you can learn from my experience- In all things remember to God be the glory and that no matter who you are HE can save you from the fire! There is so much more to this life than work, fish, and deer.

Experienced Carpenters Wanted

2011-08-24T09:45:00.002-05:00

This post sounds kind of crazy, but Noah Herman Sons Builders is looking to hire a couple of experienced and reliable carpenters. NHS is Central Illinois Premier custom home building company and they very rarely have job openings for these positions. They currently employ 21 carpenters and most of them have been with the company longer than 10 years with many of the foreman being employed for over 20 years.

They offer full benefits, retirement, health insurance, and even profit sharing with their employees. It is a very positive working environment with great opportunities for creativity and advancement.

Anyhow, just come in to their office at 8911 N Prairie Point and fill out an application, or call 309-693-4343 for more details. I wouldnt wait, cause these jobs will go fast.

Free November Whitetail Hunt

2011-08-23T20:07:00.003-05:00

Here is a pretty good chance to win a November whitetail deer hunt at perhaps one of the best Monster Buck Deer Hunting Properties in Illinois.

North Creek Preserve is a private property currently for sale in Knox County and they are offering a free hunt as a promotion to help launch their new facebook page.
Here are more details and it takes less than one minute to register for the free hunt. November Hunt Details

Here is a video showcasing some the deer you will be chasing:

1/4 acre pond Trophy Fish

2011-08-21T20:22:00.009-05:00

I started working with Rogers 1/4 acre fishing and swimming pond about 4 years ago. He is really pushing the envelope on growing trophy fish of multiple species in one small pond. The secret to growing large fish in small ponds is to maintain optimum water quality, eat lots of fish, and make sure the biggest and best always make it back into the pond and always have plenty to eat themselves.

Cam and Chuck Hart of Bob Grimm Chevrolet in Morton sent me these pics from a Sunday afternoon of fishing at Rogers pond:

I did some of my own fishing and swimming this weekend! It was great. The weather was absolutely amazing! Saturday morning I was up at 4 am working for a couple hours at the office, then headed to breakfast with a client for a meeting in Fulton County at 8 am, then out to the lake for the rest of the weekend.

Luke and his family came out Saturday and we caught a bunch of fish and fried up a feast for lunch. They took tons of pics on their cameras, but just like everyone else they all said they would email them over right away and pretty much I never end up getting the pics. Its ok though cause Luke's dad managed to snap a few and actually followed through on sending them over, I also snapped a few myself:

Disclaimer: Luke just sent these pics over, better late than never.

Sunday we hosted Noah Herman Sons Builders company picnic out at the lake. We didnt do quite as much fishing, but we swam alot and we did alot of eating! Chef Todd came out and catered the meal for the picnic. For those of you who are new to the blog, you will find that Chef and I do alot of outdoor themed catering for various events and that food is pretty much just as important as fishing.

This picture actually looks kind of disgusting, but if you know how many lbs of cheese was in this macaroni dish you would think otherwise. The macaroni is covered in baked potato chips. When you throw the word baked in there it automatically sounds healthier......

BAKED beans:

Grilled Brisket. Hey, grilled doesnt sound so bad either. I will just leave out the barbecue smothered part and stick with the name of grilled brisket.

Chef's homemade cole slaw is just stinkin awesome and he hit a home run with this mixed salad. I don't even like cole slaw in general so I need to come up with a new name for his slaw. Chef's slaw I guess sounds better than cole slaw, if that is even how you spell cole slaw? Anyhow, if you can't tell I am in a pretty chipper mood. Was just a good relaxing weekend.

Sitting here looking at the pics of the food just brings back fond memories of meal time.

I mentioned that we did do some fishing, unfortunately I didnt have my camera with me for much of the day, but did get to snap a couple pics.

How about this to cap off a weekend eh?

Semi-Live Whitetail Hunting Videos

2011-08-20T04:14:00.003-05:00

Herman Brothers Lake and Land Management has teamed up with the guys at Dominant Predator this year and are super excited to be able to post weekly deer hunting videos in a semi-live format. Thats right, starting Aug 31 and then every week all the way through hunting season we will be posting all of the edited footage from the previous weeks adventures.

With the semi-live format, this is not for just showcasing all of the highlights of the season, but rather is meant to be informative and educational first and entertainment second. The highs and lows, ups and downs, good shots and bad. Lots of 2.5 and 3.5 year old buck footage, doe harvests, field dressing, taxidermy tips, bow practicing tips, and hopefully the occasional bruiser on film and on the ground!

Here are some trailers and introductions to kick of the season, with the first episode airing Aug 31! These videos introduce the dominant predator team with some highlights of what they are capable of in the field and in the editing room.

DominantPredator.org from DP Production on Vimeo.

Here is a highlight of 3D bow shooting from the nest:

So there are some highlights and introductions. I can't wait for the first episode of hunting season which isnt just highlights and introductions, but rather will start the Semi-Live format. Already they have been piling up footage of bucks in velvet, hanging deer stands, food plots, etc which will be used in some of the weekly segments as well. They will be hunting lots of public land, typical ask for permission private land, some of their own managed land, and even occasionally some very intensively managed world class whitetail properties.

Not to mention some ice fishing trips, waterfowl hunting, upland game hunting, dove hunting and pretty much anything else going on outdoors for the next 5 months. I would have to say though that probably 90% whitetail deer! This will be fun, stay tuned!

Dock Building and Fishing Pictures

2011-08-18T21:46:00.009-05:00

I spent Wednesday afternoon with the Steffas and Pastor Bill Brown family. We caught lots of fish.

So that day actually started at 3:30 am when I went and picked up Chef Todd to help me collect and deliver fish for Bass Pro Shops big display tank. We collected big smallmouth bass, walleye, bluegill and redear sunfish. No pictures of those fish, but you can simply go see them when the store opens!!!

Steve Ryan came down and did some fishing on Sunday morning. Here are a couple shots. They use photos like these for print ads and other promotional stuff for various fishing companies.

Diverted a creek into a wetland from farmers fields and put a new road into a farm. More pics of that to follow, just dont have time to sort thru and organize the pics together.

Started raining one evening and pretty much anytime it rains me and kids head straight out to play. Especially when mom isnt home!

Renovating an old pole barn into the sweetest little guest cabin overlooking a 5 acre lake. Today me, Allen, and Lee tore out and gutted everything and busted up some concrete for some plumbing.

Check out the view from the back of the cabin!

Been building a mega mega dock/deck combo. The pictures again are out of order, they go from today all the way back to monday.

Had about 60 people out to the lake on Sunday, lots and lots of fishing, swimming, and eating.

Some happy ladies eh? These gals were from Saturdays group, we had 80 people out to the lake for more fishing, swimming, and eating. Altogether I think we have hosted more than 2700 out at our lake this year in the months of May, June, July, and August. If I am wrong on that number its because I forgot a few groups. Lots of youth camps, church groups, family reunions, campers, and friends at the lake pretty much every weekend!

We actually are eating all of the muskies out of our 33 acre lake. I like muskies when they are less than 28 inches, but once they hit that 29 inch mark or bigger out they come and into the frying pan or onto the wall. This one hit the frying pan.

Took some brothers and their sons fishing on Friday. One bro from Tampa and one bro from Chicago. Pictures are in reverse order, but you get the picture....BTW, we ate great for lunch and they ate great for the weekend!

Back to the dock construction. This mega floating dock is 15x120 feet long and it is attached to a mega deck that is 20x120 feet long.

Back to the road construction:

Oh yeah, the Rocke Brothers Masonry has done a phenomenal job on our stone work for the outdoor kitchen for the hunting lodge:

The last two weeks have been on the go from 4 am to 10 pm, but I usually always get to sneak in a couple hours with Brook and the kids at some point each day. Summer is winding down and Mae's first day of kindergarten is tomorrow!

Friday I will be working on the mega dock in the morning, then installing an aeration system and some underwater green fish attracting lights in Abingdon. Saturday will be working just till noon to cap off a typical summertime 76 hr work week. In a few weeks (or maybe a couple months) I will be scaling back to 40 hrs/week, because by then I will be starting to build my own house for about 30 hrs per week on nights and Saturdays.

Saturdays Fishing Trip

2011-08-07T14:59:00.006-05:00

Saturday morning I woke up a 4:15 am to get everything ready for the days fishing trip. So I go down in the dark to load the boat on the trailer and I couldn't find the boat. The last guys to use the boat apparently didnt pull it up onto the shore all the way. About 20 minutes later I found the boat tucked into the cattails on the other side of the lake. Special thanks to my dad and father in law and also to a nice stiff east wind for that adventure...

So it takes another 20 minutes to trolling motor the boat back to the boat ramp. I get er loaded up after finding the trailer stashed in the weeds down by the building and by the time I start loading fishing gear its already getting light out.

Off to a clients lake in Fulton County for the day to take some ladies from Chicago fishing. It didn't much matter that I got off to a late start, because when I got to the property the ladies were still sleeping and I wasnt about to have them woken up. (although the cool overcast morning would of been dynamite fishing).

Let me just say that Chicago girls spending time at a farm in fulton county is just kinda entertaining. They finally woke up about 10:15 am for our morning fishing trip and we made it out on the lake just a hair before noon. Before making it out on the water I laughed (internally of course) about stories and drama of mosquito bites, spiders, mice, camping, mud, etc.

So 3 of the ladies have never really fished before and one of them, Mary has been fishing several times. She too thoroughly enjoyed helping her 3 friends experience the great outdoors, we enjoyed a few behind the scenes laughs about the days adventures. The highlight of the day was when Mary was teasing one of the girls by putting a freshly caught fish just a bit too close for comfort and watching her reaction. Well that was all fine and dandy until the fish flopped off the hook and onto the girls lap. The next 30 seconds was complete chaos that just about capsized our boat and left both the fish and the girl laying on the floor of the boat both gasping for breath.

The fish, which was a really nice redear sunfish, managed to stick its dorsal fin into her leg at some point during the commotion and the blood running down the leg didnt help the frantic situation any. Five minutes later and Samantha was back to fishing again, and she managed to catch more fish than any of the other ladies for the rest of the trip. During those 5 minutes of therapy there was a moment when I though she would never fish again.

Anyhow despite the heat and late start the girls picked up on fishing much faster than I ever thought possible and we managed to catch some really nice fish! We filled up a 5 gallon bucket full of crappies, redears, bluegills, and catfish and we released another 5 gallon bucket full of fish as well throughout the day. We actually let all of the really big bluegill and redears go and just kept the crappies and a few of the hook swallowers for eating.

This group picture below took about 5 minutes to accomplish. The girls didnt really like touching fish, so we didnt get many pictures while out in the boat, but we had to have a group picture and some documentation of this day for the girls. Altogether I think they had a great time experiencing a different lifestyle outdoors in Fulton County!

Ladies, next year you are getting up much earlier to go fishing!

Perfect Pond Rope Swing

2011-08-04T20:42:00.005-05:00

Its like 87 degrees outside and we are all commenting how nice it feels compared to the latest heatwave! Anyhow, today was beautiful and we installed a rope swing.

Let me just say that installing a rope swing isnt just a simple task like installing a dock. It is however very fun to figure out, and I am always up for a new challenge. After installing a handful of pretty good rope swings, I believe we have finally got er down to a science and have now perfected the art of putting in the perfect pond rope swing. (Yes Jeff, self proclaimed rope swing installer experts!)

Here are a handful of pics from today. Last week we set the steel beams into the big concrete footings. Lots of steel underground in the concrete. Now the concrete is hard enough to set the rest of the swing in place.

We stood the center pole up with some do it yourself engineering and our Kubota mini-excavator. The hill is too steep and the asphalt road leading back to the property is too fragile for a big crane. We used our electrofishing boat as a platform to hold the ends of the poles out in the water and the mini excavator to set the poles on the shore end. Then we winched the poles up in place.

We poured a big footing up at the top of the hill and attached the wire with a turnbuckle to keep the poles supported at the perfect rope swinging angle. Took till lunch time to get all the poles set, than after lunch we built a jump platform 13 feet off the water and put a set of ladder stairs leading up to the platform.

The boys got home from work and were able to cool off by testing out their new rope swing right in their front yard!

I was just using my camera phone, so pics arent great and timing isnt easy with the delay after pushing the take a picture button, but you can see this rope swing really gets them boys out and up!

Let me just say that this property sitting on top of a hill with a house and a 2 acre pond surrounded by bunches of magnificent big trees is about as cool as they come. (thats before the new dock and rope swing) Thomas Kinkade could paint a dozen different nature scenes from this property, its just awesome. I am used to reclaimed strip mine scrub ground, but this timber over in Woodford County is unspoiled and just awesome.

Mae Catches a Big Catfish

2011-08-03T08:32:00.003-05:00

Mae and Noah get pretty excited about catching this fish! Mae caught the fish all by herself, even casted the pole. By the time I got there with my phone video she had it almost landed!

My kids obviously fish alot, and are learning everything about fish and fishing at a rapid and heart warming pace. But even so I still only take them out fishing for about 10-15 minutes max.

That is the biggest mistake people make when trying to teach their kids to fish or hunt. They take them out for 3-4 hrs or more and expect them to stay entertained. It just doesnt work that way and kids just lose interest.

I take my kids for 10-15 minutes fishing, we catch a couple fish and then we go throw rocks, catch frogs, and swim. Same with hunting, already I take them for very short 'deer' hunting trips through the woods or in the living room. They love it and are counting down the years already to be able to go real hunting with Dad!

They live and breath this stuff and I am doing the best I can to keep them always wanting to catch some fish and get outside! Keep them looking forward to the next trip before the last trip is even over!!

Fishing Derby Food Update

2011-07-29T19:02:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to let everyone know about the food that has been provided for the fishing derby at the fishing park on Saturday. Everyone is invited down for Community Day at the park. Lunch is being provided by Jimmy Johns, Firehouse Pizza, EP's in East Peoria is going to have a salad bar and Uncle Bob's Ice Cream is providing lots of Ice Cream!

Fishing Derby is from 10-12 with lots of prizes, the rest of the day is just for eating food and open fishing to anyone who wants to come down and fish or relax outdoors.

The lunch is free, the derby is free, and absolutely everyone is invited to come on down! Hope to see you all there!! The park is located right next to Dixons Seafood in East Peoria.

Fishing Derby This Saturday!

2011-07-28T21:02:00.002-05:00

This Saturday, July 30th we are hosting a free fishing derby for kids under 16. Everyone is invited to come and spend the day at the Hooked on Fishing Park in East Peoria.

The derby starts at 10 am and lasts until noon. Prizes will be awarded to mini-anglers who catch tagged fish and also for the biggest fish! Should be alot of fun and we can accommodate several hundred anglers comfortably so there will be plenty of room, come on down.

Also after the derby you are invited to spend the afternoon fishing with your family or just relaxing outside at the park. We have a covered pavilion and an awesome walking trail around the levy overlooking the Illinois River. Fishing instructors will be onsite and can help teach anyone how to fish, but I do stronly encourage you to come and spend time with your own children fishing. Take off a Saturday from the rat race and bring your kids out for a day they will not forget this summer.

Here is a short video that has some pictures and explains just a bit more about the park for those interested in what we do down there.

Oh yeah, we will of course have food and drinks and prizes on Saturday. This fishing derby and community day is being sponsored by Uncle Bob's Ice Cream, Jimmy Johns, Firehouse Pizza, EP's Timeout, Brewers Distributing, Culver's, Weaver Ridge Golf Course, Avanti's, Burger Barge, Presley's Outdoors, Bob Grimm's Chevrolet, Moon's Dentistry, Herman Brothers Lake and Land Management, Prairie Home Alliance, Fortner Insurance, Cefcu, and Heartland Outdoors!

If anyone out there would like to help out with this event and future events, please make sure to contact me directly at nate@hblakemanagement.com or hookedonfishingpark@gmail.com. We could always use more prizes for this event, more food, more drinks and more volunteers down at the park! Quality experiences outdoors are few and far between these days..

Hoping eventually to have every local business involved helping out with the fishing park. The more people we can get involved the more people we can accomodate down at the park. To date we have taken more than 3500 senior citizens and children fishing free of charge over the last 3 summers. That number could easily be met in just one summer with more people involved helping out!!

Goodbye East Coast Fishing

2011-07-28T20:00:00.005-05:00

Wednesday morning we woke up at 3:45 am and headed for the harbor. The forecast called for bright sunny skies so we knew the morning topwater bite would not last nearly as long as it did the day before. Its funny how only the second day ever of commercial striped bass fishing for me and I am already an expert on all things striped bass... Self-proclaimed, but thats basically how I operate. I am a quick learner, ask a million questions, and retain every bit of fishing related intel.
The topwater bite lasted for only the first 30 minutes of light, and then the stripers moved out into deeper water...When the bite is on for topwater, you dont waste any time taking pictures. Here are some photos after the topwater bite was over and the sun was shining:

Then we headed out to deeper water to jig fish for them. Was a great new learning experience to jig for stripers in 80 feet of water. Basically in freshwater fishing you have to keep the bait in the strike zone for as long as possible to be successful. Freshwater fish need all the help they can get to bite your bait. In saltwater its the complete opposite! If you want to catch lots of saltwater fish you need to briefly show your bait in the strike zone and then real it away as fast as humanly possible to get them to come chase and strike! Goes against everything in my nature, but just drop the diamond jig down to the bottom and then rip and reel it up as aggressively and lightning fast as you can. If you dont get one to bite, than drop it down and do it again. The faster you go the more bites you get.

We had a ball jigging stripers! Big fish after big fish:

Once we started catching fish, every boat within 5 miles started congregating into the hot spot. The schools of stripers would move around and so would all the boats:

Occasionally if you would keep your jig down near the bottom too long a small shark would eat your bait. I brought one into the boat for a picture. He was grinning from ear to ear to get his photo taken!

This boat had all three of their anglers hook up all at the same time! Kind of cool. We had lots of doubles, but never could get a triple. You might have to click on the picture to see it better.

So we stayed out on the water as late as possible, but had to catch an evening flight out of Boston. We jumped in the car and rushed straight to the airport and had just enough time to grab a terribly overpriced chinese meal at the airport before loading onto the plane. We even didn't order drinks with the meal cause that would of costed an extra $6.18 plus tax for the both of us and that was for water or soda.

That chinese meal costed $22.36 without drinks. That same exact, only better tasting meal here in Central Illinois would of costed $12.50! Probably was green, organic, natural east coast chinese. Its no wonder everyone out there is skinny and cranky! Their food (except their lobsters and striped bass) is terrible and overpriced.

Anyhow we made the plane and got back to Midway and I was home sleeping in my own bed at 1:10 am. I had to shower though first, cause boy did I stink riding home on the plane with fish slime and even a few scales on my clothes!!

Being up from 3:30 am and jampacking a full day of fishing and traveling all the way till 1 am sure makes a guy tired. I am going to need to go on a vacation just to recoup from this vacation. Instead I had the priviledge of answering voice mails and emails all day long. My customer service was terrific today, but for some reason I didn't make very many sales?? Sir your pond is fine, quit worrying so much and scoop up your dead fish! Sheesh, thats like the fifth time you left a voice message......

BTW, FYI, (Im getting good at texting codes, might as well start applying them to the blog). Anyhow fish are dying all over across the state of Illinois. Many ponds just aren't geared to handle this hot of weather for this long with no relief even at nighttime. Rain and cold fronts that do come only make things worse and thats usually when a big fish kill will happen. Several hot hot days in a row followed by a cold front or rain storm. On a serious note, if your fish are dying, give me a call and I can help figure out exactly what happened and ways to remedy the problem for the here and now as well as ways to help fix the problem for the future.

Commercial Striped Bass Fishing!

2011-07-26T17:00:00.011-05:00

Up at 3:30 am this morning. Headed out to do some commercial striped bass fishing on the Atlantic side of the Cape. Here is an early morning shot of the old school harbor:

You know Cape Cod is pretty much one of the coolest places on earth for a fish geek like myself. The only problem with the Cape is that Boston is only one hour away and pretty much every major city on the East Coast is nearby. Big cities bring lots of people and I pretty much don't like people in general.

We motored out to a remote beach and spotted a bunch of birds dive bombing baitfish. Instantly hooked up the moment our big diamond jigs hit the water! Crazy. Insane. Unbelievably Awesome. My first striper was a 10 lber, but it was too short to keep. They have to be 34 inches long to be legal fish and we caught tons of 32" 10 lbers. Here are some pictures of short fish that had to be released:

We also caught a handful of bluefish today as well:

So altogether we caught and released about 45 short fish in the 8-10 lb range. Along with the short fish though, we caught our limit of legal fish! Legal fish are in the 13-30 lb range and our limit was 30 of those monster fish. Our biggest fish today was 27 lbs and our average keeper was 17 lbs. Here are a bunch of pictures, fishing was just blow your mind incredible today.

Justin caught the biggest fish of the day:

We were fishing very close to the beach. Here is a photo of just how close:

Here is a shot of the view looking out. When the schools of stripers are located, every boat within miles come running in to get a piece of the action. Lots and lots of boats. Our remote beach turned into a zoo by the time we left.

We were one of the first boats to limit out today! We filled the cooler up completely by 1 pm with 509 lbs of stripers and 47 lbs of bluefish!

Basically you cast out a big jig/spoon bait and real it in as fast as you possibly can. The big stripers come out of nowhere and smash your bait so hard it about rips the pole out of your hands. The coolest thing is that you literally watch each fish slam the bait! My arms are completely and utterly jello right now. Just picking up each bite of food to put in my mouth is not easy with such sore arms, but I am managing.

As a matter of fact I am eating seared scallops on top of seared pear slices marinated in some special Cape Cod lemon marinade. Eating while I type. Take a look at this appetizer:

Also we are having more lobsters, fresh striped bass, and fresh bluefish. We brought some fresh striped bass to the neighbor lobster lady and she dug us out 3 nice big lobsters in exchange to compliment our dinner. Seriously, this is as good as it gets. Pretty much the best food on the planet and Brett is a gourmet chef.

So before I forget, we were fishing with Steve today. Steve is a 5th grade school teacher here on the cape and he commercial fishes in the summer. He was focussed and determined all day, no messing around. Finally once we just about had the fish box full of fish I got him to pose for a quick photo.

Steve and I make a great team. He needs help catching 30 stripers everyday, and Justin and I love fishing in the Ocean for free. Tomorrow we will be to Steves at 4:30 am ready to roll!!! My arms hurt, my stomach hurts, and I am tired. Too much fishing and eating. One thing is for certain, this boy is Fat and Happy! Sleeping will be nice, tomorrow will be here soon.

Cape Cod, Massachusetts

2011-07-26T15:37:00.005-05:00

Cape Cod is just like I pictured! Its like stepping back in time to when the pilgrims landed hundreds of years ago. Its also like a picture perfect old fishing town along the coast like something you would see on the Hallmark Channel. The house we are staying at was built in 1782 and is in the town of Sandwich, Massachusetts about half way down the Cape. Here are some pictures of the cottage and barn:

Justin and I arrived very early in the Monday morning from a late night flight from Chicago Midway to Boston. We then drove a rental car about an hour to the Cape. Upon arrival we decided to sleep for 2 hours and then up and out onto the Bay to look for some monster Bluefin Tunas with local Tuna guru Rocco. Here is Rocco on his Tuna Chaser:

We drove around and around for about 45 miles just looking for Tunas chasing bait on the surface. We were going to try and hook up with one of the beasts via rod and reel, and also stick one with a harpoon! The tunas in the area right now are running about 225 lbs, but Rocco's buddy stuck a 970 lb bluefin last week! Getting a tuna is a big deal, cause at the local fish market they sell for about $15 per lb live weight! Rocco, his brothers, and their 93 year old grandpa-pappy harpoon about 15-20 big tunas every summer!! They don't typically waste their time on potentially bad tuna fishing days, but we only had monday available, cause stripers are tues-thurs.

Unfortunately we didn't get the opportunity to hang out with some tunas up close and personal, the wind was blowing from the East and the sun never could shake off the clouds. Generally for chasing tunas in the bay you want it to be calm and sunny. Anyhow I snapped a photo just to break up the monotony and add some scenery to this story. The big hook in the picture is not the harpoon, it is just a gaff that we would have used to get the tuna into the boat.

We didn't catch any tunas, but we had an awesome time on the Bay just relaxing and not WORKING!!! When we got back it was time for dinner! The next door neighbors are commercial lobster fisherman and they hooked us up with 10 fresh lobsters for dinner!!

Justin ate 3 lobsters, Brett ate 2 lobsters, Katy ate 1 lobster, and Nate ate 4 lobsters! Oh yeah, we are staying with Katy and Brett. They are clients and good friends from back home. Brett is in the process of building the best Jumbo Yellow Perch lake in Illinois. They stay in the Cape for the month of July to commercial fish and they invited us out to help out! We hopped on a plane at the last minute and the rest is history....

The main fish we will be after are Striped Bass. Commercial fishing for them is a major deal around here and is only open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. You can keep 30 stripers per boat and they average about 15 lbs and bring in about $4 per lb live weight. You only have to go 1-2 miles offshore to fish for them with jigs and lures so you don't have much expenses in fuel or bait and you dont have to clean the fish when you get back to the dock. Just drop them off with the fish trucks lined up to take them to the market!

The lobster neighbor lady said she would love some striped bass fillets so we definitely are motivated to catch some fish tomorrow so we can feast again. Stripers and Lobster sounds pretty good eh?

Aquarium Fish, Deer Videos, and Consulting

2011-07-21T19:53:00.006-05:00

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.

Fishing, Eating, and Horseback Riding

2011-07-13T04:27:00.010-05:00

July is already half way over and here I am at 4:13 am with my first opportunity to post a few pics and recap the first half of the month.

Over the 4th of July weekend we took alot of folks fishing, did alot of cooking and even did some horseback riding with the Horsemeister team! The weather was hot, but yet perfect. Here are a bunch of pics:

Special thanks to Horsemeister for adding a some great fun to the weekend! Here are a few fishing and eating pics from that weekend. Can you imagine taking 4 ladies out in a boat fishing at the same time! Well, it is very interesting to say the least, you just never know what they are going to say and thank goodness we caught lots of fish!

Chef Todd, like usual cooked up all kinds of fresh fish, and various meats and dishes on the grill all weekend long.

So those pics take me from July 1-4th, and between then and now we have hosted an additional 300 people at our lake, taken alot of people fishing, worked on some really neat lake building projects, electrofished lakes in Congreville and Weematuk, spoke at the big QDMA event at Otter Creek with Dr. Grant Woods, toured a property the next day with Dr. Grant Woods, and hosted some friends from Georgia. Oh yeah, also squeezed in a Sunday School picnic. Last night I fell asleep in my lazyboy chair feeding Drake his bottle about 8 pm-ish I think, and woke up in my bed at 4 am ready to get rolling!

Here are the last of the pics, they are from the Sunday School picnic:

QDMA Field Day at Otter Creek This Saturday

2011-07-07T08:08:00.002-05:00

This Saturday, July 9th I will be speaking at a really cool event being held at Otter Creek in Astoria. People are coming from all over the midwest to attend this event. There are only a handful of tickets left so call to get yours ASAP!

Big Pike, Catfish, and Hybrid Stripers

2011-06-26T06:25:00.006-05:00

Jared Plattner with huntplots.com took his parents and their friend Bill and Janice Russell fishing on Friday evening. They were going for monster hybrid striped bass and they caught several really big ones!

Bill, where is the picture of your big fish? Oh wait, let me see if I can dig one up so you don't feel left out.....

I can't sleep any longer this morning, been laying awake in bed writhing in pain since 4 am. Can hardly move and finally mustered up enough strength to make it over to the computer desk and start typing. I didnt actually get hit by a train, but I bet it doesnt feel quite this bad! Every movement shoots pain all over my body.

What actually happened was at high school boys camp this weekend I forgot I was 50 lbs overweight and severely out of shape. My body knew better but my mind for some reason got caught up in the good times of physical competition and before I knew it I spent the whole day Friday playing football, dodgeball, and basketball with about 200 high school and college athletes.

We played until 11:30 pm and I could physically no longer walk, was getting stiffer by the moment. I went and sat in the hot tub and went to bed. For some dumb reason I decided the next day to play in the basketball tournament at 8 am. What an idiot. Anyhow, throughout the weekend I had my moments of glory, although they were short bursts of energy followed by several minutes of gasping for oxygen.

Back in the day I used to be a 6'3" 210 lb brick wall and could compete at a high level all day long. Now I have scientifically developed several layers of high tech muscle protection and natural insulation and tip the scales at about 280 lbs. I think I am evolving into the ultimate ice fisherman and now can sit on a bucket in 10degrees all day long!

I have a decision to make at this juncture of my life- either give up all competitive physical activity completely and be content watching from the sidelines comfortably in a nice chair for the rest of my life or actually physically get myself back into better shape. I think I am fine with either choice, its just you cant mix the two together is the reason why I am in the condition I am today.

Every single muscle and I think maybe even several bones ache this morning. After the basketball tournament we went out to the lake with all 200 guys and we played hard there too. We also caught bunches of catfish, hybrid striped bass, and even this monster pike. Then we cleaned all the catfish and had a big fish fry.

Last week was a great week! We got tons of stuff accomplished. Rocke Brothers are laying the stone at the big lodge we are building in Fulton County. Here are some pics, that project is moving along at a rapid pace:

We also built this dock for Lisa in Congreville in just 7 hrs on Tuesday:

Lisa's dock still gets a diving board that Cornerstone Architectual Concepts is making from White Oak this week and she also is getting a huge rope swing that we are gonna start putting in right after the 4th of July. Will definitely have pictures of the rope swing process, it is going to be an awesome rope swing!

This dock for Todd Staley in Farmington took our crew just 2 hours to build!

We have built lots of docks this spring and still have a half dozen very big docks to build yet this summer. Monday we are building a big dock for Butch in Cuba. It will have an 8x16 boat slip and a roof over most of the dock! Gonna be a neat one.

Hope everyone has a great 4th of July coming up this weekend! As of right now it kind of looks like there is sun forecasted this upcoming week, that sure is gonna be a weird feeling if that happens.

Fathers Day Fishing

2011-06-19T21:55:00.007-05:00

Spent most of Fathers Day on or near the water. Was great!!! The times we were away from the water we were eating, so all in all was about as good as it gets....

Here are a bunch of pics from the weekend. For all of Brooks friends out there (both of you know who you are), check out these pics of her cleaning some fish for dinner!! We seasoned the fish and grilled them in tinfoil with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and butter.

Also had a couple hundred high school girls out to the lake on Saturday. They had a blast riding horses, swimming, fishing, rope swinging, and especially blobbing! Here are a couple pics of the horses, and the blob pics and videos I am sure will trickle in. Especially the video of Hanna, we double blobbed her into outerspace and caught it on video.

What Day Is It Anyway?

2011-06-16T21:05:00.005-05:00

Last Saturday I headed to Otter Creek at 4 am, then ran back to Norris at 10 am to supervise water activities for 150 junior high girls, then ran back to Otter at 5 pm to finish up the fishing trip. Chef Todd cooked up a feast and of course I made it back in time to eat fresh walleyes on the grill from the Canadian Lake! Unfortunately I made it back to soon and had to help clean all the fish.....It was worth it though, Chef really hit a homerun with seasoned walleye tinfoil packs with all kinds of vegetables.

The guys we took fishing purchased this fishing trip from our hooked on fishing fundraiser. They really helped us out so we returned the favor by putting them onto one of the best days of fishing you could pretty much have! Here are the pics I was able to scrounge up. Oh yeah, Chef grilled up some peaches with all kinds of goodness on top.

This pic is kind of out of order, but Mae decided to get some sort of infection in her stomach so we had the priviledge of spending some time down at OSF last Sunday.

The guys are out everyday traveling from Secor to Lewiston treating beaches, ponds, and lakes. Here was a cool pic they sent me of killing some sort of nasty algae on a beach.

Back to some more fishing pictures

Days start before 5 am for me and end when I can't physically keep my eyes open any longer. Working on some of the most amazing jobs on the planet and not a free moment to talk about them or post pics online! The next 3 weeks are gonna be about as busy as humanly possible, blog posts are gonna be very few and far between.

In between working about 75 hrs through the week, we host camps for hundreds of kids at our lake on weekends, run the hooked on fishing park for hundreds of kids per week throughout the week, and spend time chasing around 3 young kids every day for at least an hour or two before they go to bed. While I am on the fishing park topic, I am gonna need your help on July 30! Community Day 2011 with a free fishing derby and lots of food. Will post more information in the days to come.

Also on top of that Brook and I are designing a house to build in Cobblestone Estates maybe even as soon as starting this fall! We built a house back in 2005 and sold it in 2009 and now are making plans to do er again. Here is a pic of that house we built from scratch:

Will post tons of pics of the new house during construction for sure! When I say build a house, I mean physically build a house. Brook will be pounding nails, feeding shingles, making dinner, and flinging paint for the next year. After work we will just head over to the lot and work on our house until bedtime! Sure beats watching TV.

My sister and brother-in law are just finishing their house in Cobblestone, my older brother and sister-in law just started their house in Cobblestone, my other sister and brother-in law just purchased some land across the street from Cobblestone, so by golly we pretty much have no choice but to live there. Gonna really be neat.

Gonna build a dock tomorrow, host 200 high school girls Saturday, fish with my kids for Fathers day Sunday and then try to get a million other things accomplished before the fourth of July. Probably the only other post that will be happening in the near future is about the Fishing Park Community Day!

Fishing TV and Fox Chain of Lakes

2011-06-09T20:15:00.002-05:00

Hook and Hunt TV came out and filmed some fishing shows at Otter Creek Preserve last month. Otter Creek is a Herman Brothers featured property that we have been working on since 2007!

Here is the first segment on YouTube:

This week we were up at the Fox Chain of Lakes. We built the deck and stained the trailer when we hauled it up to the chain last month and went back up this month to install the custom built screens, deck trellis, and EverRock trailer skirting. Kind of stinks to be up near 5000 acres of water and not able to do any fishing, but oh well, at least we got our fish fix taken care of on the way up.

We stopped in Kirkland, IL and electrofishing Ron Taylors 5 acre lake. We dialed up bunches of fish and helped him come up with a management plan for growing bigger largemouth bass. Then we stopped by our buddy a professional ice fisherman's place and worked out some deals on all of our ice fishing gear this winter. We will be outfitted with a whole fleet of a dozen vexilars, a 4 stroke strikemaster light power auger, and 24 micro bite light Dave Genz ice fishing rods!

Anyhow here are some pics of the finished trailer up at Grass Heart RV park on the Fox Chain of Lakes:

One last tidbit is that we will be at the
POND MANAGEMENT SEMINAR
JUNE 13, 2011 FROM 4-9 P.M. AT
OSSAMI LAKE BEACH
210 NORTHSHORE DRIVE, MORTON, IL

All are invited so come on down!!!