Venice Offshore Fishing Justins Boat Pics

Ok so first day of offshore fishing definitely goes to my boat for quality of fish, but numbers definitely goes to Justin, Chad, and Jareds boat. Oh yeah, my boat was basically the old men, their boat was the young bucks.
They took an 80 mile gamble on finding some tunas schooled up way offshore and struck out. So then on their way back in they hit up some oil rigs and loaded up on a limit of amazing red snapper, a bunch of monster mangroves, and some great eating grouper!





Hey did you notice the guys sporting the new HB shirts! Next time I head out to your place just let me know what size you wear and I will bring a shirt along for sure!!







Ok so I have caught alot of mangrove snapper in my day and I absolutely love fishing for them and eating them. Typically a good mangrove for me is in the 3-4 lb range, but this monster mangrove Jared caught is a world class trophy! Just for grins I looked up the Louisiana state record - 14.36 lbs.

I didnt get a weight or length on Jareds fish, and I think Mark just ate if for dinner, but oh well. Awesome fish! I was blown away with how many big mangroves they caught! Usually a 3-4 lber is a good one for me!!




I think quite a few state records end up with the same fate....oh yeah Mark made for sure to note that the veggies in the above pic were all harvested from his garden just hours before joining the snapper for dinner! Seriously, we all have been eating Tuna and snapper and mahi mahi like crazy the last 4 days, at this rate we will be needing to schedule another fishing trip in just a couple more weeks!

Stay tuned again, this is just the finishing up of both of our boats for just the first day of  offshore tuna fishing out of Venice. The second day of our trip we both hit the motherload, Justin swam with a whale shark and he made a sweet video that is ready to upload onto youtube!

Venice Louisiana Offshore Tuna Fishing!

We left Morton at 3 am on Saturday morning with 12 guys, 8 coolers, a change or two of clothes, and high hopes of catching some big fish down in Venice. This was the first time ocean fishing for most of the guys, so that made it even more exciting yet. Offshore fishing is my alltime favorite outdoor activity so I got a few miles under my belt out in the blue water!

We arrived down at the Yellow Cotton Bay Cabins at about 5:00 pm Saturday evening, dropped off our clothes and headed down to the Marina to see what all the boats caught that day. They were pouring in from offshore with nice catches of Tuna, Mahi Mahi, Wahoo, Snapper, and Grouper. We were excited!!!



The Venice Marina has a nice little restaurant so we gobbled down a bunch of seafood before heading back the 6 miles to our cabins at Yellow Cotton Bay.  The highlight of the meal was for sure the world famous seafood baked potato. It is stuffed with shrimp and smothered in a chowder like seafood bisque:



So up at 3:30 am Sunday morning Dave O and I made bacon and eggs for everyone to gobble down at 4 am. We were at the dock at 4:40 am, loaded the 2 boats and headed out for a deep sea fishing adventure with captain Josh and the crew at Deep South Charters. One of our boats went 70 miles offshore one way, and my boat went about 50 miles offshore the other way.

We stopped at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi and cast netted up a bunch of pogies for bait for the day and then we were off. The seas were calm and we were running 45 miles per hour so it took us just over an hour from the Mississippi to get to our first spot.

Nothing was happening at our first spot so we headed out another 10 miles to another spot and quickly hooked into this nice yellowfin tuna. Dave O battled this fish for about 10 minutes and was about ready to hand off the rod out of exhaustion when I said no way. So I got in a good position to leverage the rod for him and it wasnt 5 minutes later he brought this beast boat side for the crew to gaff! We were pumped!!! This is a pic of Dad and Dave holding up our first yellowfin!



About 20 minutes later and we hook a "big one" on a free lined live pogie. Chris and Jason battle this fish together for probably close to 25 minutes and when we get it close to the boat the crew starts freaking out that it isnt a yellowfin, but rather a monster wahoo!! Thats when everyone started to get real nervous cause wahoo have the sharpest teeth in the ocean and we were using a 60 lb fluorocarbon leader. Typically you need steel for any hope of landing a large wahoo and even then I have seen fish bite through the steel leaders.



Well, you see the pic! We landed that monster wahoo and we were more than excited!!

The next couple hours we missed a mahi mahi that hit a topwater popper I was casting off the front, but thats about it. We didnt so much as get another bite till for several hours. Then we decided to change up tactics and head for a big weedline that we saw on the way out. We pulled up to the weedline and started trolling some big plugs and ballyhoo and were just about to give up on that technique when we hit the motherload of a fishing spot.

This big bull mahi mahi came out from the weedline and slammed our surface bait. Todd battled the fish for about 10 minutes and we got very lucky that it didnt throw the hook as it leaped several times all the way out of the water! By far the biggest mahi mahi we have ever caught:



There were a couple other boats in the vicinity already catching mahi mahi along this weedline and they were reporting lots of marlin in the area too. Well it didnt take us long to spot massive marlin busting schools of bait just 50 yards from the boat! Awesome! The captain and mate wanted really bad to try and catch one of these beasts, but none of us were really too excited about a 3 hour battle with one of those beasts. 20 minute battles with normal sized big fish was about all we could handle.

Then out of nowhere a school of massive tunas showed up on this weedline and it was game on. The other boats were hooking up with 60-80 lb yellowfins when my live bait got hammered. I immediately handed off the rod to one of the guys to reel in and after 15 minutes the rod went to the next guy, the next guy, the next guy and the next guy until all the guys on the boat were completely worn out.




Then I battled that fish for the next one hour and seven minutes and finally after a battle of just over 2 hrs we landed this monster yellowfin tuna!



Got the fish in, mustered up enough strength for a pic and headed the 1.5 hrs back in to the marina. We got back in just a hair before 6 pm. We only caught 4 keeper fish all day, but they were all 4 fish of lifetime!! Since we were planning on fishing 2 days we decided to go for big fish the first day and lots of fish the second day. Definitely I recommend offshore fishing 2 days to give you a chance at big fish, but also a back up plan for reeling in lots of fish.

When 3 out 4 fish are just about 6 feet long, and the fourth is over 4' thats a pretty good tub of meat at the end of the day.




Out of Venice we fish 6 out of a boat so this was just the account of my boats fishing adventure. Justin's boat didnt make it back to the dock till about 7 pm so we waited anxiously to hear about their first day of adventure... stay tuned, I have absolutely tons more pics and stories, the fishing only got better from this point moving on.....

Gonna Be a Long Hot Summer!

Ponds all over the state are starting to dry up! The corn is thirsty....I am thirsty! It was just plain hot today and it looks like its gonna be a long hot summer! For some reason that song by I believe Keith Urban is just stuck in my head every place I go. I almost sing it out as I talking about the weather with clients and what to do with their lakes and ponds going into a summer such as this.

Ok so its 1:57 am Friday morning. I am still sugared up from a midnight energy drink as we drove home from Carbondale. Also I am jacked up for Tuna fishing in Venice Louisiana this weekend, so sleep isnt gonna come easy tonight, might as well write...

Just finished up a marathon two weeks that saw mucho miles put on the red chevy and electrofishing boat. Last week we spent a good portion of the week in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area. Consulted with 4 seperate lake and land owners there and finished up at perhaps one of the coolest estates in the whole state of Iowa. It has it all- fish, deer, golf, swimming, tennis, basketball, horses, streams, waterfalls, etc etc etc. Simply amazing and now the fish there are gonna be amazing too....

Seems like alot of folks in that area are big into fishing and hunting and managing their lakes and land! I ship more lake supply orders and get more phone calls and emails from Cedar Rapids area each year than I do the whole rest of the state of Iowa! Already got several people from that area lined up for next road trip there this fall- very cool!

Here are some pics from Marks very cool sand pit lake just outside of Cedar Rapids. Looks like a fun place to fish eh? Big and little walleye everywhere!!!




Then on Saturday we hosted a couple hundred high school boys and co up at the lake on Saturday. Shew boy is that ever an action packed day. We picked up a used ice cream maching on Ebay earlier this year and went through like 500 cones on girls camp weekend, but went through over 1300 on boys camp day!!! We stocked up.

Also on Saturday we sent the boys out striper fishing and we cleaned and cooked up the fish as they were catching them. Probably 30 fish in all!!
 



They were gobbling up that stuff so fast they were burning their hands grabbing it instantly once the basket flopped onto the paper towel.

Then Sunday we rested. Me and the kids just hung out together peacefully all day long and after church we rented a movie about a family who bought a zoo. Someday we will probably have a zoo too. Noah for some reason wants a blue lion from Africa. Been talking about that for over a year....

This week we put way more miles on the truck! Built a couple nice docks on Tuesday. Here is a pic of the big swim dock for Chris's lake:



Then we loaded up truck and boat to the max and headed south Wednesday. 3500 feet of weighted tubing, 3 aeration compressors and cabinets, 11 membrane diffusers, 1000 lbs high protein fish food, 6 texas hunter fish feeders, couple cases of HB brand lake dye and algaecides, 50 lbs HB Bacteria, tools, clothes, and 3 guys. Not an inch of space left-



Electrofished and installed aeration near Taylorville for good client Al. Visited his place in 2010 and his pond has been hopping since then!!

Then dropped up some feeders near Hillsboro for a Pond Boss guy and headed down to the Double Tree Hotel in Collinsville for the night. Mexican for dinner and then lights out. Installed aeration in Belleville for an awesome pond in the AM and then headed for the big job near Carbondale. We had so much stuff jampacked in the truck and boat, it would take 20 minutes to unload the boat and truck each time we had to use it and then repack it up again to head to the next place!

Finally near Carbondale we installed the motherload of all aeration systems. Jason is literally growing a pond full of double digit largemouth bass and I am not exaggerating. He has the perfect storm brewing and we are monitoring it very closely!!!!! There are not many bass, but rather HUGE bass... So anyhow we custom designed this aeration system, we call it the ROCK STAR system! Here is a peek inside of the insulated weatherproof cabinet!



We did some work on the other ponds on his property, designed a couple sweet docks for him and headed out around 8:30 pm for home. Oh yeah, it was 106 degrees today near Carbondale and that was actual temp, not heat index. Oh yeah again, our air conditioning did not work in the red chevy for the entire road trip and it was more than 90 degrees in the truck as we drove around the dry thirsty hot southern portion of the state. WOW was that ever an experience. Even at 10 pm it was still 88 degrees in the truck.....serious stink.....

So that brings me up to right now this very moment. Well let me back up, Jared and Tate were with me in Southern Illinois and Justin, Allen and Phil had the privilege of cutting trees and clearing Dr. Dave's lake front lot. Hottest day of the decade and they were out plugging away with skid steer, chipper, and chainsaws!







So now here we are on the heel of an epic deep sea fishing trip to Venice! One for the ages: 12 guys, 4 days, 8 coolers, and supposedly the tuna are on fire 70 miles offshore!!!!!! You wanna know whats crazy, the forecast for Venice is 10 degrees cooler than the forecast for Peoria baby!!!

So we get back July 3rd and the rest of the summer should be back to normal. The camps are done, the busy season should be behind us and we got a couple fun close to home projects to take us through this long hot summer!!! Lots of swimming will be on the agenda! And hopefully eating a summers worth of yellowfin tuna!

Managing Big Bluegill

Managing big bluegill

Bull Bluegill a rare breed indeed!
By Mike Pehanich
“One-pound bluegill!” cried my boyhood fishing buddy, Bill Auten. He had just returned from his aunt’s cottage at Camp Lake, Minnesota, and, with youthful zeal, we were already plotting a sales pitch to our dads to fish there together the following June.

Exclusive Small Waters Fishing “bull bluegill video on this post!

Amazingly, the plan came to fruition. My dad and his friend Jerry shoehorned four kids from 9 to 13 and all our gear into a station wagon. (Knowing how much gear I lug for a single day’s bass outing today, I wonder why one of us wasn’t strapped to the car top!)

Bull bluegill don't come by accident on Nate Herman's lakes. Photos courtesy of Steve Ryan and Nate Herman

And we found the bluegill on our very first afternoon as we waded chest-deep around the docks and shoreline near the cabin.
Good bluegill, they were. But one pound? No way! Nice ones. Keepers. Meal producers…and even a couple of beauties that may have edged to 12 or so ounces.
A one-pound bluegill is a true “bull,” a rare and wonderful creature that none of us would see for a number of years.
But I’ve seen them now! One pounders. Thirty ouncers. Even bigger specimens!
Have I touched an honest two-pounder yet? No. But I’m “bullish” about my chances, thanks to the company I keep!

No bull from Bro
Now huge bluegill have become an endangered species in many areas.

Cory Schmidt hoists a bull bluegill on one of Brian "Bro" Brosdahl's local waters near Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

Brian “Bro” Brosdahl is a bluegill specialist from the Grand Rapids, Minnesota, area. A dedicated “bull bluegill” hunter, he’s skeptical about the future of native bull bluegill fisheries.
“Once you take giant bluegill out of the system, it’s doubtful that the fishery will ever bounce back,” he rues.
Although the catch-and-release ethic has helped preserve gamefish populations in many areas, panfish anglers in general have not embraced it – particularly as state and local regulations have reduced panfish possession limits. Putting fish in the pan is usually the panfish angler’s goal! And big bluegill fill more and bigger bellies than little ones do!
“We have to release those big beauties,” preaches Bro. “It’s the only way to preserve these populations.”

Bull rancher
But while catching giant bluegill on public waters has become an increasingly challenging task, rearing bull ‘gills has become art and science for some experts.
Bringing a bull bluegill fishery to life is both profession and passion for Nate Herman, co-owner of Herman Brothers Pond Management in Peoria, Illinois. Herman will tailor a fishery to almost any species that climate and water quality will allow, but he’s not shy about his preference for bluegill.

See exclusive Small Waters Fishing video interview with Nate Herman…and his bluegill!

“The bass, musky, walleye, hybrids I work with…I get my fish fix just working with them,” he says. “But when I go fishing, it’s usually for bluegill and crappie.”

Ty has caught many bluegill like this off Nate Herman's "lab" lake.

But “catching” only touches a part of his passion. Nate likes to grow ‘em – and grow ‘em big! Doing so takes knowledge, planning, persistence, and consistent attention to the many factors affecting fish populations and their growth.
He will supplement the diet of the fish with pellet feed where appropriate, but he quickly dismisses the notion that “feeders” comprise a “magic bullet” solution.
His studies always begin with a study of water quality and available habitat.

“I’ll identify the limiting factor for the fish in that particular body of water,” he says. “Whether that is temperature or water quality or preferred food source at different stages of its life cycle, we’ll identify those limiting factors and address them so we can grow what is not natural in a natural lake or pond.”

Bluegill expert Steve Ryan with a Nate Herman "bull"

One of the biggest factors limiting bluegill growth is competition from other bluegill. Many of the waters he manages host a predator-heavy population that keeps bluegill numbers in check. The bluegill that survive the “forage” stage with the mix of predators grow big and fast, provided they have plenty of food available to them.
Most anglers tend to view “habitat” issues from the perspective of where they catch adult fish. But Herman repeatedly underscores the importance of prime habitat for that species at each stage of its development, and those habitat needs will change as it goes from fry to fingerling…on up through adult and bull brute stages!
We’ll learn more about big bluegill from Nate Herman and Brian Brosdahl – and how to raise and catch them – in coming weeks.

Happy Fathers Day!

Just wanted to say Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there! Keep teaching your kids about working, fishing, hunting, loving, life, and your heavenly Father! Especially I wanted to give a shout out to my own dad who has taught me and my siblings all of the above. Not by words, but by example.

All of the things my siblings and I accomplish are directly or indirectly because of who my dad is and how he and my mom chose to raise us. We were forced into slave labor working for the family business pretty much since birth, but on Sundays we went to church and then played hard (or fished) together and every family vacation we ever went on had a predominately fishing theme.

We are all to some degree pretty much following in those footsteps with how we raise our families. Here is a testimony to his approach to life and family values. Every single one of his 5 children and all 14 of his grandchildren all live within 15 miles of each other. Within the next 6 months we will all be living within 2 miles of each other (how crazy is that!) We all spend pretty much every weekend together, not to mention we all work together, help each other, help others together, hang out together, and even mostly vacation together.

Kind of crazy reading the above paragraph, but let me just say that is not an easy or normal thing to accomplish. It takes work and effort on everyones part to remain a close knit family, but basically the foundation begins with our dad who through lifes trials and tribulations has chosen to simply not be selfish. Where most men give up and take what they deserve when they deserve it, my dad has chosen to be different, he is an overcomer.

He isnt perfect by any means, but his core is rock solid. His life is devoted to God, his wife, his kids, grandkids, friends, neighbors, and pretty much 'others'. He is blessed beyond measure because of his unselfishness.

I put together a handful of random fishing pictures of my dad. It actually wasnt easy to find fish pictures of him, because usually he doesnt want to be the focal point.














Happy Fathers Day Dad!!! I bet the fish are biting today!!!!!!!!