Busiest Week Ever

This was perhaps one of the busiest weeks ever, and I actually think this is going to be the norm for the next 6 months, seeing as we havent even started our normal pond maintenance and applications yet.

Justin, Allen, Josh, and Lee spent the week building docks, a deck, installing a fountain, and shipping out products. Our online store sales of lake products are picking up almost at a rate too fast to keep up with, and seems like I cant get the boys out the door before 10 am. Last year Justin alone could get the shipments done everyday by 8 am. We are starting to get some big orders coming through as well. One gentleman from Louisianna purchased $6,000 worth of pvc fish structures!

Anyhow, I had my week already full with On-Site Consultations and Electrofishing Surveys, and had a couple of fishing practices with the Peoria Christian High School Bass Fishing Team during the evenings. Then friday was the Bass Fishing State Sectionals and our two teams did really well! Our first team was one fish short of reaching the podium, and our second team had 3 fish in the boat before most teams had their first fish. Once the wind picked up though, their pattern went dry and never landed another fish.

This week I met with Rodger Moon at his Trophy Smallmouth Bass Lake, Ravina on the Lakes about keeping their main lake looking like a million bucks for all the weddings and receptions this year, Ed Kirby about keeping algae under control in his backyard pond, Larry Gerdes for an electrofishing survey and complete management plan for his pond, and Joe Yobbka south of chicago about keeping his pond free of curly leaf and american pondweed. I am planning on writing about these pond visits, because some of these are pretty cool projects!

I currently have 3-5 On-Site Consultations or Electrofishing surveys lined up for every week for the whole summer, and that is in addition to everything else we have going on. I obviously wont be able to be in the office much this season, so I hired Marci Cox as our Office Manager. She is a bookkeeper/accountant extraordinaire and is whipping our office into shape faster than I could of ever imagined! Can you imagine stepping into an office that has been organized and managed by 2 outdoorsman for the last couple years! The biggest mistake we have made so far is not hiring Marci about 2 years ago.

Anyhow, it is Sunday afternoon, the Cubs are whooping up on the Cardinals, the Bulls are hanging in there with the Celtics, and I am just relaxing in the air conditioning for the rest of the night! Not too often you will ever catch me inside during a 75 degree afternoon in the middle of turkey season, mushroom season, and spawning season!