Weeds, Fish, Dock and House...Sold?

Monday we headed up to Princeton, IL to treat a pond infested with duckweed, watermeal, curly leaf, algae, and coontail.

Tuesday I cant even remember what we did, but it was a busy day and we needed to gather and load up tons of material for our project on wed. Also I showed the house at 6 pm and then headed out to Menards to load up the rest of the materials.

Wednesday we headed over to Mahomet, IL and built a cool dock, installed an aeration system, bojo buglight, and a Texas Hunter fish feeder for a client just finishing up an incredible half acre pond in his back yard. Tom the excavator was finishing up a few things while we were there and we decided to dig a deep hole in front of the dock for fish congregating purposes.

The pond is being filled with a big well since there is no watershed and the water coming out of the ground is so cold that we will be stocking rainbow trout into this backyard oasis!!! Shiners, Fatheads, Hybrid Stripers, Albino Catfish and Hybrid Bluegills will also call this pond home.

Thursday we delivered 4500 big bluegill and 3000 hybrid bluegill to one of our featured properties: Otter Creek Preserve. Stocking that many large fish this time of year is no easy task! It takes 100's of buckets of water to acclimate the fish in the tanks to bring up the water temps in the hauling tanks and then 100's of buckets of fish to get them down into the water and acclimate them slowly there too. Much easier to stock fish in the fall when water temps are the same, anyhow we also finished filling and adjusting the settings on 10 of the 17 fish feeders we have on the property.

This place will be hands down the best fishing destination in Illinois and rank up near the top as the best in the US in a few short years. We have several lakes totalling over 200 acres of water that are being intensively managed for over 10 different species of fish! These are not just any fish, but rather the best genetics and broodstock available! Bluegills and Albino Catfish from Missouri; Feed Trained Bass and Hybrid Striped Bass from Arkansas; Walleye, Smallmouth and Tiger Muskie from Minnesota; Jumbo Yellow Perch from Wisconsin, and Black Crappie from Illinois. I have scoured the nation for only the very best fish humanly possible and you cant even fathom how good the fishing already is after just 2 years into the program!

Friday (today) we took 37 students from LightHouse academy fishing at the fishing park. We gave them a tour, a fishing education, and made sure that every single student caught plenty of fish. The teachers will email over some pics next week. The kids had a great time!

This afternoon I showed my house to some nice ladies looking for a house for their new boss who will be moving to town in a couple weeks. They think it will be a perfect house to get him started in Peoria and while he gets acclimated and works on future building plans. Hopefully we can reach an agreement and get this house sold! Now I will need to move out and find a place to live, cause the boss man is moving to peoria Sept 18th. That is going to make things a bit more interesting this fall, but nothing we cant handle!

Mens Night at the Lake

For both of my loyal blog followers, after a 10 day marathon, I have a very small window of opportunity to plop a few thoughts and pics down in my diary....

So last friday I had 50 guys spend the weekend out at the lake: we swam, fished, jet skied, wakeboarded, volleyballed, rope swinged, and basically just went 100 mph for about 40 hrs straight. They were the young men from our church and we also spent quite a bit of time learning and listening to some very important life topics from several speakers.

On Saturday morning a group of old men came out and cooked a feast of about 130 eggs, 15 lbs of bacon, 20 lbs of sausage, pancakes, and flying saucer pancakes!!!!!!! After breakfast I took the old guys out for a quick fishing trip before they had to take their daily naps! I will let the pics give the summary of our 20 minute trip:

Then Sat night we had over 100 guys from church come out for a cookout of epic proportions: we grilled burgers, chops, brats, and chicken! We finished the evening singing praise songs and just had a great time worshipping and fellowshipping together. Mens night at the lake will be an annual event!

I didnt have much gas left in the tank, but was able to stay awake long enough to avoid being the one with shaving cream and other liquids smeared all over, etc before crashing for the night. Sunday morning we all headed in to church and my wife and I were in charge of watching the 1-3 year old kids in the nursery. After church Brook was ready to dump the kids off on me after being a single mother for a couple days, but I fell into a very deep sleep for 3.5 hours before waking up for some dinner just before bed!

Some pretty stinkin sweet pictures!

Friday we had a group from Lexington come on out to the lake for the day. It was a GREAT day to kick back, relax, and just enjoy being out on the water with some friends. I thought I had some pics from the day, but realized they had all the pics. We focused on swimming, but had to cast a few lines. The fish were hanging deep with the bright sunny day, yep we actually had a bright sunny day this summer and were able to enjoy it to boot!

Anyhow the pictures I do have are from fishing with my kids Sunday evening as the sun was setting! We just sat out on the dock, threw some worms out, watched the geese come in, and didnt think about nothin but what was right in front of our eyes:

Mae and The Bluegill

Noah and The Redear

Noah and The Hybrid

Noah and The Bluegill

Shaeya and The Trout!

Nate practicing taking pic again (I always for some reason catch my best fish when I am by myself or with my kids who are too young and finally have decided to start taking pics of those fish)

Recap and Update

So my busy season is winding down in terms of treating and maintaining ponds and lakes, but for some reason I feel like I am always busier than ever???? Its as if I am not capable of just switching into a lower gear. I found myself a couple weeks ago with actually potentially a bit of extra time available and did I GREAT job of completely overfilling and overbooking like usual. Anyhow I have been to several consultations over the last few days, treated a handful of ponds, stocked some fish, had an open house at my house, had an open house at my parents house (let me just say that getting a home ready to sell and cleaning for an open house takes mucho horas!) hosted some friends out at the lake friday (will post some pics soon), had a few meetings about the hooked on fishing park, found and bought 7000 feed trained bluegill over in Missouri for a clients lake, bought a new aquarium business, yep, you read correctly we bought out an aquarium business from a gentleman moving to California. Now we have about 30K worth of tanks, filters, pumps, lights, and gizmos and gadgets that I have never even heard of, to clutter up our already cramped space, but hey lets throw another iron the fire! Actually the aquarium business is for Justin to take care of , he is the tank expert and knows all about that stuff, I am just along for the ride on this one. Justin has been setting up and maintaining Saltwater tanks for awhile now for friends and family, now he gets to sort through and set up and sell aquariums all winter long. He also has tons of live rock, sand, etc to sell as well, its all really cool stuff, I just need to start learning it all.

Anyhow after getting ready all day Sat for the open house at my parents, we had time to do a little fishin' on the pond for a few minutes (btw, the pond goes along with the house!) I have been practicing taking pics of myself holding fish. Its actually not too easy.



Jared landed this whopper!


My dad was trying desperately to catch a trophy perch and in the eleventh hour was able to hook up.


I have a handful (or so my dad thinks, but really a handful or two or heck possibly 3 handfuls) of bonus walleye in there as well


Also I forgot to mention that this coming Friday, I am taking lighthouse academy fishing at the fishing park from 9 to 11, then Peoria Christian School is coming out to the lake from noon to 5 pm, then friday night we are hosting 50 young men from our church at the lake overnight, and then saturday evening over 150 guys from a few churches are coming out to the lake for a cookout of epic proportions! Youth group is staying Sat night as well, heading to church on Sunday, then heading up north monday morning at 7 am to do some work up in Princeton. Meetings in the office tuesday, showing my house tues evening, then heading to build a dock in champaign on Wed wont be home till midnight or so and then that brings me all the way up to next thursday. Also forgot to mention that the 7000 big bluegills from missouri were coming in tues or thurs next week as well.

So yep, my busy season is over, but somehow I am busier than ever??? Thats only a portion of the stuff that I can think of, can you imagine all the other stuff I am supposed to do that I have and will forget about!

Fuggly Cox

We have a new addition to our fish tank in our office.




Fuggly is a mutated bluegill/green sunfish mutt of a fish. The pictures dont even do this fish's uglyness justice- he is just plain uggly and quite frankly kind of creepy.