Building Floating Docks

This week was a race against Memorial Day weekend to get 3 floating dock projects done. Like usual we battled the rain, but this week a new dimension of heat and sun was added to the mix. Whew boy was it ever hot!

So Monday we headed out towards Secor bright and early. We finished up a floating dock, added a sliding board and jump platform to the swim platform and built a platform and staircase to the rope swing. No clouds in the sky for this scorching hot day, but of course we got rained on, even without clouds??? The rain was welcomed though with the heat, and the jump platform and rope swing got several trial runs....You know just to make sure everything was working smooth for the season. Doesnt this just look like the absolute perfect pond setting:





Then tuesday we headed out towards Henry, Illinois to convert a stationery dock into a floating dock. We met up with my food plot guys out at the property as well. They have been hanging deer stands, trail cameras, and put in several food plots on this property for our client. They finished planting the last food plot just as a thunderstorm came rolling in about 2:30 in the afternoon. Here is a pic of the clover plot:

We also put in a couple acres of round up ready beans, and disked up and prepared some fall plots for late season planting as well. A couple Texas Hunter tower blinds, several ladder stands strategically placed, and a handful of cuddeback cameras and this property is ready for some serious hunting this fall!

So anyhow Allen and I worked with Ed Reed Excavating to pick up this massive dock and put floats underneath it. Was a much bigger project than anticipated, but even with the hour long thunderstorm and several turkey spottings we were still able to get er all done. Once put in the water we built a big gangway, some bench brackets, and anchored er home onto some big 6x6 posts. While Ed was there we had him dig out the beach, place a few loads of sand, and even dig out about 100 foot of shoreline from the dock to limit the weed growth and attract some fish! Let me just say that Ed I think is part tractor. Its like his brain is operating that machine like we move our hands and fingers!





Wednesday Justin and Allen delivered a whole truckload of feed trained smallmouth bass to Ipava, some feed trained largemouth and hybrid bluegill to Fiatt, and some walleye, hybrid bluegill, and smallmouth bass to Washburn. I had the pleasure of sitting in the office and trying to answer some emails, voicemails, and other crappy office stuff. Then I headed out to pond consultation at 4 pm over near Mapleton. This consultation was a bit different than most. The 3 acre pond was built rock solid 14 years ago, the fish were big and plentiful, the vegetation was native and diverse, and the homeowners around the lake were generally tickled pink with their little gem of a pond. The reason I was there was well I guess just to reassure them that their pond was perfect.....a very rare thing these days.

Thursday we headed to Mapleton to build a fun floating dock for Troy. His 4 acre pond is well aerated and boasts some serious fish potential with his aggressive stocking strategies over the last 2 years. Cast a line out and you could catch any one of the 10 different species of well fed fish! Anyhow we started building the 16x16 floating dock with 7x12 gangway at 8 am. I headed out to Drakes appointment with the Ear, Nose, Throat specialist at 9 am and returned just in time for lunch. Justin, Allen, and Troy were going to town the whole time and by 4 pm we had the dock done, mounted, and even a nice little jump platform finished for Owen by the time he got home from school. Even with the chilly temps he just kept jumping off!




Friday hasnt come yet, but I will be electrofishing a 5 acre smallmouth bass pond at 6 am, and then heading back over to Oak Run for some more electrofishing and fish management work. Straight from Oak Run I am heading out to the lake for the entire weekend!!! Got tons of work to do out there, but if I can keep my eyes open I will be fishing after dark! Hopefully I will get some good fish pics. Texas Hunter fish feeders is looking for some kids fishing pictures for their 2011 catalog and I could use some for some stuff as well.

Electrofishing, Rain, Electrofishing!

This week can be summed up with two words repeated over and over again: Electrofishing and Rain, electrofishing and rain. I guess I could throw a few other keywords into the mix like fish stocking, rain, consulting, rain, carp, rain, and you guessed it: RAIN! I mean come on is it ever gonna just stop raining?

Despite another soggy week here in Central Illinois, we were still able to get out and get most of our work done. Every day started out before the sun came up and every day ended well after the sun went down. I just might have bitten off a bit more than I can chew, but some way some how I am going to get everything done- eventually. Here is just a recap of the weeks highlights:

Monday I took some clients to go see the new golf course in Metamora. My dad and older brother are building the clubhouse and I am hoping to stock some fish and come up with some management plans for all the ponds throughout the golf course. Lots of water, gonna be neat! Then I headed over to Dallas City to meet up with Dan Molsen and talk about his ponds on his fairly new property. Turned out to be a pretty good meeting for me, Dan is the president of a fundraising firm for non-profit organizations. I have a non-profit organization called Hooked On Fishing Park and am always looking for ways to raise funds so we can take even more kids and seniors fishing. Last year we took 800 folks fishing and this year we have over 2500 kids lined up to come and catch fish at the park. Needless to say Dan provided me with some real good advice on how to get volunteers and support! Gonna be an awesome summer at the park, anyone looking to help teach kids how to fish or help out in anyway please let me know.

Tuesday Allen and I headed out super early to Vermilion Fishing Club near Oakwood, Il to kill some nuisance vegetation and electrofish for their 120 acre lake. The lake is very unique to say the least. It is actually a private power plant cooling lake that fluctuates quite a bit depending on the water needs of the plant. Boasts a world of unlimited potential for growing monster fish, just needs to start turning the trash fish biomass into something a bit more desired. The lake is full of these pesky yellow bass, gizzard shad, and common carp.



I would estimate that 3/4 of the fish biomass in this lake are not desirable species. Currently working on the management plan to convert that biomass into something a bit more desirable.

Wednesday Chef Todd and I went out shocking a couple lakes while Justin and Allen went out killing nuisance weeds for a few clients. Chef is surprisingly good at electrofishing whenever I need an extra hand. We started out a 4 acre pond in Metamora where we dialed up some real nice bass, redears, and crappie. Chef called that little scenic pond a gem!


The kicker to that story is that the new owner was told the pond was 60 feet deep, but in reality it had an average depth of 7 feet and a max depth of 13 feet.

Then on Wednesday afternoon we headed out to Oak Run Lake near Dahinda to electrofish. This 600 acre private lake is completely full of fish, and some big ones to boot. I am sure there are still some memberships available and actually would recommend one if you like fishing big water. We are working on a plan that is going to transform this lake back into a World Class fishery as opposed to just the really good fishery it currently is.

There are a few changes happening in the lake as it gets older, but one of the main ones is that most of the original structure in the lake is gone. The lake really didn't have much structure to begin with. Because of this, the fish have moved around a bit, but they are still there you just need to search around for them. Crappie, Bass, Bluegill, Catfish, and Walleye all had good size and numbers. Here are some pics of some monster walleye:

There are quite a few real big bass, but a vast majority of the bass are about 11-12 inches long. In all honesty, the average size of a mature adult bass in Illinois is 11.75 inches long. Most folks dont realize this, but to grow a bass past 15 inches long is not common, very very few bass ever grow bigger than that. The biggest limiting factor to growing bass bigger than average is overpopulation. If you want them to get bigger you need to thin them down just abit. Kind of hard to talk bass fisherman into killing bass, but it is a very necessary evil. Back in the old days folks were meat fisherman and fish grew big, nowadays folks are tournament anglers and recreational fisherman and sure there are more fish around, but they have been caught multiple times, are overcrowded, and they just dont grow in these big lakes like they used to. Here are some good pics of monster bass though:

Catfish is another species doing real well at Oak Run. Lots of real nice 3-8 lb fish!

Crappie and Bluegill are very plentiful and just average for their sizes. Lots of 9-1o inch crappie, in fact there were so many 9 inch crappie that they are going to need to eat lots of them! For the bluegill I was actually surprised with the numbers of 7-8 inchers. Ideally I would love to protect all the bluegill for 2010 and give them a chance to really get going, but that probably isnt realistic. Bluegill are the backbone to growing big bass, crappie are not.

Here are some nice carp pics. I would rate the lake as one of the top carp fisheries in Illinois. Size and numbers are both real strong. Keep in mind these are 250-300 lb men holding these fish:

Obviously there is quite a bit of Carp biomass in the lake, but we are all working on a plan to start reducing that annually and the fishing is only going to get even better as the carp biomass gets transformed into something a bit more desirable. There is no fish that ruins bass, bluegill, and crappie more than the common carp. They just absolutely devastate habitat and take up precious biomass. I estimate that half of the lakes fish biomass is being wasted in the form of common carp. We have some ideas for a longterm management plan.

Thursday the heavens opened up and it really rained. I was able to squeeze in a lake consultation super early thursday morning before heading to Drake's Easter Seals appointment, but had to cancel my afternoon plans due to the rain. Mon-Wed was just scattered rain workaroundable, but we had to reschedule our electrofishing surveys planned for Washburn Thursday afternoon and Northern Illinois on Friday because of this downpour. So instead I took a load of big male only bluegill to a new pond up near lacon (in the rain).

That pond is going to be the best one acre ice fishing pond ever come winter. Here is the ice fishing stocking plan: 500 big male only bluegill, 500 hybrid bluegill, 200 big female yellow perch, 100 walleye, and 25 smallmouth bass. Sounds interesting doesnt it?

Friday I had a Hooked On Fishing Park meeting, worked on office stuff, and then went to Canton to plant some white water lillies, yellow and blue iris, and some other plants for a pond turned wetland. Got wet and muddy with the rain, but was gonna get wet and muddy anyways. Then off to the lake to spend the night. Before going to bed I worked a bit on our VIP dock. This is where we film all of our underwater videos and have trained the fish to eat from our hands. Rainbow trout, smallmouth, stripers, largemouth, crappie, walleye, and bluegill will come eat right from our hands. We filmed some real good footage that wont get edited for a long time.

Here is a video from last year at the VIP dock:

Saturday Justin and I headed out at 5 am towards Cuba. We had 9 lakes to electrofish for a client. Bill lives up near Chicago, but found his dream fishing property down here in God's country. His lakes are full of trophy fish of all kinds of species. Here is a pic of the biggest fish we found on the property:


Anyhow, Bill had some of his employees come down to get some time out of the office and help sample the lakes via angling. All the rain and flooding and fronts moving through didnt make the fishing easy, but they still caught some real nice fish. We were able to catch some real nice fish as well. By far the best redear sunfish fishing lakes I have ever seen! One pounders are just everywhere and occasional beasts like the second pic below are not that uncommon:

One of the lakes was completely full of these monster redear x bluegill hybrids. These arent stocked fish, but since the water is pretty murky the male redears just get kind of mixed up when fertilizing eggs. The resulting natural hybridization is just really cool and those fish just grow abnormally large!

With 9 different lakes, we are coming up with specialized management plans for each one to focus on each lakes potential, existing habitat, current fish population, and Bill's goals for each one individually. The lakes range in size from 4 to 31 acres. Some of the lakes will be managed for taking guests fishing for lots of fish, some of them will be managed for experienced anglers to have a chance at catching a monster fish, and some of them will be managed for toothy critters like tiger musky, pure musky, northern pike, and walleye. Here are just a few more pics. Electrofishing 9 lakes in the same day is not an easy task by any means so we just didnt have much time to take pics, but here are what we got:

Sunday I actually had trouble waking up in the morning. We were a bit late for Church and had to come home early cause I couldnt keep my eyes open. I literally crashed for 3 hours until Brook made me get up to head out to a friends cookout. I could of kept sleeping all through the night. Anyhow we went out for the evening and had a great time and ate lots of great food. I am actually not a very social person, but Brook enjoys spending time with regular people and not talking about fish for a change.

Looking forward to this upcoming week! We will be building a dock in Secor with a waterslide on Monday, building some bench seats around a dock in Henry on Tuesday, and building a dock in Mapleton on Thursday. The rest of the week will be spent killing algae, watermilfoil, and curly leafed pondweed. Gonna be hot, but bring it on, I am ready for swimming season and Memorial Day Weekend!

Drake's Easter Seals Appointment

This morning I headed out to a pond consultation in Princeville at 5:30 am and made it back in time to go to Drake's evaluation at Easter Seals early intervention program at 10 am.

He was evaluated by 2 different physical therapists and they jiggled and jostled, yanked and pulled on him like crazy and he just sat there and laughed at em through the whole ordeal. I'm telling you the kid is just fat, happy and laid back.

He is 3 months old now, but his overall test results came back that he physically is at a 2 month old level. Some stuff he excelled at, most stuff not so much. Even though he didnt score perfectly normal on this stuff, we are overall very encouraged and very thankful to have progressed this far at this stage. He really is overcoming so much and has so much potential!

Stuff like hearing and muscle tone and fist clinching and stiffness and head floppyness he tested low at a 1 month old level. Those are our red flag areas that we have been given exercises to do at home to try and correct. Stuff like communication, speech, awareness, vision, and cuteness he tested at 3, 4, and even 5 month old levels! Very encouraging!! Along with his at home exercises he will see a physical therapist every other week for the next 6 months.

They are still monitoring him for a mild case of cerebral palsy and slow motor skill development due to the stage 2 and 3 hemorraging stemming from his bleeding near his brain in his ventricals at delivery. Our gameplan and really only option for treatment at this point is to continue with therapy and working with him and try to squeeze every single ounce of potential out of him as humanly possible.

Our next important appointment is next thursday with the Ear Nose Throat specialist. We will hopefully find out the extent of his hearing loss, whether he will need tubes in his ears to drain the fluid, and also come up with a gameplan for hearing aids if they find out they will help in any way. We are hoping that in his right ear the nerves are still pulsing and it isnt completely deaf cause if they are still alive they will try to stimulate them with the hearing aids.

I am gonna have to scrounge up a few pics, because the boy is getting FAT and is about the cutest boy on the planet. He has all of my best attributes: happy, cute, laid back, funny, fat, and super smart yet kinda dumb. I already know with this kind of start into life that God has great things planned for this boy- he is definitely not normal and is going to be a world changer.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

I am very uncomfortably sitting here during my 2 hours of rest (kid nap time) on this lazy sunday afternoon. My back aches and my legs still hurt from a long day of work (fishing) on Saturday; and I just had to take my belt off and unbutton my shorts to see if that helps alleviate some of the pressure being caused from devouring a few too many donuts and sandwiches from lunch at church......

God sure did know what he was doing when he created this day of rest. By the time Sunday afternoon rolls around, it takes about all the energy I have left just to stick the pacifier back into the boy's mouth when needed and also to switch between the Cubs game and the PGA during commercials. Multi tasking at its finest..... Here is a typical Sunday afternoon picture:

All the rain this week sure made things a bit more complicated than needed, but we worked around it and were still able to keep checking things off the list and get some stuff organized as well. All of our office duties have been officially turned over to Holly and she is untangling the mess I have created over the last 6 months. She works Mon-Thurs 8-4 so if you need to pick up anything you dont have to try to track me down anymore.

Anyhow at the crack of dawn on Monday Allen and I delivered a load of fish to a client's 20 acre lake in Fiatt and then headed over towards Cuba for an electrofishing survey for a 35 acre lake. This lake was completely full of 3/4 pound bluegill and one pound bass.

The owner graciously donated 240 of his surplus 13 inch bass to the Hooked On Fishing Park's handicapped pond. After the survey Allen ran them over to the fishing park, and I headed out to meet a guy from Southern Illinois who came all the way up to get some smallmouth bass and yellow perch for his new pond. Casey called the next day and said the seniors from skyline drive and an AC nursing home from Eureka already started catching those bass the very next day!

Tuesday I think I have completely blocked from my memory because I most likely was stuck in the office all day long due to the rain. Oh yeah, in the evening I headed out past Metamora for a consultation with a nice couple who's new one acre pond just filled up. They wanted to learn about water, weeds, fish, aeration, and docks. They now have a gameplan in place.

Wednesday we were supposed to Electrofish and Trapnet at Oak Run, but it was too cold and rainy. Instead I went to a meeting that evening with the sport and fish committee to gather all the information about the lake as humanly possible. We have rescheduled the surveys for Wednesday afternoon of this coming week. Once we gather all the data about the current fish population, go through all the data about the history of the lake and the fish population surveys we had them fill out, we are going to combine all that info with the direction they want the fishery to move towards to come up with a 5 year management plan. The plan will help them determine annual fish stockings, daily fish limits, vegetation control options, and habitat enhancement improvements. Very fun project!

Thursday I had a pond consultation in Princeville, and put together a vegetation management plan for an association near kickapoo. The rest of the day is a blur cause I cant remember anything else. (must have been working on some tax stuff and other office organizing junk)

Friday we installed some fish feeders in Lewiston, put in an aeration system in Hanna City, and then I delivered smallmouth bass to Cuba. Here is a pic of the smallmouth bass going into this awesome lake.

After delivering the smallmouth I headed out to stay at our lake for the night to get ready for my fishing trips on Saturday. I ate dinner and spent some time with the fam and rigged up some more rod holders on the pontoon boat and got all my gear together.

Saturday at 8 am I met up with Jeff, Chuck, and Ron. They donated a bunch of money to the Children's Advocacy fundraising auction and in return we took them out on a guided fishing trip. They really wanted to catch some crappies, but instead the only thing we could catch was some bluegill, trout, smallmouth, largemouth, yellow perch, and a whole bunch of walleye. We still had a lot of fun and caught a ton of fish, but was disappointed in not being able to get them boys some crappies??? Hey, take notice that only 2 of the 3 fishing in the group are in the following photos and also take note that the majority of the photos are of Ron. Ron came into this trip with absolutely no fishing experience or equipment. He just simply learned how to use the fishing rod, listened to all of my instruction and just did exactly what he was told to do.

After lunch I took out Matt, Kent, Zac, and Jesse Snyder. They purchased their guided trip from the Peoria Christian School fundraising auction. Both Zac and Jesse attend PCS and they were fish catching machines. Especially Jess, she outfished all of them boys put together!

We had a handful of broken lines on some huge fish, and also lost a 30 inch northern at the boat, but still managed to fill up the livewell with a bunch of walleye, trout, perch, giant bluegill, and naturally of course the crappie decided to cooperate as well- go figure.

By the time I got everything cleaned up it was dark and I still needed to load up the electrofishing boat to pull back into town. The trailer ball hook up thing was about 8 inches lower than the hitch receiver thing on my truck and the jack that raises er up was broken. I tried lifting that trailer with all of my might but couldnt get it up high enough and over enough. That boat is just too heavy. I broke two 2x6's trying to use them as leverage to lift the trailer up and over as well. I was sooo close to getting that hooked up myself, and sooo determined as well. Eventually that determination turned quickly into frustration and I realized I just needed to give up before I did any more damage to my back, pulled a hamstring, or threw something unnecessarily!@#$%!

Next week we are putting some miles on the truck headed to Metamora, Dallas City, Metamora, Champaign, Dahinda, Secor, somewhere in northern Illinois, and then south of Cuba. Working on some really cool projects next week! Might be another lazy Sunday afternoon on the 23rd.

Smallmouth Bass Available for Stocking

Gone. Only took about 4 hours after posting this morning to find a new home for these trophy fish!

This hardly ever happens, but 2009 produced a great crop of smallmouth bass and I actually have a handful of the most amazing smallmouth bass on the planet available this spring. I don't have many left of these big guys, only 75 of them to be exact, but they have been gorging themselves on fathead minnows and are already 6-8 inches long. Most smallmouth fingerlings this time of year are 3-5 inchers.

I have a handful of 3-6 inch smallmouth bass available as well, but really want to find a good home for the biggest and best of last years crop. Their advanced size is perfect for stocking into an existing pond with no fear of predation.

Anyhow call 309-303-5691 or email nate@hbpondmanagement.com if your interested in more information about these fish. Genetics are a big key to growing abnormally large fish, and these are the best of the best.

Smallmouth Bass Spawning Video