Headed To Gulf Shores!

Oh yea! As soon as I finish this blog post I am headed to bed. I will only sleep for about 4 hours and then I will be headed to the beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama! This is kind of a last minute trip, but the tides are right, the forecast is perfect, and all the houses on the beach through Meyer Realty are 1/2 price!

I have been traveling to Gulf Shores pretty much every year for the last 26 years. It is the perfect place to mix a fishing and family trip together. I fish in the mornings before everyone wakes up, then I lay on the beach and swim with the kids all day long and head back out fishing after dinner. I know every nook and cranny and fishing hole from Orange Beach all the way to Fort Morgan. This year I am hoping the fishing will be extra good since there hasn't been any fishing pressure since the oil started spilling earlier this year.

Here are some favorite pics from past fishing trips to the gulf:

Our main species of fish we will be targeting this time of year from the shore are redfish, flounder, and whiting. Those are the best eating! We will also catch sheepshead, drum, ground mullet, ladyfish, bluefish, spanish mackeral, speckled trout, and a few varieties of sharks. Typically I use live shrimp and pinfish for bait and will put on just enough weight to keep my bait on the bottom. I look for deep pockets along the beach during high tide, and I will go to the passes where water rushes out of lagoons and bays into the ocean during low tides.

I will be posting fishing and eating pictures pretty much every day while down there. It is a 14 hour drive and as soon as I get in about 5 pm ish on Wednesday I will be walking down to Bahama Bobs and ordering a cajun crawfish poor boy. Or maybe the fresh yellowfin or even the mahi mahi sandwich? Ooh maybe the fried shrimp poor boy sounds good....I guess I will have 14 hours to decide which seafood to eat first, and if I can't make up my mind by then I guess I will just have to get em all!

Installing a Goose Pit

Today Justin and I installed a Bradley Blind Goose Pit for a goose hunting club near Canton, IL. We have actually become the official goose pit installers for Bradley Blinds. Anyhow this pit went on a small island in the middle of a wetland that is planted with all kinds of goodies for ducks and geese to eat. Once the blind is completely finished and the exposed dirt is planted with winter wheat, the hunting club is going to flood the wetland with 3' of water.

Here are some pics of the instalation.

First we dug a big hole and then we plopped in the blind. Next we anchored the blind with 6 earth anchors and 2500 lbs of sakrete. Then we filled the dirt back in and finished the grade.

Here is the nearly finished product with Herman Brother's finest male model showcasing a job well done:

Here is a video of Bradley Blinds featured on Flyway Highway Outdoor TV Show

Big Flathead Catfish

Last week while electrofishing a 6 acre private lake near Elkhart, Illinois we came across this big flathead catfish:

This week while electrofishing a 6 acre lake near Dunlap, Illinois for the Radnor Rod and Camping Club we came across this big flathead catfish:

Just to give you a bit of a reference at how big those flatheads were, here is one of Herman Brothers finest male models showcasing this regular sized flathead catfish:

Fall Crappie and Trout Fishing

I took Mary and Sally crappie fishing Saturday afternoon. It was a perfect 70 degrees, sunny, and we were fishing in an undisclosed top secret crappie mecca in Fulton County. The setting was as good as it gets and the fish were biting just nice for this picture perfect fishing trip. Our mission for this trip was to keep just enough fish for dinner!

We caught 25 crappies between 11 and 13 inches, 4 channel catfish, a 25 inch muskie, and 16 largemouth bass of various sizes. Thats a bunch of fish for only a 2.5 hr afternoon trip and we only needed 8 of the crappies and 3 of the catfish for dinner. Here are the fish we ate:

We drenched the crappie fillets into Chef Todd's sweet chili glaze and cooked them on the grill. While they were simmering we stripped the catfish fillets into 1/2 inch strips, coated them with Nate's secret cajun batter, and deep fried them golden brown. Here is Justin prepping the fillets:

Here are a couple of the other fish that we didn't eat.

Mary kept wanting to eat the big ones, but I finally got her to understand we just take pictures of the big ones and then let em go. They are just for sport and don't taste nearly as good as the little guys.

One story worth mentioning that we don't have a pic of is the HUGE bass that almost got her picture taken of! Mary was reeling in a 10 inch largemouth bass when a much much bigger largemouth bass decided to eat her fish. We got that big bass all the way to the boat when it jumped 2.5 feet out of the water, looked us in the eye, and spit out the little bass! The giant fish was over 2 feet long and not only would of got her picture taken, but would have lived forever over the mantle in the cabin!!

So then on Sunday it was off to church with my family and then out to the fishing park in the afternoon to take some guys trout fishing and wild game feasting. They bought this trip from our fundraising dinner last February. (I auction off several of these trips per year at our fundraising dinner in order to help operate the fishing park. To date we have taken and taught over 2500 kids and seniors fishing free of charge at the park!)

In order to save some words for future stories, I will let the pics tell the rest of the story from perhaps one of the best days of trout fishing 2010!

OK, I didn't take good enough pics of the food so I will have to write a bit more. Chef Todd and Chef Kevin cooked us up a feast of epic proportions. They started off with enough appetizers to feed a small army. The deer kabobs, steaks, and chili glazed mako sharks, cavier, and smoked salmon dill patties were out of this world good. I do have a pic of some of the appetizers being cooked. Can you handle a grill that big chef?

Then for the main course we had crab stuffed trout patties from the freshly caught fish. Here is Chef Kevin preparing the meat:

I wish so bad I would have taken a couple more pics of the food. The crab stuffing was out of this world good. Then we finished off the feast with grilled wildberry cobbler and vanilla ice cream. Don't tell Brook, but I ate so much food at this feast that I can barely breath as I sit here and type this up tonight.

A+ Chef Todd, you hit a home run with that feast! I am thinking Chef Kevin was the 'x' factor in making the best wild game dinner on the planet? One more special thanks to Charlie Brackett for supplying the mako shark his son caught a couple months ago!

Stocking Smallmouths, Shiners, Trout, and Perch

Today we stocked tons of golden shiners for several different lakes. Golden Shiners are a great supplemental forage for largemouth bass and all species of predator fish. Shiners grow to about 8 inches long here in Central Illinois and they reproduce great in lakes and ponds with lots of vegetation. Bass absolutely love them and they convert them to flesh at a much higher ratio than fathead minnows. I stock 20 lbs of shiners per acre in larger lakes and up to 100 lbs per acre in smaller lakes.

Here are some pics of shooting the shiners into this 35 acre lake:

Also we stocked a whole bunch of smallmouth bass. Smallies grow great here in central Illinois, they just dont reproduce well when a lake is overcrowded with Largemouths. They reproduce great when largemouths are not overcrowded or not present. The key to getting smallies established in a mature lake is to stock them large enough so they dont get eaten by the existing predators.

Stocking rates for smallmouth vary depending on your goals and your habitat. Typically if your lake is clear and produces lots of 12-14 inch bass, your habitat is actually more geared for growing trophy smallmouth than largemouth. Smallmouth can grow to larger sizes on smaller forage than largemouths can. A diet of crayfish, amphibians, and small fish will grow 3-4 lb smallies whereas that same diet will only grow 12-14 inch largemouths. Largemouth bass need big prey items that they can capture easily in order to reach trophy size.

Next fish we stocked today was the rainbow trout. Last week we stocked thousands of trout, today we just finished up our trout orders with 200 fish into several different ponds. Trout need clear water typically over 40 feet deep or heavily spring fed in order to survive our hot summer months. Surprisingly we have quite a few lakes and ponds in the area that sustain trout year round. I still stock more trout into farm ponds than you can imagine. We put em in as bonus fish for ice fishing and cold weather open water fishing. They are alot of fun:

The last pond of the day is a male only bluegill and female only perch pond. Sounds interesting doesnt it? Male bluegills grow abnormally large in the absence of females, and female perch grow HUGE in the absence of males. We have this one acre pond setup to grow some monster panfish for our client for ice fishing this season. It takes a bit of thinking and management to pull this off, but this one acre pond will be the best icefishing pond on the east side of the Illinois river.

It was a very busy day. Started in Norris, then to a couple places in Canton, Cuba, Mapleton, Peoria, Washburn, and Spring Bay. Lots of driving, but got alot of fish into some new homes!