Morel Mushrooms, Wild Turkeys and Fish Pics

Here are some pics sent in by blog readers over the weekend. Lots of turkeys being harvested, fish being caught and mushrooms being found!!

Brad Usher harvested this bird on the first day of turkey season down in Washington County. Amazing photo with the deke in the background!


Jeff has a nice bird and photo!

Chris Rock picking wild asparagus from Friday:


Fulton County crappie and mushrooms from Saturday:

A bunch of small bass being culled from a peoria county trophy bass lake:

FAT Heartland Outdoors Bass also from that Trophy Bass Lake:

Mike and Kevin Gar fishing in the backwaters. Those guys are crazy trash fish specialists with like over 60 species of fish caught this spring already.

Jamie Melton's boys tagged out by 11 am during youth turkey season!!! Probably the neatest turkey pic I have ever seen:

Mrs. Melton couldn't let the boys have all the fun!

Grandpa Melton also got in on the action. My goodness, if you want to shoot a trophy Gobler you need to change your last name to Melton!!

Ken Wilson sent in these pics of multiple morel mushrooms from Shelby County. His wife finds most of them and found over 100 that day!

Sam Smith sent in this picture. I have no clue who these people are, but this is an amazing picture if you ask me! Very Cool.

Chuck Hart caught this walleye from a 1/2 acre pond out by Goodfield. I have been working with this pond for about 4 years now. Probably more fish per gallon of water in this pond than any pond on the planet.

Tony Prayne was turkey hunting and sent in this pic of a morel. Where is the turkey pic Tony?

Chuck caught this monster muskie out at Banner Marsh last week. Man that fish is a beast!

Michelle Kellenberger texted me this pic of morels on Friday with a note that said THANKS! I dropped her off a batch at noon that I had found with a client while stocking fish that morning.

How to Get Rid of Duckweed and Watermeal

This is definitely the most boring blog post I have written to date! Yep, I think I am going to write all about watermeal and duckweed. I just hope I can keep my eyes open as I type.....Anyhow, many of you will hopefully find this information very helpful, easy to read and understand. Here we go:

To get started try to grasp this concept, it is key to learning about everything in your body of water. An organism can survive pretty much anywhere, but with IDEAL HABITAT, that organism will thrive! Basically anything alive will only thrive if it has its preferred habitat. If you want fish to thrive, give em their preferred habitat. If you want crayfish- habitat, if you want waterfowl- habitat. Basically here is a saying you need to remember "If you build it, they will come"

So as goes the habitat, so goes the organism. This is a pretty basic and very understandable and accepted statement for deer, pheasants, rabbits, and many other desirable animals. For some reason though, it is a concept that many folks just simply cannot grasp when it comes to undesirable or invasive specimens. So I have written three full paragraphs now just setting the stage for the topic at hand.

How to get rid of duckweed and watermeal? Well, the first step is to properly identify what exactly you have. The very most costly mistake folks make is to not properly ID the green stuff growing on top of their pond. Next step is to understand the preferred habitat of your species. Spend a few minutes on Google researching. Third step is to do something to change or alter the current conditions. If you dont change the conditions, the green will just come right back. Then the last step is to completely kill it out.

Watermeal is teeny tiny green dots smaller than grain of sand. They float on the surface and are blown across the pond with the wind. They are very very romantic creatures and basically just spend their entire lives making babies. Here are some pics of watermeal:




Duckweed is also small and green, but waay bigger than watermeal. Duckweed usually have 3 little tiny leaves connected together kind of like a floating 3 leaf clover with little tiny hairlike roots attached to the bottom of the leaves. They also float on top of the pond and blow back and forth with the wind. Here are some pics of duckweed:



So anyhow its getting late and I didnt get nearly as far into actual information as I hoped, but hopefully you learned something about duckweed and watermeal so far. If I get a chance in the near future to pick this topic up again I will get into habitat alterations, treatment options, and application timing and rates. In the mean time if you have any questions about your specific situation, just shoot me an email to nate@hbpondmanagement.com

Extreme Carp Fishing Video

So I stumbled across this video from a fishing blog called lunkerhunt. I figured some would enjoy and probably you more conservative, mature, safe, boring, sane, older people probably not so much, but regardless it was a pretty funny video filmed just down the road:

Evergreen Lake Fish Structures

The high school bass fishing sectional was at Lake Evergreen last week and Mike Steffa the head honcho at Comlara Park put all the high school kids to work this year! Instead of just standing around waiting all day long, the kids assembled 36 porcupine fish attractors to enhance the habitat in the lake for the fish!

Herman Brothers Lake and Land Management in Peoria, Illinois provided the porcupine spheres to the park for a discount and would love the opportunity to provide materials for similar habitat projects in the future at discounted rates. The 1/2 inch pvc pipe was purchased by the park from a local hardware store. If your just an average guy though looking to purchase these attractors odds are you dont stand much of a chance to purchase them at a discount, you can however purchase them 24 hours per day online at full retail value simply by visiting products.hbpondmanagement.com.

Assembly of these units is pretty much rocket science, but high schoolers these days pick up on technology faster than I can vanish a fistful of fudge rounds. Getting the right amount of glue onto the pipe is crucial...... Anyhow here are some picks of the assembly process and a pic of the finished batch of fish attractors:

Also of note is that if you contact Comlara Park they will provide you with very detailed maps of Evergreen Lake and also GPS coordinates to the fish attractors. They have a full service bait shop and boat rental and one of the finest campgrounds in Illinois! A half day fishing trip with a local guide and you will be set on how to catch some serious fish on the lake for an enjoyable camping/fishing weekend!

Ultimate Southern Illinois Bass Pond

I started helping Aaron plan out the ultimate bass pond from scratch two years ago. I actually met him three years ago when I was speaking at a pond conference down in Southern Illinois. Anyhow Aaron is a tournament bass angler and wanted to create the ultimate bass fishing pond.


The pond is 4 acres with several narrow fingers and bunches of different contour, shelfs, depths, and various forms of cover and structure. Perfect habitat is the key to growing many large bass. Also not only did Aaron want to grow the biggest largemouth on the planet, but he wanted big smallmouth bass down in Southern Illinois too.

We set up ideal smallmouth habitat and then installed a Vertex Air Three aeration system to provide water circulation and movement, optimum water quality, and increased carrying capacity.

As the pond was filling with water we put in a handful of fathead minnows and we let them multiply to the umpteenth degree before we even thought about adding any predators. Then we added bunches of regular bluegill from several different sources and several different sizes. Creating the ultimate bass buffet.... We fed the minnows and bluegills aquamax 400 and let them grow and multiply all year long before we added the yearling smallmouth and largemouth in June of 2010.

The day the smallmouths were being unloaded from the truck, the pond was so full of baby fatheads every square inch of water was basically pinheads swimming around. The smallies burst out of the bucket and started nailing those tiny fatheads instantly. I think it was pretty much one of the best moments of Aaron's life by the way he was jumping up and down with excitement to see those fish hunt down their prey! He said every penny spent on building the pond was worth seeing that first fathead slaughter....

Anyhow I got a couple emails from Aaron this week and figured I would just plop em online as an update. Keep in mind this is less than one year from stocking 2-3 inch baby bass:

Dude, my pond looks awesome! So far so good I should say. Couple small outburst of duckweed that I caught in time to spray and kill. I think starting the Aquashade early maybe helped the most. Algae is growing but under control, I have added copper sulphate once. I just added my second bacteria treatment for the year.

No sign on the Koi yet, but I am hopeful they are alive. These bass are so mean though that I am afraid a 4" orange fish was an easy target. No sign of the smallmouth yet this year either.

Check out the pics of my largemouth bass at less than 1 year of age! The bluegill have really taken off as well and I am catching several of all sizes now. I can't hardly go a night without fishing for a while after work.



Thanks for all the help!

Aaron

So then I asked Aaron to take some weights and lengths of 5 bass for me and the very next day this is what he sent:

Nate,
Not sure if this is the kind of photo you wanted or not, but here are the 5 I caught tonight. If you want different kind of pictures just let me know. You can get the lengths off the pictures and I also listed the actual measurements below because the mouths are not pushed tight to board in the pictures.





Notice the last one is a smallie!! Caught another one yesterday too, so they are alive and well. They smally's are just doing ok and not near as fat as all the largemouth though. Definitely not full of eggs like a few of the largemouth appear to be. Here was my catch:

1. 10 1/4" - 11 oz (smallie)
2. 11 1/2" - 1 lb l oz
3. 11 1/2" - 1 lb 1 oz
4. 11" - 13 oz
5. 11 1/2" - 1 lb 1 oz

That's a 5 bass limit weighing just a hair under 5 pounds. Wouldn't get me far in a tournament, but I'm as proud as a peacock of them! This is a pretty representative sample of what I have been catching.

See ya,

Aaron

So then I let Aaron know that typically a 12 inch bass should weigh between 12 and 13 ounces. His bass that are just one year old already are averaging 16 ounces which is a relative weight of 133%! By the end of this summer he is going to have a pond full of 2-4 lb fish. They are going to explode in size this year as they will be able to start taking down the bluegills! Also I let him know that growing a smallmouth bass to 10 inches in less than a year is pretty stinkin amazing. Just because his smallies are not as obese as his largemouths didn't mean they were just doing ok.

Last email from Aaron this morning:

Full pool this morning. Both wood duck boxes occupied also. Never knew a pond could bring this much enjoyment to a family. Have a Happy Easter! See Ya