David Reyes Tequila and Fish Stocking

On Friday, I was working on figuring out a very intensive fish mgmt plan on a very interesting lake up near Victoria, Il. The goal of this 15 acre lake is to carry world class caliber fish of multiple species. Typically its very easy to create a trophy fishery of one or two species of fish with a couple bonus species here and there, but this lake is different. The goal of this lake is to create trophy fisheries all in the same body of water for Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass, Hybrid Striped Bass, Walleye, Tiger Muskie, Crappie, Bluegill, Catfish, and Rainbow Trout.

Not an easy task, but possible. I've been scratching my head the last couple nights thinking about the exact ways to achieve this specialized fishery for this exact situation. I do my best thinking when I am about 70% sleeping and 30% partially conscious.

Anyhow, the lake we have been working on for a couple years and the backbone infrastructure is in place with some big fish already, but now the plan is to go way beyond natural management strategies and capacities and really create a showcase lake.

Here are some pics from this lake over the years:





So while I am there I meet an interesting fella in town from Mexico. The guys name is David Reyes and after a few minutes of conversation I found out he grows Agave's down in Mexico on his families land and they produce the finest Tequila in the entire world!

I actually have never tasted Tequila before so I wouldnt know what is good tequila or what is bad tequila, but I figured this had to be good tequila if it costs $100 for just a small little glass full. Anyhow, here is a picture of one of his aqave fields down in Mexico. Supposedly the agaves are farmed organically and grow for 8 years before they can be harvested for this tequila.


Here is a picture of David Reyes himself explaining to me the tequila making process. Some day when people are singing songs on the radio about David Reyes tequila like they do Jose Cuervo and Jack Daniels, I can tell my kids and grandkids that I actually met the man himself!


So moving back into the week, we stocked lots of fish into lots of lakes and ponds all over central Illinois and Missouri. We finished most all of our trout stockings for the year, and gave thousands of smallmouth, largemouth, catfish, and hybrid bluegills new homes as well.

That brings me to another interesting story from the week. I was putting in some special strain of pure genetic bluegills I had raised for a fishing club that has 8 lakes on it when the guy said, hey you gotta come up here and check out my lake that you stocked 3 years ago. He said that he guaranteed me that he would catch 3 big yellow perch in the first 5 minutes right from his dock.

I figured the moment he said that we would see exactly zero perch, but low and behold on his first cast he reals in a 9 inch perch. Second cast a 10 inch perch, third cast nothing and 4th cast another 9 incher. I was pretty excited as we talked strategy for this lake. He said he regularly catches 30-40 perch per outing with the biggest well over a lb each and 12-13 inches long!!!

Back to the fish stocking subject, we will be stocking tons of walleye, pike, perch, and muskie in the next coming weeks. We still have pretty much every species still available, but what I have a surplus of and really need to find new homes for is northern pike 16-24 inches long. Right now I have 50 extra pike that are 2 years old and that have an average weight of 1.5-2.0 lbs each. The absolute most perfect sizes for stocking into lakes with existing predators!

Send me an email to nate@hbpondmanagement.com or call me up at 309-303-5691 if you could find a home for some of these fish for me.

Missouri Conservation and Illinois Youth Season

A short breakdown and apology for this past weeks questionable events on DominantPredator.org

Brian Sutter hang and hunts with his Lone Wolf set on a new property in Illinois, in attempt to figure the deer movement out for rut. Then tag along with Blake during the Illinois youth season as he looks to pull the trigger on a big buck or a doe. The Dominant Predator crew is ready for a cool down in the temperature!

Mission Oak Inn Electrofishing

On Wednesday Chef Todd and I headed out to Mission Oak Inn to electrofish their 7 acre lake and snoop around to see exactly what kind of food they prepare for their guests, etc. For those of you who have been keeping tabs on Chef and I for awhile, you know full well that FOOD and FISHING is what we do. Well we kept hearing bits and pieces about great food and fishing coming from this place out in the middle of nowhere near Henry, IL and when the Innkeeper Denny emailed me a couple weeks ago about needing a little help with his 7 acre lake, I knew Chef would be needed to help scope out their entire facility.

Chef and I are fairly similar (but with different techniques) when it comes to trying to learn everything humanly possible from every place we ever visit. For those who don't know Chef, he is a tad bit inquisitive in all things fishing, food, and turkey hunting related. The plan worked about as perfect as any premeditated plan could ever work and by the time we left at about 1 pm we were served egg florentine casserole, sticky cinnamonny caramelly buns, pumpkin delight cheesecake, and a chocolate encrusted pie so rich that Chef said he was gonna enjoy his sugar buzz until about 8 pm tonight!

Overall we drove out of that place and quite simply were in awe of every facet of that little bed and breakfast. Their entire 100+ acre facility intensively landscaped with walking trails, etc is about as nice as it gets anywhere in the entire midwest. Denny didn't need my help to turn 6 inch bluegills into 9 inchers or 1 lb bass into 3 lbers or 8 inch crappies into 12 inchers. He wanted my help to maintain and improve on 9 inch bluegills, 3-5 lb largemouth bass, and 12-15 inch crappies! Simply fantastic world class fishing already in a perfectly designed and very manageable 7 acre lake.

Chef and I often talk when leaving a place we just electrofished that we wouldn't go back fishing there if they offered us a free membership......Not the case on Wednesday!!

We designed a management plan to provide year round 365 days a week fishing opportunities for guests and created daily creel limits that will allow guests plenty of trophy fishing and meat fishing opportunities that overall will enhance the lake when they fish as opposed to draining from or harming the resource as they fish.

Rainbow Trout are going in on Tuesday to allow great angling opportunities for open water and ice fishing in November, December, January, February, March, and April when other warm water species wont be nearly as active.

Here is a picture of one of the two suites at the Inn. To be honest, I have never been to a bed and breakfast before, but definitely will be back at some point in the future when Brook and I need to get away for a night or two. This option will be WAAAY better than going to Chicago!!! Brook was even excited when I showed her the pics and spent 5 minutes telling her the story of stuffed french toast with homemade strawberry sauce and pumpkin cheesecake....


Handcarved wood carvings decorate the place:




Dining Room Pics

On Friday morning at 5 am, Cole and I headed to Arthur, Illinois to electrofish a pond and then drove on over to Casey, Il to electrofish a couple more ponds. The first pond is about an acre and is going to become a trophy bluegill fishing pond. The second pond is about 1.5 acres and is well on its way to become a trophy largemouth bass fishing pond.




The third pond I actually am the most excited about. It is about 2 acres and we couldnt find a live fish in that pond anywhere. This pond is going to be a future crappie and walleye fishing pond. When someone owns multiple bodies of water, I absolutely love outside the box fish stocking experiments. High risk, but high reward potential! Watermeal has taken over the pond recently and that will need to be remedied next spring with Clipper and White Cap. Also I am going to have my lab tell me exactly what nutrients and elements are bound up in the water column and we are going to zap them out with a custom bacteria concoction to clean up the water and give us clear water all the way down to the bottom! Then the fathead minnows go in the spring to start the forage cocktail. In the fall goes the crappie fingerlings and the following fall goes the walleye and northern pike finglerlings.


Very cool old burrow pit tucked back in the woods and some point in the last year or so all the fish died out of it. The reason I think the fish kill was recent was because there werent many frogs or tadpoles. Ponds void of fish usually teem with other forms of life that fish like to eat...Also the owner said he saw some fish swimming in it last summer...

Cole came along for this survey, cause he helped the owner with his deer management program. Fine tuning his food plots, prairie grasses, and deer stand locations! We didnt get home till 9 pm Friday night, just in time to watch the end of the Cardinals stunning victory over the Phillies!

Food, Fish, N Fun Stuff

Saturday morning it was freezing cold outside, but Tyden, Noah, Grandpa, and I decided to see if anything was biting down at the dock. Not much activity, but we did manage a few good ones. This time of year I prefer to fish in the afternoons to let the water warm up a degree or two, but we had a brief opening in the morning for fishing and we took it.



We had some very special guests in from Lincoln, Nebraska on Friday and Saturday and our mission was to show them the time of their lives with a focal point on outdoor activities. Shelby and Ann were up for a weekend they will never forget. We jampacked as many cool things into those two days as humanly possible. We rented very warm wet suits and took them scuba diving, high dive jumping, rope swinging, clay pigeon shooting, handgun shooting, archery shooting, heavy equipment operating, Chef Todd cooking, and hit the Spoon River Drive!

On their way up I texted them to see if they liked meat. On an extreme outdoor weekend you pretty much need to eat meat and with high school girls nowadays you just never know anymore. Anyhow when meal planning with Chef, my text went like this- Bacon or Sausage, Turkey or Ham, Steak or Chicken, Livers or Gizzards....

We ate well: Sausage Bagels

Bananas Foster French Toast

Chef and the crew getting an early start.


Chef then took Bruce out fishing for a bit while I took care of a few things on land. They caught some nice fat fish!!







Some pictures of the activities. We also filmed the entire weekend, including underwater scuba footage of feeding the fish. I am sure those videos will surface in the weeks to come.

This is a random picture of a Pony from the flavor factory in Cuba, Il. A pony is a mini version of the classic Horseshoe.

Monday we had subcontractor appreciation lunch on a big project we are working on. Mark Rocke and Lee Esslinger cooked up a feast consisting of Venison Cheddar Brats, Elk Burgers, and Andoiulle Sausages.

Justin and Cole have been cleaning up the edges of our lake and making a walking path all the way around it right on the waters edge with rip rap. I am so pumped to eventually have good shoreline access all the way around the lake!! Makes it way more usable!

My older brothers pond is finished. We still are burning some of the leftover tree debris and are going to put in a sweet beach, but pretty much finished. Now we need some rain so we can stock the smallies and perch!



Saturday evening we went to the coolest bonfire ever at a clients place near Brimfield. The logs were stacked 30 feet high and the flames light up the whole 10 acre field! Sweatshirts and blanckets before lighting the fire and Tshirts and sunglasses after lighting the fire.

Also for entertainment they had fire dancers, balloon clowns, face painting, and all sorts of games and tons of FOOD. Lots of fun with the kids.

This weekend we are gonna film a youth deer hunt, so hopefully some deer will get out and about with all the warm nice weather forecasted this week. WOW, this weather is as good as it gets, nice and cool in the morning and calm and sunny in the afternoons!!! Hope you all get outside as much as possible during this changing of the seasons! Looks to be an awesome month ahead.