Shoe Boy Summer Fish

Last night we were sprucing up the rope swing for the girls camp coming this weekend. I was headed back across the lake and decided to troll a generic deep diving crankbait down the middle. I was by myself and landed a nice 5 lb striper and then landed this monster muskie right in the center of the lake!


We use muskies as a tool, but we remove them once they get over 32 inches long and just put more in the following fall.

We have been building tons of docks. All over the place- Fairbury, Fiatt, Lacon, Peoria, etc etc. Once we build a dock on a lake, we end up building quite a few more on that lake for all the neighbors....All custom designed specifically for each situation.


Early Monday morning we filmed and tested out a bunch of new baits from various lure companies. The Stream Stalker and Mike Pehanich were the guys trying out the baits. I think Jonn found a couple he really liked....

Last weekend one of our clients had a big outdoor wedding. Lots of fun. Our job was to clean up a 50 year old silted in, 6 feet max deep, duckweed, watermeal, and algae infested pond for the event, pictures, etc. We custom designed a really nice dock that I neglected to take pictures of, but the dock was assembled so that after the wedding it could be taken apart and moved to a better lake. 

I did manage to get pictures of the dock being loaded up and shipped out.


We had the nasty pond looking like a million bucks!! You can see tiki torches in the water that we sunk into the muck and lit, very cool that night!


Its gonna be a long hot and dry summer. We have been installing lots of these pumps into creeks and other ponds and pumping water into main ponds for clients. We custom design pumps for each specific situation. Water is always a rock solid investment. I'm telling you, water is valuable and you should tap into it anyway possible.


A very good client of ours has a little backyard pond that we will be fixing up for him. Normally we dont mess with water gardens or stuff like this, but I am always up for a new challenge.


You dream it and we will design and build it. That seems to be our motto for everything- fish, docks, cabins, lakes, properties, and now FROGS. Another good client (they all seem to be good clients these days) wants frogs on his property for his grandsons to capture and eat. We are designing the perfect frog pond wetlands apprx 100'x25'x4' and will be bringing in some kind of awesome genetic frog. I havent found a good source yet, but surely will. Anyone know a good source for some giant frogs? We are probably gonna build 2 of these ponds and plant clover around them to dual as a water hole/snack for some deer as well..........

Jay caught a nice striper on Sunday afternoon.


Spark caught a nice smallmouth


Jared's brother Blake was in town and they went out fishing one evening and caught some real nice fish!



I have been electrofishing ponds and lakes all over the midwest, hence the lack of updates lately. Shoe boy we have been swamped. Today we built this nice dock for a good client near Fiat. This lake is an up and comer, some awesome fish swiming around in that nice water, gonna be looking at some amazing pictures from here in another year or two!






I havent posted pics of our office lately, but it is very fun themed. Also in the photos you will see Andi and Sarah. They keep everything rolling at the office. We have surrounded them with all kinds of living and dead animals......Come on by (and buy some stuff for your pond while your in....) Hey also now that I have a bunch of help doing all the background work, there is coming a time in the hopefully not too distant future that I will actually get caught up!!!








So anyhow we have been working and traveling like crazy, these pics dont even scratch the surface, but we are having a blast. We work hard, but we play hard too! Before June is out, I will be going to large properties in Springfield, MO; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Paris, IL; Arthur, IL; Carbondale, IL; and many more places in between.
Got some big announcements coming up that we are super excited about. But for now I have to clean up some pee from the carpet floor before Brook and the rest of the kids get home. I just glanced over and Drake has his diaper off and I see a little dribbling going on.......Life is GOOD!!

Great Opportunity to Take Kids Fishing This Saturday!

By Jeff Lampe of www.heartlandoutdoors.com



The call comes often. “Where can I take a kid fishing?” The answer will never be easier than this Saturday from 8-11 a.m. at Hooked on Fishing Park in East Peoria, located just north of Dixon’s Seafood Shoppe along the Illinois River. Saturday marks the second Presleys Outdoors Free Fishing Derby for kids. Youngsters ages 15 and under are welcome to fish for free. And while you can bring your own gear if you want, there will be rods, reels, bait and other gear available for use at the park.



 If you’ve never been to the much-remodeled Hooked on Fishing park, you should take time for a visit. This really is a nicely kept fishing facility. For one thing, the ponds are fully stocked, so that kids have a good chance of catching something. Then too, access is easy. No weeds to navigate or ticks to fear. “Every kid fishes for free. Not only that, but they fish in the comfort of white rock and concrete. No ticks and chiggers. Not that there’s anything wrong with ticks and chiggers. They’re part of nature and that’s all cool. But this is easier,” said Kelly Presley, whose family sponsors the event. “It’s close. It’s in town. It’s comfortable and it’s clean.” Plus, each kid who participates gets a prize. There are even volunteers on hand to help bait hooks, remove fish and give tips in case you aren’t a fishing expert. And if you can’t make this weekend’s derby, there will be more chances to enjoy the park. Fishing derbies will also be held the first Saturday in July, August and September, courtesy of Presleys Outdoors. All in all it’s a great combination. Easy access to plenty of fish plus a prize. Tell me a kid who wouldn’t like that?

Pond Waterslides, Algae, and Fish

Memorial Day Weekend was definitely a highlight for the year! I absopositivealutely love hot weather (when I am near water that is). Well, this weekend was hot and I was very near the water! We built waterslides all weekend so that was kind of fun to figure out.

Anyhow Friday morning we were in the water at Ravina on The Lakes in Peoria by 6:15 am. They had several weddings this weekend and a nice fresh batch of filamentous algae covering their lake. When they called Thursday night in despair I was so close to saying there was nothing I could do about it on this short notice going into the weekend, but for some reason I just have a soft spot in my heart that still needs hardened up a bit....

Jared and Phil had no clue what was in store for them Friday morning, all they knew was 6 am at Ravina with swim trunks. We had the pond cleaned up by 8:30 and were in route to Cuba, IL to work on the coolest floating dock in Illinois. This dock is 120' long connnected to the lodge, then the stairs are also 120' long going down to the 120' long floating dock with extra cool wood bark railing. We had to calibrate the floats for the weekend!

Then we finally ended up at the lake and set out the rest of our fish feeders. I use tiny 1/16" high protein fish pellets in Texas Hunter tripod scatter feeders in 3-4' of water to feed all my small fish! Most people use feed programs to feed their adult fish, but its even more important to feed your little fish!! I have been doing lots and lots of experimentation and research on fish food diets and am getting amazing results on species of fish that dont even eat fish food because of the feed programs geared for growing forage.

Ok so then on Saturday morning we got started on our main project for the weekend. You see my family's idea of a great weekend is to work on a project. Seems like there sure has been alot of great weekends lately, project after project after project. Anyhow this one was really cool. We built a waterslide 8 feet wide by 92 feet long with 29 feet of elevation down into the lake. We got a 2" pump and plumbed a pipe from 15' down in the lake and rigged it up to come out of both sides of the slide for an awesome ride down! Here are some pics of that project going together, it turned out AWESOME!!!

Took us a day and a half from start to finish the waterslide. Then once we got that done we caught a bunch of fish for a fish fry Sunday night. Also we made sure to save a little time each evening to catch a few fish. Here are some of the fish pics from the weekend. These pics dont even scratch the surface of the fishing that went on. Kids were fishing nonstop, I just had a bit too much going on to snap photos, these are what I got typically with the last few minutes of light:

We fed 55 people Sunday night fresh fish (oh yeah, I had the priviledge of cleaning lots of fish, burned through two electric knives this weekend.)  Guests coming out for the weekend were like you dont even have the fish caught yet??? No worries, we can catch fish for a hundred people lickity split! 50 people is nothin. Anyhow we tried out a new batter from a fish breading company in Florida that they shipped up to us to try out for a sample. Was amazing! Will make a seperate blog post for that breading once we use it again and I remember the name. Everyone loved it and it fried up nice!! So then Monday comes along and we decide to squeeze in yet another project. Only this time my smarter brothers and sisters headed home to relax and just Justin, Jared, and I were left to tackle this one. We bought a fiberglass slide from craigslist or ebay or a garage sale last fall for pennies on the dollar, but it didnt have any directions or hardware, etc. We just started coming up with ideas and places and ways to use this thing and by the end of the day we were pretty proud to have this baby put together and operational!! Still have to get a pump and some plumbing and some railing up top, but the kids sure loved it with just using buckets of water for the trial runs....

So I get home about 7 pm monday night just sunburned and beat. I took a short 2 hour nap in my chair and then went to bed about 9:30 pm. I could of actually slept in Tuesday, but like an idiot I had an electrofishing survey scheduled for 8 stinking am in the morning. Was a very neat 17 acre property a guy had just purchased and it had a nice looking 5 acre strip mine lake. I knew instantly it was full of carp since the water was so cloudy, but was very surprised to only find the maximum depth at 7 feet deep. Next time you guys want to buy a new lake or property, have me come out before closing on it!

Anyhow, I am currently figuring out a way to pump water from the creek to bring the lake level up a few feet....I have set up several pumps along the shoreline pulling water directly out of creeks and other ponds piped to other ponds, but this particular situation will require some sort of wet well or bored well or concrete enclosure for a submersible pump. Anyone out there have any experience with this sort of application?

So life is speeding along at 180 miles per hour and I cant even depict a small portion of whats going on in these blog pages. Got several big announcements coming up in the months ahead involving real estate, tv stuff, and our business is transforming and evolving literally daily, been pluggin away at building my house every spare moment, been helping my brothers/in laws on their houses every other spare moment, and been working on my parents house/addition all the other spare moments. This is all in addition to working on over 170 local properties just in the last 4 months. On top of all this I am trying to do the best job humanly possible raising my young family. June is booked up to capacity and I am finishing up the month by going deep sea fishing down in Venice with my brothers and some friends! I have a few minor announcements and events to post coming up, but it might be awhile before I get a chance to personally post a blog entry....

Big Bluegill, Bigger Bluegill and Monster Bluegill

I have been experimenting with bluegill nutrition and genetics extensively since 2007. My proving grounds is a 30 acre lake out in Fulton County where we study fish intricately. Anyhow if you look closely in the following pics of these monster boone and crocket bluegill you will see about 10 different strains of regular and hybrid bluegill. Contrary to popular belief, I can actually grow regular bluegill bigger than hybrid bluegill. Hybrid Bluegill just grow quicker, but ultimately not bigger.

InFisherman contributor and international fishing guru Steve Ryan and his buddy Doug came down for a day of fishing for bluegill pics and these photos just scratch the surface of what they caught. Look for photos similar to these in upcoming magazines, articles and product advertisements!

They also caught plenty of other species of fish, but bluegill pics was the focus of the day.

This beast of a smallmouth bass is actually on her way out.  Probably almost a 10 year old fish that caught in her prime would have given the state record a run for its money.

I got an email from Steve on Monday. It was nice and I thought it appropriate to post with the photos:

Nate,

Somewhat crazy around here this morning (afternoon) but didn't want to get side tracked any longer without saying thanks again for letting me fish your little piece of paradise.

There was a period Saturday afternoon where I just couldn't stop smiling based upon the size of the gills. Just incredible and greatly appreciated.

In all my years of chasing big gills, I have never seen anything like it. A true testament to your lake management skills.......

Thanks, Steve

This week like most has been somewhat crazy for us as well! Beautiful weather and always lots of stuff happening. I got out of a big road trip up to savana for stocking a new smallmouth pond, putting in a cedar floating dock, aeration system, fish feeder, the whole works basically. The guys are loading up the fish and heading out first thing in the morning. I have kindergarten graduation thursday night.

The only problem with the weather is that it is so nice right now, but our lack of rain this spring is going to have some huge ramifications in the weeks and months ahead. Could be a very hot dry summer....Ponds that are usually overflowing are actually several feet low to start out the summer.

I was electrofishing a guys lake near Emden this morning and his lake is already 7 feet lower this year than it was last year at this time. Now I am excited for the mid 90 degree temps forecasted for this weekend, because I plan on swimming!! The only projects we are working on are in or near the water projects at the lake. Building 2 water slides so that will be fun. Sunday we will catch a bunch of hybrid striped bass and will have a huge fish fry!!!

Oh yeah I forgot that on Saturday we have 20 guys coming down to fish at Otter Creek with Chef Todd. I will be there in the morning to get things rolling, but then have to get back to the lake to get them water slides built. Should have tons of fish and food pics to post come Monday.....err Tuesday.