On Wednesday afternoon I had the privelege of picking up Bob Lusk at the Peoria Airport. Bob has been designing lakes and growing monster fish across the United States for the last 32 years and is the pioneer of lake and pond management! He is the editor of Pond Boss Magazine and the owner of the world famous Pond Boss Forum. If you have any pond, fish, weed, or wildlife question you just pop on the forum and ask your question and within a few hours some of the smartest people in the nation will have some answers or advice for you. Let me just say that if you are a pond owner, land owner, hunter, fisherman, or wildlife enthusiast, you absolutely are missing out if you do not get Pond Boss Magazine sent to your home or office. It is the best resource on the planet for learning about your outdoor passions. When I stumbled across Pond Boss in 2005 I became addicted to learning from their experiences.
So anyhow flash forward a few years and the pond boss himself came to visit and help me with a big project. Basically the magnitude of this visit can best be described as a basketball player working with Michael Jordan, or a race car fan hanging out with a famous driver (I dont know which ones are or were good), or a football player training with Jerry Rice or Walter Payton.... Basically you get my point, but just in case you dont I will keep going like an ice skater skating with Kristy Yamagucchi, or a hockey player slapping a puck with Wayne Gretzky, or a gymnasticker gymnasticking with Mary Lou Retton.....the list can go on and on
Straight from the airport we head to Jim's Steakhouse to hang out and feast on some of Chef Todd's food! The man can flat out cook and I have a bunch of pictures a few paragraphs down to prove it. Anyhow this pic of some steak and crab from Jim's will have to do for now.
So Thursday and Friday I spent with Bob designing the best fishing lake in Illinois for a client complete with its very own state of the art fish hatchery for raising forage minnows, crayfish, and occasionally gamefish like muskies, stripers, smallmouths, etc as needed. This lake is going to flat out be the best fishing lake anyone has ever seen or can even imagine. We are putting alot of thought into this design!
Saturday morning I loaded up my boat and fishing gear at 4 am, took Bob to the airport at 5:30 am, called up Kelly Presley to let me into his bait shop at 6:30 am and pulled up at a clients place in Fulton County at 8 am.
Chef Todd and Chad and Lee helped us take a bunch of people fishing and we caught some awesome fish with some monster crappies for it being the 95 degrees outside. I only was able to snap a couple pics and it will be weeks before all the other pics start trickling in so this is all you get:
Then we cleaned and cooked up the fish along with some bacon wrapped scallops, crab rangoons, shrimp skewers, oysters rockefellar, Ahi tuna, apple cinnamon chicken breasts, and filet mignon. All I can say is WOW, Chef was able to pull all that off in the midst of a big thunderstorm with lots of mud, basically out in the great outdoors with some make shift shelters and a leaky roof.
Then on Sunday and Monday I stayed out at the lake and played with the kids. Was different than usual though, the big storm brought in a massive cold front so we didnt swim or fish, we just made fires and actually wore sweatshirts! I can't say the cold weather felt great, because I was uncomfortably cold and the wind was blowing. But was a nice much needed relaxng weekend nonetheless.
Justin, Lee, and Dave started our shoreline rehabilitation project over the weekend. To prevent erosion and to make a nice patch around our lake, we are putting in a trail that will be rip rapped around the entire lake. I can't wait to be able to walk around the lake and catch fish hanging out by the rocks!! Just an FYI for those of you thinking about rip rap, we found a source for reject concrete that will be our base layer and will be putting it out quite a ways in the water, then we will cover it up with this nice rip rap stone for looks! The concrete costs about $15 per ton and the stone about $20 per ton delivered. Semi trucks can hold about 20 tons. In this picture, the reject concrete is on the right and the stone rip rap is on the left.
My lake has never been good for fishing from the shore because of no good access and lots of overgrown erosion. With this path around the lake I will be able to easily fish around the whole lake without needing to get in a boat!! This will take lots of pressure off our docks and create awesome fishing opportunities for lots of people who just want to fish for a few minutes and not get in a boat! Here is the beginning of the creation of the trail, I will update with more pics as we complete this project!
Just as I was leaving the lake this afternoon, Justin and Allen came up with this monster catfish:
Also I found this snake out sunning itself on the top of our dam, anyone know what kind it is? I am terrible at snake ID.
Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend! Looks like the hottest summer ever has officially lost its grip and now hopefully we can enjoy 2 months of perfect 70 degree weather!! Fatten up fish, you only got a few weeks of good eatin left!!
No comments:
Post a Comment