Electrofishing up near Chicago

On Wednesday we headed up near Chicago for an electrofishing survey. This condo complex is an absolutely amazing, world class recreational property up near Chicago. There are 2200 condo and apartment units spread throughout the property and many of them are overlooking the very scenic 22 acre lake or the other lakes and river that runs through it. In the heart of the complex is a 4 run ski hill with terrain park, a dozen professional sand volleyball courts, basketball, tennis, pools, paddleboats, sailboats, walking trails, and pretty much anything you can imagine is included for the members to enjoy. Lets just say its not the average apartment complex swimming pool and community rec room .

On top of all that, the lakes are set up as unbelievable world class fishing, and they dont even realize what they have!!! We captured many 3-5 lb walleye, tons of 2-4 lb largemouth bass, some really nice crappies and even missed netting a couple nice northern pike. If for some reason I had to live near Chicago, it would be at this place. Here is a video of pics of fish we captured and surveyed!

We invited Bill Anderson with CatchPhotoRelease along for the full lake audits with electrofishing survey and he took some awesome pics and wrote up a really nice little article about his adventure on the water- Electro Fishing with HB

Missouri Monday- An Awesome Day to FORGET!!!

5 am monday morning and we are completely loaded and ready to hit the road for Shelbina, Missouri. We were headed to Dan Bollow's newly acquired farm to install a Vertex Air 4 aeration system. Apparently the previous owner of the beautiful 3 acre pond failed to mention that the pond gets completely covered with watermeal every summer. Anyhow Dan did his research and basically put together a complete management plan for ridding his little slice of heaven of the dreaded floating green sand! He found us online and we were up for the task for helping him implement his plan for eliminating the watermeal.

Anyhow we were on the road heading towards Shelbina for oh about 5 minutes when our fish holding tank got picked up by the 35 mph wind gusts and thrown from our boat out onto the interstate. What a great way to get the morning started.

We were lucky the tank didnt hit any cars traveling along I74, but unfortunately the tank wasnt so lucky when a Semi plowed into the tank sending it flying into the middle grass buffer! The semi just kept on trucking.



So we very narrowly averted a potential disaster when we realized that our electrofishing annode arrays were supposedly in the tank! We spent a few minutes searching up and down the interstate with the aid of a state trooper and his spotlight who was so kindly called by an anonymous traveler who happened to see a big fish tank on the interstate at 5 am (apparently just seconds before the semi came by) and low and behold did find most all of the pieces of our $2000 annodes!





The good news is we found most of the pieces, the bad news was we found them a bit late after many cars and semis had ran over them a few times. We just bought those new annode arrays and only got to use them 3 TIMES!!!!!!

An hour later and we were back on the interstate headed for shelbina. We picked up a good friend from Taylor Missouri and headed over to Dan's and got the aeration system installed by noon. Then we headed over to Taylor to check out some of Jacob and Kent Heimers pond projects:

So about 6 pm and we are on the road headed back to Peoria when a very nice small town cop decides we are traveling just a bit too fast through his town on rt. 24. Let me just say that I was driving like a grandma on a Sunday afternoon and was already past town when I decided to speed up to 43 MPH just a few yards ahead of the 45 mph sign. Just a great way to cap off the day eh? He didnt mention anything about the missing left tailight on the trailer, broken license plate, or no seat belts. I think it was just the end of the month and he needed to fill out his ticket quota?

We got home about 9 pm and then up the next day at 5 am and headed for a consultation in Fiatt, IL. Then from Fiatt off straight to the Doctors office to find out whether we were having a boy or a girl. I did not want to find out, Brook did. Anyhow we are at the sonogram, baby looking fine, and Brook decides it is ok for us not to find out the gender.....So the next sonogram isnt for about 12 weeks.

Electro Fishing Lake Audits and Pics

Here are some pics from shocking some lakes and ponds the last few days. We will be doing a lot of traveling over the next few weeks performing Full Lake Audits and Electrofishing for BIG lakes and pond across the state of Illinois.

We are pretty much booked solid for the rest of this season, but get your favorite fishing lake, club, campground, etc signed up for next spring!!

John Sauders Pond Pics:




Lake Wildwood Fish Pics:

Wilmington Recreation Club pics:

Redear Sunfish Stocking program to combat zebra mussel infestation has been working!

Doug Oberhelmans Fish Pictures. This is a lake we have been stocking heavy with northern pike, tiger musky, and walleye in order to combat the infestation of carp, gizzard shad, and yellow bass. It is working, and the LMB are getting fatter and larger (albeit not quite as many of 'em):

Leisure Times Pictures:

That is definitely the end to a very eventful week! I am stuck in the office all day today trying to catch up on voice and emails and write up some reports before our next round of electrofishing kicks off at 5am Monday morning. Next week we are headed to Shelbina, Mo; Fiatt, IL; Lisle, IL; and the Quad Cities for electrofishing surveys and also gonna squeeze in a Sonogram for our little bun in the oven as well as attend the Lyle Finch Memorial Clay Pigeon Shoot that benefits the Easter Seals. Then on Saturday we are taking a family guided fishing out at the lake that they purchased from the PCS benefit auction. About next sunday I will have another round of really cool fish pics for sure!