The tide dictated another early start this morning leaving the house at 5.30am I double dropped two coffee’s and off I went. Today was the first Mullet session of the year, overcast with the threat of rain it mattered not,it was great to be up fishing at this time and not driving to work as has been the case lately with lots of early starts.
I decided to change from 4 pound to 6 pound line this year due to some obstacles I encountered last year, 11 inch Drennan waggler due to the strong wind and my usual mix of bait. I will keep it short, two bites one fish lost and this one landed 4 pound 10 oz. A nice start to the Mullet season with a solid fish which fought well and went back easily. The threat of rain became a reality so off home for some breakfast I went.
This week was a race against Memorial Day weekend to get 3 floating dock projects done. Like usual we battled the rain, but this week a new dimension of heat and sun was added to the mix. Whew boy was it ever hot!
So Monday we headed out towards Secor bright and early. We finished up a floating dock, added a sliding board and jump platform to the swim platform and built a platform and staircase to the rope swing. No clouds in the sky for this scorching hot day, but of course we got rained on, even without clouds??? The rain was welcomed though with the heat, and the jump platform and rope swing got several trial runs....You know just to make sure everything was working smooth for the season. Doesnt this just look like the absolute perfect pond setting:
Then tuesday we headed out towards Henry, Illinois to convert a stationery dock into a floating dock. We met up with my food plot guys out at the property as well. They have been hanging deer stands, trail cameras, and put in several food plots on this property for our client. They finished planting the last food plot just as a thunderstorm came rolling in about 2:30 in the afternoon. Here is a pic of the clover plot: We also put in a couple acres of round up ready beans, and disked up and prepared some fall plots for late season planting as well. A couple Texas Hunter tower blinds, several ladder stands strategically placed, and a handful of cuddeback cameras and this property is ready for some serious hunting this fall!
So anyhow Allen and I worked with Ed Reed Excavating to pick up this massive dock and put floats underneath it. Was a much bigger project than anticipated, but even with the hour long thunderstorm and several turkey spottings we were still able to get er all done. Once put in the water we built a big gangway, some bench brackets, and anchored er home onto some big 6x6 posts. While Ed was there we had him dig out the beach, place a few loads of sand, and even dig out about 100 foot of shoreline from the dock to limit the weed growth and attract some fish! Let me just say that Ed I think is part tractor. Its like his brain is operating that machine like we move our hands and fingers! Wednesday Justin and Allen delivered a whole truckload of feed trained smallmouth bass to Ipava, some feed trained largemouth and hybrid bluegill to Fiatt, and some walleye, hybrid bluegill, and smallmouth bass to Washburn. I had the pleasure of sitting in the office and trying to answer some emails, voicemails, and other crappy office stuff. Then I headed out to pond consultation at 4 pm over near Mapleton. This consultation was a bit different than most. The 3 acre pond was built rock solid 14 years ago, the fish were big and plentiful, the vegetation was native and diverse, and the homeowners around the lake were generally tickled pink with their little gem of a pond. The reason I was there was well I guess just to reassure them that their pond was perfect.....a very rare thing these days.
Thursday we headed to Mapleton to build a fun floating dock for Troy. His 4 acre pond is well aerated and boasts some serious fish potential with his aggressive stocking strategies over the last 2 years. Cast a line out and you could catch any one of the 10 different species of well fed fish! Anyhow we started building the 16x16 floating dock with 7x12 gangway at 8 am. I headed out to Drakes appointment with the Ear, Nose, Throat specialist at 9 am and returned just in time for lunch. Justin, Allen, and Troy were going to town the whole time and by 4 pm we had the dock done, mounted, and even a nice little jump platform finished for Owen by the time he got home from school. Even with the chilly temps he just kept jumping off!
Friday hasnt come yet, but I will be electrofishing a 5 acre smallmouth bass pond at 6 am, and then heading back over to Oak Run for some more electrofishing and fish management work. Straight from Oak Run I am heading out to the lake for the entire weekend!!! Got tons of work to do out there, but if I can keep my eyes open I will be fishing after dark! Hopefully I will get some good fish pics. Texas Hunter fish feeders is looking for some kids fishing pictures for their 2011 catalog and I could use some for some stuff as well.
The 80° blue water is just a couple of miles off the beach, and the action has been fairly steady for striped marlin, blue marlin, and a few sailfish. However, this is the time of year for these kind of results. It is hard to imagine, for the 30 calendar days starting about May 12, there can be better blue marlin fishing anywhere in the world, as compared to what we have here on this coast. A few years back I made a study about our marlin fishing in May. The blue marlin out numbered the striped marlin by about 10 to 1, plus there were also a few blacks caught. The sport fishing fleet averaged 7.5 strikes a day, with almost 4 fish a day brought to leader. Historically during this time period, we average a blue marlin per boat, for every three days on the water.
Plus, this was done by boats that were basically geared for sailfish, and found themselves sadly under equipped when the marlin hit. Some boats, like the See-Ya from Cabo San Lucas, spent the fuel money to get here to sample this action, and being they specifically targeted marlin, had a great month with 24 marlin brought to leader. Plus, there was an insignificant difference in fish caught between the pangas and the cruisers, proving the fish doesn’t care how fancy a boat you are on; only the hook in the corner of his mouth. For this last week, the super panga Huntress, with Captain Francisco, only caught 1 sail at the 16 mile mark, in what owner Mike Bulkley described as “beautiful blue water”, but had several marlin strikes also. The Huntress was handicapped by a couple of earthquakes the day before, which really hurts the fishing. Mike also told me there was a lot of the bait stealing bufeos (boo-fay-ohs) in the area. Almost identical, but much lager than a porpoise, they are false killer whales, near the top of the food chain, and can shut off a bite also. Santiago, on the super panga Gitana, says “fishing is good right now”. He fished three days with John Fuller of Chicago, with friends Ben and Sam, releasing 7 sailfish, and catching a 180 pound blue marlin. They also had 5 more sailfish and 2 striped marlin strikes, but missed them. Inshore action was tough this last week, as we had huge waves hit the coast from a storm several thousand miles away. The waves were actually washing up into the beachside restaurants, whose tables are on the sand. But, from tracking the waves on the internet, it sure brought in the surfers from all over the world. Ed Kunze
In three days of walking along the surf, I've caught and released 15 snook. Most have been small. The largest fish was 26 inches. I've also caught some nice spotted seatrout, blue runners, ladyfish and skipjack.
I fished about 30 minutes south of Sarasota the first two days. I fished along Casey Key the third day.
I saw more snook the first two days. I estimate that I saw 300-400 snook each of the first two days. I saw maybe 90 snook along Casey Key.
I've been fly fishing the surf for snook for the last 25 years. It's certainly one of my favorite pursuits. It's great sight-fishing and load of fun.
I estimate that I've caught nearly 5,000 snook over the years. My best day in terms of numbers was 41 snook. Last season, I averaged 19 snook per trip. I'll have to have a couple of great days to get my average up this season.
My best day ever took place last August when I caught and released 15 snook to 20 pounds. That included six snook of more than 28 inches. The largest was nearly 40 inches. I also caught and released three redfish to 32 inches and jumped three 100-pound tarpon.
Of course, I didn't come close to landing the tarpon. They simply were too much for my 6-weight TFO TiCRX fly rod. Still, it was fun.
I wasn't sure how this season would be. We had a very harsh winter and experienced a large snook kill because of cold water. Fisheries scientists estimate that 10 percent of the snook along Florida's west coast were killed.
It's too early to tell what affect the kill will have on the beach snook season. I can tell you there are good numbers of fish out there, and the population should increase daily.
My best months are still to come. I like June, July and August best.
If you want to try this yourself, you'll need a 6- to 8-weight fly rod, floating or intermediate line and a leader with a 20- to 25-pound shock tippet.
As far as flies go, I use nothing but my Gibby's D.T. Variation, a fly that has accounted for several thousand snook over the years. It was the fly of choice on that once-in-a-lifetime day last summer.
Other required equipment includes a cap or hat, sunscreen, quality pair of polarized sunglasses and water.
I like to arrive at the beach around 7:30 a.m. I usually fish until 1 p.m. Best sight-fishing is from 9:30 to noon.
When the summer wind is gentle and from the east, it's time for me to grab my fly rod and head for the beach.
I'm certain success is not based on number of fish caught. I am certain it's based on the enjoyment you get from a particular outing.
That happened to me today. This was my third day in a row fly fishing for snook along the beach. It also was my worst day in terms of number of fish caught. I totaled three small snook and a ladyfish. Not great by any stretch of the imagination.
However, I had a great day.
I saw an abundance of wildlife: ibis, snowy egrets, blue herons, osprey, pelicans, terns, skimmers, cormorants, frigate birds and others.
I also saw a magnificent spotted eagle ray gliding along in the shallows of the beautiful Gulf of Mexico.
When I first stepped onto the beach at Casey Key, I saw an angler in a skiff battling a large tarpon. I also saw three schools of tarpon.
The hilite of the day was when a large tiger shark swam into the surf and made its way down the beach toward the public swimming area. I was fighting a snook at the time and I thought the shark was homing in on my fish.
By the time I got to the swimming area, the water was vacant -- except for the shark. A lifeguard was slapping his surfboard on the water in an attempt to persuade the shark to leave.
One problem: The shark obviously was sick or injured. It was lying on its back in two feet of water.
A small fish swam around the shark.
"It just gave birth," some on in the crowd said.
Wishful thinking. It was a cobia, a species that's known to hang out around sharks. I have no idea why they do that, but they do.
The scene was pretty funny. Everyone was suddenly a shark expert.
"Yeah, it's a 10-foot mako," someone said.
I overheard a fellow saying, "That shark was hooked by a fisherman just up the beach. It apparently swallowed the hook and died."
There was a shark tournament over the weekend. Although the tourney was catch-and-release, the shark could have swallowed the hook and been injured in the process.
It could have been any number of things.
"You need to get it out of the water," one man told the lifeguard. "That's shark's dead. Get rid of it so we can swim."
I was amazed by the hot tempers. People don't like to be inconvenienced at all.
Suddenly, the "dead" shark righted itself and began to thrash its large tail. It slowly swam away from the beach toward deeper water.
Last time I saw the shark, it was at least 100 yards offshore.
The red flag was still flying at the lifeguard station.
Got to make sure the shark is gone.
I fish the beach quite often during the summer and see plenty of sharks. And they're not all little sharks. I've seen bull sharks, hammerheads, lemons and now tigers. I've seen them within a few feet of the beach.
One thing I've discovered is most beach-goers are oblivious to what's happening in the water. Most pay no attention.
I don't swim in the gulf. I've seen too many sharks over the years. I know the odds of a shark attack are great, but I'm not taking that chance.
This week can be summed up with two words repeated over and over again: Electrofishing and Rain, electrofishing and rain. I guess I could throw a few other keywords into the mix like fish stocking, rain, consulting, rain, carp, rain, and you guessed it: RAIN! I mean come on is it ever gonna just stop raining?
Despite another soggy week here in Central Illinois, we were still able to get out and get most of our work done. Every day started out before the sun came up and every day ended well after the sun went down. I just might have bitten off a bit more than I can chew, but some way some how I am going to get everything done- eventually. Here is just a recap of the weeks highlights:
Monday I took some clients to go see the new golf course in Metamora. My dad and older brother are building the clubhouse and I am hoping to stock some fish and come up with some management plans for all the ponds throughout the golf course. Lots of water, gonna be neat! Then I headed over to Dallas City to meet up with Dan Molsen and talk about his ponds on his fairly new property. Turned out to be a pretty good meeting for me, Dan is the president of a fundraising firm for non-profit organizations. I have a non-profit organization called Hooked On Fishing Park and am always looking for ways to raise funds so we can take even more kids and seniors fishing. Last year we took 800 folks fishing and this year we have over 2500 kids lined up to come and catch fish at the park. Needless to say Dan provided me with some real good advice on how to get volunteers and support! Gonna be an awesome summer at the park, anyone looking to help teach kids how to fish or help out in anyway please let me know.
Tuesday Allen and I headed out super early to Vermilion Fishing Club near Oakwood, Il to kill some nuisance vegetation and electrofish for their 120 acre lake. The lake is very unique to say the least. It is actually a private power plant cooling lake that fluctuates quite a bit depending on the water needs of the plant. Boasts a world of unlimited potential for growing monster fish, just needs to start turning the trash fish biomass into something a bit more desired. The lake is full of these pesky yellow bass, gizzard shad, and common carp. I would estimate that 3/4 of the fish biomass in this lake are not desirable species. Currently working on the management plan to convert that biomass into something a bit more desirable.
Wednesday Chef Todd and I went out shocking a couple lakes while Justin and Allen went out killing nuisance weeds for a few clients. Chef is surprisingly good at electrofishing whenever I need an extra hand. We started out a 4 acre pond in Metamora where we dialed up some real nice bass, redears, and crappie. Chef called that little scenic pond a gem! The kicker to that story is that the new owner was told the pond was 60 feet deep, but in reality it had an average depth of 7 feet and a max depth of 13 feet.
Then on Wednesday afternoon we headed out to Oak Run Lake near Dahinda to electrofish. This 600 acre private lake is completely full of fish, and some big ones to boot. I am sure there are still some memberships available and actually would recommend one if you like fishing big water. We are working on a plan that is going to transform this lake back into a World Class fishery as opposed to just the really good fishery it currently is.
There are a few changes happening in the lake as it gets older, but one of the main ones is that most of the original structure in the lake is gone. The lake really didn't have much structure to begin with. Because of this, the fish have moved around a bit, but they are still there you just need to search around for them. Crappie, Bass, Bluegill, Catfish, and Walleye all had good size and numbers. Here are some pics of some monster walleye:
There are quite a few real big bass, but a vast majority of the bass are about 11-12 inches long. In all honesty, the average size of a mature adult bass in Illinois is 11.75 inches long. Most folks dont realize this, but to grow a bass past 15 inches long is not common, very very few bass ever grow bigger than that. The biggest limiting factor to growing bass bigger than average is overpopulation. If you want them to get bigger you need to thin them down just abit. Kind of hard to talk bass fisherman into killing bass, but it is a very necessary evil. Back in the old days folks were meat fisherman and fish grew big, nowadays folks are tournament anglers and recreational fisherman and sure there are more fish around, but they have been caught multiple times, are overcrowded, and they just dont grow in these big lakes like they used to. Here are some good pics of monster bass though:
Catfish is another species doing real well at Oak Run. Lots of real nice 3-8 lb fish!
Crappie and Bluegill are very plentiful and just average for their sizes. Lots of 9-1o inch crappie, in fact there were so many 9 inch crappie that they are going to need to eat lots of them! For the bluegill I was actually surprised with the numbers of 7-8 inchers. Ideally I would love to protect all the bluegill for 2010 and give them a chance to really get going, but that probably isnt realistic. Bluegill are the backbone to growing big bass, crappie are not.
Here are some nice carp pics. I would rate the lake as one of the top carp fisheries in Illinois. Size and numbers are both real strong. Keep in mind these are 250-300 lb men holding these fish:
Obviously there is quite a bit of Carp biomass in the lake, but we are all working on a plan to start reducing that annually and the fishing is only going to get even better as the carp biomass gets transformed into something a bit more desirable. There is no fish that ruins bass, bluegill, and crappie more than the common carp. They just absolutely devastate habitat and take up precious biomass. I estimate that half of the lakes fish biomass is being wasted in the form of common carp. We have some ideas for a longterm management plan.
Thursday the heavens opened up and it really rained. I was able to squeeze in a lake consultation super early thursday morning before heading to Drake's Easter Seals appointment, but had to cancel my afternoon plans due to the rain. Mon-Wed was just scattered rain workaroundable, but we had to reschedule our electrofishing surveys planned for Washburn Thursday afternoon and Northern Illinois on Friday because of this downpour. So instead I took a load of big male only bluegill to a new pond up near lacon (in the rain).
That pond is going to be the best one acre ice fishing pond ever come winter. Here is the ice fishing stocking plan: 500 big male only bluegill, 500 hybrid bluegill, 200 big female yellow perch, 100 walleye, and 25 smallmouth bass. Sounds interesting doesnt it?
Friday I had a Hooked On Fishing Park meeting, worked on office stuff, and then went to Canton to plant some white water lillies, yellow and blue iris, and some other plants for a pond turned wetland. Got wet and muddy with the rain, but was gonna get wet and muddy anyways. Then off to the lake to spend the night. Before going to bed I worked a bit on our VIP dock. This is where we film all of our underwater videos and have trained the fish to eat from our hands. Rainbow trout, smallmouth, stripers, largemouth, crappie, walleye, and bluegill will come eat right from our hands. We filmed some real good footage that wont get edited for a long time.
Here is a video from last year at the VIP dock:
Saturday Justin and I headed out at 5 am towards Cuba. We had 9 lakes to electrofish for a client. Bill lives up near Chicago, but found his dream fishing property down here in God's country. His lakes are full of trophy fish of all kinds of species. Here is a pic of the biggest fish we found on the property:
Anyhow, Bill had some of his employees come down to get some time out of the office and help sample the lakes via angling. All the rain and flooding and fronts moving through didnt make the fishing easy, but they still caught some real nice fish. We were able to catch some real nice fish as well. By far the best redear sunfish fishing lakes I have ever seen! One pounders are just everywhere and occasional beasts like the second pic below are not that uncommon:
One of the lakes was completely full of these monster redear x bluegill hybrids. These arent stocked fish, but since the water is pretty murky the male redears just get kind of mixed up when fertilizing eggs. The resulting natural hybridization is just really cool and those fish just grow abnormally large!
With 9 different lakes, we are coming up with specialized management plans for each one to focus on each lakes potential, existing habitat, current fish population, and Bill's goals for each one individually. The lakes range in size from 4 to 31 acres. Some of the lakes will be managed for taking guests fishing for lots of fish, some of them will be managed for experienced anglers to have a chance at catching a monster fish, and some of them will be managed for toothy critters like tiger musky, pure musky, northern pike, and walleye. Here are just a few more pics. Electrofishing 9 lakes in the same day is not an easy task by any means so we just didnt have much time to take pics, but here are what we got:
Sunday I actually had trouble waking up in the morning. We were a bit late for Church and had to come home early cause I couldnt keep my eyes open. I literally crashed for 3 hours until Brook made me get up to head out to a friends cookout. I could of kept sleeping all through the night. Anyhow we went out for the evening and had a great time and ate lots of great food. I am actually not a very social person, but Brook enjoys spending time with regular people and not talking about fish for a change.
Looking forward to this upcoming week! We will be building a dock in Secor with a waterslide on Monday, building some bench seats around a dock in Henry on Tuesday, and building a dock in Mapleton on Thursday. The rest of the week will be spent killing algae, watermilfoil, and curly leafed pondweed. Gonna be hot, but bring it on, I am ready for swimming season and Memorial Day Weekend!
