Boy, summer flew by this year. This Saturday morning the temperature here in North Texas is hovering around 40, pretty cool for us this time of year. We've had a ton of rain over the last few weeks, with some localized flooding. But, that hasn't kept us from doing some fun stuff.
As most of you know, the Pond Boss conference and Expo was held in September at Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgedale, Missouri. It was a huge success! We had people from 38 states...and a company from Italy displayed in the Expo. Also, Scott Tucker, from Australia, made the trek to the U.S. to attend this show. He is a fascinating man and I got to spend 8 days with him. We traveled around, touring, consulting and learning.
Here are a few photos from the conference, many more in the November-December issue of Pond Boss. By the way, after the conference, Scott and I traveled for 8 days, then I put the magazine together. It might be a few days late...
Shawn Banks and his helper did an electrofishing demonstration at the conference. Lots of 'hands-on' stuff, probably the most popular part of the conference.
Outdoor Water Solutions John and Tonya Redd set up a windmill aeration system near the pond.
After the conference, Scott Tucker, from Melbourne, Australia, tagged along with me for 8 whirlwind days of touring big sportfish hatcheries, consulting on a lake in Arkansas that is overloaded with coontail, electrofishing several lakes, in Oklahoma and Texas. We looked at a lake in central Arkansas that has been renovated and is ready to fill with water again. It was an exciting, but exhausting few days.
At the hatchery, we learned about hybrid crappie. See the story about them in the Jan-Feb issue of Pond Boss.
We shocked up this huge, 40+ pound grass carp in a lake in south central Texas. Below are some other things we saw at this property.
This big, orange lichen was growing out the side of an oak tree.
A swan posed for me....actually, I was getting a little to close and it was telling me to back up.
The lake we electrofished is overcrowded with chubsuckers too large for the majority of bass to eat.
This is the second time we've electrofished this lake and it continues to yield flathead catfish, a non-target species. We're removing all the flatheads and suckers we can.
I have no idea what kind of duck this is, but this bird and its mate have a nest in a stump in the middle of the lake.
As we traveled, we saw some pretty cool stuff, including this gorgeous sunrise over a lake in southern Oklahoma where we stocked some Florida bass fingerlings.
We even saw some wood storks in east Texas. They were about 75 miles north of their normal range. It was a rare sight for us.
We do get to have our share of fun at home, too. Here, from left, Karen Lundquist, Ken Kennedy, John Lundquist and Debbie circle around a carbouy of home made wine. I've become fascinated with the wine business and Ken has a wild grapevine. Mustang grapes. I found a recipe, we picked some grapes and you can see the wine fermenting in the carbouy. It's fun and a good distraction from day to day stuff.
Dr. Bruce Condello and his dad spent much of two days with us in September and they caught a load of fish. They caught several nice tilapia (I posted about this elsewhere on the site) and we ate them...with some steak and chicken.
One of the tilapia Bruce and his dad caught.
Got this photo from a man in western NC. He caught a skinny bass that had a hard lump in its gut cavity. Cut it open, shot these photos and sent to me. It looks like this fish's ovary has hardened and there's some issues. Trying to figure it out.
Here's the ovary. It's hard and brittle. Not normal.
Last, but not least, a stinkin' beaver wandered up at LL,2 in the middle of the night and chopped down a cottonwood tree I had transplanted from a seedling three years ago. It was just becoming a good tree and that beaver did it in.
Gotta run...taking a grandson to the Whitesboro Peanut Festival parade at 10
Fish on!
