Thank You Nate Herman - Giant Bluegills Galore

[Steve Ryan]

Spent two half days over the holiday weekend fishing some incredible waters at the invitation of Nate Herman.  As Bruce has pointed out on this site, Nate and his brother Justin run Herman Brothers Pond Management Company in Central Illinois.  They have quickly built a reputation of designing, building, stocking and consulting on some of the premier bodies of water in this part of the country.  This post wasn't meant to be an advertisement for their business as Bruce has already included a link to their website on here but as a thank you for allowing my wife and I to sample some of their current projects.  No doubt, they have countless happy customers who benefit on a daily basis from their pond management services.

 

Back to the fishing.  I don't use a clicker to keep count of fish numbers but looking back at photos, I would say we had 10-12 fish of a lifetime in just two half days of fishing.  Monstous bluegills of all dimensions and color patterns. 

Even with less than perfect weather conditions and spending more time taking off my wife's fish than fishing myself, the fish numbers were incredible.  We likely had 80-100 fish in the 10" class range - a true quality bluegill by my standards and had countless bonus fish including largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, crappies, yellow perch, walleye, hybrid stripers, rainbow trout, etc.   The trout and stripers were just a riot on 4# test line and UL set-ups. The fish number were not a testiment to our fishing ability but to the quality water we were fishing. 

 

To me it was a real eye opener regarding what can be achieved in a pond or lake of any size with quality management practices in place.  

 

I'll try to throw up a few photos in the days to come.

 

Thanks again Nate.

 

Steve Ryan

[Vic Tankersley]

Thats' a booger

[Jim Gronaw]

Hawg gill!

[David, aka, "McScruff"]

Nice! I knew I shoulda' become somebody, so I could get invited to those kinda places... :-)

Were they hard to catch; I mean selective or "finicky?"