Trophy bluegill guide service in TN

[tnpondmanager]

Hello all, thought I'd introduce myself on here. I have a small pond management company in middle Tennessee. I do everything from aquatic vegetation control to fish stocking to fish feeder sales to aeration installation to yearly management plans; one of my best bass lakes recently gave up six largemouth from seven to nine pounds each for two anglers over two days' fishing (the landowner just informed me yesterday and I'm working on tracking down photos of the fish, of which he says there are several). I also have been spending my own money for the past three years on a handful of ponds ranging from a half-acre to twenty-two acres, which I don't own but for which I have an agreement with all of the landowners that allows me to offer guided trips on the ponds for trophy bluegill. When I started working with the ponds, they were in pretty bad shape - the bluegill in most of them averaged 2-3", were just morbidly stunted. So a lot of hard work and more money than any sane, underemployed person would spend on somebody else's land later, the 'gills are starting to get pretty big


We're open for business now. The cost of a trip includes a custom rod - here are a couple photos of the rod I made for my first client, who is coming back in October:





Here's a bluegill rod I made recently for a bluegill enthusiast in Indiana:



Here are a few photos of bluegill and shellcracker that have come out of my ponds this summer:























PM me if you'd like more info. Thanks for having me on the site - it's a really cool place!
Walt Foreman
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[Slab]

Welcome to the site. Thanks for the introduction Walt, and thank you for being a Sponsor Member here on Crappie.com. Those are some real monsters there. Best of luck with your endeavors.

[tnpondmanager]

Thanks for the warm welcome, Slab! This is a really awesome site and I'm happy to be a part of it!

[STUMP HUNTER]

Welcome aboard Walt. Good to have you join us here at Crappie.com. Always enjoy your post on BBG and your knowledge of Bluegill will be very useful. The pics are very nice, looks like the ponds are doing great.

[CrappieStalker1]

Love the fishing rod!! Can you just buy them?

[deathb4disco]

Love the fishing rod!! Can you just buy them?

Yes, you can.

TROPHY POND MANAGEMENT - POND MAINTENANCE | AERATION DESIGN | FISH STOCKING | POND MANAGEMENT PRODUCTS

[chaunc]

Interested so i visited your site. Rates are about the same as Bienville plantation but only keeping 5 gills under 8" thru me off. Welcome to the site tho.
TROPHY POND MANAGEMENT - POND MAINTENANCE | AERATION DESIGN | FISH STOCKING | POND MANAGEMENT PRODUCTS

[rducks123]

Awesome Gills and fishing rods. Welcome

[tnpondmanager]

Interested so i visited your site. Rates are about the same as Bienville plantation but only keeping 5 gills under 8" thru me off. Welcome to the site tho.
TROPHY POND MANAGEMENT - POND MAINTENANCE | AERATION DESIGN | FISH STOCKING | POND MANAGEMENT PRODUCTS

How many would you prefer to keep per day? I do have a couple ponds that are not yet at the level of the best ones but still have 'gills that average around 8", and those ponds could use some thinning of the smaller fish (7-8" range), so I wouldn't mind letting you keep twenty or thirty out of one of those ponds. And, the largest lake I'm presently managing in this capacity is 22 acres, and it could stand to have a few harvested not just now but for the foreseeable future (at least for the next year and a half). So I do have ponds that you could keep a good mess out of. I typically take clients to multiple ponds per day anyway, just to keep from over-pressuring one pond on a given day, so it would be no problem to fish one pond for eaters and another for trophies. And my eaters are a sight bigger than most folks'

The stricter limits are just to protect the ponds that are starting to get a lot of fish in the 20-24 oz. range, as I've aggressively thinned the smaller ones already in those ponds to get the bigger ones to where they're at, and there's not much wiggle room for keeping many without the ponds getting fished out.

[tnpondmanager]

Thanks for the link to my site! I'll be getting the rods page updated soon - some of the rods pictured on there were made a year ago when I was just getting back into building from a thirty-year hiatus, so the ones I've posted photos of here are more representative of the rods I'm making now.

I specialize in bluegill rods, anything from 5' super-ultralights that are lighter in action than any factory rod you can buy (1-4 lb. test), to 6'6" super-ultralight rods made on 2-weight fly rod blanks, to longer live bait rods 7-9' made on Lamiglas fiberglass fly rod blanks. Each will do things that a factory rod won't. I also make bass rods, or any other freshwater rod someone might want (don't have a lot of expertise in saltwater).

Anyway, thanks for the warm welcome, everyone!