Hello and welcome to Kentucky Afield.

I'm your host Chad Miles.

Join us as we journey the Commonwealth in search of outdoor adventure.

This week we're going to meet up with biologists as they leg band turkeys.

Then we're headed to the bank of the Fall of the Ohio for some springtime fishing.

But first we're meeting with my ole buddy Bill Carman to go fly fishing in one of Kentucky's most beautiful locations.

This beautiful spring morning, I'm out here with my good buddy, Bill Carman.

Bill, you bring me on some incredibly beautiful scenic fishing adventures throughout the state of Kentucky.

That is part of the deal, man.

I include that in the package because the scenery.

Hopefully we catch a fish or two.

You know, we're going to catch some fish, but looking around, it's just beautiful.

Yes, this is a small stream in the Daniel Boone National Forest, and it's kind of on a trail that is a spur off of the Sheltowee Trace.

Okay.

And I don't know if you know much about the Sheltowee, but Daniel Boone's Shawnee name was Sheltowee, which means big turtle.

And he was named that when he was captured by the Shawnee in 1778.

But this little stream is on a spur of that Sheltowee Trace.

And this is a place that may have some trout that hold over from the entire year.

But it's also stocked by the Department of Fish & Wildlife.

It█s stocked a couple times a year, and it does have rainbows and browns.

Hopefully we catch some.

We've had a pretty good little rain and the waters up a little bit.

Okay.

But there's a chance if we play our cards right we can catch some fish.

Okay, well, I'll tell you what.

If you ever wanted to go and explore this area, carry a fly rod with you because you never know when you're going to go by a stream that might just be loaded up with fish.

And this is a catch and release only.

We're going to be releasing everything we catch.

So it's a delayed harvest stream, which means that from April 1st to October 1st through the summer months, you can keep trout.

But from October 1st to April 1st, you got to throw them back.

And we're going to be throwing flies today.

Yes.

This one's a jig type.

And it's got a tungsten head, which means as soon as it hits the water, it goes down.

Okay.

Yeah.

And we'll be stripping it and making it, you know, swim through the water.

All right, well, let's get started.

Let's catch a fish.

Let's do it.

Anytime I get around small creeks and streams like this, it immediately takes me back to my childhood.

This is.

Oh, look at this.

Got one?

Yep.

Sweet.

Let me get the net here.

Good for you.

Looky there.

Come here buddy.

One thing I forgot to mention is that, these are barbless hooks.

Okay, so you gotta keep pressure.

Keep the pressure on them.

Okay.

That is a pretty rainbow.

Look at that.

Pretty.

It is a pretty little fish.

It already popped out, didn't it?

Yeah.

There you go.

Thank you sir.

We can go home now.

There we go.

Oh, there you go.

Where is that net let me get grab you.

There you go.

Looks like a little better fish.

Nice.

Oh nice job Bill.

Thank you sir.

Look at that beautiful rainbow trout.

I'll tell you what.

A little stream fishing light action rod.

It's a lot of fun.

There you go, buddy.

So I try and avoid touching them.

Yeah.

So if you can use a net that's got a rubber fabric, it doesn't abrade their skin.

And then, of course, if you do have to touch them, you always want to wet your hands to keep that skin from getting abraded.

Because if that skin gets an abrasion, they can get a fungus.

And, you know, it's bad for them.

Doesn't always kill them, but certainly not a good thing.

I got one.

Got one?

Oh, I got one, too.

Oh, goodness.

That's cool.

We got a double hookup.

It's like, I'll get the net.

No, you get the net.

See if we can get them both in the net at the same time.

Get off there.

Oh, I lost him.

Oh, that's okay.

That's where we were getting ready to put him anyway.

If this don█t put a smile on your face.

Catching fish like this in a little beautiful stream, a double.

Nice.

There you go.

Rainbow after rainbow after rainbow.

That's a little better fish.

He█s fighting.

Oh, that's a better fish.

Yeah, a little thicker.

They got broad shoulders.

Broad shoulders that's exactly right.

That's a broad shouldered fish.

That's a beautiful fish there.

I tell you what, you upsized a little bit on us.

That's a little bigger fish.

We'll get him back in.

There he goes.

See you later.

You know, I'm thinking we'll walk right along the creek and there will be little pockets we might want to fish.

All right.

That sounds good.

In this kind of condition, you're probably going to have fish that are kind of podded up together.

And as you can see, you don't have to cast very far.

Just kind of moving it real slow right here in this little pocket of water.

And there's enough fish I can pick it up.

They are stacked up there, right in front of that little log there, that waterfall.

There you go.

That's better fish.

A little better fish.

This is almost cheating.

Look at that.

There we go.

Thank you, Bill.

Just a roll, start pulling it.

Pick it up.

And, I mean, there is a pile of those fish right there.

It might be the same fish.

You might have to keep this one in the net.

We'll check your theory.

He came off.

Oh, perfect.

Pretty fish.

Bill, let me hold the net.

You want to catch a couple?

Sure.

Why not?

Yeah.

Oh, here we go.

Nice job, Bill.

Thank you.

Get it right back in.

There he goes.

Looky there.

You see that?

That was a surface feed, wasn't it?

Looky here.

All right.

That's the biggest one of the day.

That is a good fish.

It's a 12 inch.

12 inch trout.

Isn█t that a nice one?

That is very nice.

Very good.

There he is.

Oh.

Oh.

Nice fish.

Yeah, it turned out good.

Bill, I'll tell you what.

This is the third different trout stream that you've taken me out on.

And I always know when I go out with you, I'm going to have a lot of scenic beauty and a lot of fish catching.

It was a beautiful day.

Tons of fish.

Yeah.

I appreciate you bringing us out.

Had a good time.

Great time.

For many waterfowl hunters, taking a banded bird is a rare prize.

But here in Kentucky, you may even stumble across a gobbler that has a leg band.

So today we're out here trying to trap or rocket net wild turkeys for our wild turkey study that we're doing.

And we're set up here.

We have anywhere from 4 to 12 birds showing up.

We'll pull the trigger on jakes or toms, and then we'll put bands on them and then release them back.

And then during hunting season, if anybody harvest those birds, we'll basically get that information back and goes into the four year study going on.

So hopefully it'll be a good shoot.

So this study began in 2021 in Tennessee.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency began trapping turkeys.

We joined the study the next year, and it's a really unique opportunity for both states to look at harvest rates on male turkeys during the spring season.

Hunting is the main source of mortality for adult gobblers, and so we're trying to get a sense of how much pressure we're putting on the gobblers and jakes in our populations across our states.

So this type of work has been done for decades in other places.

It was done in Kentucky back in the late 80s or early 90s.

And so it's kind of a pulse check on our population because things are very different now.

We have a lot more turkeys than we did at that point.

At that point, they were mostly confined to an area of western Kentucky.

Now we've got them statewide.

We harvest 30 plus thousand turkeys every spring, which is good.

But is that more than we should be taking?

The way you get at that is with harvest rate.

Everything is good there.

Beautiful.

So once we find a suitable site, then it's really getting an idea of where the birds are using, you know, what fields they are in.

We'll start by putting some bait out.

Usually thats cracked corn.

And we put a trail camera up.

We're watching to see when the birds show up.

At that point, we can get a sense of their pattern and we can plan the actual capture.

Once the birds have been showing up consistently for several days in a row, we've got to kind of act fast because turkeys can just turn fickle.

Inexplicably, they can just stop showing up at a bait site for no reason seemingly.

Everything is set.

Now time for a good shoot.

Hopefully.

Sitting for turkeys, you really don't realize it until you're in the middle of a study like this.

And we've set countless of hours in a blind without success and Russ and I we've set several times this year alone and have turkeys there, just not interested in corn for whatever reason.

Hopefully today's not that day.

Got deer now coming out into the field.

It's amazing how many deer this place holds.

There are several hunters that harvest does off this place, but it seems like they multiply up here faster than other places.

We just heard some birds gobbling down over the ridge, so hopefully it won't be too long now.

Yeah, we got birds coming down the hill right now.

Longbeards.

All right, here we go.

Got him.

Good shot fellas.

So once we fire and have the birds under the net, our first goal is safety.

So we're trying to help make sure the birds are as secure as they can.

And we want to reduce injuries.

So we'll throw a jacket over them.

Or maybe a towel.

Just something to calm them down so they're not thrashing about.

We'll put a leg band on them.

So these are aluminum held on with a rivet.

So they're very secure on the birds leg.

Most of them are regular silvery aluminum.

About a quarter of them though are green aluminum.

And those come with a reward.

And the reason we do that is to help us calibrate the estimates that we get.

And a big shout out to the National Wild Turkey Federation who chipped in funding on those rewards.

So they're another partner.

Really.

It's been a good opportunity to bring a lot of people together.

So a major thanks to the many landowners that have allowed us access to their farms across the state.

I mean, we've got birds banded from Pikeville to Paducah.

We've also got birds banded on public lands.

So that's a testament across the board to our department staff who have put in many, many hours.

It's fun work, but it can be some long hours while you're waiting for the turkeys to show up because they don't always cooperate.

We're going to weigh these birds.

And then on the back end, we'll subtract the weight of the box out.

So we're going to stick.

We're going to I'm going to go ahead before we go down I'm going to feel body condition.

We're looking to see you know are the birds healthy good condition.

A subset will also have a blood sample taken and a swab sample.

We're trying to look for various diseases and essentially just get a sense of the baseline health of the turkey population.

Turkey in a box.

One down, two more to go.

Our goal is to capture 300 male turkeys across Kentucky every year.

We just completed our fourth year of doing this, and we've met our goal this year, so we get a lot of good information from it.

We can kind of tell, you know, some years it's been harder to capture turkeys than others, and that sort of reflects the population.

But we've seen an increase recently.

And it's also looking good because this past year we've caught a higher percentage of jakes, of young turkeys, which bodes well for the future.

Ready?

I got the bird.

I say I did.

Big old bird.

With the weight of the box.

32.13, 31.11, 32.04.

Now is the fun part.

Releasing them back.

So what we've learned so far is that harvest rates in Kentucky seem to be right in line with where we want to be.

We're harvesting about 28% of our gobblers, which is pretty in line with common recommendations for management.

We also know that where we have a lower bag limit.

So our Wildlife Management Areas where you're only allowed to take one bird, we see lower harvest rates.

While it may seem like common sense, it's an important piece of information to know because in the future we might want to make a regulation change.

And now we've got a sense of how well that can work.

And really, we just have the overall goal of maintaining a healthy turkey population and good hunting opportunities for Kentuckians into the future.

Here in Kentucky, many of the major waterways have a spring spawning run that can be great for fishing, including the Ohio River.

Lets see if we can get down there and get a fish to bite and get him to the bank if we do hook one.

Man, it█s pulling through pretty fast.

I think we'll catch a couple fish.

I think it's going to be tough to get big numbers of fish because it's just ripping through so fast.

Who knows, I could be wrong.

May turn out to be fantastic.

I got something hooked up here.

I don't know what, but.

Anybody's guess as good as mine.

It feels like it might be a hybrid.

It could be a catfish.

Lets ee what we got here.

Oh, I got it foul hooked.

That's why he's doing that.

That tells you how many are out there.

Looky there.

We're going to turn him back.

They get a lot bigger when you get them hooked up there like that.

Look at that.

It's such a pretty hard fighting fish.

It's a hybrid bass.

And there are a ton of these out here.

But, man, when you get one hooked up there not in the mouth.

It changes the game as far as the level of fight.

Pretty fish.

You can catch a little bit of everything, but these are one of my absolute favorite fish to try to catch.

They're just hard, hard, hard fighting.

And this is a decent fish, but this is a small one compared to how big they get.

12 pounders.

They're here.

But we're not keeping any fish today.

I just come down here to the Falls of the Ohio strictly for the fishing opportunity.

Like I say, you never know what you're going to catch.

And there are just so many feeding fish in here right now because of the amount of bait spawning.

All right, let's get it back.

There he goes.

The Ohio River's been so far out of its banks with the massive flooding we've had.

Everybody's been wanting to get out and fish, and the conditions just haven't been favorable.

Now that we're starting to get where you can actually get close enough to the water to make a cast, you're seeing a lot of fishermen out.

So getting hung up with somebody, it's part of the deal.

You come down here getting hung up on the bottom and getting hung up in other people's lines.

That's part of it.

Everybody wants to get out and take advantage of what this river has to offer this time of year.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

There you go.

Here we go.

It's a sauger.

What do you know?

That's a good size sauger right there now.

Now, these.

If you're one to eat fish out of the Ohio River.

These are the delicacy of the river.

They got to be 14 inches long and that one definitely is 14 inches long.

I'm not keeping fish today, but I got to feeling one of these guys with a stringer will want this.

I█m going to see if he wants it.

You want this?

Thank you.

You're welcome.

There you go.

I got something.

Might be a sauger.

Sauger.

So that last fish, that last one I had is actually a walleye.

There's several different species down here that are very, very similar.

This is definitely a sauger.

You see the spots.

They have to be 14 inches to keep it.

I think this one's going to be a little short.

Here we go.

What do we got this time.

This one doesn't feel as big.

Looky here.

We either got a white bass or a hybrid.

Looks like a white bass.

I'll tell you what.

There are a lot of white bass in this river.

Some of the biggest white bass I've ever caught in my entire life.

Not been out of the Nolin River.

It's been right here.

And they█re in the spawning run.

You can see this fish is melting.

See this?

That's what you can tell.

You can tell they're in their spawning run.

But, this one's a little small.

But when they come in, they come in in big numbers.

So maybe we can catch a few more.

Here we go.

Got one to hit.

Just hard fighting fish.

You see how much current you have out here and how much wind.

And that's not a giant fish.

You're looking at about 12 or 13 inch fish.

But, man, they fight so hard.

Here we go.

We got another sauger.

Man, I'll tell you what.

This is crazy this time of year.

Still catching sauger.

You know, this is typically thought of as a as a cold water fish.

Such a fun fish to catch.

I'll tell you what, if you want to venture down here in April or May is a really good time to come down to the Falls for this shad spawn.

Everyone's down here fishing, using a bunch of different techniques, catching a bunch of different species of fish.

Bring extra tackle.

Bring a lot of patience.

You will catch fish.

Now let's check in and see who else has been out having fun in this week's ones that didn't get away.

Check out seven year old Jake White with his first muskie.

This fish came from Cave Run Lake and was 46in long.

Nice job.

Check out this rare fish, a lake sturgeon that was caught by Bradley Fisher while fishing in McCreary County, said it was his biggest fish of his life.

Nice job.

Check out this giant largemouth that was caught by 11 year old Aubrey Dick.

This fish was caught at a farm pond in Nelson County.

Nice job.

Our spring turkey season starts up next weekend, April the 18th.

Now is a great time to get out and pattern those shotguns.

And remember, hunting and fishing on private property is a privilege.

Always ask permission and thank the landowner.

Until next week, I'm your host, Chad Miles, and hope to see you in the woods or on the water.