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 headed over to the mountains of eastern Kentucky to trap and collar Black Bear.

Then we're going to Red River Gorge to backpack in trout.

But first we're headed over to green River Lake in search of crappie.

Beautiful, warm summer morning.

And I'm with Tim Marple, with Tim's catching crappie We█re out here on green River Lake.

I've been watching, following your reports, the crappie fishing.

I mean, is there any other way to say it than it's on fire?

No it is on fire.

It's hotter than the weather, hotter than the weather, and the water temperature right now is 89.1 on the humminbird.

Wow.

So we got warm water middle of the summer, and you've been pretty consistently catching limits of crappie about every day.

Kentucky Fish and wildlife, they know how to take care of their fisheries.

I think that's got something to do with it.

They've not changed a lot over the last few years.

And we have a ton of shad.

They got plenty to eat.

And we was in the Marina coming out, and there was shad all over the net finder.

If you're crappie fishing and you like to eat fish, you know what?

You come out and catch crappie.

Keep them.

Keep some crappie.

That's what it's all about.

It's all about the managing the resource.

There█s a reason there's limits.

And that's exactly we're going to do today.

If you're okay with that I'm good.

I've got I've got a cooler got some got some ice in it.

We're going to put them in the Hurt Locker.

There you go.

So it's pretty easy to see what we're going to be doing today.

We're going to be Spider Rigging.

Looks like 7 or 8 Rod and reels set up here.

So we're going to be spider rigging spider rigging with minnows.

As I tell everybody “minners.” I'm a minner█ man I like I like to have a little meat on a hook, and, we're going to fish with eight poles.

Probably trolling.

Anywhere .8 mile an hour to one mile an hour.

Okay.

So we're going to stay on the move.

We're going to be moving.

Oh it's not we're not going to go set in a brush pile and sit there.

We're going to be moving.

We'll be trolling.

Fish number one.

There we go.

And it's a crappie.

Tim's catching crappie.

Little bitty one.

Yeah, we got a small one.

Got a little one.

What do you think we got about six inches?

Got it started.

Gotta start somewhere don█t we?

There you go.

Summertime crappie.

Got one?

Sure do.

I believe that'll make the cut.

They must be nine inches.

And you're allowed 20 per person.

I mean, that's probably a nine and a quarter.

Nine and a half.

Nine and a half.

Yeah.

There you go.

Makes good filets.

Chilling.

Number two.

Yeah.

Here we go.

This one█s got one too, Chad.

Two at a time?

There we go.

You got one?

Lookie there.

Crappie just coming up left and right.

Next year's crappie.

I mean, we've had a ton of fish that size here at green.

That touches.

He█s a little over.

There you go.

There's another one.

Eight, nine and an eighth.

Hurt locker.

Uh oh.

Oh, here you go.

That one there.

I can tell you.

I can tell you that one there is big enough.

So, Tim, what is it that makes green River Lake so good for crappie fishing?

I think it's for the numbers.

I mean, it's a Thursday.

There's three other boats here.

It's consistently ranked right as one of the best crappie lakes in the state, isn't it?

At one time, it was sixth in the nation.

In the nation?

Yeah.

That one█s got it.

Work them two at a time over here.

It█s alright you got three hands.

Oh this is a little better fish.

Lookie there.

You want to stick him on and see?

A little bigger than then?

10.

Ten and a quarter.

There you go.

And that's a good size eatin█ crappie.

And there's millions of them, huh?

Quite a few.

There we go.

Got him.

That's another good one.

Yeah, we'll take it.

That there's another ten inch fish, isn█t it?

There you go.

Beautiful fish.

And I'll tell you what.

If you like to eat fish, you're going to love crappie, because these probably as far as how much meat you get off of one, and how light and mild they are for most people.

They'll tell you this is the best eating fish in the state of Kentucky.

Between that and walleye, it's that don't get any better.

Yeah, I got one too.

Oh.

The middle rods pick it up.

Oh, that's a good one.

Look at there.

That's a real good fish there now.

how many of these does it take to to feed a man?

Well, four.

Yeah.

About eight pieces is good.

But I'll just say this, yesterday was my mom's.

Would have been my mom's birthday.

78th birthday.

I took her and dad, 26 crappie, 52 pieces.

Yeah, they sat and eat it all.

Here we go.

Crank it a lick or two.

There you go.

Now you can put him in your lap.

That's a good█n.

We'll take it.

They're all good.

Some better than others.

Looky there.

I don█t even have to put that one on the board.

Nope.

Which one are we looking at?

One.

Here we go.

See Pat, it's it's spider rigging in training.

Yeah, exactly.

This feels like a good one.

That's a good one.

Looky there.

Oh, look at that.

This is this our biggest fish of the day so far?

That█s the biggest fish of the day.

Look at that.

Now that's a pretty fish.

That's a that's a good fish for Green River.

That's a good one.

We'll take that.

That's probably eleven and a half, 12 inch fish beautiful beautiful fish.

Look how you can you see right through there their fins.

And I'll tell you what certain times of the year they get marked up a lot more a lot more, prevalent black lines in them right now.

They're down there pretty deep.

Yeah, it's pretty hot.

One way to tell the black crappie from a white crappie is the fins.

The white crappie will have less dorsal fins that are separated than the black ones do.

And in the springtime the males will turn black.

They got their tuxedo on, looking for love, just like the gobblers do and the bucks do.

They all look prettier than the girls.

I don't think this one's going to make it to springtime.

I think this one's going to make it to the ice.

Here in just a second, and the grease Shortly after that.

Well, Jim, here in the middle of the summer, hot as can be.

8:30.

We're getting ready to go clean fish.

We█re at Green River.

We█re at Green River Lake.

Hey, you know what?

We got some nice fish.

We got some good.

You know, the fish were biting the entire time.

Green River Lake is the place to come catching.

You know, sometimes you stop fishing because you're tired.

Sometimes you stop fishing when you, run out of bait.

Today we're stopping fishing because that's all we want to clean, I think.

I think that's about enough.

Let's get busy, get these cleaned up.

I'll call my wife, tell her to get the skillet ready.

What do you think?

See?

You better be getting it hot.

Cuz█ its ready.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

The black bear numbers here in the state of Kentucky continue to increase.

And biologists are doing their best to monitor their movements.

We█re down in the big South Fork area of the Daniel Boone National Forest It█s late July and bears are breeding and are in search for food.

And it's a good time for us to try to catch some bears.

So what we do, typical trap line that we have is we try to deploy as many as possible.

It takes some time to put them together.

So, we're limited on how many we can put out.

So we try to do about 10 to 12 to maximize how many bears that we can catch in a day So we'll place these traps usually about a half mile apart, try to encompass different home ranges of the females we've got this designed in a manner.

That is.

Safe for the bears.

So our locking mechanism.

Has, just one clamp on it.

So the way we put it together tries to eliminate any kind of, like, sharp edges for the bear paw.

The sharp end of the locking mechanisms to the outside with our cable locker or cable clamp.

The bolts face out.

So when the paw is in and it stenches, there's a minimum amount of sharp edges that can touch it.

Kind of grind the edges of these make it smooth.

So when it gets around that bear paw, the harder they fight the tighter it█ll get.

Usually doesn't have any kind of consequences.

There's usually maybe just a small abrasion Get some Moss around the cable.

So the good thing about moss, there's a couple things that you can use for your spring and hiding your spring.

But I really like moss because it's lightweight.

It blends in well.

The Idea is we're directing the bear exactly where we want it to step.

So the bears that we're working on down here in McCreary County, we've been studying these bears is probably about 2010 when we first initiated our research down here.

And it's just a continuation of that.

We've seen that the population continues to grow.

And that's the entire purpose of this is so that we continue monitoring the population and what they're doing.

So as we enter into late summer or early fall, the food sources change as well.

And we've seen some of that sign as we travel long the forrest service roads here.

To set our snares.

So we see a lot of the sassafras trees that have been rolled over from the bears.

So So we're in the Big South.

National Forrest.

And this time of year, we get a lot of trees rolled over by the bears like this right here.

And so what they're after is they can smell these berries that develop at the top of this sassafras tree.

And there's dozens of them along the roadways.

But this is just a natural food that bears feed on this time of year, when these come in the season, we transition past the blackberries and we've moved into other crops, that█s coming in.

And this is one of the favorites at this time of year.

The traps that we're using is called an Aldridge snare.

It's not a selective trap.

We can't determine if we catch a male or female.

So during the process of our research trapping, we have just as equal of an opportunity to catch male bears as we do females, So today is our first day of deploying traps in the area.

So what our main goal now is to get as many out as possible, so that we'll check it, at least twice a day, morning and evening runs.

All bears that we catch are good information.

We collect data equally from whether it's a female or a male bear.

The same.

The only difference it will have is the collar.

Male bears grow fast.

So they'll put on a lot more weight in the winter than what females do, and they're more difficult to collar.

Plus, there's not much information that we're looking for.

We don't have any reason to track male bears specific, but it's very important for us to know the location of the den sights in the winter.

And that's the reason why we use collars on the females.

Sometimes going into these trap sights on these ridge lines.

You come across this, two main land mammals that'll eat ground nesting bees is bears and skunks.

Most times it█s bears that does it.

You see where they dig it out and it doesn't affect them.

They don't pay attention to these stings.

From the bees as they█re eating them.

They'll try to go after the lava.

That's mine.

But I guess where most of nutrition is with the lava.

But they'll eat the bees in the process as well.

So goal is hopefully with some of these traps that we've set out this morning with the bear activity we've seen, we've actually even seen a couple bear as we've been traveling down the roadways.

And hopefully that movement will translate into a captured bear today.

So we've got all our traps deployed this morning.

Now it's time for us to make our evening run.

So we'll go in, make sure that we still got bait, none of the traps were thrown, and see if we caught a bear.

So as we approach, we can tell that there's nothing in here, our cubby is still in place.

So the second thing we'll do is we'll check to see if there's any activity at the site.

See if any of our bites eaten on the ground or on the tree.

And obviously nothing's been here yet.

A lot of times we'll have a lot of other, small mammals that come in, whether it's possums or coons, and maybe rob the bait before bear gets to it.

But, it doesn't look like anything in here right now.

So probably a little over 200 pound bear.

Caught good around her wrist.

We'll go back, we█ll get us a dart worked up and some drug worked up, and we'll get it down so we can work em up.

So after we successfully dart him.

we'll retreat back here.

Kind of get out of sight, out of mind That way it can calm down and have it easy.

they'll go under Anastasia and everything It could be as little as a minute and a half, or it could be 15 minutes before it finally goes down.

There we go.

So it gives us a clean place to work.

Main thing, even though this is even capture.

And sun light is not an issue.

with them laying on the forest floor like this.

We want to protect their eyes, because we'll have to move around a little bit.

And everything.

So we might want to make sure that there's no sticks that█ll jab her eyes.

We have three means identifying bears, bit tags, ear tags, and tattoos.

Ear tags are easy to locate, but the longevity of them can be limited.

Tattoos are something that are long lasting and will last entire life of bear.

The reason we go after this tooth is it's easily accessible.

It's the tooth that the bear can live the same life with or without.

So it doesn't affect the animal by losing that tooth.

And it's generally easier to extract that tooth and not do any harm.

Oh, she's got some tooth wear.

Pretty heavy.

Look them upper molars back there.

They're almost flat, she's old.

Look at them upper incisors.

I mean, she's probably at least 14, 16 year old.

Well, just from what I've seen in the past, she's probably at least that.

So what we're doing is we're putting a leather spacer on this collar.

So with this design, it allows this collar to eventually drop off the bear.

So if the bear puts on the large amount of weight in the fall.

Then the collars simply drop off.

Okay.

She█s good.

Time will vary on how fast they will react.

Sometimes it's as little as 30s.

Sometimes it may take 18 or 20 minutes.

This evening we went out, done our evening check.

Come down to the last two traps that we had that we'd set this morning.

We was able to catch two females, which is, our goal you know, we was after the female bears so that we can put collars out by putting these collars out is to continue to collect the data so we can put it into our population models.

So, ultimately we can do the den surveys in the winter and count cubs and see the sex ratios of those cubs.

If you're interested in volunteering opportunities with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife, backpacking trout into the Red River Gorge might be for you.

So we are down in the Red River Gorge, and we're getting ready to stock rainbow trout here, specifically today into Chimney Top Creek and a couple weeks ago we backpacked trout into Swift Camp Creek, and we also stopped them into East Fork, Indiana, Middle Fork Red River.

We do that because really, there's no easier way to get them down in the creek.

You know, these these fish need to be in water the whole time.

We can't drive the truck right down to the creek.

So putting them in in a bag with water and hiking them down is the next best option.

The journey of these fish really starts at Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery.

There our federal partners in this.

They raise the fish.

And what happens in this particular instance today is, a couple of guys out of my office drove from Moorhead all the way down to Wolf Creek Dam, picked up these fish, and now they're bringing them all the way back to Red River Gorge.

When they get up here, we're going to look at the data, see the number of fish in a pound of fish.

And that kind of tells us how many fish we need to put in a bag.

We count those out into a bucket.

We put it into a plastic bag pump pure oxygen in that plastic bag, seal it off with some castration bands, which prevents any air from getting in and hopefully any air or water from escaping.

they're put on your back And then from there, the clock is ticking.

And we got to get them down to the stream as quick as we can and got to get them out into the water as quick as we can.

These backpacking trips are fun for a lot of folks.

You know, we get a lot of folks from the department and volunteers from different hunting and angling groups, community colleges that sort of stuff that come out and help us because it's a unique opportunity where you get to put fish on your back and hike them down and release them into streams.

And in the past, we've gotten with different state agencies like Department of Juvenile Justice has brought kids out to do this before angling groups like Bluegrass Trout Unlimited.

Today here at Chimney Top, we have, one of the community colleges is coming out.

And then also the backcountry hunters and anglers are coming out to help us today, really without the help of the volunteers we can't do this.

You know, we just don't have enough staff, in my office, especially to to handle stocking these, several hundred fish we█re about to stop today.

I've been fly fishing since I was 18 years old.

My, interests have always revolved around being outside in nature.

And, it's wonderful to fish.

It's even more wonderful to to get into the backcountry a bit and be able to have an experience alone in the water.

Kentucky Afield had done a program several years back about the few streams in the state that require hiking the fish in.

So for the last several years, I've been trying to get on board and meet with the volunteers and find a chance to, to pack in fish myself.

It's a really neat experience, and I certainly hope to do it again.

I think I'll just keep popping the events on my calendar and come whenever I can From there, those fish, because they've been raised our whole lives at Wolf Creek Hatchery, they they naturally are schooling up together, and they just kind of stay together in this big mass for a little while.

But slowly, through the course of the rest of today and definitely into tomorrow, they█ll split up and kind of get out on their own and start adapting to that, wild diet.

Why put all this effort in?

for those adventure anglers.

These aren't your normal pull up walk ten steps, cast a line and you go put some effort and you got to, hike down to these streams.

You got to do some research.

You got to be quiet.

The reward for your effort is not only just the fish, but just the beauty of what's around us.

These are unique opportunities, not necessarily just for us in the Northeast District, but unique across the state.

You know, there's there's only one Red River gorge, and there's only a handful of the streams that we stock.

It's an opportunity for us to, you know, reach another group of our constituents as far as anglers go.

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

Three year old Graham Sizemore went out on the opening day of dove season and had some luck.

Congratulations.

Here we have 14 year old Layla Newton with their personal best smallmouth bass.

She caught this in Bashir's creek using a live creek job.

Nice job.

Garrett Griffith.

Jumped in a kayak and headed down Skaggs Creek at Barron River Lake and caught this nice largemouth bass.

Ten year old Jackson Wayne Blocker got out on the opening day of crossbow season and took this nice doe at Hart County.

Many of our fall hunting seasons here in Kentucky is now open, and if you're interested in a quota hunt this year, September is a month to sign up.

Go to fw.ky.gov for more information.

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

Always ask permission and thank the landowner.

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