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 year, Kentucky's deer archery season opens on September the 5th.

Let's take a look back at an early season bow hunt.

Then we're jumping in the Floyds Fork right outside of Louisville, Kentucky, to do a little wade fishing.

But first, we're headed down to the Cumberland River to target stripers in some skinny water.

There you go.

That's what's on the menu today.

That█s it.

So we got Gizzard Shad right?

Gizzard Shad yup.

It's always easy to tell a Gizzard Shad, you got that dot you see that painted on so many artificial lures.

And we're just nose hooking them here.

With a circle hook is the number two you say?

2/O circle hook, Yeah.

Dawn, on the Cumberland River.

It doesn't get any prettier in this, does it?

No it don█t.

I'm down here with Alan Turner we're just dropping gizzard shad down trying to hook a big striper, aren't we?

Yes we are.

we're dropping some probably six eight inch gizzard shad on some, two ounce egg sinkers with circle hooks.

this is actually a pretty good time of year to try to target these is.

And I mean, earlier in the year, better than the summer Yeah.

Usually the fish kind of start moving out, around the last week of August.

It's a beautiful day.

The scenery don't get any better than this, that█s right.

Well.

Let's go.

Let's see what happens.

Uh oh!

Oh!

Wrote it up right on a fish.

That hurt.

Yeah.

I might have jumped the gun on him a little bit.

He█s grabbing at it right now.

Real, real.

Oh, he got off?

Dang it!

Put you another bait on.

That fish come off, and then I started reeling, Then it popped it again.

There█s a fish on.

Oh, reel.

Oh.

What the heck?

I don't know, this ain't jiving with me.

30 something feet.

Yeah.

There's the school of striper right there.

Yeah.

There at 22ft.

get up here and get pretty close to these rocks and just pitch to the side of them anywhere they might be hiding.

Literally, like, flipping and pitching for bass.

Yeah.

You got it.

There.

Let me get out of your way.

Let me grab the net here.

Oh, shoot.

There we go.

Bam!

Nice job.

You actually saw that fish hit didn█t you?

There, right there.

That was pretty good.

That was pretty awesome, actually.

You actually go.

Well, there's a fish after my bait right now.

Yeah, set the hook.

That was perfect.

Now, that was awesome.

Cool.

a fluorocarbon line is so good that I can't even see it.

So, started out this morning.

We had some down rods out fishing, some deeper water, and, we had a couple bites, but we never did get hooked up.

Allen said, I tell you what.

“ I think these fish might be shallow, but if we go up in there, we won't really use the down rods, we█ll just have to cast to them.” So, sure enough, about five minutes into into that, into trying this technique.

Started casting right to these fish.

Got hooked up really, really quickly.

let's get it back in the water.

There we go.

Oh, That fish took off flying with that.

I'm gonna move this.

You█re good.

Nice.

Very nice.

I'll tell you what.

When you told me we were going to be on the river today, and you expected that we would be using live bait on down rods, I was like, okay, it's going to be a fun day.

Yeah.

He told me, hey, we're going to transition over.

We're going to start catching these fish by holding a rod, flipping to them with a live scope.

I said, okay, this just went from a solid eight or 9 to 10.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a lot of fun.

That's killer.

Tell you what.

And then the river up here.

You said you caught 30 pounders.

Yeah.

I can't imagine what that 30 pounder gonna feel like When we can get a even a 10 or 15 pounder.

This is about what, three?

Yeah, probably about a three or four pounder.

Three or four pounder.

Lot of fun.

Yeah, normally shad don't like to come out of the water.

No.

For no reason.

see your bait.

Here we go, bait.

Here come a fish up, Oh oh.

That was awesome.

You're like, there is fish down there below it.

And all of a sudden, you just is just, like, watching it on television.

So cool.

And that circle hook is doing it█s job.

Right on the nose.

Look at that.

So much fun.

bait, I casted my bait out that time.

It, it moved a few, a few times, and then all of a sudden, it started to sink down.

I could see some fish, and then my bait come all the way up out of the water.

And we knew there was a there was a fish in there after it.

Soon as it sunk back down, we sit there and watch that fish come up and just smoke it.

This is not how I've seen the day going, but I'm fine with it.

Oh.

Me too.

I think you're down below me, oh.

I'm coming up.

Is that mine?

Yeah.

You're right.

Yeah.

The water looks so calm, peaceful.

Nothing going on.

And then all of a sudden of violence of a big striper coming up.

Double, you hooked up?

Yeah.

Oh, There we go.

What do you think about this?

You good?

You need the net?

No.

I'm good.

What do you think about that?

Sit there and watch both of them get eaten at about the exact same time.

I think we created a feeding frenzy over here.

What a cool situation.

Where you're sitting there watching your bait slowly work your way down.

And the fish just shoot up.

Oh, it's awesome, it's awesome.

All right.

Your's is getting ready to get hit.

I'm getting out of the way.

You got it?

Yeah.

That is so cool.

It's like.

All right, I've got to get that rod out, because, I mean, I saw the fish coming up.

I didn█t expect him pull back that hard.

You need a net?

No.

I was not expecting that fish to pull that hard against me when I set the hook.

it was almost bad.

You know, I tell you what.

This was not the game plan today.

And say, what you want about a live scope.

It's not the way that I fish all the time.

But there's something about watching a big fish come up and just destroy your bait before you can even feel it.

And honestly, I think I'd rather do this way.

Yeah, There's nothing better than rod in hand when that fish hits.

Right.

Cumberland River, not only is it scenic and beautiful, it's a great place to go put a little bit of fish on the plate.

Absolutely.

Or, just do what we did today and just catch and release.

Absolutely.

Hopefully, you have your trail cameras out and you've been practicing with your archery equipment because deer season is right around the corner.

Well, it's early September, very, very first week of Kentucky's archery season.

I'm here in a familiar spot in Shelby County in the same stand I hunted several times last year had quite a few encounters with some nice deer.

Just nothing.

I wanted to take just yet.

I really didn't see myself hunting this stand this early because as farmers do crop rotations this year this is in corn there could be a herd a deer stand right there and I would never know it.

So it really puts me in a situation where I have to set up here on the field edge and hunt the woods.

Well, this woods is thick.

It's 30 minutes after daylight right now.

And I can still barely see spots back in here.

It's going to be very, very hard to pick up a deer slip into the woods.

I'm going to have to stay on my feet, bow in hand release attached to my string and watching because of the deer comes through.

I'm going to have literally seconds to field judge it and decide to take a shot and then find a opportunity to get a really good shot.

Like all Septembers my freezers empty so I'm willing to take a doe stay tuned because it's going to be fast and furious.

Literally, if a deer comes in, it's going to be.

There it is.

Draw.

and shoot.

I had no idea where that deer came from.

I█m sitting up here.

Like I told y█all I abandon The field I'm watching down here on this trail where I know the deer have been traveling.

It's like that doe crawled out of my tree.

It's very, very wet today and you can't hear anything.

That deer was literally first time I saw it a foot and a half to two feet from the tree and she started to get a little nervous.

You saw her smell saw her smell.

Thank goodness she was upwind.

She couldn█t wind us and she would turn to figure out which direction she was going to go.

Gave me a real tight window.

I mean, a real tight window to draw and get a shot.

I think I put a really good shot on that deer.

It was really close.

Sometimes those are hard to hit because you shoot over them.

But I think I put a really good shot on that deer and it sounded like I heard her go down.

Hopefully.

It's exactly where I think it is.

That's the next objective.

Locate the deer as quickly as possible.

Get it out of here.

Start processing.

Well, here's my arrow.

A couple of things that you always want to do when you walk up on the impact site is.

First off, I'm going to take this arrow and I'm going to inspect First off, it looks like looks like all my blades on my broadhead.

It's a grim reaper.

Broadhead looks like they are opened and worked exactly like they're supposed to.

The blood I see on here, it's got some little bubbles in it.

It looks like a high shoulder shot, possibly through the lung and it's blood soaked all the way to tip.

Got a little bit of some bubbles on it.

Probably a single lung shot, if I had to guess.

Such a high angle, because this deer was right under me that it looked like it hit a little high.

But that means it'll come out the bottom, which is which.

A really good pass through shot.

Now, I'm not going to take this arrow with me.

I'm going to leave it right here.

This is the impact spot.

If I if I were to lose my blood trail I know I can come back right here and start again.

So right off the bat I'm seeing blood and I know the deer went in this direction and I believe it hooked and came back around here.

It looks like it ran a little circle.

I'm already seeing blood through this way, so I'm going to start tracking this thing, hopefully where it crosses this creek.

There should be a ton of blood All this is completely blood soaked.

I heard the deer get to this creek, so I know it made it to the creek.

I don't think it made it much past the creek.

Just there's just too much blood.

Here's the deer.

Here she lays right here.

Barely made it past the creek.

I thought I heard it fall down.

And here it lays.

All right, well, here she is.

Oh man, What a what a nice looking doe.

You can tell this deer is kind of transitioning from its summer coat to its winter coat.

It's getting real thick, and it's right in that process of shedding.

I'll tell you what, this was absolutely perfect.

The shot was in high and came out low, which is at that angle.

You want to try to aim where you want the arrow to exit.

And that's exactly what happened.

It turned out to be a perfect shot.

I couldn't be more excited to have this deer because my freezer is almost empty and I'm looking for some venison and some ground burger so that I can make chili and tacos and nachos and all that type stuff.

Hey, it's football season, you know?

So I'm looking forward to that.

And I tell you, this could not have turned out to be a better situation.

I want to get this thing drug out of this area.

This is the woods right here that I keep seeing a buck on camera over and over and over.

So now my goal is to get this deer out of here with leaving this little sent I possibly can.

I'm not even going to field dress it in here.

I'm going to hook it up and I'm going to drag it to the truck as fast as I can.

Get this thing processed, get it home.

And I'll tell you what, this here is going to be the beginning of me filling the freezer this fall.

August is one of the best months to do some wade fishing, and it's a great way to stay cool.

Well, today is super exciting.

This is how the vast majority of people in Kentucky and how I learned how to fish.

And that is at a pond or a stream with a couple of hours to kill.

You know, days are getting shorter and summer is winding down.

That makes stream fishing really really, really good.

These fish know that they need to feed up before winter gets here.

So soon as you get those couple of cool nights If you got an hour or two to kill, it█s a great time to go jump in a pond or in a stream like where we're at today, we're actually on Floyd's Fork in the Parklands in Jefferson County.

We've got this beautiful stream that comes through that I know has a lot of small- mouth, because as a kid I was raised fishing this stretch of water.

So I can't wait to get out here and see what█s feeding today.

You know, a lot of times I like fish out of a boat or a kayak, but when you just got a couple of hours, it's just not feasible to go load a kayak up plan and drop in and take out or go hook up to the boat.

Those are more half day to full day trips.

This is how I really like to fish.

Just an hour or two, go hit my favorite couple spots and see what you can catch.

I come to a stream like this, which there are thousands of them in Kentucky.

I mean you really look at the bluewater trails and it's pretty much covers a lot of them.

I like to focus really in two areas, and that is very, very, very small, minnow imitating lures like this little bait here.

This happens to be a three inch keitech easy shiner or crawfish imitating baits, like what I have here, that goes right on the bottom.

So really keep it simple.

Those two options right there.

About all you need.

Oh.

Right there he is.

What do we got here?

It looks like a little smalley, maybe.

And I mean little.

That's what we... Nope.

I've actually got a large mouth bass here.

That's about as small as they come.

Well, I hope to catch a couple small mouth, but that right there is a very small largemouth bass.

Two steps into the creek, and I've already got a fish, So that, that's pretty promising.

Oh, here we go.

Well.

Five steps in, they█re small, but that is definitely a smallmouth bass.

You know what?

They're still a lot of fun.

Wade fishing when I get into the water.

I want to walk upstream.

And the reason you do that is because as you walk, you can see I'm kicking up a plume of stuff behind me.

So I like to fish upstream and cast at fish before I walk past them.

Here we go.

I don█t know what this is.

Looky there.

Beautiful Floyd█s Fork smallmouth bass.

That one there's probably nine or ten inches long.

It's a little better fish.

Here we go.

Putting on a show.

There we go.

Another small mouth.

That fish, You know, you have no way to know it's exactly the same fish.

But I cast it out and before I even engaged my reel he hit.

Pulled it about five or six cranks, came back and he just smoked it.

We've had a little bit of a deep pocket.

When I say deep, I mean over three feet for a long stretch.

Right where that water comes in, where it's moving, that is where I intend to catch some fish.

And hopefully bigger fish.

Better fish.

There we go.

Just hard fighting stream smallmouth you just can't beat them, they're just so much fun to catch.

Get it back.

Oh, that soaked me.

This one here hit right by me.

Another smallmouth bass.

Man they're bunches of them in here in that ten inch range.

This is the third or fourth one, I mean, in a row.

It almost looks like I'm catching the same fish over and over.

This one's a little shorter than the others, but looks like he might have a chance to be a little fatter, too.

Pretty fish.

You know, the small mouth in these streams, you kind of see this coppery color that's in them.

They're really, really, really pretty.

Now, when they get bigger and they get out on the lake you've got this barring on them like this, when they get bigger, you start seeing those bars show up.

But these are very pretty little smallmouth bass.

I tell you what, that moving water right there looks like a perfect opportunity if I can get something that's got a little more weight to move it across the bottom to maybe catch a little bit bigger fish.

So got this little jig here.

It█s hard to be catching as many fish as I'm catching now and go, Oh, it's time to change tackle.

But this is a perfect spot to go to a little bit bigger fish bait.

Here we go.

Oh, yeah.

Looky there.

That's a respectable smallmouth bass when you're in a little creek or stream fishing here in the state of Kentucky.

Here you go.

Look at that pretty fish.

These fish are looking for easy opportunities and I made it as easy as I possibly could.

And he smoked it on like the second cast.

Here we go.

Looky there.

It█s a rock bass.

I'll tell you what.

You hear these called a lot of different things.

Rock bass, google eye, goggle eye, whatever you call them.

They're plentiful and they're fun to catch.

And man, they love a jig.

I█ll tell you what, I got so many bites on the swim bait earlier, Even though I think I can catch bigger fish on the jig.

I'm gonna go back to that swim bait and try to pick up a few more.

Another cool thing about coming out here this time of year, late summer, early fall, everything has hatched.

The crayfish spawn has taken place.

There's bait and minnows everywhere.

You could grab a rod and reel and a couple of small hooks and come down here and catch all the bait that you needed to catch these fish.

Crawfish especially, just turn over a couple of rocks.

Let the water clear.

Pin them to the ground.

Makes great smallmouth bait.

What a pretty fish.

I love smallmouth bass.

Here we go.

I'll tell you what.

Today has been a lot of fun.

We're right here in Jefferson County.

Walked down a little trail, accessed the Floyd█s Fork right here in the Parklands.

Probably have walked half a mile three quarter of a mile.

Fished three or four pockets of water really quickly.

And man, have we had a ton of bites, caught a bunch of fish.

It's been an absolute blast.

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 the smiles on Aiden and Riley Fraylens.

They caught this nice catfish while jug fishing with their uncle Barry on Barkley Lake.

Nice job.

Check out the size of this giant bluegill that was caught by Wayne Bug.

This fish was caught at Kentucky Lake using a shad wrap.

Nice fish.

Here.

We have five year old Colin who just caught his biggest largemouth ever, using a blue swim jig and on his Spiderman fishing pole.

Nice job.

Check out this nice largemouth bass that was caught by Brittany Yance while fishing at Jonathan Creek at Kentucky Lake.

This fish was caught on a white curley tail grub.

Nice job.

Check out Ricky Farmer.

Tied his own jigs and headed to the Cumberland River tail water where he caught this beautiful trout.

Nice job.

Four year old Arlo Bailey caught this whopper while trolling on Taylorsville Lake while fishing with his dad and granddad.

Nice job.

Are you ready and excited for all the upcoming fall hunting seasons?

They're right around the corner.

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 I hope to see you in the woods or on the water.