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 walking the banks of the Nolin River in search of white bass.

Then we're headed down to the Cumberland River to meet up with biologists, to do some sampling of the lake sturgeon.

But first, we're headed to Rough River Lake in search of crappie.

Well, this morning we're out here on beautiful Rough River Lake chasing crappie with Tom Perkins.

How are you doing?

Doing good.

I'll tell you one thing I have been looking forward to getting out here and catching crappie with you.

This will be a whole different experience today.

We're going to cast for them.

Ok, instead of straight line and they█re easier to catch when their in shallow water they█re, just not in shallow water all the time.

So we're not going to use any live bait, no live scope today.

We're doing it the old way, the old fashioned, the hard way.

But you catch fish doing it that way all the time.

So I'm super excited.

And honestly, it's a way I like fish.

So, yeah, I'm super excited to get out here and see what we can't drum up.

You're just kind of shaping the contours of the bank as it falls.

You're just letting it fall a little deeper.

So this ought to be a good year for the spawn.

Oh, that's a good crappie.

You want a net?

Yeah, Tom, that's a good that's a dandy right there now.

Pound and a quarter or so.

That is a really, really nice crappie.

I'll tell you what, you come out there and you get a few 20 of those.

Oh you got that right.

There's a sandwich, you ain't a kidding.

I've done caught enough for me to eat for supper.

Y'all are lagging behind.

Yeah.

Another keeper, black crappie.

And so you keep saying that and I'm will check you look at them, can tell you I can't tell.

Black Crappie.

Roughly two, three, four, five, six, seven.

This is a black crappie.

So at one count, these.

I just look at it, see if it's in bars straight up and down, or if they're sporadic like that and not in the bars.

It█s a black Crappie.

If he's got the barring on them, then they're then they're a white crappie.

Okay.

Well yours is definitely.

Yeah.

Plenty big good fish.

You got him now.

That's a good one.

Nice fish.

At what point in time do you change weights or is this just pretty much this is the way you throw most of the year.

If the wind's really blowing, I'll throw a 32nd.

If it gets where I can't feel a 32nd or a 16th, if it gets where I can't feel 16th.

I go home.

The wind is blowing too hard, so 32nd or 16th or stay home.

You bass fish all the time from small mouth, the lighter jigs you got a more fish you're going to catch.

Good one.

Sounds like Jose.

Leave him alone.

That's a spotted bass there.

Yup.

Kentucky.

Okay.

Pretty little fish.

Not what we're after today.

No, it's not.

But they are good eating.

They are good eating.

And I tell you what, if I'm out here and I get five or six crappie and now I need to make a mess, I'll keep me a couple of those.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm not above it.

That's for sure.

There you go.

Oh, good fish in right here.

I know you're a bass fisherman.

You hold them by the lip.

Yeah.

If you'll get a crappie right there, he'll quit flopping.

Everything done.

And I'm not.

I'm not squeezing.

Yeah, I'm just holding him tight enough to hold him, but a bass.

You grab him by lip and he quit crop.

You get him right where his gills comes together and he quit.

He settled down pretty good there are you going to beg for him?

Sit up, sit up yeah, you still cant have him.

There█s one, there you go.

That's a that's a crappie.

It might be the second biggest fish of the day so far.

You want him?

I can leave this live well open.

She'll get everyone one of these fish out of the live well, we found this, aren't we?

Found something here.

All right.

You need to back up Jose There you go.

Not quite the size of what you got, but by golly, That█s a keeper, Three pounder, anyway.

Yeah, that's a good fish.

Nice fish.

You see it?

Yeah.

I think the squirrel she'll tree him if he runs up a tree.

You got yourself a squirrel dog Oh, that's a good one.

Now, that's a good fish.

Watch out Jose.

There we go.

That's a good fat fish right there.

nice, we'll take that.

Oh, this little spot here is not put out a small fish.

Yeah, it has.

I hope it keep that way.

I believe I'm indicating a strike.

Yeah, Yeah, that's a good one too.

So dark.

I thought it was a bass.

That's a good one there.

Yes, it is.

Look at that pup.

That's crappie.

Yeah.

It's a keeper to keep it to.

You know what, you told me, Chad?

You're done turkey hunting.

You ought to come out here and try to catch some crappie.

And I was like, Tom, this weather is going to be terrible.

And you're like, We█re only allowed to keep 20.

Exactly right.

How long you need.

Well what it 930.

Yeah.

It's about 930.

Almost 10:00.

I say we put this boat on the trailer so that we're not, we're not soaking wet and bailing water.

What are you thinking?

Oh, yeah.

My bilge pump don█t work.

Well, let's.

Let's load it up and get moving.

Okay.

Many anglers across the state of Kentucky look forward to the historic white bass runs to kick off their fishing season.

And the Nolin River is a great place to experience it.

I█ll tell you what, for me, it doesn't get any better than late March hitting the Nolin River in search of white bass.

Just got down here today, and apparently the fish must be starting to bite because I see a lot of people up and down the bank.

You have any luck today?

Just one.

One.

I'm going to walk up and down the bank today, see if anybody's having any luck.

It looks like some of them are catching some fish.

It's all about catching the water at the right time, and usually in March is the time to start checking it.

But you really want to get that water if it's slightly rising after a warm rain, that's when it can be gangbusters.

What do you know, fellas?

Good man.

Doing alright?

Yeah.

You█ve grown up a little bit in the last four or five months.

My buddy Evan and his dad, Dan, are down here.

It looks like they've found the honey hole, and they're catch some white bass too.

Let me get a stringer.

Those white bass fight don't they bud?

Yeah.

There's one.

Got one?

Oh, it's a white bass.

That's a good one too.

Good job, buddy.

That's a big female.

That's what we want right there.

Here we go.

Man, I was barely, barely, barely moving that bait.

Barely moving that bait.

A small one here.

I tell you, these things they fight so incredibly well.

It's just so much fun to catch.

You know, and the great thing is, I'm looking up and down these banks and there's so many people that get down, and enjoy this style of fishing.

You can go in a boat.

We got some guys here doing that.

But also just grab you a couple of little lures.

Really, anything you can catch a crappie on, you can catch a white bass on.

Either spinners, hair jigs, and when the water gets staind like this, I like throwing something with some pink or something with some chartreuse.

It seems to work really, really well.

But man, this little fish right here doesn't look like much.

Had this rod bent around.

They fight so incredibly well.

Just so much fun.

We're gonna let this one grow up another year.

Evan is the same young man that got a house right down from my place on Nolin Lake and picked him up last year for a surprise fishing trip.

White bass.

White bass.

That's what we been looking for.

Nice job, buddy.

You've been catching big fish?

Yeah.

You can't beat that.

I'll tell you what, Evan, I know you play baseball, and your family likes to get out and spend time outdoors.

I have to think that a spring break, an entire week at the lake when the fishing is really good is probably a perfect spring break for you, isn't it?

Yeah.

I like being out here just catching white bass and just the thought of being out here and the nature.

It's just really fun and peaceful.

I love it.

So what's your favorite thing about white bass fishing?

The fight.

Yeah.

They fight like crazy for their size.

Sometimes they'll trick you.

You'll be fighting the thing to the bank and you be like, oh my gosh, this thing is huge.

And you get it in and you█re like, that is what was pulling my line that hard.

That fish ain█t six inches long.

They're fun to fight.

You like eating them?

I love eating them.

I'll tell you what I know me and my kids, we love eating them, too.

My wife, they.

You know how to clean them and get that red meat out.

They are hard to beat.

They█re fantastic to eat.

That's right.

I love them.

You know, I know that you have a boat and you fish from a boat quite a bit.

A lot of times you go find the fish.

But when these fish are making a run up the river like this, you can kind of stay in the same place and let the fish come to you and you might have 20 and 30 minute stretches without getting a bite and then you may catch three or four in three cast.

Oh.

Got him?

Yeah, I got him.

Nice.

There you go.

You're on the other side again.

You know, if you look at this water, it's kind of got a mud line it's out there.

By the bank is kind of clean.

You're making long enough cast that you're able to fish both that mud line and this mud line.

What have we got?

Seems pretty nice.

He█s pulling drag.

Another beautiful white bass.

Nice job, buddy.

Thank you.

That's a pretty good one.

Dan, you know, you and I spoke before about catching white bass.

I've always said that March and April down here on the river was really the best time to catch them.

Yeah, I'm glad you told me about this, and I'm glad it worked out.

We could be down here at the same time and catching fish together.

Yeah.

You know, you and I get to hang out a lot in the summertime, and then, you know, you got a house right down the road from us.

We became lake-time friends.

But March is kind of the time I don't get to spend a whole lot of time at the lake.

So this is bonus days for us to kind of get out here and do this and catch fish.

Yeah, it's a bonus.

The weather's beautiful and the fish are biting.

So that's where we want to be.

Now that's a fish.

That fish there█s got an attitude.

I've probably thrown back more than I've kept and that I would not throw that one back.

I believe I would keep that one.

Dan, that's a great fish, man.

That's a good looking guy there.

How█d that one hit?

He just smoke it?

Oh, he smoked it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They sure are pretty too.

I like to appreciate how pretty they are.

Dan, I guess we met about four or five years ago.

I noticed that your son Evan had an extreme interest in fishing.

He wanted to fish, and I was able to fish with him a couple of times, but we were trying to catch bass in the jumps and that's a lot of fun.

But, you know, to do that, you almost need a boat.

You actually are here for a week for kid█s Spring break, have your boat at your dock, hopped in the car and ran out here just to try this out.

You know, there's less to deal with as far as the boat and the trolling motor.

Just walk down the bank with a handful of jigs and catch fish like that.

Can't beat that.

No can't beat it at all.

I'm glad you told me about it.

And we were able to work it out to where we could be here together.

How old were you when you kind of got into fishing?

Probably about Evan's age.

Ten or twelve, thirteen years old.

When my grandmother used to take me fishing out in eastern Indiana, Brookville Lake.

And we used to catch a lot of channel cat and bluegill and crappie and everything we could out there.

It was a good time.

Kind of got me started.

I'm glad I've been able to pass that on to Evan.

As a dad, you got to love when he gets out here and wants to do this as much as he█s doing it because you don█t have to worry about him being in any trouble.

He's eat up with it.

Oh, he is.

He definitely ate up with it.

It was a pleasure getting down here and seeing you.

We█ll be spending a lot of time together this summer with our entire families together.

Yeah.

But hey, these fish will be doing this tomorrow too.

You and Evan got choices.

You can run back up here and catch them again.

Yeah, I think so.

When you hear Cumberland River, you may immediately think about stripers or trout.

But there are some other fish species that can also be found there, including the lake sturgeon.

Well, the Cumberland River in the middle of the wintertime.

I'll tell you what, it doesn't get any more stunningly beautiful than this does it?

It is certainly beautiful down here.

It's a great place to be.

Today, we're doing something that I've never experienced before.

We're actually in search of what is going to be the state's largest fish.

You know, for a number of years now, we've been stocking lake sturgeon into the system and we've got fish that are up above 20 plus pounds and approaching 50 to 60 inches if we're able to get some of our older fish today.

Lake Sturgeon, we've been reintroducing them now back here in Kentucky now since what, 2007?

2007 is our first year class, the first stocking went in in 2008.

So we're committed to a 20 year restocking effort.

So we're getting close to the end of that stocking frame right now.

And so far we've seen pretty good survival.

20 years is a long study, but that's what it takes to learn a little bit about Lake Sturgeon.

And we're going to learn a little more about Lake Sturgeon today.

You're going to pull some data.

Hopefully we catch some and we're going to learn a little more about why we're reintroducing them here in Kentucky.

All right.

Let's get to this first line here and see what we got on there.

It's not like most fishing we wait until we have a fish to put water in a livewell.

With 400 hooks, we feel pretty confident we're going to have one huh?

Yeah these lines are set kind of with the current helps us avoid some tangles.

Also, lake sturgeon, tend to feed as they go up the river, so they'll eat benthic mackerel, invertebrates, things like that when they're younger.

They'll continue to eat that throughout their lifecycle, even even large, you know, 30 plus pound fish.

However, once they get big enough, the gape size in your mouth, how wide their mouth is will become large enough that they can start preying on smaller fish species as well.

So today you're using all night crawlers, right?

Today we█re using all night crawlers.

That helps keep things standardized in terms of the data.

I have to ask you, why this location?

Why here this time of year to try to catch them?

We are kind of looking at their migration patterns as part of the study.

So there are some telemetry studies going on right now.

Yeah, an earlier portion of the study was telemetry.

We've wrapped that up and we've moved on to a monitoring stage to see how these fish are surviving, growing just kind of how our stocking efforts are, whether they're being successful or not.

All right.

Well, good.

We'll see.

We have hey with Nightcrawlers who knows what you may have?

You never know.

About every fish I know will eat a nightcrawler, right?

Absolutely.

And a mud puppy, I already seen that joker.

Yeah, occasionally we do catch them.

Sometimes we have lines with several on them.

For the most part, they're eating nightcrawlers as well.

So we'll catch them and we'll take the hooks out of them or release them.

And most of the time they swim off just fine.

We've called them every year that we've been doing this.

You might catch 20 plus on a line.

Now people need to realize that there's a difference in a mud puppy and another big species of salamander we have here In Kentucky that we're actually trying to reintroduce.

And that's a hellbender.

These are not hellbender.

These are mud puppies.

Right?

Right.

Typically, they're going to inhabit different types of areas.

Hellbenders are going to be more in your Highland streams often These mud puppies are not getting anywhere near to the size that Hellbenders are at maturity either.

Yeah.

Look there, a Channel cat.

Channel cat Matt.

And typical for a channel cat that has been on a line.

He's got that thing twisted and curled as many times as he can.

So you can see they're pulling these hooks now.

They're going to rebate and put these back out to pull more samples tomorrow.

But you can see how they're managing these if you ever pulled trout lines you've probably seen this is a box that just has some cuts in it, and they'll pull each one of these individual hooks and they'll spin that box around and that helps them manage and keep the line from being tangled.

Now, when they go to put it out, they'll go in reverse.

They'll pull them up and bate them back up and pull the line right on out and put it back on the bottom.

Channel cat Matt.

Just popped off.

Quick release.

Actually getting a quick release is speeds up the process today.

So that's a good thing.

Yes, it does.

We got two red spotted newts here that we also got that actually weren't even on the hook.

They had just wrapped around the dropper.

Oh, we got a lake sturgeon.

Im going to need to reach back and get that net.

Here we go.

He█s wrapped up in there.

There you go.

well, there's our first lake sturgeon.

Now this is it's a little bit younger fish.

What do you think best guess?

What do you think this is a two year old fish?

That's probably a three year old fish right there.

Okay.

So you guys are going to check this thing to figure out how do you think it is, Get some measurements, What other data will we be getting today?

Right.

So we're going to take total lengths, uh, fork length, which is essentially to the fork of the tail.

They've got what they call a hetero circle tail.

So the top half of the tail can be a little bit longer.

So sometimes fork length is a little more indicative of growth.

We'll also be weighing these fish and putting a tag in them so that if we recapture them, we can kind of follow them as far as when we caught them, how large they were at that point in time.

We got that long pulled in.

We're going to head on down to our next one and see what we've got on that one.

We got a sturgeon about to surface.

Sturgeon about to surface.

Awesome.

Oh, that's a good one.

All right.

So we're just checking for a pit tag here.

And this one does not appear to be tagged.

Looks like a right seven eight on the scoot removal, fork Length 21 zero.

Total length 24 one total weight two 14.

So we're gonna be putting this pit tag into this fish now that will allow us to track it.

If we recapture it and just make sure that it's in and we've got it in that fish successfully.

So this is a nice example of Lake Sturgeon.

You know, you've got the three rows of bony plates, the dermal plates that cover the skin, and these plates are large and really sharp with sharp keels.

When the fish is young, they tend to get smaller.

As the fish grows and the keels become more blunt.

The interesting part of the sturgeon around the head and the snout or rostrum is they've got a lot of sensory cells, especially on the underside of the head.

These are called barbells, which are just fleshy tentacles hang from the snout and they are covered with taste buds and they use these they drag them along the bottom in search of food, and they'll actually suck in the sediment like silt and mud and screen out the insect larvae.

They extrude the mud and sediment out the gills.

So that's how they feed Their vision is not super poor, but they don't have highly developed vision.

They feed by taste and they rely heavily on their sense of smell.

It has a cartilage skeleton.

They are the most primitive or ancestral of the bony fishes and so essentially they're living fossils and haven't really changed much since prehistoric times.

The cool thing is about these fish is that they are very long live fish.

The bad thing is from a restoration side that this fish, if it's a male or female, may not be able to produce offspring.

For how long?

If it's a female, they don't reach sexual maturity until they're 20 to 25 years old.

So the males are a little bit sooner, 15 to 20 years.

This fish has several more years.

If it's a female, more than that, and before sexually mature, when they do reach maturity, they only spawn on average every four years.

So you've got a low reproductive potential, slow maturity.

All these things are what make them so vulnerable to overharvesting.

If you catch one, we ask that you return the fish back to the water.

But we would also like to have information on your capture date, a photograph of the fish, the location and any other information like the bait that was used, the depth where you caught the fish.

All of this helps us with our monitoring efforts.

We've got another one coming up.

Oh, a real good one.

So this project will go on for the rest of the month, trying to get a bunch of individuals and collect all that data to help you guys manage the species.

Yeah, we'll be continuing to set trott lines at a few different sites here and on the main stem of the Cumberland for years to come.

And it's very cool to get to see a fish that most of us people out here, that are outdoorsman, we don't get to see that.

So thanks for bringing us long today.

Yeah, no problem, Chad.

Very interesting work.

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

Here we have Avery Richmond on our very first duck hunt.

She was hunting in Henderson County with her hunting dog, Hank and her dad.

Nice job.

Check out Kelly Simpkins from Magoffin County with a nice muskie that she caught while fishing at Cave Run Lake.

Ten year old Layne Brown went out squirrel hunting with his uncle, Scott Wallace from Morehead, Kentucky, and was successful in taking these squirrels.

Here we have Case Gobin, who is waterfowl hunting at Lake Barkley in Lyon County.

He was successful and took this beautiful golden eye.

Ten year old Braydon Davis headed down to Hatchery Creek in Pulaski County and caught these trout.

Easton Stewart took advantage of creek hunting with some open water and had a lot of luck on a waterfowl hunt.

Eight year old Grayson Stewart was running trap lines in Logan County when he caught this coyote.

Nice job.

Hey, next week is our annual question and answer show all about fishing.

Start getting your questions ready.

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 you in the woods or on the water.

Hello, I'm Chad Miles.

Did you know that when you buy a fishing license, it does more than provide summertime fun?

That's nice.

It produces millions of fish that are stocked in our waterways.

It constructs new opportunities for boat ramps and public access.

It provides new sustainable habitats for our native fish.

It creates quality fishing opportunities close to home.

It helps protect our home waters and it makes for a better, more beautiful blue grass for all that live here.

The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

It's more than just a fishing license.