This week on Kentucky Afield, we're pulling trot lines with biologists and hoping to learn a little bit more about one of the state's most interesting fish species.

Next, the key to quail hunting is having quail to hunt, and the key to that is having a well-managed piece of property.

Then, One of the first great fishing opportunities of the year is stocked trout.

We're gearing up and getting out for it.

It's all next on Kentucky Afield.

Hello and welcome to Kentucky Afield.

I'm your host, Chad Miles.

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

Recently, we hit the Cumberland River with a couple of biologists to check in on a long term restoration project of 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.

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 2.14.

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.

Do you want more wildlife on your property?

Well, a good place to start is by reaching out and contacting the Kentucky Private Lands Habitat Management Team.

You can find them on Facebook or at fw.ky.gov.

Now let's check in with a landowner who utilized this resource and now they have quail.

So we're in Logan County here today doing a little small game hunting.

And I'm with the right crew for that, right?

I hope so.

Yeah, that's all we're here for.

Small game program coordinator here.

And John, everybody's farm looks just like this, doesn█t it?

Oh right.

You drive across the state, they look just like this, don't they?

That's where I know.

No, this is perfect for a small game.

Absolutely, this is a primo farm and we've been working with Mike for a couple of years and it's very rare that a landowner actually listens to some of the things we mentioned.

And you're going to see a lot of great habitat today, thanks to the work of Mike and his family and friends that come out here and work with him to make it look like this.

So Mike, tell me a little bit about your piece of property you got here.

Obviously, it looks like it was built for small game, but you told me you're mainly a deer and turkey guy.

I am.

I do enjoy seeing the quail, seeing small game.

But when we started out with it, it was mostly deer and turkeys, but found out that what you do bleeds over into the small game too.

Hopefully it seems to be working.

We'll see.

We also have Zach Danks, and Zach, you're the Turkey program coordinator as well as grouse.

When you put out plots like this and you let CRP grow up for small game, what's your turkey population going to be like as well?

You'd be doing the best you could do to help that local population and anything you can do.

Quail management is Turkey brood management.

And if you want more turkeys, you got to have more baby turkeys.

And this cover for nesting and broodering is- it's vital.

Well, let's go meet the dogs and load up.

What do you think?

Let's do it.

Let's go.

Are you running beepers on these dogs if they go on point?

Not beepers.

So I've got a good GPS unit that tells me when they stop, when they go on point.

So there'll be times when they stop that I can't tell if they're stopped to use the bathroom or if they're actually pointing.

I got you.

But I'll have to be watching it and tell you.

it's so thick.

I was wanting to see how you knew what was on point.

Yep.

I didn't realize you had a GPS on them.

I run bells usually, but I'm only got one bell now.

So between the bell and the GPS, the beeper is handy.

I have one on her so we could use it if we need to.

Okay.

Oh, look at this nice ragweed strip.

This is your food source mixed in with the cover.

Hey, John, look for May up there.

52 yards from me.

It's just saying she stopped right to your left.

Oh, yeah, yeah, girl.

Yeah.

Rayna too.

May broke it looks like 33 to blue he broke.

This is wild bird hunting here.

They'll run on the ground and take off on you some.

This is really, really, really thick.

But you can see that there is an area in the bottom where you can tell that the very bottom undergrowth is kind of missing.

And this is perfect habitat for quail.

They can get in here, areas to feed, but yet there's a cover, a canopy that keeps aerial predators from coming down and picking them all off.

Everything wants to eat a quail.

birdie right here.

That's like- that█s 41 yards, right up in the sumac.

Oh, she's on dead point.

Over there, Mike.

She break?

She broke.

Man, this is pretty prime right through here.

It looks perfect.

Got a point?

Yeah.

Where they at?

They█re in here.

Nothing?

You think these birds flew?

Maybe we didn't see him or hear him, but- Might█ve been where they were.

Who knows?

So far, we█re 0-3 on our covey encounters.

The law of averages would be eventually get one twice.

Oh, you█d think.

habitats ever changing, a lot of people just don't recognize how nature's constantly evolving and changing.

We're constantly trying to maintain cover.

So tell me a little bit about what you need for good quail habitat.

When we talk about Bobwhite, we always talk about the B█s.

Bunch of grasses.

We got a bunch of bunch grasses with those native warm season grasses.

Bare ground.

That's what Mike's making when he's burning.

And part of what that burning does is diversify the plant community in different stages of plants.

So he's resetting the plant community when he burns a patch and that creates that opportunity to get that bug community in place.

So if you get all those B█s right, we'll have birds.

And that's what we hope we find today.

Now this looks good.

Oh, they█re in here.

Zach and I are going the upper side.

You guys see that over here.h Let's make a miracle happen.

There they go.

How about that?

Now, that's what we're talking about right there, Mike.

Hey, May.

this bird is a juvenile.

See those white-tipped feathers here?

These are the secondary coverts.

And when they're white tip, that's a juvenile, when they're really- they're fuller and completely gray, when it's an adult.

So means it was hatched this summer.

We had two or three times where we thought we had birds.

That last one held really tight.

It was right in the corner.

So we make our way down here to this corner or that corner.

I feel very comfortable that we're going to flush another covey of quail here.

Dog█s are working good.

Oh, deer.

Look at all of them, tails going everywhere.

That's the thing about this cover.

Is the are deer secure here 365, you know?

I mean, they just come out to eat a little bit, come back, bed in this, go in the woods.

Dog█s still on point?

Yeah.

Just 49 yards up ahead.

Oh, you get one down?

Yeah.

Nice.

All right.

I was a little late getting up here on that.

We had all three dogs on point and as we come over the ridge here, the covey flushed.

I think we got one down.

Let's go see.

Dead, dead.

Got it?

Good girl.

Well, that is a beautiful bird.

I tell you what, you never get sick of seeing those dogs on point, walk over and hear that flush.

Yeah.

It's a special moment in the hunting world.

It really, really, truly is.

Turkey, turkey, turkeys.

Oh, if was fall turkey season.

Mike, we might have switched gears.

Yeah.

Uh oh, we got it point here.

Double point.

They're in there.

There they go!

I will never do that again.

Mike, I couldn't even pick my bird.

Everyone I picked, It was going down.

I killed three.

You got three!

I did, I knocked down three birds.

I'll never do it in my life again.

Mike.

All right, Rayna.

Right here.

There█s one.

There you go.

Right here, right here.

Yeah.

That one got hit really hard.

Here's one right here.

Man.

Woo hoo!

Well, I'll tell you what, I think that was a pretty good day.

It's been a long time since I flushed coveys of quail.

And you're all█s dogs did great.

Mike, it's obvious that all your habitat work is paying off.

Well, I hope so.

It makes me feel pretty good to have a day like this.

Are you looking for a good reason to get outdoors and go fishing?

Well the trout are being stocked right now.

And you can go to our website and find out where they're being stocked in a fins lake near you.

Well, Lee, we're at Academy Sporting Goods.

We're actually going to take $50 each and we're going to pretend that we are not fishermen at all.

We're literally going to go with $50.

We don't have rods, reels, hooks, bait.

We literally have nothing except for a fishing license.

We do have that.

Yes, we do.

So we're going to go about picking up some gear and show you how to get started with fishing without breaking the bank.

Because let me tell you what, it's a passion.

You got the passion.

I got the passion.

You probably spend more than 50 bucks nowadays when you go fishing.

Don█t tell your wife.

I'm just running over what I spent the last two weeks.

and we're going to pick up some tackle and some gear.

We may take that straight to a fins lake which is not far from here.

Try to catch some trout.

Yep.

There's a couple of ways we can start this.

You can go tackle and see how much is left, then buy a rod and reel.

Or you can go buy a rod and reel and see how much you've got left and buy tackle.

Maybe the rod and reel first.

All right, then that will let you know how much you can buy of the other one.

I█m going for a light action spinning rod and reel combo, that's where I'm going to start.

So I think that's this way.

Let's go see what they got.

All right.

Oh.

Oh.

19.

Little bit more than we would want.

These actually come with some tackle.

Having thrown a spin cast rod in years.

We know that we're targeting trout today and we're looking at stocked trout.

I do think that maybe this light action might be the ticket.

I think we're good.

If I end up getting some red worms, this would be the size I'm planning on using.

That's what I need right there.

So I think I got about $10 left.

i█m going to go see how much the live red worms are, get a pack of that and then see what we've got left.

I'm really close to my budget now.

I think we're done.

I believe we're ready.

All right, Lee.

You want to go first?

Sure.

If I'm over, that will give me a chance to run back and put something back.

Start looking at what you like the least.

Okay.

We█re within a nickel of each other, Chad.

Yeah, that's pretty close.

I'll take that.

I got a whole bag of fun here.

Look, I could use these up in a couple weeks probably.

Now I'll go out there and get hung and break every one of them off in about 20 minutes.

In-line spinners, live bait, trout Bait.

We're in good shape.

So Lee, you've written a lot about fins lakes.

If you were wanting to get into fishing, how would you start on picking a lake and a time to do that?

Well, there's the axiom.

You go fishing when you can.

Yeah.

So, time-wise: now ‘til, you know, I think these would be a great late winter, early spring option before other things turn on.

I would go to our website.

If you go to the search bar in the top right of the Web page, you just put in “fins”, they'll take you to the Fins page.

Yeah, there's a link: “stocking schedule”.

Look on that stocking schedule.

That's why we're here today, is we know these have been recently stocked because we looked on the stocking schedule.

Also, the where to fish is a great thing.

If you're looking to fish anywhere, you can judge by county, by water body type, by access, by species.

I use it all the time in my research.

All right.

I think I'm going to make my way where all of the fish are being caught.

So let's just walk up there and give it a shot.

All right.

Lee, won't be long, we'll be hearing turkeys gobble.

I know.

So what have we got?

Looks like a trout.

There we go.

Switch over to the power bait and about my second cast, had a bite.

We're actually going to keep some of these today.

But this is about what size mostly stock trout are.

Somewhere around eight inches.

Rainbow trout.

Beautiful fish.

Chad caught one, that's nice.

See if we can get lucky.

Got him.

All right, is that a power bait fish?

Power bait, brother.

Nice.

It█s a good size for a stocker.

If you all intend to release trout, a rubber net is a great thing because it doesn't remove the slime coat like a nylon net will.

I█m going to grab my pliers, here.

I like to touch trout as little as I can, so I got him in the side like there.

Hook is out.

First bite of the day and it helps if you don't step on your rod.

That's a real good idea.

Oh, there we go.

Would you like my net?

I would, if you don't mind.

You lead him over.

I█ll get it.

Thank you.

All right.

Beautiful, rainbow trout.

Well Lee, today, It kind of took ourselves back a little bit.

Like we had really never fished.

Wanted to showcase that you don't need to go spend $5,000 to get into fishing.

All we needed to spend today was power bait.

I mean $25 in a rod and probably $6 in hooks, sinkers and power bait.

I mean, any day you catch a fish, it's a good day.

And we did get skunked.

It's been fun.

It's been a good time.

A real good time.

I haven█t done this a long time.

You know what?

I feel like a kid.

Yeah, I do, too.

But I haven't bobbin█ fish bait like this in a long, long time.

It's fun.

Are you interested in submitting a photo to the ones that get away?

We're now accepting them on Facebook.

Go to the Kentucky Afield Facebook page for more details.

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.