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 team up with fisheries biologist to find out why they're having surgeries on alligator gar.

Then we're going to hit the field for a predator hunt.

But first, we're hitting the most unique fishery here in the state of Kentucky.

McAlpine Lock and Dam.

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.

We're literally fishing what's normally dry.

And there's a couple of big rocks right there.

You got to be real careful.

You want to get down in that dip, but you don't want to get on the rocks.

He's on him over there.

It looked like he had about a 10 or 12 inch sauger.

He flipped it back.

So it looked like it was undersized, but still.

That's promising.

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.

Anybody want this?

Thank you sir.

You're welcome.

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.

The reintroduction of the alligator gar here in the state of Kentucky started over ten years ago.

Now it's time to start collecting some data.

We're here today on the banks of Elkhorn Creek, right here at Pfeiffer Fish Hatchery, and I'm here with Stephanie Brandt.

How are you doing today?

I'm good.

How are you?

Little rainy, little cloudy.

You know, today we're working on a really cool project.

Every time I see, you always say, Hey, how those alligator gar doing?

People ask a lot about these alligator gar.

How long has this program been going on?

How many individuals have we put in the waterways here in Kentucky?

Yeah.

So this has been going on since 2010, 2011.

We've been doing this for about as long as it takes for them to start spawning.

We've got over 50,000 fish out in West Kentucky.

So we're going from Paducah down the Ohio River down to Hickman Harbor.

Your Fulton, Ballard, McCracken counties.

This species is one of those- you've probably seen it on river monsters.

It's the prehistoric fish.

It's the dinosaur fish.

It's the past that's still with us.

They've made it all these years, and they're still swimming with us.

And so our goal is when they came to low enough numbers here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, our job is to make sure that those species are still here, that they don't disappear completely.

The idea here is to insert some tracking devices that will allow us to gather data to find out exactly where they're moving, how far they're moving.

So what we're doing today is we will anesthetize the fish just like you would be getting your happy juice before surgery.

They will be asleep while we do it.

We'll open them up, get the tags in as fast as possible, close it up and get them right back into the water as fast as we can.

They will stay the night overnight here at the hatchery.

And then tomorrow morning they'll get these external SAT tags turned on and off to the water they go.

If you come across one of these fish, if you do accidentally catch one of these fish, we want these fish to be immediately returned to the waterway.

Yes.

I'm super excited to hear a little more about what the long term plans are with these particular fish and then seeing how you're going to do the surgery.

Let's get indoors and- let's go out these fish.

Check out these fish and I want to watch you do your work.

We█ll be here with Murray State.

They're getting ready to show up.

So, yeah, let's go see what happens.

So our Murray State crew is shown up here and it looks like we're getting our table set.

Yeah, we've got four fish over there.

Yeah.

What's the process?

How this going to work?

Yeah.

So we got the four fish there from our 2020 year class.

They came from Mississippi.

They'll go from that raceway, we█ll have this big knock out tank where they'll get anesthetized like we talked about.

As they fall asleep, they'll move over to a table.

And at that table, we'll start doing the surgeries.

This is one of the tags.

This is a little battery.

And when this battery gets topped off, this tag turns on and it starts on beeping and it'll be for four years.

So so we'll have four years of data off of this.

And this will be internal or external?

This will be the internal tag.

Okay.

And then after that, we'll hook on the external tag, the SAT tag.

We'll show that as we get to that point, then we'll have them on the table once they're all sewed up, they'll go back into a recovery tank.

So they're going to be cut inserted, stitched back up, and then there will be some additional pieces that come out that are transmitter tags, right.

That'll be the satellite tag.

All right.

Yep.

So these fish are pretty resilient.

They're really tough.

They can be out of water for a chunk of time and go back in and be all right because they have adapted swim bladders so they can come up to the surface and gulp air, which is why they can live in these habitats like these backwater areas that look like they wouldn't even have any dissolved oxygen.

But they do just fine because they can come up to the surface and go back down when they want.

Wow.

Yeah, that is amazing.

We have to use power tools, like that's how thick they are.

So we'll be using power tools to do some of the surgery today to get through these really thick scales.

Okay.

So you're literally going to be using dremels?

Yup.

Dremels and any kind of inconventional things that make it to where we can get this job done as fast and as sterile as we possibly can.

I think he might be ready try to keep it on this.

I mean in here.

Where the color change is?

Yep, give or take.

So these are ganoid scales.

So they're very thick scales.

That's why we're using the Dremel to get through those scales.

We've been experimenting through the years in a couple of different ways to do this, and this seems to be the fastest and least damaging way.

Obviously he█s being very careful, you don't want to damage any other organs in there.

So he just got through the bone and then made a snip.

Now, scalpel.

Okay.

So here we're going to test one of our pit tags.

In this little keychain is a little tester tag.

It's about as wide as my fingernail is wide.

Just like at the vet clinic.

When you find that lost dog or that lost cat, we do that, and it gives us an individual number.

And that's a unique number to that fish.

So from here on in it's life we'll always be able to wand it and know exactly who that fish is.

And that's the size of the pit tag.

It's pretty small.

All right.

So we've got two tags inside now.

Now we've got to sew these things back together.

So you can't just take a needle and poke it through, you literally have to drill a hole.

Exactly.

All right.

So next, we're going to go for the external satellite tag.

That's what's going next.

It'll go in that tail.

So when it's in the water, you'll have this little thing that bobs out on the backside of the fish.

Man, their scales are so incredibly tough, huh?

We want to make sure that this does come off.

The SAT tags are only going to give us a couple of months worth of data.

So we don't want that just sticking on there.

We don't want metal sticking out that's going to cause any kind of injury, disease, all that.

So we've chosen to do it this way.

It worked great for us last year.

So we're going to do the same thing with this nylon for this year.

So this is this nylon rope after a period of time will rot away and the tag will release and Yep, and that'll be that.

There we go.

We got it.

Oh, yeah, that took some work.

Well, the surgeries are complete.

Surgeries are complete.

We got all of the internal stuff done, and then all we have left now is an external part of the project.

So tomorrow our hatchery folks will load them up.

They'll go out to West Kentucky.

So they're going to go into Clarks River as well as Ballard and Boatwright WMAs.

And then when they get out there, this is the external set tag.

So the line that you saw us leave off the fish will get tied to this.

So if you see this floating around around any gar or just kind of popped on the surface, that's an alligator gar that's below it underneath.

So the fish, this is supposed to be on there?

It█s supposed to be there.

Don't take it off.

This is the little thing that transmits up to the satellite.

So a lot of technology.

So we know for sure these fish are going to western Kentucky tomorrow.

But from where they go from there is the million dollar question.

That's just it.

We had fish last year that did 90 miles in two days.

We had fish that stayed in the WMA so they can be anywhere.

Yeah, it█s great information.

This is just technology showing us how to do better science.

So you know what?

And these young students, they got to come out here today and learn something really cool.

Hopefully they're going to be helping manage fish populations across the country, investing in our younger generation.

Absolutely.

Because they're the ones that are going to be taking our places.

There's a good chance these fish will outlive all of us.

They will outlive us and our children.

These fish can live for 150 years old.

Generations to come again, just like with the lake sturgeon- generations to come.

Well, the next time you and I work together on these fish, hopefully we'll be out in the boat.

We'll get to see what a big giant looks like.

Maybe we can break the world record like the Kentucky fishermen did maybe this last week.

It's very cool work that you do, and I appreciate you letting us come in and check this out.

Hopefully the next time we're working together will be on the front of a boat somewhere, checking in on these things, getting some additional data, seeing how much they've grown, how far they've moved, all that other great information, all the good stuff.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for being with us today.

May and June is the time of year that whitetail fans are being born here in the state of Kentucky.

And coyotes are opportunistic feeders, and they know that as well.

Wow.

I█m out today on my deer farm planning on calling some coyotes.

You know, it's that time of year.

Late May, early June, where all of your deer fawns are being born and you know, if you have deer here in Kentucky you probably have coyotes.

And for me, it's part of my management plan here on this deer farm is to try to keep a control on the predators that are out here.

This farm has a lot of coyotes.

Every time we hunt we hear them.

Quite often we see them.

I like to get out here and run fawn distress and try to pick off some of these coyotes that may be coming in for an easy meal, an opportunity to take out a young deer.

So that's what we're out here doing today.

Let's see what happens here.

I think I may have missed.

That happened way faster than I thought.

Three coyotes came out.

Had a rough time picking out which one I was going to get a shot at.

I believe that was a complete miss unfortunately.

Tells you how many coyotes are out here.

That's four in about five minutes of hunting and two shots.

Unfortunately, one miss.

And when you got a real thick coyote populations like this, there's not a real predator or rival for a coyote on the Kentucky landscape.

So if you have a farm that you're managing, this is the time of year.

End of May, beginning of June, is when A lot of your deer fawns are born.

So as part of the plan on this piece of property that I hunt is to try to get out here and take care of some of these coyote populations, because they're pretty prolific.

So I'm very happy to be able to get out here.

I'm not too happy that I missed the first one.

But man, they just showed up like that, as soon as I hit the call.

Really wasn█t even ready.

And when they came out in more than one, tried to pick out which one I was going to shoot at, as they trotted across the field, it just all happened so fast and chaotic, like all hunting situations.

Unfortunately, sometimes misses are part of it.

But luckily for me, that second coyote showed up and gave me an opportunity.

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 LeVar Daniel, who caught this nice largemouth bass while fishing from the bank with a lipless red crankbait.

Nice job.

Here we have Robbie Marshawn and his son with two nice stripers that they caught while fishing at Lake Cumberland.

Nice job.

Check out this freshwater drum that was caught in Westport, Kentucky by Chauncey Griffin.

Nice fish.

Check out Bailey rigs with this nice gobbler that she took during the spring season in Hart County, Kentucky.

Rick Miller found the red bluegill on Lake Barkley.

Look at this.

Nice fish that weighed over a pound.

Nice job.

Check out Griffin Goman, who caught this nice bluegill while fishing with his uncle and in County.

School is ending, making this a perfect time to make plans to be outdoors with your families.

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.