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 meet up with wildlife biologists to find out one of the techniques they use to determine when the whitetail rut will hit.

Then we're going to head out to green River Lake in search of crappie.

But first we're going to meet up with my daughter and head to Nolin Lake in search of largemouth bass.

Today is a really special day for me because I'm actually going to go fishing with my daughter Campbell, who likes to fish with me.

But you like to fish like, 2 to 3 hours at a time max, right?

Mhmm.

You don█t like going out daylight to dark, do you?

Yeah, no.

This is the perfect time of year to do something that we're going to do today And that is we're going to go out and fish some of these rocks that are in 10, 15 feet of water.

And usually in July these bass have spawned, they moved out to find that cooler water.

And it can be a great way to catch bass the way we're going to target them today.

You know what that is?

No.

We are going to use what's in this bucket here.

Look at this.

These are live crayfish and their escape artists.

I'm going to try to keep them in bucket here.

We're going to fish with live crayfish.

I don█t wanna- I don't want to do this anymore, actually!

Alright, hon█, walk up here.

You're going to fish up front with me.

All right, so here's what we've got.

Just a little I don't know what number hook that is, but it's a little bait keeper hook.

Now, I will tell you, these fish, these crayfish, when you let them get to the bottom, they're going to try to do what they naturally do in a creek.

Have you ever been in a creek when crayfish are in there?

No.

They will crawl under the rocks.

So what that does, It'll get you hung up.

So we're going to put that little split shot in there.

We're going to cast it out.

And when about time- you'll see your line swimming.

And then when about time you think it hit the bottom, keep it tight and just pick it up a foot or two and let it swim back to the bottom again.

Okay.

I'll show you how we're going to hook them.

So really the size that we want is about right there.

That is about a perfect size crayfish.

So go in the back and underneath on the bottom of the tail and just you got to pop it through the.

And then that right there is all you want.

Whoa, we got some escapers.

Why are the small ones better than the big ones?

Well that's a good question.

You can catch really big fish on the big ones, but you seem to get more bites.

We're not tournament trophy fishing today.

Of course, you can't fish with live bait tournaments anyway, but we just want to catch fish, so watch him swim.

See that?

Yeah.

See that little guy going crazy?

Well, bass can't hardly stand that.

When they see that they're going, oh, we got to have some of that.

That's what we want right there.

Swim swim swim swim swim.

So.

All right, here's yours.

If you try to like overhand cast these real hard, then you'll cast them off.

So what I like to do with them is I kind of take it and I'll just kind of pendulum swing it, and then flick it out there.

See that?

That's plenty far enough.

And then just reel it slowly?

Keep your rod tip up and just start letting it go.

Go down.

just want to let it go down.

I can see him swimming around with it right now.

Okay.

After the fish spawn, they're up on the banks.

But now all the bait has been hatched.

And so these fish start chasing these little, these little minnows, and you see them out here chasing them kind of in the jumps.

I have a swim bait on another rod.

If we get a chance to catch one, we'll try to do that too.

But so sometimes, like super early in the morning, these fish might be out here working, but as it gets, sun comes up, they'll move back near these rocks.

So that's why we're not super early this morning.

because sometimes if you█re real early.

Like the bite will get better throughout the day.

All right, let's go hit a different spot.

You see that big stump right there?

Yes.

If you cast toward it, you're going to come right over.

You don't even have to cast that far.

It's actually not that quite that far out.

All right.

You're probably going to be real close.

You want this one?

You can do it.

Come on.

You got to catch it.

Here, trade me out, rods.

Keep the rod bent.

Okay, Okay, okay.

Don't just- keep the rod up.

Pull him up with the rod.

Hey, Quit.

Quit.

There you go.

Let the rod do the work.

Oh my gosh, what have you got?

Let me get the net.

If this is a bass.

Hang on.

Hold on, we█re going to give you a little more drag.

Now, now reel.

When it's up.

Reel reel reel reel reel reel reel down.

Now use the rod tip to lift him up.

Reel again?

Reel down.

Oh my.

Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh!

Dad, get it in!

Holy What.

It's huge.

That's a 5 or 6 pounder.

All right look open your line up.

Open your bale up a little bit.

Okay.

He's a monster.

Oh my gosh.

Oh look at this fish.

It's bigger than I thought.

I thought it might be a catfish now.

Oh, my.

Campbell.

That's that's a very, very, very old fish.

See how he's kind of beaten up from post-spawn?

Look at that ole Bruiser.

You you wore him down.

Look at that bass.

You wanna hold it?

How old do you think it is?

It's an old fish.

You can tell it's really old.

It's kind of in bad shape.

It's kind of got a lot of marks and spots on him.

Wow, that's such a great fish.

I tell you what.

That's cool.

That is a great catch.

High five!

I can█t.

Oh my goodness.

Let█s see what we think that fish weighs real fast.

Whoa.

Yeah.

5.2.

All right, puttin█ him down.

All right, hun, it's a great fish.

This is a really nice fish.

We're going to get it back in the water.

All right?

Dad, how do you get these crayfish?

Well, you get in a creek.

And the way I catch them is with the sain net, which is like six feet wide.

And you go into a creek that's got some flat rock or some, you know, some pebbles and stuff, and you just kind of shake it along.

And then when you pick it up, they'll be in there that and some minnows and other fish too.

And the trick is keeping them alive because, you know, they live under the water.

Yeah.

You think that.

Oh, I'm just going to put them in a big bucket full of water and they'll be fine.

That's not how it works.

You.

They have to be able to get out of the water.

And, so you need water that doesn't get too hot or too cold, and you have to keep them wet but not submerged.

So that bait bucket right there with that little mesh net that lets them crawl up it, actually works great.

Here we go.

Campbell.

You can do this one.

I think you knew this one wasn't quite as big.

This one's the spotted bass.

Spotted bass right there.

Now, this would be a good one to keep if we wanted to eat some, but we're not going to mess with them today.

Trun him loose.

Uh oh, Campbell, I'm getting up on you now.

Mine ain't near as big as yours, but another fish on.

You want to catch this one?

Sure.

Here you go.

I got you.

Yep.

This one too.

You kind of started off too big.

Now.

There you go.

That's another spotted bass.

That's a good size spotted bass too.

See how these lines are all together on the belly?

Yeah.

And then the color is real vibrant.

It's a real pretty fish.

Really aggressive.

And like I said, if you ever wanted to eat a bass, that's about what you want.

About a 12 to 14 inch spotted bass, beautiful fish.

And they love crayfish.

I mean, they are crayfish eating machines.

It's no fun with you.

I wish I would go with someone... Who doesn't catch any?

Yeah.

You want to go with somebody who catches none?

Yeah.

No fun because you're competitive.

Well it makes me feel better about my fishing skills.

You're so competitive.

You're like, dad, I don't like going with you because you catch ten, I catch two.

I'd rather go with somebody who catches zero and I catch two.

Yes, that;s exactly what I am saying.

Oh, look.

Let me see that pole, Let me see that pole.

Okay, okay, okay.

Uh oh, may be a fish on this one.

Oh, here you go.

It's got a crawfish on it.

Can you get this one?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh my, that's a good one.

That's a really good fish, hon█.

So, did you see what just happened?

Those fish came up behind us, and I reached down and I quit reeling my crayfish.

I reached down to pick up my swim bait for one cast, and I looked over and my rod was going in the water.

You saved my rod and caught a bass all in the same shot.

Yup.

Perfect.

All right, get it back in the water.

Well, Campbell, have we hit your 2 or 3 hour limit?

That's about how long you like stay out.

Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what.

I've enjoyed it.

It's been a lot of fun coming out here with you today.

Caught a giant.

Yeah.

What do you think about that bass?

How long you think it█s going to take you to catch one bigger than that?

A long time.

I don't know, maybe the next cast.

That's what's the beautiful thing about fishing.

Maybe it's the next cast.

If you drive the highways here in Kentucky, you've probably seen a deceased whitetail deer that's been hit by a car.

Now, wildlife biologists are finding a way to use that data to try to peak the whitetail rut to our hunting season.

My name is Tommy Apostopoulos I am a biologist in the Deer program here at Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife.

And today we are going out to check on a road kill doe to hopefully pull some fetal data off of it.

Getting this fetal data also tells us when these fawns are being conceived, when the deer are actually breeding on the landscape now varies a little bit throughout the state.

So we do it region by region.

All right.

So we're coming up on our deer and we█re going to throw our flashers on and go ahead, pull off on the side of the road here.

So today is the 8th of March.

She's definitely been here about a week.

So give her March the first was a road kill deer.

So the next thing we're going to do is age her.

All right.

So this is a two and a half year old doe.

All right.

So the next thing we're going to do is see if she's pregnant.

This is when it gets a little stinky.

Here's one.

Here's another.

She was pregnant and she's got two fetuses.

So we'll go back up to the tailgate and measure these and sex them, and then we'll be finished.

All right, so we've got this.

It's called a fetal scale.

We're going to put these fetuses on the scale.

It's going to give us a value.

And then we do a little bit of math with this chart, and it'll give us our date of conception.

So first thing is, we're going to sex them.

We've got a female right here.

So fetus, number one is a female.

And then we will put this right here.

So we're at about 114.

So that's 114 days since this fawn was conceived.

Same thing with the second one.

So it's a male and we've got 113.

All righty.

And that's all we do with these fetuses.

We're going to put them back with the carcass.

Hopefully, they'll all be scavenged.

Hey so just did a quick double check to make sure that there were only two and here is a third.

So that Doe was pregnant with triplets.

This is a female and she is at 113 as well.

This is all we do with these fetuses.

Now, we just plug these numbers in to a quick equation and we'll have all the data that we need from this DOE.

All righty.

So we have our days since conception.

So now we're going to use this little chart and figure out when these fawns were conceived.

So date of kill, March 1st.

So March 1st in Julian days is day number 60.

So we're going to add that to 365.

We've got 425 days now.

We're going to subtract these numbers from 425.

All right.

So now we have these numbers.

We can take these numbers and they correspond to dates just like that March 1st did.

So day 311 is the 7th of November 2022.

So this fetus was conceived on the 7th of November 312.

It's the 8th of November.

So we'll average all that together.

It's going to end up being right around the 8th of November 2022, when that DOE was bred and she had triplets, which is pretty cool to see, especially in this part of the world, in this part of Kentucky.

All righty.

So we're back in the office.

We're going to take these numbers, plug them in to a big Excel sheet with all of the data from the last two years, we'll average all of that out with physical graphic regions, and it's going to show us that peak of the rut, pretty much the peak of when breeding is happening throughout the state.

Historically, that's been about mid-November and that doesn't really change.

That's a pretty common misconception that the rut is kind of contingent on the weather of right around November.

But a DOE is going to go into estrus, it's going to go into heat around the same time every single year throughout her life.

So on top of being able to give that information to hunters for us, we're able to determine are all the does being bred right around the same time?

And if not, you know, there's everybody kind of knows about the second rut.

And so if does are not bred in that first time that they go into estrus, a few weeks later, they'll go back into estrus, they'll they'll drop another egg.

So if that's happening a lot and a lot of deer are being bred late, that tells us either there aren't enough bucks on the landscape to breed all of the does that are there.

Or in most of Kentucky's case, there are too many does on the landscape and the Bucks just aren't able to get to all of them during that first Estrus cycle.

And from there we'll be able to determine how healthy the herd is around here.

Most crappie fishermen will tell you the peak time to crappie fish is March and April.

But if you ask my good buddy Tom Perkins, he'll tell you it's the middle of the summer.

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.

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 eight year old Ella Floyd with this big bullfrog that he gigged in Edmonson County.

This was his first ever.

Congratulations.

Five year old Easton Van Meter of Henderson, Kentucky, has taken up kayak fishing.

And here he is with his first ever large mouth.

Nice job.

Elizabeth Timbering of Shepherdsville caught this buffalo calf while fishing at rough River.

This is our biggest fish to date.

Congrats, Jay Ellison's taking advantage of these cicadas as he went largemouth bass fishing using the live bait in Madison County.

Nice job.

Check out this flathead catfish that was caught by Richard Walz while limb line fishing.

This fish was released back in the water.

Nice job.

Check out the size of this beautiful redear that was caught by a fender nymph while fishing at Kentucky Lake.

Nice fish.

A special thanks this weekend to all the fathers out there.

Especially my dad.

Thank you so much for all that you've done.

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.