This week on Kentucky Afield.

We've got bird dogs on point in eastern Kentucky and we're after quail.

Next, we'll travel nearly 400 miles west to Western Kentucky WMA for the Hunting Retriever Club Fall Grand.

Then we're going to join biologists on the Cumberland River and search for one of the state's living fossils.

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.

Ask any old time hunter and they'll tell you there's not a site more beautiful than the rise of a covey of quail.

So we headed to eastern Kentucky to find out for ourselves.

We're down here in eastern Kentucky in Knott County this beautiful morning and I'm here with Brandon.

Brandon, this is a little different than the last time you and I hunted together.

We're running some dogs today.

A little smaller animal.

I'm with you.

You know, we're doing a small game hunt.

And every time we're down here, elk hunting or elk scouting, it seems like we always jump a lot of rabbits and we actually flush coveys of quail, which, you know, it's not really easy to find wild coveys of quail anymore.

So, you know, you guys have got the perfect habitat for it.

What are our chances of getting a covey up?

I think we'll be good.

We've ran, there█s a few spots, probably four or five times this year already, so it's been quite a bit.

So we should be good.

I'm going to say two to three covey today, especially decent sized coveys.

10, 12, 15 birds.

That's a really good day.

So, who knows?

Let's go.

We'll see what happens.

I'm looking forward to it.

Let's go, Waylon.

Come on.

What, you got Waylon?

Waylon and Jessie.

Waylon and Jessie.

Waylon and Jessie, There you go.

Go Jessie, Let█s go girl.

It's amazing.

You look out over these hills and ridges and it looks like it's all ankle high.

It is a big difference once you step out in it.

I like the road.

Waylon here.

I think he█s pointing on the hill there.

Oh, you got them pointing in two different places?

Yeah I'd say they're walking, feeding this morning.

Sitting right here up in that little small patch there.

Think we got a bird?

Maybe.

Let█s walk in and find out.

Easy Jessie.

Jessie's locked up.

Yeah Woah Well that was quicker than I expected.

I couldn█t swing any further.

I saw it here and one single went out this way.

Do you think you got anything down?

Uh, worth checking.

Good Job.

Oh look.

Good, Job.

Good job, girl.

Very nice, lookie there.

pretty little creatures are they?

Oh, beautiful bird.

Let's go find another covey.

Let's go.

Come find another covey, come on, girl.

Jessie█s right over here pointing.

Uh oh.

What do you got Jessie?

Oh, single.

Wow.

Now that was a bunch of quail.

Yes they were, that was spread out.

I mean, that was a bunch.

Time we got our attention on this single that went out this way.

They all slipped out the back side on us.

I don't think either one of us got a real good- No.

Bit of a long, long shot.

I was shooting through autumn olive I knew that wasn█t going to go good.

But, you know, you flush a covey that size you got to pick a bird and try to make the best of it.

Waylon, you got to find that bird, buddy.

What do you got, buddy.

Wow.

That ear laid back.

What do you got buddy?

I don't know.

It's usually when she stands up, head up.

It's usually- Whoa!

That was a covey.

Yep.

On point?

He looks it.

It's a woodcock.

That season's not in.

Leave it be, bubby.

Sure was, pointed a woodcock.

Brandon I can't tell you how much I enjoyed today.

Was a great day.

I said it earlier.

I think that that one of the most beautiful things you can see in the state of Kentucky is a covey rise.

It's shocking, first off, but then secondly, watching them take off and all the different directions.

Well, I've said it before, I'll say it again.

You live in a small slice of heaven.

Hey, appreciate it.

It█s different opportunities every time.

That█s a fact.

You got opportunities to fish and hunt and big game hunt and today it was the small game and today may have been my favorite.

I'm with you.

I've said it from the get go.

I love turkey hunting, deer hunting, elk hunting but quail hunting takes the cake.

Most people start out fishing by buying one rod and reel and they go fishing, you know and that really works well to get you started in the fishing.

But as you want to start trying new techniques of fishing, you may realize that you may not have the right kind of line or the right pound test line for whatever technique you want to try.

As you progress into fishing and you start fishing for multiple different species and a bunch of different techniques, you're going to very likely find yourself having a whole pile of rod and reels.

Now, how do you keep it all separated?

How do you know what kind of line is on what rod and reel?

Well, that can be tricky.

And here's a little technique that I like to use.

Go right here and put a little piece of medical tape.

This is something you put on your finger and it's very durable.

And I will write on there with a magic marker or an ink pen.

A couple of things.

First off, I'll put the pound test.

It's 30.

The material B stands for Braid, and then the date in which I put this line on the spool.

Why do I do that?

Well, Braid can last up to two years.

It'll last for a long, long time.

Fluorocarbon, on the other hand, you know, if you use Fluorocarbon quite a bit and it's out in the it's out in the sun, you might want to trade it out about every 2 to 3 months maximum.

So this one here, what I have on this 8F5 23.

That's 8 pound test on a spinning rod fluorocarbon line.

Great fishing line if you want to use a real sensitive technique.

This line may not last more than two or three months.

It's time to replace it.

So I need to know the date that it was put on here.

Another technique that I sometimes use is just by taking a Sharpie and writing it right on the spool.

And I try to put it in a place that my fingers don't touch and rub it off.

So I use right here, this is a silver sharpie and it says 12 M. That's 12 pound test monofilament, I write that on there.

Now, I don't have the date on that particular one.

Should have the date on it.

It's very good to have that.

Now once you get it on there, how do you get it off?

Well, a little bit of alcohol will wipe that right off and you can start fresh again and put whatever the new line that you plan on intend putting on your rod And you can write that back on there.

I'll tell you what technique fishing.

One of the most important things is matching the material and the pound test of the line you're fishing, with whatever technique you're fishing.

And if you always know what type of line is on your rod and reel, then you will always be able to match that to whatever technique that you want to fish.

Are you a dog lover and looking to bond with your dog?

Or spend more time in the field?

Maybe you should consider joining a Hunting Retriever Club.

So we're in Paducah and we're doing the fall grand.

Without a doubt, this is the best dogs you'll see in the country anywhere.

I mean, this this is the best venue there is.

We had 998 dogs entered.

I think we ended up with like 936 that were running here.

We got ten different sites, five water, five lands.

And we're judging these retrievers on a standard, the grand standard.

What you'll see primarily Labrador Retrievers, up until this last year, they were the top registered breed in the United States with the American Kennel Club.

You will see some golden retrievers, you will see some Chesapeake Bay retrievers, you will see some Boykin spaniels.

Potentially.

There are poodles here, standard poodles as well, which many people do not know was one of the original, if not the original retrieving breed.

So those are primarily what you're going to see.

The whole country's here.

I mean, we're here from coast to coast.

The judges are here from coast to coast.

So, yeah, we're seeing the whole country.

I mean, we even have people from Canada.

I think the first time you run this thing, you're just addicted.

You get into it.

There's a lot of people here.

We're all family here.

Everybody gets along.

It's a great thing.

We do a series of land and a series of water, so each dog that runs through here is required two run to land series, two water series, and if they make it that far, then the Upland Series.

Water series, let's start with that.

It's like an everyday duck hunt.

Let's say we go to down here to the WMA, we put our decoys out.

We conceal ourselves, we conceal our dogs and we kill our ducks when they come in.

We send our dogs on the retrieves.

There are three marked retrieves that the dog will actually see fall.

The dog will proceed to the area of the fall, pick the bird up, retrieve the hand, and then we run a blind retrieve.

So blind retrieve is where a bird is fallen and the dog doesn't know where it's at.

But, you know, as a gunner or possibly your hunting buddy saw it and said over there by that stick, there's one laying there.

So the dog and handler work as a team.

At that point, the dog proceeds to that area.

If he gets off line, we stop them with a whistle.

We cast them with our hands and with whistles until they achieve that area.

Pick up the bird, bring it back.

We also have what's called a diversion.

And the best way to explain a diversion in real terms is let's say we're we're out here, we're hunting and we've killed our birds and we've got a bird come in as the dog is coming back with the retrieve, we kill that bird.

The dog has to hold the bird that it has in its mouth, keep it, bring it to you and not break for the bird that comes in.

And then once we get the duck from the dog on the original retrieve, we send it for the diversion bird.

We also have what's called an honor.

In a real life scenario, I go hunting.

I've got my dog, my buddy comes with me, he has his dog.

So the best case scenario is we let those dogs take turns picking up birds.

That way they get the most amount of work.

A dog on honor means that he has to sit and watch while the other dog makes the retrieves.

The guns are fired, the dog makes a retrieve.

Your dog has to sit quietly, watch and be steady during that part.

So it's skills that the dog uses when they actually duck hunt or goose hunt or dove hunt, in this case.

They're being scored on on marking, memory, control.

We want the dogs to be biddable.

And by that we mean we want the dog to be able to work with the handler.

This is so much teamwork, especially at this level.

And that's what makes these dogs great.

They work as a team with the handler, they█re a dog that you would be proud to take hunting and be steady and quiet in the blind.

Pick your birds up would be obedient, coming in and out, not break, not knock guns over.

Safety is a huge aspect of what we do too, and safety is also plays a part with the dog.

What differs us is we are a hunt test program instead of a field trial program.

And so we don't run against each other.

We run against a standard an established standards that has two judges, and the judges set up the tests and they see what they want and they want to see a grand champion show us.

That's their grand standard by our rules.

They judge the dogs individually against that standard.

The Western Kentucky Wildlife Management Area has a great property for us.

This is our third time being here.

We love these grounds.

The large fields they█re manage to have some cover and some broken areas and that allows us to be able to set up our marks and blinds and add difficulty degrees to the marks and blinds at the grand level.

Kentucky Wildlife, It just does a great job out here managing these grounds, the road structures.

You know, the pond management is just we love this place.

I got into it, as many others do, as I'm a duck hunter and chase ducks all over the country.

I had a duck dog that I had gotten and wanted something else to do with it.

The breeder and trainer that I got my dog from suggested that I find a retriever club and at the time I lived in Saint Cloud, Florida, and I found the Central Florida hunting Retriever Club and got involved with them.

And that's been 25 years ago.

And so we enjoyed it, gave us something to do in the off time.

It gave me like friends to go and train with and improve my dog and I made a better hunting dog.

What brings me back is the people and the dogs is just that's you know, these are the greatest handlers we've got from just ordinary person to doctors are here.

And we're all the same.

We're all dog trainers and dog enthusiasts and enjoy the Hunt test program.

Now let's head south in Kentucky and jump on the Cumberland River and learn a little more about a unique fish, 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.

Waylon Goodwin went to the Kentucky River in search of his first smallmouth bass, and he was successful.

Nice job.

Here we have Emmy Lou, who took a shot at this deer during the Free Youth weekend and had her friend Josie help her track it down.

Nice job.

Here we have Eric Mills with a nice buck that he took on public land.

He had a biologist age this deer at seven and a half years old.

Check out this beautiful six and a half pound bass that was caught by seven year old J.R. in Cox's Creek.

Great fish.

Kinsey Scott took this nice buck in Webster County during the free youth weekend.

She said all of her siblings, Kinsey, Anna and James, love to go hunting.

Nice job.

Mandy and Tasha tagged out on opening day in Knott county with these two giant bucks.

Congratulations.

It's going to be super chilly here in Kentucky this week, so it's a good time to hit the field in search of predators or break out that rod and reel and get them ready for spring.

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 on the water.