This week on Kentucky Afield.

the land Between the Lakes is one of the most unique public land hunting opportunities that the state has to offer.

We are boating in and hunting squirrels.

Next, we'll head east and meet up with a good fishing buddy on Dale Hollow Lake.

Then we're continuing our trip, ending in far eastern Kentucky, where we'll be setting the hills on fire.

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.

There's a special bond between a boy and his hunting dog.

We headed to western Kentucky to chase squirrels and see it for ourselves.

We█re out here today with a couple of familiar faces.

We're at Land Between the Lakes.

You know this is an area you were born and raised, right?

Since you were this young man's age.

Even before even.

So we're here with Eli.

Eli, We've had you out fishing and frog gigging, you know, the last two or three times we've been out and you've had your dog, Ellie, with us.

She's a great dog to have in the boat isn█t she?

Yes.

But I heard she also does some What else she do?

Trees, squirrels, she trees squirrels.

So we're we're going to go out here on public land and we're going a different route today.

And then we're taking the boat.

Yeah, go take a boat.

Kind of get away from the roads and maybe get some squirrels.

It's not been chased too much.

we're going to get us a mess of squirrel today.

I got a feeling.

What about the breed of dog that Ellie is?

She's a mix.

Kind of an odd.

She's the female was a border collie.

Male dogs, a Belgian Malinois.

Okay.

she got donated to me at 12 weeks old.

You really weren█t looking for a dog either at the time were you?

I was not really looking for one.

we were going to go without a dog for a while.

But about six weeks, we're thinking about getting a dog.

And my brother said, I brought that one by and said, You need this.

So I've spent a little bit of time with Ellie, She's a pleasing dog.

She wants to please you, doesn't she?

She does.

I think it's, you know, with any dog that wants to do that, you can train them to do just about anything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So she's only two now?

Yeah.

So this is only the second year you've actually had her to do any type of squirrel hunting right?

Right.

She says there's something there.

Let█s go check it out.

Let█s go see.

Yeah, she says there's one there squat down a little bit Eli, I can see him a little bit.

Here you go.

Right there.

All right, hold up.

Got ‘em.

I think.

Yeah.

well, here he comes.

Give ‘em El.

good shot, buddy.

You see the boat is parked right there.

We let her out.

And before we even made a couple of steps up there, she was already barking saying there was a squirrel up here.

She wasn't lying.

Better check that other tree.

she acts like there█s one there too.

hopefully I can get some more.

Well, we're just getting started.

Looks like we got one is a Cedar tree here.

Cedar Tree.

And she was looking over here.

if they left the tree.

A lot of time for your watch, but she won't move So, Jim, I noticed the last tree we were at, You spotted that squirrel while watching where that dog was looking.

So she'll, she█ll visually keep an eye on wherever they go.

Right.

there's one right there.

There he goes.

Right, right over here.

Is that tree there better for you?

this little tree's better.

That's good.

Come here.

Tell me when you see it.

Alright, hold up right there.

See if I can miss Dang it, I shot that darn limb in front of us.

Shoot ‘em!

Here.

Get over on this tree.

He'll stop.

There's another one.

That tree right there where you say there's two of them.

Here's another one here.

Yep.

Going in the nest.

One right above the nest.

You see them, don't you, girl?

He█ll stop.

Get him Ellie!

Put your gun down Eli, unload it I█m going to go get that one to stop.

Come here Ellie, go get ‘em.

It's not exactly a squirrel.

What is that, Eli?

A possum.

My goodness.

Not a possum.

Ra..... A rac..... It█s a raccoon man.

Huh.

That does not look like a raccoon.

It looks exactly like a raccoon.

Good Girl.

I'm sorry.

I shot a tree limb.

She did a good job.

She was holding tight.

She knew something over there.

Go hunt up, go.

See ‘em?

Yeah.

I can shoot at him if you want me to.

Think you got a shot?

If he sits still I believe I can Oh yeah.

You see ‘ em?

I can see ‘em.

I don't know if I can hit this one or not.

I'm going to try.

Here he comes.

Get ‘em Ellie!

That's a pretty good shot of the pistol.

Nice shot, Jim.

I didn't even notice it.

You know that█s the rule.

So you get it.

When you bring a 22, you get to shoot, and it's your turn to keep going till you get a limit.

Or you miss.

Then guess what?

What?

Papaw gets to shoot till he misses.

You may have to go over there right before he shoots and nudged him a little bit.

See if you can't get in to miss and then be your turn again.

I'll tell you one thing.

There's very few things that bring you back to your childhood.

Than slipping through the woods with a 22.

Yeah.

It's a lot of fun.

A lot of fun.

Good practice.

Let█s check these other trees, then we'll make our way back to the boat.

You█d think there would be up this tree.

You'd think he'd already gotten nervous and bailed out by now.

if he was.

We may have a prospect over there.

Oh really?

Yeah.

She's on that tree right there.

Come here buddy.

Got a perfect spot right here for you.

Make sure it's all the way down.

All right.

There you go.

Nice shot.

Got em.

He█s getting ready to come down.

Let's go ahead and reload.

But, he's getting ready to come down.

there you go.

Good girl.

Nice shot.

You put it right.

Right in the head there.

Way to go!

Hey, good shooting.

Yeah.

Let's go see.

We can't find some more.

We go ahead and head east in the boat, Move up the, lake a little way.

There he goes right there.

One out of the big tree.

It came out of here and went to the next one she█s at for sure.

Yeah.

There's another one down there by the water line Jim.

He's on your side of the tree.

He█s gonna go.

Better kill him.

Eli, you see ‘em?

Now I see ‘em.

Oh he's hit.

I hit him right on the head.

I believe he's coming out.

Here he comes.

Nice job, buddy.

You're working on a limit today.

Perfect.

Beautiful little gray squirrel.

I'm going to put him in here.

Your job is to fill my pouch up.

I walk out here, with squirrels like this.

Now I at least need four.

You wanna try another spot?

If you're up for it, I'd like to try one more.

Okay.

Come here, right here on the ground.

What is this?

It█s an armadillo!

Armadillo!

Look right here.

I was wondering what in the world I was looking at right here.

You know, I█ve heard of armadillos moving into Kentucky and I've seen them dead on the road, so I know 100% for sure they are, but, I never expected to walk right up on one like that, sure enough.

That█s what that was, an armadillo.

Ellie!

She█s alright.

She ain█t gonna hurt it.

Isn█t that wild.

Sure enough, an Armadillo.

Well, they don't have a little bitty mouths, Yeah.

Feel his teeth, Here.

Come on.

Come here.

That armadillo was like, Man, I wish I'd stayed in Texas.

Good girl!

Come on.

Well, did not expect to see that.

But you know what?

That's the reason to get outdoors.

You never know what you may run into.

You know, we've seen we've seen all kinds of deer sign and we've seen raccoons, squirrels, all kinds of birds of prey just getting out outdoors.

You never know what you may see.

It█s like a giant roly poly.

A giant roly poly.

That█s what it looks like.

You got warpaint on, don't you?

Chad.

You see it?

Yup.

He█s on your left hand fork there.

Close to the top.

Oh I think you got it.

I love watching Eli shoot.

He is a dead eye.

It wasn't a headshot but, I don█t care.

It wasn't a headshot?

Well, then it don't count!

Yes, it does!

Oh, you Sure?

That was a great shot.

Nice job, buddy.

Good shot of Eli.

Jim, thanks again for bringing us out.

You're raising a heck of a special little grandson here.

He's really, really good in the field.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that.

You almost got a limit.

You got four.

You got to see him shoot one with a pistol.

That's really cool.

I tell you what, if you if you spend time on the couch or if you've got things that you need to get away from, it's as close to you as your nearest WMA isn't it?

It is this.

Get out and do it.

Put on some extra clothes and go for a walk.

Well, this is a good time.

Thanks, guys.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Chad.

Late winter and early spring is one of my favorite times a year to go out on the lakes and target big fish.

And one of my favorite places to do that is Dale Hollow Lake.

Today I'm out here on beautiful Dale Hollow Lake with the gentleman who wrote the book about fishing Dale Hollow Lake, literally.

It's been quite a good experience.

I've had people say, When are you going to do a book?

You know, I said, Well, I probably could write one, but I've got to have somebody help me.

So I█ve done stuff with Ed Harp, with bass masters.

We took all the questions that's been asked over the years put down into print.

We kind of put a bunch of years of experience together with him.

You know, I absolutely love this lake.

And I try to spend a lot of time down here, mainly in the winter months, but we're at the end of March.

This is the time of year to potentially catch a true Dale Hollow giant.

Yeah, this is a real day.

Some days it's chicken, some days it's feathers.

But, you know, it's you've got to enjoy what you're doing and enjoy the hunt.

Well, let's go find us the first spot and make a couple of casts and we'll converse and hopefully catch a couple of fish.

We'll get ‘er done.

All right, hold on.

Let's get rolling.

So Bob, what are you going to start off with?

I'm going to throw a spinner bait.

Just a little bit.

Make a little bit of noise.

All right.

I think I'm going to start off with the swim bait.

You know, Bob, we've got about 52, 53 degrees.

You still need to fish slow because that's cold water.

But it's that time of year that you can start speeding it up a little bit.

Yeah, we're in a good transition and that's really what it is this time of year.

They're changing weekly, sometimes daily, but they're starting to speed up some.

Got him?

Got one.

All right.

Oh, it█s a largemouth.

Caught a green fish today.

There we go.

First fish of the morning.

There you go.

I usually catch about 8 to 10 small mouth for every one large mouth.

And that's just mainly because of the areas that I like to target down here.

So you know what that means?

Yeah?

That means we're going to catch 8 to 10 smallmouth.

8 to 10 smallmouth because you got a large mouth.

Because I caught a largemouth.

It only makes the numbers right.

You know, it's all about math.

Hey, look at that belly.

I know that that's a pretty healthy fish.

Almost as good as me and you.

No, he's got a way to go to catch me.

Yeah, we'll take it.

That's a nice fish.

Good job, Chad.

There you go.

So, Bobby, how many years you've been guiding now?

I've been guiding for around 25 years, but 22, 23 years.

I've been full time.

You know, I had a lot of people that I knew fish professionally and something I've done since I was a kid.

So it just seemed like the right thing for me to do.

I'm sure you've probably got lifelong friends that you've met out here and on the boat.

Oh, absolutely.

Oh, there he is.

I don't think I have very good hooks set here Bob.

I█m going to try to keep this fish low.

Pretty decent little small mouth.

Here we go.

Good job.

I casted up there and got hung in behind a rock and was shaking that thing loose.

It must have been just...

Fish took it off the rock for you.

It sure did.

Sure did.

Well, here we go.

It's pretty smallmouth.

Hey, you know what?

Considering these conditions, if we can get a couple bites when this water is flat.

Think what it█s going to do when the wind blows.

It'll only get better when we get some wind.

Nice, beautiful little brown fish.

Hey, bit me.

He bit me.

That fish bit me.

You know, Bob, one of the interesting things about your book is you talk about different structure.

In your opinion, when is the best time to fish some of the different structures.

When you█re fishing the highland reservoir like what we're fishing herein Dale Hollow.

A lot of times your points are going to reach about any depth there is because they taper out.

You know, it just helps pinpoint areas to fish by using the thermocline during the summer.

It's just a good ambush spot, too.

If you've got a little current coming through there.

Tell me about when you like to fish bluffs.

Bluffs is really good for May during the shad spawn.

The shad don't make beds, they disperse them eggs.

Then bluffs will warm up on them rocks generally them shad will get on them bluffs and that's the dinner bell ringing.

Uh-oh, we got a fish on.

Oh, my goodness.

I finally got one on a spinner bait Chad.

You've been telling me you catch one during daytime.

I night fish spinner baits all the time.

I really don't do them in the daytime down here very much.

But look, you got one.

You got to try them to know.

It's a daytime color for a spinner bait right right now in the spring and I use it prespawn/postpone, so.

Let's get down back and see if we can catch another one.

All right.

What do you know?

It aint coming up, this might be a large mouth.

Nope, brown fish.

There you go.

Thank you.

Good job Chad.

He wasn█t going nowhere.

Punched it right through the top lip.

That's where you want them, right there.

That█s where you want them, Right there.

We'll take it.

Here we go.

Good one?

This is a better fish.

Come here, joker.

It's a good fish.

There you go.

That's what I'm talking about.

I tell you what, Bob, we found some aggressive fish.

There we go.

They're going to eat.

You just got to be at the right place at the right time.

Yeah.

That belly don't stay like that by not eating, does it?

No.

There's one.

Oh, got him?

Yeah.

That's a pretty good fish there.

Now what's that on, a swimbait?

On a swimbait.

There you go.

Take them all day.

Swimbait█s turned things around, hasn█t it?

Hey, it's all about learning something new, because we came out today we drug swimbaits on the bottom, caught a couple in the morning.

Sped up our retrieve as the water warmed and got shallow.

The tip of the day.

You've got to keep trying different things until you figure out a pattern.

Here we go.

Coming to us.

Oh, that's a good one.

That's a chunk.

That fish hit and felt like a ton of bricks, and then swam right to the boat.

I mean, just absolutely took the wind right out of that, that swimbait.

That is a toad.

Look at the thickness on that fish.

That's a prime pre spawn Dale Hollow smallmouth right there.

That's what you're looking for.

I'll tell you what I'm going to get a weight on this one.

I'm going to say 4 pounds, 5 ounces.

I'm going to guess over 4.5.

4-14.

That's right at a 5lb fish.

I like when they're bigger than I think.

Whoa, this is a good one.

That's better than good Chad.

That was back to back cast.

A 4-14, and what do we got here?

5.

That one there is going to go 21 inches.

That's what I'm saying.

21 and a half.

5-1.

9lb, 15oz, in two cast.

I'm glad you read my book.

Wildlife biologists are always discussing new ways to combat invasive plant species.

And one of the best ways to do it is with fire.

We're on the original release site.

This is the old Starfire mine.

This is also the spot where we did the helicopter capture this winter, where we captured adult cows and put implants in them to come back later in a couple of months and try to catch calves and be part of that monitoring study for adult cow survival and calf survival.

We're going to be doing prescribed burns today up here, try to improve some habitat, try to get rid of some autumn olive, and get rid of some of the unwanted plants that we have and promote growth of native vegetation and some cool season grasses that will provide better forage for elk up here.

So we're using a drip torch today to ignite the fuels on the ground, and that consists of a canister which holds the mixed fuel, which is combination between diesel fuel and gasoline.

There's a venting mechanism that's on the canister.

This controls the flow rate of the fuel that's inside so that we can control how much fuel is being put on the ground.

In order to ignite the drip torch, you saturate the wick pour a little fuel on the ground and you can ignite that fuel, which in turn will not the wick and you're ready to put fire on the ground.

So this is one unit of four that we're going to get to today.

This is our largest unit of 200 acres.

And what we're actually doing here right now is we're getting a lot of black.

We're kind of on a downwind side of things.

So we're going to make sure we get a lot of black before we send our head fire up to this side of the unit.

And basically what that's going to do is set back plant success.

And we're trying to we got a lot of non-native species in here, like sericea lespedeza, autumn olive, and we want to make sure that we keep our open areas open.

In east Kentucky we have a lot of areas that are predominantly wooded timber and a lot of wildlife benefit from these open areas.

Fires is a necessity to do that.

Each of our rigs have a drip torch fuel for the drip torch.

We've got two hand tools.

Usually we've got a swatter and a fire rake.

Each of the rigs we have 25 to 50 gallons of water.

What we've got going on here, as you can imagine, on our reclaimed areas, there can be gas wells or gas lines that pop up out of the ground.

So what we're doing right now, as you can see, we're blacking out to protect a gas line that pops up just in front of me here.

What we're doing is we're blacking out all the way to a hard break on this side.

And then this side we're also going through a road that is a hard break this down below us.

So we want this gas line to be protected at all cost.

But as you can see behind me, see what we're trying to do is knock the autumn olive back.

You know, we've had a lot of autumn olive starting to come in.

It is an invasive species and the seed source is hard to get rid of.

So two of the things we're trying to do this spring is have a prescribed fire in order to kill what's above ground on the autumn olive.

And then they may end up having to come back later as it starts to re-sprout and do something chemically or mechanically.

This is our last unit for today.

What you saw John doing is bringing along the line and we're just laying a wet line just to kind of help us make sure we keep the fire where it's suppose to be.

We've been really happy with what we've accomplished so far today, and we're excited to see how the elk respond to habitat management we've done here to promote some better foliage for our animals.

All right.

So what we're doing right now, doing a mop up and what that consists of is crew members going around, running the whole unit and making sure that all fire is out.

Fire is good for all wildlife, and I hope that this is able to continue throughout the Southeast.

Here we have a picture of Jack White who tagged along with his dad on a successful Bobcat hunt.

Nice job.

Here we have Guy Guernsey, who had a successful 2023 rifle hunt by tagging this nice bug.

Congratulations.

Ten year old Archer Higdon had a day he'll never forget, and that was killing his first cottontail rabbit hunting with his dad, Jeremy Higdon.

Nice job.

Picture here we have Jeff Zeman and a 52 pound beaver.

That he trapped in Menifee County.

He took this beaver in honor of his late father, who was a trapper in New York.

Doug Butler was sharing this moment with his granddaughter with this impressive buck that he took in Breckinridge County.

Nice job.

Mattie Witherspoon went fishing with her grandfather, Roger Fields, and caught this 72 pound blue catfish.

Congratulations Jeremy Gillam and David French know how to take advantage of a little snow on the ground.

And that is night hunting coyotes.

Congratulations.

Bruce Hatter had a nice day of fishing on Lake Cumberland with this beautiful 28 inch striper.

Congratulations.

Here we have a couple of Anderson County boys Colt Cooper Case Cooper and Grady Jenkins, who are being mentored by Rusty Ruble on how to trap.

Nice job.

February is the month that I have to remind myself to get my sportsman's license.

I don't want to be caught out on a pretty day without one.

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.

I hope to see you in the woods or on the water.

If you hold a Kentucky hunting or fishing license, then you have helped make possible Kentucky's wildlife management areas, places to hunt, fish, birdwatch.

Or just let your mind wander.

With nearly 100 dotting the Commonwealth Put wildlife management areas in your sights and see more of what makes Kentucky's outdoors outstanding.

Get all the info online at FW.KY.GOV.