This week on Kentucky Afield.

It's one of the best fisheries in the world and it's just outside of the state's largest city we█re at the falls of the Ohio next Nolan River Lake isn't too shabby either, especially when it comes to white bass.

Then we're still on the water, but we're not fishing.

We're learning more about the Commonwealth's freshwater mussels.

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.

I love fishing on the Ohio River below the falls of the Ohio.

But when it comes to what species you catch, sometimes you have to be willing to take what the river gives you.

Well, I'm right here.

Just steps away from the parking lot of the falls.

The Ohio and Indiana.

This is a place I like to come several times throughout the year, usually in the morning or in the afternoon.

And June is a great time of year to come down here.

One of the reasons I love it is it's so close.

There's always fish here.

And when the water conditions are right, like they look like they are today, you never know what you're going to catch.

I'll tell you what, when I come down here to the river, you're going to lose some tackle.

I like to use a wire that is a little more of a light wire hook, and I usually throw it on, braid it a lot of times.

Allows me to straighten this hook out and get it back now.

You catch or you hook into a 30 or 40 pound fish.

You might regret that decision because you're going to use a lot of drag and hopefully you can get it in.

But otherwise it seems like I'm retired all the time.

Here we go.

We got a fish on.

It's good to get a little practice.

When I get a fish, I really want to get it because this is probably the route they're going to take over the dam and back up.

All right.

Perfect.

Just such a high concentration to Gar right here comes another one, probably.

I'll tell you one thing.

These are rod benders.

Whatever they are, that's a drum That fish actually tried to hit and missed it.

And made him feel a lot bigger because he's foul hooked in the back.

Old drum.

And they are fun to catch.

But after a little bit, they kind of just give up on you.

That was going, he was trying to go up to up the river, getting out of here.

Here we go.

Oh, what do we got here another drum.

Hey, a lot easier to bring in when we're actually hooked in the mouth.

I'll tell you what.

This thing about fishing down here, in these fossil beds, is that every time you come, it's a new experience.

Even though the bottom really in changing.

I've got to figure out where they're seams that are in this fossil beds and Seems are where the water runs all the time.

We've got more water there.

So you might be catching over a seam or just shy of a seam and you got to figure out where that deeper water is because there's a lot of times the fish would be sitting pretty close to that.

Thing is it doesn't give you a real wide area to fish.

So I make long casts a lot of times to fish.

Five or six feet stretch of water and the rest of it's almost too shallow.

So every time you come, it's about figuring out where those spots are at.

And that's a lot of times going to hold the fish.

Man, how I'd love for this to be a sport fish, but just don't have that much confidence.

Tell you what, well, when you come to the river, you got to be ready for anything.

You never know what you're going to catch.

Kind of hoping for hybrids today, but if you just want to get your line stretched, well, these will definitely do the trick.

Now, generally, as a fisherman, normally don't like to see those cormorants or such aggressive fish eaters.

But when you're trying to locate fish, one thing's for sure.

If those cormorants are diving, there's bait.

Here we go.

A cormorant may try to eat my fish right under it.

Another drum today.

It really is rough fish that are piled in here.

And there's not a whole lot of water.

It's kind of not very deep.

And these fish are in here and open and willing to bite.

Well, when that happens, I'm willing to come down here and stretch the line and try to have a day of catching.

Who knows what.

I'll tell you what.

The whole thing of hooking at fish that fight in that current.

Watching it go through the ripples over this Little Rock waterfall here and then it back up the other side.

Pretty fun.

Here we go.

Oh, my goodness.

Thank goodness he got off.

Oh, he didn't.

Not off, I thought he got off.

Oh, my goodness.

I think he got off and hit it again.

Gosh look how aerodynamic those fish are how they can just shoot straight up that rough water.

Actually hook soom bigger than this one today.

But I think it's the first one we got all the way in.

Now I got to find a spot to secure my feeding so that I can grab this fish.

Now, you never want to reach down and grab one of those.

It looks like you got a handle hanging out there.

That handle is covered in teeth.

You do not want to reach down there and try to grab that fish.

You would regret it.

Let me get better.

Oh, perfect.

There we go.

Look at there.

It's exactly what we wanted right there.

Got my lure back, turned him loose.

Hey, I must be living right.

What do we got here.

It looks like another Gar and they█ve been getting off quite a bit.

It's another drum.

I█ll tell you what.

Getting a perfect combination of a rod that will cast a long, long way but has enough backbone to pull a fish like this through.

Takes the right rod selection.

A good one.

It█s a good what?

I don't know.

But it's something big.

Another drum, hard fighting fish.

Man.

As many fish as I'm catching today, this is a perfect way to spend the morning come out and catch a lot of fish.

Here we go.

All right, here we go.

Another drum.

Say what?

These things are crazy.

You got a chance to come down here and catch.

Just tons of fish.

I don't know how many pounds of fish I've caught today, but tons and tons of fish.

It's kind of crazy coming down and being able to do this right outside the city limits of Louisville.

The great location to come for just a morning or an evening walk in and catch fish like this pretty much all day long.

Getting out on the boat and catching white bass in the jumps is sometimes just what the doctor ordered.

So Nolan River and Nolan Lake and White Bass just kind of go together.

I'm down here with a good buddy of mine, Dr. Josh Honaker, and we're in search of the white bass.

Yeah, Nolan's known for it.

And through the years, we fish for him a lot of times.

And it's exciting.

Fun venture.

Yeah.

You know, I love fishing down here for these white bass.

When they get in the jumps.

Couple of things you look for is lack of wind and not a lot of boat traffic.

So right here in the middle of the week, this is a really good time to get out here and try to catch up.

You know, this time of year, if you just drive around enough, you'll see some schools and they cycle in the years, you know, some years are better than others.

And recently it seems like they've been more active.

This is a good thing to do to get out and catch big numbers of fish when they're on.

It's a great way to get a kid or introduce a new person to fishing.

It's highly active and you never know.

You might catch a large mouth in the jumps as well.

Absolutely.

I fully suspect we probably will.

It's supposed to be 96 degrees today.

It's going to be like get out early, finish early.

But hopefully we start seeing some schools and jumping fish.

I'm starting to see them right here.

Look out here.

Yeah, right in front of us.

Matter of fact, we're going to turn the boat off and get ready, because I fully suspect that any second we're going to start having fish on.

I'm going to start off with the top water just because it's so exciting to see them blow up on top of.

Yeah, here we go.

White bass, number one.

That's a little one.

I'll tell you what, one thing, if you're throwing in any type of lure like this that has trouble hook, I tell you a must is to have a set of pliers.

If you've never eaten a white bass, you know how to fillet these.

They are fantastic.

So incredibly good to eat.

But we're going to throw them back today.

And this is a little bitty one.

Probably about eight inches.

Oh there's one.

Yeah.

Yep.

That better fish?

Well, I don't know about better.

That's a little bit better than the one I caught.

I'll give you a little bit.

This lake has a enormous population of plus 15 fish, and I have caught them up to 18 inches in here.

So yeah, numbers and size.

This looks known for here's another.

Man, you've got another one already.

Even when the water quits boil and you still catch them.

Aren█t they such a hard fighting fish for their size?

Just like a small mouth.

You think they're twice their size.

That one's got a blind eye.

Oh, really?

Yeah, that compared to that side.

Look, it is Now, this is a spotted bass.

You got a good chance of catching both large mouth spotted bass and white bass out here doing this.

I've even caught bluegill.

All kinds of opportunities.

I'll go to a swim bait approach here for a few cast.

Oh, there he is.

Change to a different tail spinner.

This is a spinner, right?

We'll probably talk a little bit more about it later.

It█s a unique history.

A history very close to where we're at right here.

In Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Exactly.

Yup.

Look at there.

Nice white bass.

Look.

Here we go.

They're not really jumping like crazy, but they're here right?

We're catching smaller size than I've been catching down here this year, but we're still early.

Yeah, I mean, the sun just came up.

When you're fishing on someone else, you want to make sure you're getting different levels.

Because the schools, some are deeper some are you know, more shallow.

You've got swim bait.

I got a quarter ounce spinner right on.

So we're going to hit different layers here.

And sometimes those big ones are definitely down deeper.

Look there.

As we're both hooks got this fish.

Oh, up in front of the big pod.

There they are.

Here we go.

White bass, black bass.

What do we think.

It's like a.

Little white bass.

White bass.

Here's one that's an average nolin white bass.

Size 12, 13 inch is probably just.

Bigger than the ones we've been catching this morning.

Oh, another spotted bass.

See you buddy Josh, that little bait you█re throwing you're really catching on.

Now, that is one of the original tail spinners.

It's called the Pentagon spin, right?

Yeah.

So my grandfather was really good friends with Cecil Pedigo, the inventor of the lure, and they were big, avid fishing buddies.

But then they quit making it in the mid late seventies.

And so the pedigo spit in, right.

And sat idol for almost 40 years.

And I found out the trademark had lapsed.

In 2008, I filed for the trademark, got it back in production, and on the back of the lower package, I put a picture of my grandfather and showed a big stringer of Basset he caught with it back in the sixties.

It's just bringing back one of those oldies but goodies.

It's a good presentation because I can see it.

I can feel the vibration.

It's a good way to go after him a little bit better.

Got One.

You got one too?

Yeah.

This one's a little bit bigger.

Look at that.

And I'll tell you what.

I've got a pretty good 14 inch fish.

You've got one of the things even.

But this is our best double of the morning, no doubt.

Look at that.

Another quality.

White pass.

People see us throwing all these white bass back in there.

They're going to think we're crazy.

So when you start seeing these fish out there jump and what you're seeing is predatory fish, They come out and they get in schools and almost like you've seen on TV where you've got sharks or whales that will circle, they will circle and gather that bait up.

And then it's like a feeding frenzy.

They all go at the same time and they just start eating everything they can see and they scatter the bait.

It's a cycle that keeps going over and over and over.

All right.

There you go.

See if I can't get one on this top where I love catching them on top or we're not going to bite it.

Oh, there we go.

I'll tell you what, there's a little bigger plug.

I've been catching bigger fish down here.

And if you notice this bigger plug, the very first one I call it, Look at that.

It's probably 15 inch fish.

Here's one.

Got him?

Yeah.

Oh, here we go.

Oh, man.

I tell you what, I can't think of a better way to get kids outdoors than to get them out here and do this.

No one coming off of a crazy year 2020 with COVID and no school and life is you know, it is just been different.

Being on the water and that doors period just recharges you.

It allows your emotional well-being to be optimized as our kids, so many of them just don't get any exposure to nature.

You know, there's a book that you gave me a few years ago.

It's called Last Child in the Woods, and it talked about something called Nature deficit disorder.

Kids that don't get to go out as much.

They don't have as much energy and excitement about life, and they tend to have more anxiety and depression and struggle with emotional well-being.

We do see an improve when they get outside.

Oh, here we go.

Well, Josh this was a lot of fun.

We got out here.

We got to catch some white bass and black bass.

Didn't need your medical services to take a hook out of my hand.

That's a good day.

It was a great morning.

A beautiful morning.

Couldn't have scripted it any better.

I'll tell you what, it's a great opportunity to get out here and reconnect with old friends.

And this is a great way to get a kid off a computer out here.

Casting And catching these fish.

Yeah.

Just spend some time outdoors, connect with nature.

And if you get tight lines there once, once, all the better.

Just watch those treble hooks.

That█s right.

Freshwater mussels are some of the most amazing aquatic species that you probably never spend much time thinking about.

But there is so much to learn.

That's why we're about ready to jump into Green River and learn all about freshwater mussels.

From Dr. Marnie MacGregor.

Monty, I have to tell you, I've been with the Department of Fish Wildlife for about 13 years now, and this is something I've always wanted to do, which is to get out here on the Green River with you.

For someone like yourself that have studied mussels your entire life, this kind of is nirvana, is it not.

For freshwater mussels.

This is it.

This is one of the best places in the world.

75 species, which is one third of North American fauna.

Right here in the Green River.

You spend a lot of time working on a lot of mussels, but especially the endangered mussels.

And I think that's a little bit what we're doing today.

Right?

Right.

This river has 17 federalists as species as threatened or endangered.

We have 27 endangered mussels in Kentucky.

And so we have a large portion of them here in the green.

And this is one of the best rivers we have left in the Ohio River system.

So someone says mussels, You know, it's a part of the environment, but they're really, really important because mussels are essentially filters.

They're our filter feeders.

They're pulling out all the mud and silt, which nobody likes.

They're also eating things that can harm us like bacteria or even harmful algae.

They're eating that material and getting it out of the water.

So there's over probably 50 to 100000 little filters out there running constantly.

And these things are not small.

They sometimes are the size of a baseball, sometimes the size of a dinner plate.

So one of those endangered or federally listed species is the one we're actually putting in today, right?

That's right.

And it's called the pink market.

And it's a species that we've been working with for a while now.

Our first release of that species within 2007 at this site.

So 12 years later, we're coming back and we're bringing more.

We have several thousand in the Green River now at about ten locations.

So we think after a couple more years we're going to be done with that species as far as reintroducing it.

We're already seeing them reproduce in the wild.

And so it's just a matter of time now before we see juveniles popping up at different places where we caught them.

Wow.

Now, that's incredible.

When you can start getting natural repopulation, that's really the ultimate goal.

That's the goal.

This is the pink market, right?

That's correct.

So obviously, the very first thing is going to get your attention is the green and the purple.

I have actually been down the facility in tagged these before.

These are tags.

Tell me about these tags mean.

Well, these tags are a way that we can track individuals.

So this one here, for instance, has a little B tag on it with the number 29.

So we've measured this animal and have recorded it.

So that way, if we find it five years from now, we'll know how much it's grown.

The purple just basically indicates the year class.

So we everything that goes out in 2019 has purple on it.

So that makes it a little easier.

How old are these?

The two years old.

How long will it take these to be able to start producing offspring?

You're five and six.

So these about three or four more years from now, you should start seeing them reproduce.

The animal can hold several thousand little tiny caterpillar larvae, so those have to contact a fish host.

So usually the fish has to get close enough to it that they can shoot the larvae out of the water and hit the gills.

And then this one here is a species that it has a little fishing like lure that's maybe two, three inches long.

It'll sit there and jerk it back and forth, and then a bass comes along, strikes at that, and as soon as it hits it, it'll actually get the larvae loaded on its gills.

So to bring this species back, you have to first find out what it prefers to the host fish Check the populations of those in this particular stream.

Because if that's down, then you already know.

That's right.

Well, I'll tell you what, I'm very interested to see where you're going to put these in.

And then are we going to check and see if we locate any mussels from previous years?

We are.

And we're going to look and see what kind of species are here and look at the tremendous diversity.

We're going to see a lot of mussels today.

So what are these sticks you have in water here for?

In order to monitor your site, we have to mark the site.

So we want to measure from the bank and we have a GPS coordinates and we randomly sample in the coordinate system in the grid.

We want to put this on the bottom of the river and we want to count.

Everything that's inside.

This grid.

And then we will move it to a random location and we'll do this 102 hundred times.

Sometimes that'll give us a good estimate of how many mussels are in the whole area.

We don't know what we're going to get here, but we're going to see what we can find and then hopefully we'll see a lot of different kinds and maybe even a rare one or two.

So, Laura, you've been with the department for a long time and you're working now with Kentucky Wild.

You said this is the first time you've made this trip.

I've been really excited to come out in the field with Lonnie and his crew.

So this is the first time for me to go help restore endangered mussels.

And we all work in Frankfort.

We've been down the muscle facility.

We see some of the great work that they do.

But to get out in the field and see how it's impacting this river system is amazing.

Yeah, it is really exciting.

And you know, Kentucky Wild, even though it's a really new program, I've worked here since 1994, we've had a staff of folks that work just on the species that maybe folks don't hear about things like bats and salamanders and songbirds, birds of prey, all those creatures that are out there and make up 90% of what Kentucky's wildlife are.

But many folks don't ever see.

And mussels are a perfect example of that endangered.

Wow.

So that is a big catch out of a one meter square and a lot of different species of mussels here.

Right.

You're going to go.

Through.

All of this is the pink muck and we're going to be releasing these today.

But this one was put out two years ago.

So we know they're doing pretty good.

So we're glad to have these here now in the population.

Here's another federal endangered species called the fantail.

This species is actually doing fairly well in Kentucky, in the green, in the Licking River.

It's got some of the best populations in the world.

This is a monkey face we see.

We've got three different ages here.

You can tell by all the little lines on here how old they are.

Okay.

So you can just look at the little rings, how like you do a tree.

This is a fluted shell.

He gets his name from these little ridges on the side.

We have a pistol grip.

This one used to.

Be called the Buckhorn.

You said pistol.

Is it because it is right here?

Yeah.

It's the shape of the pistol.

The handle.

The pistol.

Gotcha.

We have the three ridge.

This gets really large.

This is fairly small, but it can get pretty large and the bucket.

This is the most common thing we have in the green.

And there's a young one right there.

And I think this is called the Pink Hill splitter.

And it gets its name because when it's in the substrate it'll be like that and you step on it.

It can really injure your foot with this one.

Good.

It's been stepped on or something, but it's repaired itself.

And so it's pretty remarkable that it can do that.

Fantastic.

This is a spike.

And here's a closely related one called the Kidney shell.

This is the way the grade lamp muscle, this is the pocket book.

If there's a lot of chemical names to these guys.

Well, I say we get these back to the grid and release.

Some new ones today.

That's a good idea.

Now let's check in and see who else has been out having fun and this week's Ones That Didn't Get Away.

Here we have Noah Collins with his very first catfish.

And man, is it a nice one.

He caught this fish while fishing with his dad, Jeremy.

Check out the size of this beautiful grass carp caught by Jericho Benoit.

This fish was caught at Peabody and Hopkins County.

Nice fish.

11 year old Landon Walker caught this nice largemouth bass in Harrison County while fishing at a farm pond.

Congratulations.

Anna white knows how to have some fun.

And that is setting limb lines for catfish on Dale Hollow Lake.

Check out this nice trophy.

Two of our summer holiday weekends are now behind us.

And now it's time to start thinking about our fall hunting seasons.

This is the time to start getting ready.

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.