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 head to Kentucky Lake and meet up with crappie professional fisherman Tony Sheppard.

Then we're going to head to Cedar Creek Lake and jump in the boat with some game wardens as they use some of their latest technology to locate and recover a car.

But first, we're headed to Meldahl Dam in search of trophy catfish.

This June morning, we're here at Meldahl Lock and Dam and I'm with Michael Waters.

Michael, you fish this Ohio River in this area quite a bit, don't you?

I do, I fish it a lot.

So what are we fishing for today?

Fishing for blue catfish.

Blue catfish.

Unique way with spoons.

Spoons.

Okay, so pieces of steel, essentially.

That's it.

So normally, you know, you talk about catfish, but we'd be thinking about skipjack or some type of other live bait.

But a spoon.

Tell me what makes a spoon good for fishing these conditions?

Well, you know, we use chrome spoons and they mimic skipjack and shad that are being chopped up in those boils right there.

And those blue cats every spring come up here and stack up in those little channel pathways, and we just pick them off there.

It█s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Well, I hope that's what it's like.

How are these conditions right now?

Conditions are not ideal.

The river's up.

It's muddy.

It's not perfect, but I still think we can get on some fish.

You know, it's just been up and down, and a lot of water.

Yeah.

You really have to pick your spots.

I mean, it's been a really tough spring for everyone.

It's just been up and down.

Unique thing about spoon fishing is that, you know, we're not casting rods out and sitting there and waiting for something to take it.

When they make contact, rods in hand, you're going to feel them set the hook.

It's going to be a lot of action?

It's electric.

It is electric.

And you will get a workout, it will wear you out.

Some of these fish I caught a 65.5 pound blue yesterday.

Oh my gosh.

And it will shock you.

Let's go get it.

I'm excited.

Let's make it happen.

All right.

Today because the currents a little faster we're going to throw 80 to 100 gram spoons.

We've got variety of spoons.

Color does not matter so much.

I usually swap out the hooks with a two aught treble.

Saltwater.

I see you're throwing braid.

We're not talking about 20 pound mono here today, I know.

We've got eight foot muskie rod with 80 pound braid.

We've got a 90 pound fluorocarbon leader.

This was the spoon I used yesterday.

Okay.

They hit it on the fall and they love hitting it on the head.

So that's why I put that assist hook on there.

Oh sweet.

We let's see what happens with it.

I'm excited to see how you work it in this current.

All right.

Let's get after it.

So what all species do we have a chance to catch today?

Well, the way we're fishing, flatheads, blues channels and an occasional Asian carp.

Okay.

You can't go anywhere on the river and avoid them.

Hardly.

Can you?

What█s he got over there, Michael?

He's got something that looks like a sauger.

Maybe.

No.

Gar.

Gar.

Sure is.

There he is.

Got one?

There we go.

Big head.

Is that what it is?

Big head?

Yeah.

A big head.

I'll tell you what.

That's a fight, isn't it?

Yeah.

Whenever I hook a big head, I always try and get them out of that current.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Just makes for a lot easier fight.

Look at that sucker.

So this is actually a very large silver.

This is a nice silver.

Yeah.

Yeah, the big heads have a little different color.

Yeah.

It's a silver.

It's a heck of a fight, wasn't it?

So what we're supposed to do is kill these.

Yeah.

Yeah.

These are an invasive species that we don't want in Kentucky waterways.

Unfortunately, there's thousands and thousands of them.

So we're going to dispatch this fish here and put it back when he's dead.

Oh, here we go.

There you go.

Good job Chad.

Yeah, that's a blue.

It never gets old.

He's just not ready to come up yet.

Look at that.

Here he comes up.

I love it.

I might have him snagged.

There he goes.

Yeah, he ain't that big.

He just hooked in the back.

Oh, he's a big one.

Who do you think that fish weighs?

I'd say probably 20 plus.

Hooked in the back.

Made him feel like he weighed 60.

Look at that.

Now we're putting them all back.

I tell you what, these are so much fun.

Such a trophy fish.

We're going to release this fish.

This is the easiest, safest way to do it with as slick as the bank is.

I'll tell you one thing.

I broke a sweat.

There you go.

There he is.

Oh, man.

That was closer to the wall.

I sure hope we're getting them in the mouth.

Oh.

It's a race.

Put line on the spool faster than he takes it off.

There he comes.

There he is.

That's a good fish.

Come on in there.

There you go.

We got him now.

Look at that one little hook right there.

Chad, that's a carbon copy of your fish.

Wow.

That is a beautiful, beautiful catfish.

Strong.

Oh.

21.

21.

Goodness gracious.

That thing looks bigger than that.

Oh, my gosh.

That was a nice fish.

Ready to catch another one?

Or you hope this cast is a blank cast.

I told you that's how it works.

You're like, oh my God, I hope to God nothing hits this time.

There he is.

All right.

Hooked up.

What you got there?

Catfish!

There you go.

Another blue catfish.

He smoke it pretty good?

Yeah, he did.

All right.

Yeah.

It's nothing for them to wrap you up several times.

He was trying to pull that thing through the water like a corkscrew.

All right, let's get him loose.

Oh.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Chad.

He's got you doubled up.

Oh, yeah.

He's... Definitely a blue.

Oh!

There we go, Chad.

Yes, that's a good one.

Right in the mouth.

Got him in the mouth.

Got one to eat.

Whoo!

That is a bruiser.

Yes, it is.

Nice job.

All right, here we go.

Oh.

Nice job.

All right.

Good job with that one.

You got it out of that current and headed this direction.

Yeah.

Let's get a weight on her and put her back in.

18.7.

18.7.

Nice job.

Man.

They're all about 20 pounders.

You caught one that was a little bit smaller, but other than that, they're all about 20 pounds.

Healthy as a horse and just as strong.

There he goes.

He's been stretching the line over there all day against that wall.

Yeah, that's the hot spot.

I mean, that's where if you want to go and catch numbers of fish, the walls where it's at.

He's catching those buffalo mainly, though.

Oh.

Got him?

Yeah.

Wow.

I'm gonna bet it's 20 pounds.

Want to bet?

Seems like that's the number today.

It's like, Yeah, it's between 19 and 22 pounds.

Oh my goodness.

I'm tired.

Tell you what, it will absolutely wear you out in the current.

Big flathead by the mouth.

You got a flathead!

What do you know?

Flathead catfish.

How often you catch these?

One every dozen.

Okay.

A flathead catfish.

What do you know?

That one is big enough to hand grab.

I'll tell you what.

They're such a unique fish.

Aren't they beautiful?

They are beautiful fish.

There you go.

Look at that Michael.

They hit the same spot.

They're all out there taking advantage of the opportunity of the bait.

Nice flathead catfish.

Nice job.

All right!

Come on.

You want to go home?

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, there he is.

Another one!

Sweet!

Cramping?

Yeah.

My arms cramped.

Reel him in, Chad.

We should.

We should have hydrated.

Here.

Are you serious?

Yeah.

Reel him in.

He's all yours, buddy.

I'll tell you what.

It's like tuna fishing.

It's like, I've had all I can take.

I'm tapping out.

Oh my goodness.

Michael's been reeling these 20 pounders in all day in this current.

Arms are cramping.

Right?

Another flat head.

What do you know?

Well.

There you go.

He just had that nose stuck on the ground.

Good job, Chad, look at that.

Well, Michael, I'll tell you, one of the cool things about my job is I get to go see people fish the way they love to fish.

And I learned so much.

You taught me a lot today.

You are fantastic at fishing these big spoons.

It's a great opportunity.

And you can go a lot of places on the Ohio River and do this.

Hard fighting fish in hard current, throwing big, heavy lures.

That's as good as it gets right there.

It's just fantastic when one of those attacks your spoon, you won't soon forget it.

It's a blast.

Thank you.

Chad, it was a pleasure having you guys up here.

The methods that are being used to locate and catch crappie has dramatically changed over the last ten years.

And I went out with one of the best to show me how it's done.

This morning, we're out on beautiful Lake Barkley, and I'm here with Jenko professional fisherman Tony Shepherd.

Tony, how are you doing?

Good.

How are you?

I'm doing good.

Hey I feel really lucky today because you're actually prefishing for a tournament that starts tomorrow.

You're heavily involved in lure design and manufacturing and Jenko lures.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

I've designed, I think, seven different styles of baits.

I've got like 30 colors and they all have a purpose.

And there's all a day for everything.

So you've allowed us to get in the boat with you and kind of go out and try to locate some fish.

And I want to talk about a little bit about tournament fishing, but more than anything about lure selection, lure color.

I want to go through your process on how you do that, because where to start is pretty important.

Yeah, it is because the faster you can start getting information on what those fish want, how deep those fish are at, how they're going to respond to a particular lure.

The quicker you get that, that's that's really the name of the game.

Whether you're tournament fishing or fun fishing.

Right?

Right, right.

Exactly.

I mean, knowing where the fish are helps a guy catch them a whole lot quicker, you know, especially if you don't get to fish very much.

Like, right now we're out here.

It's water temperature█s 76 degrees, 1st of May.

And, you know, we're postspawn blue.

You know, the fish have been spawned out, they're heading back out.

And, you know, what they do is normally pull out to about 8 or 12ft of water and chill out for a little bit before they make their way back out to the river.

All right.

Well, fantastic.

Well, let's get at.

And I'm excited.

You told me not to bring any tackle.

I brought a rod and reel.

So I'm gonna let you set me up to with whatever you think I need to start with.

Okay.

We'll get you set up.

Thank you, sir.

So, Tony, if they had a tournament that said, hey, you get to pick one lure and you got to fish with that one Lure the entire crappie season.

What are you throwing?

What color?

What we got on this is a baby mermaid.

Just because it's such a natural finesse presentation.

I mean, it's natural.

It looks like a minnow day in day out.

Never catch fish.

I mean, even if they're aggressive, they're going to bite it.

If they're a little finicky, they're still going about it.

So if you had one lure in your entire tackle box crappie fish.

it'd be this.

Yep.

There you go.

Oh, wow.

That's a good that's a good one right there.

There you go.

Look at that.

What a nice fish.

Now is that one big enough to get you excited tomorrow.

I hope not, I hope not.

That fish probably weigh a pound and a quarter, you know.

And I'm looking for more pound and a half fish.

Next year.

He'll be around next next year.

That fishthere will be one that can win you some money.

Yep.

There we go.

There's a crappie Not a bad crappie not a tournament Crappie.

But, this would have been.

You're trying to put together a limit of fish to eat that'd been what you're looking for right here with some mighty fine eating right there.

Yeah, that's just the absolute average sized crappie that you catch that?

Yeah.

That's just your average.

Just the average run of the mill.

Thousands of them.

See how much them fish move around?

Yeah.

That's not- crappie█s nature's not like that.

They they it's more sit still.

And they kick their tail once or twice and they coast.

So like if you see one moving its tail all the time, it's not a crappie.

It's amazing how that's just hours and hours.

Oh yeah.

It's just time on the water.

Let's say.

Like that fish there kind of looks and shape like a crappie.

Yeah.

That's that would be like a pound and a quarter.

Pound and a half probably.

You think he's a good one?

I'm pretty sure.

Oh, yeah.

That is a nice Kentucky lake crappie right there.

More like what I'm after.

That fish is as thick as it's going to be.

And it's probably 15in long.

I'd say it's 15in long.

Got a big ol█ mouth.

Big ol█ mouth.

That's a really, really good crappie.

So this is, this is a spot you█ll remember for tomorrow, huh?

Yeah.

There's another one on there.

So we'll leave him and maybe tomorrow i█ll catch him.

There you go.

Tell me a little bit about what makes a good crappie rod.

I mean, you want you want something that's got enough backbone to get your fish out of the brush quick.

Don't get tangled up.

You want something that's really sensitive and you want something to cast a light jig.

Lookie hear?

Pretty crappie right there.

That's probably what you think.

12.5in crappie.

Yeah, probably a 12.5, 13 inch, 13in, maybe.

It's pretty good fish.

You know, you can see the structure down there and you see the really big fish moving around.

Now those are like the Asian carp.

This is the structure that we're fishing.

There might be another one right in there possibly.

Got lucky.

But that's exactly how it works right there.

You find your structure.

You figure out how far out you got to cast.

And then you swim this little this little jig right there above them.

Nice fish.

I'll tell you what.

If I was trying to put a mess of fish together, that'd be a really good one for a crappie tournament angler.

That's a throwback.

Well Tony, I'll tell you what I know today is a super busy day for you.

You're out here trying to locate some really big fish.

Not this one but we'll take this.

This is, this is a nice nice fish.

And I appreciate you coming out here and showing me exactly what it takes.

You use a live scope.

And to fish like this.

This is a for me, it's a really a learning experience.

It's definitely time on the water.

But, you know, with enough time on the water, with the unit, you can, you know, you can see it's rewarding.

Yeah.

It's fun.

Well, I'll tell you what, tomorrow you don't have to keep any of this small.

I hope they're all on it.

I hope you are a lot bigger.

But, I'll tell you what.

It's been a lot of fun.

I appreciate it.

I█m going to get this fish back in the water.

All right.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

I had fun.

Being a game warden is a very interesting job.

One day you may be checking hunting and fishing licenses, and the next day, fishing a car out of the lake.

We're out here at Cedar Creek Lake today and Lincoln County.

This is a department owned lake.

We got a call that there was a car in the water.

We're using new equipment to ultimately get the car out of the water.

There's a marker behind me of a buoy that we've marked that has the GPS coordinates of where the car has been located.

So the equipment we're using today is a tow fish sonar, which allows us to GPS plot everything and take pictures as we're going through the water and cover a bigger area.

There it is.

This program we use allows us to plot everything and it allows us to ping, put a to take a picture of each thing.

So right here, we've got a picture of the edge of the boat ramp with GPS coordinates.

And then you can see is these little red dots are each image I just took of a car.

Everything in the water puts off a shadow, so we're able to look from different angles to see.

Yeah, that is confirming that it's a car or a body or stump or whatever.

And it allows us to be able to get all these points and it gives us a GPS coordinate of it to where we can go and type in our phone and then drop a marker on it.

And it's going to get us in a real close area of that object to whether we deploy the ROV or we have to send divers down.

In this case today, we're going to send a set of divers down.

We're getting ready to deploy the ROV, an underwater drone that has multiple propellers on it and a claw on it.

It's going to be ran off a generator.

It has a big monitor on it, along with a computer that you use for the sonar equipment.

There's a process to go through.

You got to run your code to the ROV.

There's a lot of little bitty things you've got to check before you can put it in the water and make sure everything works.

We're going to try to get a picture of the car up close and maybe try to get a license plate off of if we're lucky enough and the water's clear enough.

I'm on the rope.

There's the car.

There it is.

Once Taylor County gets set up, they're going to follow that buoy marker down.

We've got it attached to magnets at the end of it.

They're going to be able to follow that line down to the car.

It's going to help us utilize not wasting so much time.

They're going to hook up some straps and then take a cable out there from the tow truck.

And that way they can hook up to it and get the car out.

This is just an easier way for us not to waste as much time with having divers constantly searching in the water.

This equipment that we're using is allowing us to get that time factor down and not have the divers in the water as long on those hot summer days.

This new equipment that we're training on and getting out in the field is going to be able to help us be able to recover cars or other objects out of the lake in a timely manner.

If we have that worst case scenario of a drowning at all, allow us to go out there and recover that individual for their loved ones quicker by using this equipment to hopefully narrow down the areas that they are and go down and recover that individual or either get the car out in a timely manner once we know it's there and locate it.

Now let's check in and see who else has been out having fun.

And this week's ones that didn't get away.

Kelly Vice caught this nice size channel catfish at the toe water of Karen Lake.

She said chicken liver did the trick.

Nice fish.

Check out this beautiful bluegill that was caught by nine year old Jace Ward of Floyd County.

This fish was caught at Lake Barkley in Trigg County and he caught it on a green nightcrawler.

Nice job.

Check out this beautiful largemouth bass that was caught by three year old Grady Wayne Wilson.

He hooked it and reeled it in all by himself.

What a fish.

Here we have Keaton, Jacob, and Holden Bratcher all holding largemouth bass that were caught at Nolan Lake on the 4th of July.

All these bass were released.

Nice job.

Check out this beautiful smallmouth bass that was caught by Zane Allen.

He was fishing at Lake Cumberland and using a paddle tail swim bait.

One of my favorites.

Nice job!

Check out this beautiful walleye that was caught by Michelle Jackson while fishing at Lake Cumberland.

Great fish.

Talk about a giant large mouth.

Check out this beast that was caught by Bella Wilson.

This fish was caught in Henry County and weighed over 8 pounds.

Nice job!

Check out James Milby, who recently floated the Elkhorn Creek Smallmouth fishing with a fly rod.

Nice fish.

Here we have Kathy Williams with the trophy size striper that she caught while fishing in Cumberland County.

Wow, what a fish!

Here we have 11 year old Sadie Saltzman with a nice bluegill that she caught at a farm pond in Grayson County, Kentucky.

Nice job.

Hey, mark your calendars.

It's that time of year again for our Kentucky Wild Live Show.

This year, It'll be on July the 28th at 7:00.

Hope to see you there.

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.