This week on Kentucky Afield We're breaking out the gigs, but not for frogs.

We'll be jumping in the creek and searching for rough fish.

Next, we'll try our luck on Lake Cumberland fishing for black bass.

Then this year's batch of peregrine falcon chicks have hatched.

So we'll be tagging along with biologists to see what a work up looks like.

It's all next on Kentucky Afield.

Hello and welcome to Kentucky.

A field.

I'm your host, Chad Miles.

Join us as we journey the commonwealth in search of outdoor adventure.

There are many different ways to catch a fish, but one of the more unique and oldest forms of fishing is by fish gigging.

Once you learn the season dates in which fish may be taken, fish gigging is definitely worth giving a try.

We're here in Madison County today, and I'm here with fish biologist Scott Barrett.

Scott, you've been telling me about an old tradition that old timers used to do a lot.

And I know you to as a kid as well, and that is gigging for fish.

Yeah, you know, a lot of people gig for frogs, right?

But gigging for fish is a little is a little different.

It's at night.

So we're going to be wearing waders, are going to be out in the stream.

We're going to have lights out, maybe some lanterns and a fish gig, which is a little different than a frog gig.

Tell me what a fish gig is.

What makes a good one?

You know, you think of a frog just like a like a beefier frog gig.

You want something that's a that's a little more robust.

I have a couple that were hammy down.

One of mine was my grandpa's things.

80 years old, and I still use it today.

And that you want something robust.

You hear a lot of rocks and unlike frogs.

You know, you're kind of poking them in a mud bank.

These guys are in a rock bottom stream, and you're having to put quite a bit of force.

I brought a lantern and a flashlight.

I don't know what's going to work best.

You tell me what I need.

We get down there and that's all we'll use.

Well, let's go.

Let's do it.

Let's go.

You know, I've always been all those people that don't like to get into cold water real slow.

I like to just go all out on this.

Definitely.

It's definitely cool.

I'm glad we decided to our waders.

Here's one.

Got em█.

A gar.

Yeah I think you got him.

There you go.

Kind of hold him up like gravity help you out and there you go.

So this is a long nosed gar right here, right?

Yep.

We're after a rough fish trying to can some fish.

Yeah.

Have you ever came one of these?

I've not canned one.

But it may be a good candidate to try.

Are you willing to give it a try?

Absolutely.

Well, if that's the case, I'll put it on the string and we'll see what we got.

Absolutely.

Here's you a gar Chad.

See him turning toward you.

Coming right at you.

Here, You hold this lantern, you got here.

Yeah.

You got him.

Well, good eye Scott.

Because I didn't need to see that.

Well, looks like we're going to be having gar croquettes.

That's.

That's what it's looking like.

That's what a lot of these fish that we were kind of looking at, hoping to see the real sweet or milder tasting fish.

They're up here to spawn.

Yeah.

And even though it's cold out in the water, which is pretty cold, the water has already been warm enough.

They've kind of moved up.

So we're just catching the last couple lingering fish.

So hopefully we hit a pocket and see some more.

Otherwise, we're going to have to make do with the gar tonight.

That's what it's looking like.

Yeah.

Got him.

There we go.

Well, we'll have a mess before you know it.

A mess of something.

Now he's got a mino in his mouth.

Yep.

Got him.

He's now got a gig in him too.

Well, shad.

He had a Shad in his mouth.

boy, they're all about the same size ain█t they?

Watch yourself Chad, this hole is filled with them.

there might be one.

Just swim right up to you.

Oh, there we go.

Gar hole.

I won't be long.

We brought him to the Gar hole.

There's one right there.

Got one here.

One right in front of you.

Yeah, two of them, miss coming back at you.

See him right here.

There you go.

Yeah, Kind of in one.

Right here, right now.

Oh, You got that one.

We got him.

Here we go.

Got it.

Here comes another one.

Now.

You got him good.

Yes, you did.

Heard that crunch.

It█s unreal how hard they are boney They are.

We have found the honey hole for the gar.

If we can just find some suckers or some catfish like this.

boy, we'd be on to something.

Well, you guys want to go up and about a hundred yards, maybe go back and see if We can't pick those up.

We can do that.

We got to go back that way anyway, so.

All right.

Recently, I went to Lake Cumberland and shared the boat with an old friend, Creed Fowler.

Fishing conditions were tough, but we were able to catch some fish and have a beautiful day on the lake.

This morning, we█re out here on beautiful Lake Cumberland.

I'm fishing with my fishing buddy, Creed Fowler.

Creed, I know you spend a lot of time on Lake Cumberland, you fished it your entire life, and it's May, late May.

Tell me what what phase the bass are in right now?

Well, mostly post spawn.

Water is 72 degrees right now.

It's been running in the sixties through most of April, but we had a pretty warm stretch over the last week or so, and it's got it warmed up in the lower seventies.

So most these fish are post-spawn, I'm sure almost all the small mouth spawns are post-spawn.

There's probably still some large mouth spawning, but they're about done.

Okay, so this time of year, I know you like to fish this time of year, what kind of conditions do you look for or what type of techniques do you like to use?

a lot of different techniques.

You know, as fish start to get active again.

You know, I enjoy fishing top water if they'll they'll hit that kind of stuff.

What I'm hoping today, especially with the sunshine, is that they'll hit a floating worm that, you know, I don't know what it is about the sunny conditions in the floating worm post spawn, but it seems on days like this that that can be a good bite.

And it's a lot of fun, too.

But, you know, plastics, you know sometimes if it's tough to get out an ned rig or shakey head something like that.

we're going to be throwing in and around areas where there should be some fry.

And hopefully we're going to be potentially finesse fishing.

But if we have to power fish then we will, right?

Yeah.

All right.

Well, let's give it a go.

Here he is.

Got him.

There you go.

Ah a little fish.

That's all right.

It looks like a spot.

A little Kentucky, yup.

Oh, there he goes.

Right there.

Hey.

He was on it Oh he█s a little one, you know, that Felt like a fairly small fish.

And when he hit it, I normally don't like to wait, but these little fish to get to the hook, sometimes you got to let them swallow it a little bit.

Another Kentucky.

Kentucky spotted bass, little bitty bitty, just a little flick of that bait.

Yeah, Hopefully they get a lot bigger today.

Oh, man.

Big hook set , little fish.

I'm throwing this little crawfish imitator just kind of following in behind him a little bit.

This fish hit your lure.

I see why.

I see why you missed him.

Because it ain't much to it.

But you know what?

Trying to figure out what they're going to eat.

That's part of the game, right?

That█s right.

Oh.

Here is a better fish.

I don█t know what this is.

Oh it█s a catfish.

What do you know?

Channel catfish.

That was not what I was expecting.

Yeah.

How often do you catch a channel catfish on a crawfish imitating soft plastic?

I█ve caught them on a lot of different bass baits.

But.

But not that often.

I wish it was a bass.

But you know what?

If you wanted to.

If you wanted a catfish sandwich, that right there is about the perfect eating size channel.

You know?

yeah.

You got it.

Another spot.

What we've been catching is spots and catfish.

Yeah.

But you know what?

There's still fun, especially on a spinning rod.

Check out that gar right there.

I'm going to try casting this worm over it.

Oh, that was pretty crazy.

Oh, my gosh.

do we got here?

Is that a smallmouth?

I think its a small mouth.

Yeah, just a little one.

Yeah.

Another little fish.

A little bit better, though, than what we█ve been catching.

But that aint saying much is it?

Well we've got em█ to 13 inches now.

Maybe Maybe we're about to put on something, though.

It█s going in the right direction.

Yep, that's right.

Got him?

Yup.

That█s a little better fish.

Smallmouth.

There you go.

I think, isn█t that?

It's a large mouth.

Sure is.

It█s a large mouth.

Sure is.

What he hit?

Net rig?

So is that fish?

Was that fish on the bottom or up top a little bit.

Up top.

Okay.

And that fish is.

Looks like it's a that's a spot right?

I think its a largemouth.

No that's a spot, it█s got the tongue patch.

It's a spot, but it really kind of looks like a it's got a lot of small mouth color in it.

Almost looks like a small mouth bass.

Huh.

A little better one.

A little better fish.

Yeah.

If you fish Cumberland, everybody knows this lake can be extremely good and it can be tough.

And today we found some fish.

We just didn't find the right ones, did we?

Didn█t find any big ones today.

But you know what?

I haven't spent too many days on Cumberland that I regret.

It was a good day, a beautiful day on the water.

We just didn't catch the right fish.

But, hey, that's part of it, isn█t it?

That█s fishin█ .

The peregrine falcon is the world's fastest bird, and there are several nesting pairs right here in Kentucky, one of which is at the LG&E facility on the Ohio River.

You can tune in and see these chicks, which just recently hatched live on YouTube.

Peregrine falcon, Is I'm going to go with the fastest animal in North America.

It can dive at speeds of well over 200 miles an hour.

They are bird eaters.

They're like streamlined jet fighters.

Peregrine falcons eat birds.

And so they are extremely fast fliers so that they can catch their prey on the wing.

They like to live at these power generating facilities because there's a lot of pigeons and starlings here.

And oftentimes they're welcomed here because the utility companies like to see pigeons and starlings knocked back a little bit.

Their wingspan is three feet or so, not a real large bird, but they can have a large personality that makes them seem bigger than they actually are.

If you go back far enough, peregrine falcons were essentially extinct, extinct in Kentucky.

And the last known Peregrine Falcon Nest was found in 1939 I believe.

And then until the 1990s, they were functionally extinct in Kentucky.

The decline was really for a lot of reasons Habitat loss is always an issue, but we were also still seeing the effects of the insecticide DDT that had been used and caused their egg shells to thin and for birds that only reproduce one time a year, it's pretty catastrophic if your nest fails.

And in Kentucky we didn't have a nesting pair much after the 1940s.

In the eighties all the way up until the early 2000s there was an effort to reintroduce the species to Kentucky called hacking.

This is where you would take chicks and raise them in captivity and then release them as subadults into the wild, just hoping that they would nest somewhere throughout the state.

The first actual nesting pair was in 1997 in Louisville.

There was a bridge here that they laid eggs on and then from there they kind of just exploded back throughout the state.

And that recovery is mostly attributable to the companies that help support these nesting boxes that the birds are using.

LG and E was one of the earliest kind of partners with Kentucky Fish and Wildlife to reestablish them in Kentucky.

This was a really early nest box was installed in 2004 I believe.

They moved in shortly after was installed, and then they laid their first eggs and had a successful clutch in 2006.

It's been so interesting to watch over the years.

Each nesting season is incredibly different.

The Falcon that's currently nesting at Mill Creek, based on her markings and her colorings, our employees and the KDFWR avian biologist have tracked her since 2006.

An employee affectionately named her Diana after the goddess of the hunt.

Since then, she's been Diana all through these years.

As a mom myself, it is so interesting to see some of the habits and the activities, whether it's protecting the eggs or, you know, going out and getting food, watching the chicks sort of compete for her attention.

You know, those are just things that for me personally I relate to as a mother myself.

We're kind of a backup to help this banding process go smoothly for the chicks, both the male and the female especially the female, it's going to be really, really protective.

So the team that we have here on the roof is essentially bait.

We're to serve as a distraction to get the female out of the box.

And what that will do is allow the team that has gone up into the stack to insert a really thin barrier between the opening of the box and the inside of the stack.

And that way it excludes mom and dad for the short time that the biologists will be in there and banding the chicks nicely done.

We'll open up the box, we pull the chicks out, we put them in a little cardboard box that has cubbies in it, and then that just keeps them from getting too close to each other or hurting themselves accidentally.

Oh, you're the cute one, aren't you?

We have to come during a certain time window because we have just about five days when the chicks are an appropriate age for us to band them.

All right.

Maybe one male one female?

Yep.

Their bone structure is just about full grown at this age, but they're going to grow a lot of muscles and feathers before they learn to fly.

About two weeks from now.

She's on to us now.

Yeah, I'd say so.

Right now, let's see, right now, Mom is sitting on the landing pad and Dad is circling around.

Thankfully, the biologists work really quickly and make sure they minimize the stress to the adults, but they'll probably take turns switching off on the perch and just keeping an eye on things until they can open it back up.

Gloves for getting them out?

I probably would if I were you.

They bite pretty hard at this age.

We'll pull them out individually.

One of us will hold them the other person will attach leg bands to both legs.

We cover their faces just to keep them nice and calm through the process.

This one looks big like it's probably a female.

Females are bigger than the males.

They have bigger feet, bigger legs.

They also have a lower pitched voice.

Yeah, definitely a female.

We put a band on each leg.

One of them is the same type of band that you'll see on Canada Geese around her neighborhood.

It's got a nine digit number on it.

That number is unique for all birds banded nationwide.

All across the United States.

People are looking for these leg bands and they report them to a national database, essentially.

And then they let us know when our birds are resighted.

So we know that they're living.

We keep track of how many young they're producing as well.

Band locks on their legs so they can't take it off.

And this way we can really keep a close eye on the population.

We know what survivorship is going to look like for individuals.

If we have all of our banded birds that just aren't being resighted we know that they probably aren't making it.

The other one is the color band that differentiates the birds when we look at them in a spotting scope, it's got a number and a letter on it and different colors.

So that allows us to just see the bird or take a picture of the bird and tell that it's different from another bird.

These birds will move around.

I mean, they won't necessarily stay in Kentucky.

In fact, we've had birds go throughout the Midwest.

It's interesting to find out if a bird shows up somewhere else and they can read the band number.

We find out, Oh, that's one of ours that came from Kentucky.

We also test them for a disease that's kind of prevalent in Kentucky called Trichomoniasis.

They get it from the pigeons that they eat and it causes a really bad, inflamed throat.

We test them for it because if they have it, we can treat them for it in the nest.

And like to do everything we can to enhance their survival usually isn't a problem to get their mouth open to do this swab.

It's just like a strep throat swab.

All right this bird is done.

Since 1999, more than 170 falcons have been banded from the nest boxes managed by KDFWR at our generating stations.

So these birds are 25 days old.

They hatched from an egg 25 days ago.

They'll start flying about two weeks from now.

So these brown feathers that are growing out from under the downy plumage are are going to be what they look like when they're ready to fly.

Boy, that one's considerably less chill than the last one.

When I started with Peregrine Falcon restoration, there were no nesting pairs.

There was also no digital cameras and no internet.

So what we had to do was largely by watching through binoculars or spotting scopes and trying to learn what we can.

Now the technology is much better, but the Mill Creek Falcon Cam has brought Falcon Biology is something that anybody can watch.

I mean, they can watch when the first eggs are laid, try to figure out when the first eggs are hatched, get to see the growth of the chicks, get to see what mom and dad are bringing in to feed the chicks.

It is so fun.

Even if you're not a bird watcher, this is something that's super entertaining and it's helped us get some really valuable information on on when nest timing happens in Kentucky and what they're being fed.

Our employees are so dedicated to providing a safe space for the Peregrine Falcons at our generating stations where we have nest box installed and they really just enjoy being a part of this experience at our generating stations.

All right.

So he's going to lose all his white downy feathers over the next couple of weeks.

And he'll be flying.

He'll be brown instead of gray and like his parents are, and then he'll gradually turn gray over his first year.

It's not uncommon to have eggs that don't hatch.

We'll have several each year throughout the States.

What we do is we collect them and then we freeze them either something to a field museum in Chicago or the Cincinnati Natural History Museum and they add those to the reference collection so that researchers can go look at those as references, you know, for whatever project they're working on.

We're very grateful to receive funding each year from LG&E and KU That goes directly to our Peregrine Falcon activities, helps buy us equipment and helps pay for our technicians time to do this work.

We launch the Falcon webcam with KDFWR in 2013, and what really started as a unique project has grown into an award winning initiative.

Oh, they just opened the box.

Oh they did.

Yep.

Oh look at them.

All is well, all is well.

With environmental stewardship and empowering education being such a key focus for us, we really saw over time that this was such an incredible opportunity because we've heard over the years, for instance, that teachers are tuning in to the webcam during the nesting season in their classrooms as part of our environmental stewardship to help protect the Peregrine Falcons by providing a safe area for them to nest.

It also allows viewers to tune in in near real time and watch the season unfold.

It's been an overwhelming success.

You know, when I started, we had zero Peregrines nesting in Kentucky and now, wow, there's more than we had historically.

So it's been an overwhelming conservation success story.

Here we have Andrew Probus with a 19 inch largemouth that he caught on a Cinco at a friend's, like in Campbells Burg, Kentucky.

Nice job.

Here we have Kurt Devine at Berkeley Light catching a crappie on a spider rig.

He said this was his first one on a spider rig, but I bet it's not his last.

Check out 15 year old Caden Sipe with this huge blue catfish.

This fish was caught on 8 pound test.

Crappie fishing.

Said it took him over an hour and a half to get him in.

The fish was then released.

Nice job.

Here we have Jeffrey Scott Wells with his grandson, Garrett, and a ton of bluegill.

Caught from Barron River Lake.

Nice job.

Here we have nine year old Jarrett Bolen with his first long beard.

This turkey was taken while hunting in LaRue County.

Nice job.

Here we have Parker Pritchard with a nice, 2 pound crappie caught at Kentucky lake.

This was his biggest crop to date.

Nice job.

Here we have Robert Mason-Dixon with a huge 50 pound blue catfish caught at Titusville Lake.

This fish was caught on cut bait and was released.

Nice job.

Check out Grayson Bailey with this huge crappie she caught in a pond in Hart County.

Wow.

What a fish.

Summer is here, making this the perfect time to plan your next kayak trip.

For more information, check out Bluewater Trails or download the free fish boat KY app to choose a stream near you.

And remember, hunting and fishing on private property is a privilege.

Always ask permission and thank the landowner.

Till next week.

I'm your host, Chad.

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