This week on Kentucky Afield We█re trying our hand at one of the most exciting fishing opportunities in the state, top water striped bass.

Next, we█ll make our way to the hatchery, and see where Kentucky█s striped bass come from.

Then, we█re improving the land for native wildlife and we█re doing so in a whole new way.

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.

Every year, in May, usually at night, the shad spawn starts to take place.

And if you can be on the water when those stripers come up and start hitting top water well that█s a night you█ll never forget.

Tonight we're down here on Lake Cumberland.

I'm here with my good friend Jared.

How you doing?

Good.

Great.

You know, we're going to try to do something tonight that we have done quite a bit.

And with mixed success.

I have to say, sometimes it's like the greatest night of fishing in your entire life.

Sometimes not so good.

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of that's how fishing goes.

But this particular way of fishing is a lot of times feast or famine and that is, it█s May..

So what's going on this month?

Well, we got, everything spawning and, you know, tonight, looking at that shad spawn, see if we can, take advantage of that.

Shad spawn, alewifes.

This lake has a bunch of alewifes, and a lot of people never seen alewife, if you█re ever out in the wintertime.

And you look at your transducer, you see these massive balls of bait that are 60, 70, 80, 100ft deep.

There's this little bait fish species, and they get about this big.

They don't really use the bank any time of year except for right now.

They come to spawn and they do it at night.

Well, predator fish follow up, right?

Sure.

you know, when you're up and there█s a couple hits like, how do you know where the shad are spawning?

for me, Sound like, take a bowling ball and chuck it in the lake.

Like, what's that over there?

And I've heard that before.

You know, when they blow up on them that, you know, even the large mouth.

Small mouth or the stripers when they hit it literally does sound like you threw a bowling ball in the water, but you can also hear the shad can█t yah?

flickering and, yeah, and the moonlight.

Sometimes you'll see them working up on the bank.

Sometimes you'll even hook them.

Yeah, when you're real and real slow, you'll even hook these little alewifes, and they'll come up by the thousands and thousands.

So before it gets too dark, because we're going to have to run infrared.

The crazy thing about these fish is they are lights sensitive.

the moon is going to be coming up here in a little while, and we're going to look for the shaded banks.

We're going to fish the darkest territories we can find.

But I'll tell you what I like to do.

Let's go to the bank, even though way too early, and make a few casts and kind of demonstrate the technique that we're going to be using tonight.

And then from then we're going to just go do a little bass fishing and and wait till we start hearing some action.

you go with that?

I'm great.

Let's make it happen.

All right.

So you can see how close we are to the bank.

And we're parallel in the bank.

Both of us are going to be fishing out the front of the boat.

And the idea here is that you move the bait as slow as you possibly can, as close to the bank as you possibly can.

So what we'll be doing is Jared will be casting on the inside, and he'll make his cast.

about time.

He gets about halfway in.

I'm going to cast out We're just going to go down these banks easing and down these banks.

Yo, yo.

Casting out in front of each other.

And that's that's the process.

Always close to the shore.

Now, you can see right now we're both working barely subsurface baits.

It all depends on what the fish want.

Look at that one right there.

Brand new one.

Dude, that might be the one we need tonight Chad.

What are you going to do?

I'm going to jump on the bank.

No...

When the tackle stores are closed on your way down here.

Right here.

Over this way bub.

my way, right?

Yeah.

Shaking the tree, boss.

Shaking the tree.

Shakin█ it over here.

Shakin█ a tree boss.

Hey, that's what we've been looking for.

It's not a sliver.

It's a long, a long a it's a big, big.

There we go.

Hey, hey, Hey, we're not what we used to be, dude.

Unless not tested.

Oh, yes.

that's quite the find that There might be what puts them in the boat tonight.

And it might be the only thing we put in the boat.

It could be.

Oh my word.

Wow.

That was either a giant fish or a Yeti's throwing rocks on.

Yeah, I'm going for the Yeti because there ain't nothing in the water eating.

cloud cover.

Perfect.

Oh my goodness.

Was that on your line?

No, I'm right there by it tho.

Oh, golly gee, that's that same one.

It█s where we█ve heard three or four of them right here.

We get many more blow ups that are kind of in the area, and we don't get a bite.

We need to think about changing lures, because if we're throwing where the fish are feeding, we're not getting bites.

Then we need to change up.

bone color bait or something.

Oh, there he is.

I got him.

Sweet Fish on.

I█ll grab the net.

That.

That fish just smoked.

My bait and I lost him.

And you got him.

Still got him hooked up?

Yep.

You ready for him?

Yeah.

Let's go.

Hey, hey.

Nice little striper.

There we go.

Quick release in the net.

I like perfect Hit spot lock, we got these fish blowing up all around us.

How many have we missed about?

We've missed about four in a row.

Finally.

Thing sucked it down, and you were able to get a hook in him.

You know, we've been throwing a bunch of different colors and it changes.

For whatever reason, we've been throwing, blue backs and silvers and nothing.

They're blowing up all around us, but not under out bait.

We went to a bone color.

And we've had about 3 or 4 strikes in about five minutes.

Yeah.

Let's get these lights turned off.

Let's get these lures back out, because this bite window might not last forever.

There you go.

That's probably in that, 26 inch range.

Yeah, 24, 26 inch.

Nice job.

Pretty fish.

Yes, sir.

Nice job.

Oh, here we go.

Got it.

Yep.

All right.

You got it.

I never even heard that one hit.

Oh, yeah.

You know, we've been hearing him come up and blow up that one there.

Just all of a sudden.

Just took the rod out out of my hand.

Never heard that strike at all.

Come on.

That█s a nice one.

There you go.

Two and one.

The last four minutes.

Yeah.

You know, we fish for three hours.

Never had a bite.

Had four bites.

Change colors.

Yep.

Bam!

Two in the boat.

They got an attitude don█t they?

They do.

Now.

Here we go.

Let me get this.

Fight like crazy.

I mean, these are saltwater fish.

If they weren't here landlocked in Lake Cumberland, and they fight like saltwater fish, they're actually really, really good to eat.

Oh, but, but they fight like a like a saltwater fish.

Look at that.

All right, so this end of the board's 22, that was about 24in long.

All right.

Hey, maybe we're on to something.

Let's, let's get the lights off and get back after it.

Guess what.

That 1:30, 2:00 hour.

Here we are.

I hope we didn't waste all of our bite window casting in the wrong color at them.

Hey, that was two nice.

That's good eating right there.

I'll tell you what.

I slowed my retrieve down.

That's what I've done.

Almost.

Yeah.

To nonexistent.

Just barely creeping.

I mean, when you think you're really in it to slow, slow down.

It's amazing how slow they want this thing.

There we go.

Is that you?

Yeah.

You got him?

Yeah.

I heard him slap.

Good one?

yeah.

Yeah, it's the best one yet, I believe.

Oh, my.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

You█re not having fun are yah?

I got something real here.

You are not having any fun yet.

Get us out of here.

I'm take taking out that deep water.

We ain█t in no hurry.

Oh!

Oh, boy.

They're all about the same size.

These are all probably the same year class fish.

Look there.

Hard fighting.

It's hard to describe how fight, how hard they fight.

I mean, when you go, okay, that█s a 5 pound fish.

I've got a lot of 5 pound Largemouth.

But yeah, it ain█t the same game is it?

Yeah.

It's nice.

Wow.

Nice fish.

So that's the third keeper in seven minutes.

Yeah.

So now the limit is two per angler.

So let's put this one in.

Oh, Look at there.

This we were talking about earlier.

You know, this fish did not try to eat that bait.

That is exactly what is spawning right now.

And this little this little fish came up and he was trying to spawn with my bait.

And every now and then, these little hooks are so sharp, you literally hook them.

But that right there is what these stripers are eating.

About the same size of the bait.

And they tried to spawn with it and got hooked They█re on fire right now.

A double would be fun.

Did you hear that?

Yeah.

Hey, I'm gonna fire out just a little off that point.

Oh, you got him?

Got him.

Oh, my goodness, he's over here at the bank.

Got him?

Yeah.

Still?

Yeah.

I don't know I got him, he's got me, somebody got somebody.

Something's happening.

I don't think this one is as big.

Well that thing just jump four foot out the air.

You don't normally see stripers jump.

That one there decided it was time to come out and show himself.

I mean, it just jumped.

I was going to jump on the bank.

I got my drag set semi loose because I've only got 15 pound on here, so.

If we have to horsing around for a little bit, then that'll just be okay.

There█s another keep.

Dude, they're all exactly the same size, same year class.

Well, Jared, if we'd have figured this out, we'd been home in bed.

You know, the crazy thing is, is sometimes you come out here and you get all the fishing reports, and we heard people catching them on blue and black and silver, and we came out here and threw that.

Yeah.

And we heard fish blowing up around us, and we casted that bait for three hours.

We switched to the bone.

We've had eight bites, boated four, hooked two others, and now we're done.

We got our limit.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, and we got our limit in ten minutes.

In ten minutes and ten minutes.

Yeah, that was awesome.

I thought, I'm pretty sure that one is going to keep Every one of these are the same year class fish.

So I don't know the age of this fish, but believe it or not, this is probably about a three year old fish.

And like I said, when you start thinking about this fish getting up to 50 pounds and 40in long, you think you could land one on that 15 pound test?

That's big.

You█d have to get out here in this deep water.

We'll put this one on the board.

But I'm pretty sure this one going to keep as well.

Probably 25in.

Well, that was fun.

You know what?

May, close as you can get to the bank, slow as you can pull a topwater bait, get your drag set right and hold on and bring plenty of friends, because limit of two goes pretty fast when they're biting.

We█re gonna have to tell the cameraman to put that thing down and get his two.

Yep.

Oh, man.

And tonight, there's the bait.

Tonight it was just this long A.

Nothing special.

We got her done.

We got her done Thanks for the invite.

let's put them up.

Go get em cleaned up and get in bed.

Let's go.

If you have caught a striper in the state of Kentucky, you may be shocked to know that fish came to Kentucky as a little bitty minnow.

It was raised and released into our waterways for you to catch.

I'm here today with Scott Barrett.

Scott, How you doing?

Doing good.

We█re here today to talk about stripers, yeah stripers.

That's been an interesting topic here in the state of Kentucky And I█ll tell you what they go in several bodies of water, obviously Lake Cumberland being the one that gets a good majority of our stripers.

Tell me the process of what you guys do and how do you take a striper?

Because it's such a unique fish in the wild.

You guys are doing this at a fish hatchery, but that's a fish that's been some of it█s time in saltwater, right?

Right.

we have them in one eye acre ponds.

we will start those bonds draining at least 24 hours in advance.

And we'll creek the pond down slowly.

So it gives all the fish time to kind of come down towards the deeper end.

And our ponds are they start out shallow and they end up, they, they have a gradual slope down into this catch basin we'll crack them open, drain them down and once we get them all down in the kettle there, that point we can get in with the with the seine and seine those out.

And we have a lot of help down there.

We have some big tubs like garbage cans you can imagine, we flip of the seine into those cans and then we have employees carry them up the steps.

We have the smaller tanks on our pickup trucks and they will pour them into there.

We have O2 rolling on those tanks and some good clean water.

when we get down we'll take those up the hatchery and into our main building.

There in the tank room and we got a big pipe that you, you hook up to the smaller tank that lets us shoot them off into these tanks.

We have eight individual concrete runs in the hatchery so we can shoot them off the truck into those runs.

And at that point we can begin to process them, we█ll do sample counts on each individual size and get an idea of how many per pound for each size class that we can weigh them and put them onto larger hauling trucks to go out, you know, either that afternoon or the next day.

A lot of the time.

It's an amazing process.

when I hear you walking through all the time, effort and energy of feeding and draining and grading, it's like having a big garden.

But you know, your output is is fish live fish, same principle.

It's farming, but we're raising fish, you know, We've been talking about stripers, striped bass, and priority one is always Lake Cumberland.

That's an area you've been working for how many years now?

17 years.

17 years.

So how many years have we been stocking Lake Cumberland now?

We've been stocking doing the experimental stockings all the way back into the fifties and sixties.

what makes Lake Cumberland like priority one such a perfect destination for stripers?

So striped bass need a cool oxygenated water and Lake Cumberland being as deep it as it is, has a lot of cold water available.

And so we've got this two layer fishery where we've got our warm water species like black bass and crappie and bluegill in the center.

But then we also have a really cold oxygenated water below that that we can have a good walleye fishery, a great striped bass fishery.

And so that's what makes Cumberland is so awesome is we do have both of those features.

So when you guys go to stock them how do you decide what part of the lake do you have to be near deep water.

I mean, do they do really well the first couple of years not being in certain areas, or do you spread them out from dam to headwaters, we actually spread them out.

We have ten different locations that we stock around Lake Cumberland.

We don't like to put all of our eggs in one basket, so we stock about 50,000 at the ten different locations.

Okay, so we█re doing 500,000 fish total in Lake Cumberland each year now.

Okay, So three year old fish, that first one and 500,000 you're talking about, these fish are legal, right?

At this point, Yes.

So any fish like the fish we stock in 2023, they're going to be legal size going into the end of 2025.

Okay.

They're very fast growers in Lake Cumberland, it doesn't take them long to reach 22 inch size limit.

I really appreciate all your hard, hard work and efforts.

We like doing it.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Wildlife biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife are always looking for new, effective methods for controlling invasive plants on our WMA█s.

We're here on Rock Castle River Wildlife Management Area in Pulaski County.

The prior land use on this property was strip mining and during that, especially during the reclamation stage.

Oftentimes, landowners will use fast growing species to put back on the landscape.

In some instances, especially previously, they used species that are non-native invasive species.

So in June of 2023, we started a fairly extensive invasive species removal project.

We rented a dozer and actually spent a month dozing out autumn olive, bush honeysuckle, multi-flora rose, and basically just piling up these invasive species.

To eliminate or reduce the amount of autumn olive specifically on this property.

Doing one thing alone is not going to be the answer.

We've got to follow that up with other types of management practices.

So prescribed fire is another tool that we're using and then of course this herbicide treatment and we're trying to adapt, you know, as things evolve and technology is coming along.

And so we had the money to go ahead and fund this project to get the helicopter out here, do the aerial spraying.

We did 330 acres of that, and then we followed that up with 65 acres of the drone treatment out here today.

It's just a really good way to get a good coverage of herbicide across the area.

And it's a different technique, something that we haven't done in the past.

So we can compare those two practices and just see which one is going to be the most efficient moving forward.

Non-native invasive species are really good at establishing quickly on the landscape.

They can reproduce very quickly.

They can also spread very rapidly and pretty much cover a landscape and smother out all of the native species.

If you don't get every single stitch of root out of that autumn olive, it will re sprout.

So the helicopter coming in, basically what we're doing is we can spray 333 acres fairly quick.

We can get a landscape level impact for the habitat and for the local wildlife.

So you're talking about a very large impact really quick.

Autumn olive is one of the most hearty plants and hard to kill plants out there.

And he was able to run that thing with 95 gallons of herbicide in it, and he was treating about 20 to 25 acres at a time.

And then he would run that herbicide out, come over and land it on top of the tanker truck, refill it.

So we could see we were getting a good coverage of herbicide that's being treated.

Herbicide application with a helicopter has allowed us to address multiple acres.

In the project that we've done this week that would have taken us months on the ground if we were spraying it via a tractor or if we were going in and actually cutting those down.

So it's much, much more time efficient and then also cost efficient when you look at all the cost, that is rolled into there.

So helicopter application is definitely something that is going to benefit us at being able to address large acres of this species over time.

We're also spraying with the drone and the drone is actually going to be used to spray a different type of invasive called sericea lespedeza.

It's more of an herbaceous weed that grows in these poor soils.

And what it does is it basically takes over as well.

It outcompetes all your native species and has zero benefit for wildlife.

The drone is going to treat a smaller area, but for situations like this, we had 65 acres here today.

We could have never contracted that chopper to come over and do that because it's not worth their time.

So drone comes over.

They got a 25 gallon tank on it, you know, much smaller than what the chopper is.

It's a slower process, but this guy's flying like 13 feet above the vegetation.

Same set up.

He's got a tablet.

We can see the transects he█s flying.

We keep the herbicide where we want it.

And you can see in the video, I mean, he's getting awesome coverage on everything that we're spraying.

And so it's another tool in the toolbox for us.

If we're treating a smaller area, we can call on the drone to come in and do it.

Or if we've got these bigger acreage plots, three, four or 500 acres or more, I think that's at a place where we want to use the chopper.

Not only are we addressing that acreage here on Rock Castle River WMA, but we're also looking to expand this and have done that on some of our WMAs in eastern Kentucky as well.

The landscape is extremely similar and unfortunately it's inundated with these non-native invasive species such as autumn olive and sericea lespedeza.

The next step is we're actually going to come in next week, once some of these weeds start dying down, and we're going to drill native warm season grasses and forbs.

We have a lot of quail in this area and there's not very good nesting cover or escape cover for those quail, which is what you need.

So we're going to come back in and plant some native warm season grasses, which acts as their nesting cover, and then some forbs as well, which brings in those insects.

It allows for good brooding habitat for young poults and it creates great browse for deer as well.

So it's kind of a one stop shop.

Once we get some native cover on the ground, that's actually going to be a fire tolerant species and it's going to allow us to run some hot fires through this.

The thought process is that we're going to be able to set back these invasives over time.

That way we can provide better habitat for all of our wildlife species.

12 year old Noah Stags caught this nice 30-inch Blue Catfish while fishing in Floyd County.

Great fish.

Check out these young ladies with a nice mess of bluegill caught from a farm pond in Mason County.

Pictured here we have Allison Wells and Delaney England.

Congratulations.

Here we have Lucas Barnes with his first turkey, that he took t year while hunting in Wayne Coun Nelson Townsend said this is the biggest crappie he█s ever caught in his entire life.

This fish was 16-inches long.

Nice job.

Easton Walker is proud to have this nice largemouth bass that he caught while fishing in a farm pond.

Congratulations.

Liam Carrol, who is 8 years old went fishing with his dad, Jason on Elkhorn Creek and caught this green sunfish.

Nice job.

June is a great month to grab a kayak and a fishing pole, and do some exploring.

I suggest checking out Blue Water Trails at FW.KY.GOV for more information, or a location close to you.

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

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.