This week on Kentucky Afield We're surprising a young fisherman who loves the show with a spotted and white bass fishing trip on Nolin Lake.

Next, we're in the field with biologist and we're learning about this year's goose roundup.

Then we'll beat the heat and catch fish by heading out on the water for some night fishing.

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.

Thanks to YouTube, we have many new young Kentucky Afield fans all across the nation.

Recently, I got to meet up with one of those young fans and surprise him with a fishing trip.

Well, this morning, we're going to do something fun.

We're out here on my home lake, Nolin Lake.

And this morning I'm going to go pick up a young kid who has no idea that we're coming to get him.

He's a gentleman I met about two years ago, and he absolutely loves to fish.

He's 12 years old.

His name is Evan.

He's from central Indiana.

Super good kid.

Huge fan of Kentucky Afield.

And I just got word that he is standing on his dock hoping that the white bass come up this morning.

We've already okayed it with his parents, so we're going to pull up.

He has no idea we're coming.

I don't know what is the reaction will be.

We're going to pick him up and take him fishing for a day on Kentucky Afield, and hopefully it's a day he'll never forget.

And we'll catch plenty of fish.

You catch anything?

You seen him in the jumps yet?

Well guess what?

You want to go with me?

Your dad knows you're going today's your day man.

We're going to go out and try to catch some white bass and you're going fishing on Afield if you want to go.

You want to go?

Have you got any fish yet?

Well, let's get in the boat and run up the up the lake a long way.

See if we can locate some more fish.

We already saw the bald eagles already caught him a white bass this morning.

See if we can't go have some luck.

Hop on in.

So, Evan, how old are you now?

12.

And how long, how long you've been fishing?

Maybe eight years now.

Okay.

Yeah.

So you started really young, you know?

I know you watch a lot of the Kentucky Afield segments because you're always asking me about them.

You don't get Kentucky Afield up where you live do you?

No.

So how do you watch it?

We have a lake house down in Kentucky that we just we me and my dad get up early in the morning and we just watch the show.

Okay.

So you record them?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So tell me, which ones have been some of your favorite shows?

Well, I like the ones where you go and you go to, like, Green River and stuff and you go catch smallmouth bass.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, well, it's going to be a good time.

I'm seeing a couple of ones and twos jumping, but not like big groups of them.

I'll tell you what, let's cast a rod out and troll for a minute.

And while we do this, we'll just wait and see if we see him start coming up.

But I know there's fish right here.

We're going to move and see if we can't find the fish.

And we're going to be fishing while we're while we're looking.

Oh, yeah.

Here we go.

We've got a couple we're going to troll you right through those.

So get ready.

Our lures should be getting close.

Here you go.

You want real this one in?

What do you got there buddy?

Largemouth bass.

Largemouth huh?

Or a spotted.

Oh yeah, it is a largemouth bass.

Hey, that's a fun catch.

Is not exactly what we're after today, but we'll take that.

If we start catching a bunch of those, we'll move.

All right.

But we'll try it.

We'll see what happens.

I'll tell you what.

Let's turn around, troll right back through there again and see if we catch two largemouth, three largemouth, we'll go find some white bass.

He's super hot right now.

Oh, man.

That water temperature is literally 87 degrees.

It's like bath water.

It is like bath water.

Here you go.

Let's just turn, make a cast and try it again.

Here we go.

Oh it's a largemouth again.

You can reel it.

This might be a spot.

Nope, Largemouth.

Nice fish.

A little bit.

A little bit better.

Nice one.

There you go, largemouth bass out here in the jumps.

Tell you, tells you that's where all the bait is at.

Yeah.

Oh, here we go.

Here you go.

You want this one?

White bass.

White bass.

White bass.

It's another, I think it might be, it's a white bass.

White bass, white bass, white bass.

That's what we've been looking for.

Nice job, buddy.

Hey, we're out here in the middle.

I know that's where they're at.

There you go.

White bass.

Now, you caught a couple of these off your dock of the day, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's a good sign.

Sure is.

All right.

There you go.

Nice.

Nice job.

Thanks.

You want to turn it loose?

I know you're a really good caster on that rod and reel.

We're going to try one more spot and they may be black bass, but a spot that we may be able to get in there and let you make some cast and catch some that way.

Oh, I got one.

Uh oh, fish on?

Largemouth.

That's pretty good little fish.

Pulling.

He's pulling hard isn't he?

Yeah.

It's a spotted bass, look at that.

That's a good sized spotted bass.

Nice job, buddy.

That's a good one.

Pretty fish.

There he goes.

Well, Evan, it's only 9:00 and it is getting hot.

What do you think, you want to want to call it quits?

Yeah.

I'll tell you what.

Fish are still jumping, but it is so hot it's hard to be in the boat.

But before we go in, I want to take you back to this creek, show you something really pretty.

This is going to be cool.

So what do you think about this?

So this is a good place to come when it's really, really hot.

I know.

Feels cool doesn't it?

Lot's of shade.

lot of shade.

When we've had more rain.

There's usually a little waterfall coming off right here and I want to come here and cool off, but I don't believe we got enough enough water to do it today.

Well, I'll tell you what, that was a fun day of fishing.

It's hot out there, though.

I brought you back here.

This little spot, because it's kind of a really pretty location that's also cool in temperature and it's a good place to come have a drink and a granola bar, what do you think?

It's been a lot of fun.

You and I get to fish quite a bit together.

Today wasn't the best, but I had a great time and I really appreciate you coming out with me.

Welcome.

Thanks for having me.

It was a good time.

We'll do it again soon.

How about that?

Sounds good.

Well, fall is right around the corner, which means that deer season is also right around the corner, with archery season starting here in the state of Kentucky on September the 3rd.

So I'm here with Noelle Thompson, who is our Deer program coordinator.

And, you know, last year was an interesting season here in the state of Kentucky with our surveillance zone for CWD being implemented.

Tell me a little bit about how that went and what will be going forth with next season.

Right, so after Tennessee detected CWD just eight miles from our Kentucky border, we created a five county surveillance zone.

In there we banned the baiting of deer and also carcass transportation.

So we allowed deboned meat to exit our surveillance zone.

It just can't be a whole carcass or the high risk part.

And so whole carcasses or high risk parts could not leave our five county surveillance zone.

We also created mandatory check stations during early and late muzzleloader seasons, and also modern gun season.

Whoever hunted during those seasons had to come get their deer tested for CWD.

We will still have mandatory check stations, but that will only be during modern gun season and the weekends of Modern Gun.

So for the first weekend it'll be Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

Second weekend, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and then third weekend, just Saturday and Sunday.

And you can always go on our hunting guide or our website to get those exact dates.

So testing, testing was focused on that five county area, but it really was statewide.

So we had drop off freezers, which we're going to have again this year, where you can get your deer tested regardless of what county you're hunting here in the state of Kentucky?

Freezers are already out and they'll be available throughout the entire deer season.

Which is a great resource, and it's also a really good way for us to collect additional data across the state, not just from five counties.

Tell me how many tests were done statewide last year.

Right, so we tested 7500 deer across the state with over half of those being in our surveillance zone.

Okay, and out of that 7500, we had zero positive tests come back?

Right, Kentucky still does not have CWD detected in the state.

So for a person that wants to hunt and hunt in the state of Kentucky again this year, there's some great resources out there that can really help you navigate the CWD surveillance zone.

Right, so you can go to our website, fw.ky.gov/cwd, and you can find information about our CWD surveillance zone, when we will have mandatory check stations, and the rules and regulations.

Or you can look in our 2022 fall hunting guide.

Obviously we're doing a lot of testing, because early detection really is the key.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much, and I hope we have a very successful season, and keep our fingers crossed for no more CWD.

As do I, thank you.

You may have heard the term "as difficult as herding cats".

Well, as it turns out, herding geese is not as hard as you think.

As a matter of fact, the Department of Fish and Wildlife does it every summer.

We are banding Canada geese today as part of the work that department does to manage migratory birds.

I am the Migratory Bird Program Coordinator and across the state of Kentucky we banned up to 10,000 birds every year.

So we band Canade geese every summer, in late June to early July because the birds are flightless during that period.

All birds molt their feathers when their feathers get worn out they have to molt.

A new feather will grow in and then they can fly better.

So each year they have to molt and replace their feathers.

Well geese, waterfowl specifically will molt their feathers all at one time.

And the geese are flightless right now.

So we take advantage of that.

And so what we will do is we slowly circle the group.

So we literally are corraling these geese, just like you would a herd of cattle.

I like to joke around and say, you give me enough people and I can put 200 geese in the back of a Corolla.

They literally move just like cattle.

Takes a lot of people.

You work slowly.

The fastest way to move geese is to work slow.

If you start running at them, they're going to run.

If they start running, they're faster than you are.

The trick is to make them think they want to go that direction and then get them to where the net is.

That net will be used to hold them in a corral.

And so we slowly go along just nice and easy.

Everybody kind of slowly condensing on them and we'll push them to where we want them and then surround them with the net and hold them in that location.

Let that one go, let that one go.

Pass the net around, pass the net around, pass the net around.

Once they're in that net, then we can pull them out one by one.

Grab right there and just squeeze hard.

Geese come with these perfect little handlebars on their back.

So each at the base of each wing is a big bone.

It's just like our arm bone has a large bone.

Geese have that as well.

So those handlebars on the back, that's what you're after when you grab a goose.

Once they're in that net, then we pull them out.

We put a leg band on it and we send them on their way.

So we can get in and out of an area pretty fast and band 100 or 200 or 300 birds in an hour or less.

And we band the birds as part of our obligation to the Mississippi Flyway.

The reason we band birds is because we want to know the impacts of things like hunting on these birds.

And so by banding birds, we can figure out how many of these birds are actually killed by hunters.

And every bird receives a unique number.

That unique number is only found on that one bird in the whole world.

And so if one hunters shoots one, they can report that number.

And then we know, okay, that this bird has been killed by a hunter.

It got hit by a car.

It got whatever reason it died.

We get this information and it helps us monitor the populations.

This year one of the things that we're doing is there's two different types of bands, silver aluminum bands and black bands.

Half of our bands this year are cerakoted.

It's a process of putting a coating on it that makes them black.

And that is part of a national study that's being done all over the eastern United States.

And we are looking at is there a difference in harvest rates between black bands and silver bands?

The idea behind banding is a banded bird represents the population.

And so if a band makes it more likely to be killed, then that biases our data.

So this is a check just to make sure that people aren't targetting those bands in flight at a higher rate.

We're banding today in multiple locations.

When you band Birds, you want a representative sample of the geese that are in your state.

So we band all locations, all birds are susceptible to harvest.

So a lot of people have this idea that city birds never leave the city.

That's not true at all.

And we learned that through banding.

Everybody says, Oh, Canada geese, they're here, they're residents.

They don't go anywhere.

They're not migratory.

But that's not entirely true.

We learned through this banding that we have maybe 20% of our Canada geese every summer will go to Hudson Bay or James Bay to spend the summer.

But for us, the most important part is we have hunting seasons.

Because we have hunting seasons, we have an obligation to make sure that what we're doing is not negatively impacting the population.

And so that's what this banding does.

It tells us how many birds were harvesting, and it allows us to know that, okay, we're within limits that are reasonable.

With summertime temperatures reaching the mid nineties during the day, seems like a good time to explore some night fishing.

We're out here on beautiful Green River Lake and I'm with an old fishing buddy of mine, Billy Parrish.

And Billy, you fish this quite a bit.

Oh, yeah.

I started a night fishing this back when I was about 16 years old, and.

Two years ago?

Three years ago?

Yeah, yeah.

We're in the dog, dog days of summer.

When I say that, it's 94, 95 degrees.

We haven't had a whole lot of rain fishing in general right now is extremely, extremely tough.

Extremely tough.

Yeah.

I mean, if you get five or six good bites all night, I think I think you're doing good, you know, but just got to slow down and, you know, we'll see what happens.

Hopefully it cools off a little bit.

I like that we got a little bit of a breeze.

So let's go get on our first brush pile and try to catch a couple of fish what do you think?

Sounds good man.

All right, let's do it.

Let's do I love fishing this lake at nighttime, it's probably my favorite lake to night fish on.

I see some shad moving right there.

Great thing about fishing and green river lake is you start throwing a spinnerbait or something moving, a crankbait, you never know when you may hook a muskie.

Oh know it.

Have you ever caught one out of this lake?

Oh yeah, some big ones.

I caught one one day on the Carolina rig.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

It's about as long as my leg.

It was a good one.

Oh, there he is.

Got him?.

Look at those tails on that thing, lighting up.

little guy.

So there you go.

That's the way to get it started.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, a little guy, but, he bit of good.

There you go.

Hit that.

Hit that craw.

You got that craw with those really, really, really chartreuse little feet on it there.

Little pinchers.

Little Berkley.

Little four inch Berkley power craw.

Fish one on the board.

He's gone.

Oh, you got him?

Yup.

I knew this spot should hold a couple of fish.

Pretty good fish isn't it?

Yeah not a bad fish.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, that's a good fish man.

That's a 2 pound spotted bass.

Sure is.

That's Kentucky's state fish, spotted bass, and that's a thick, healthy summertime spotted bass.

You know, a lot of times in the summertime these fish get kind of thin.

That fish, he's been eating right.

I'll tell you what, they're fun to catch, too, aren't they?

That's a pretty fish.

You can tell it's a spotted bass.

See how these lines are, and that color?

Just a little bit smaller mouth, tooth patch, pretty fish.

You've caught a couple of fish on soft plastic.

This is the spinner bait that we made for the Cumberland trip that we really didn't get fish that much on TV a couple of weeks ago.

That fish wanted that one.

There he is.

Another little guy, he's a little bit bigger.

It looks like a very similar to the same fish.

Same spot, almost, almost back to back cast.

Yeah he took my craw.

It looks like they're liking that little chartreuse tail, pinchers you got on.

I think so.

That baits always work good night fishing and I've got a little heavier sinker.

We'll see if we can get some little bit bigger than that.

Now Billy, you and I actually met through a good fishing buddy of mine that I know you use in tournament fishing with, Bill Hurle.

Oh, yeah.

Bill's a good friend of mine.

Great person, very knowledgeable fisherman.

He's taught me so much in the last few years, Bill and I fish in the wintertime, a ton.

He's one of those die hard guys that love to get out there in the middle of the winter.

So we do a lot of smallmouth fishing together.

We went up and did a Wisconsin smallmouth fishing trip at Sturgeon Bay and to this day, that might be the greatest fishing trip I've ever been on.

It's definitely the greatest fishing trip that I've ever been on.

I'll tell you one thing.

He put us on some fish, didn't he?

Yes he did.

Oh, hold on.

Here we go, little one.

I saw that one running.

I know it.

I let him have it for a little while.

Look how little he is.

I'll tell you what, you that's one of the benefits of using these lights that you've got around here.

You've just got some U.V.

stick on style lights you can use.

But, I looked up I see your line running the bank.

Yeah, that's what that fluorescent blue monofilament, that black light, well it makes it just show up really good.

Look at this mouse right here.

Never in a million years, out in the middle of the lake did I think we'd have a mouse come out on the boat.

What's that mouse on the Green Mile?

Mr. Jingles.

Mr. Jingles Yeah, it does look like Mr. Jingles doesn't it?

Got us a stowaway here somewhere.

We can only assume that we've had a mouse got on the boat in our storage shed.

So we've got us a stowaway out here in the middle of the lake.

Not something you anticipating seeing.

Oh, that's good fish.

It's about like what I just caught.

Let's see here.

Yeah, that's a good fish there.

Oh man.

That's a good fish.

There you go.

Oh, yeah.

Hey, a little bigger fish are eating spinner baits.

Yeah, that's a good fish there.

Thank you man, I appreciate you helping me out there.

What we've got here is you've got the whole lake coming in to an area and the wind's blowing in this way, and it comes up on a ridge, and the fish are sitting right there in about 10, 12 feet, right on that ridge.

And that seems to be where they're sitting.

There we go.

Thank you.

Well Billy, all the reports we've been getting said fishing was really, really tough.

Oh, yeah.

When you get these periods in the middle of summer where the days are in the 90's, and we've we've had almost three weeks of no rain, fishing can get really tough.

But I'll tell you what, I'd rather come out here and find out for myself than to come out here and fish in the heat of the day.

I'm glad you invited me out here, and I had a great time, and I wish there would have been a little better.

But we caught some fish and we still had a good time.

And that's what it's all about, right?

Spinnerbait's out.

Caught a couple of fish and got to catch up with an old friend, so.

That's right.

You can't beat that, man.

It's a good time.

Thank you.

Now let's check in and see who else has been out having fun in this week's ones that didn't get away.

Check out this beautiful tom turkey that was taken by Mason.

Look closely, this turkey has two beards.

Nice job.

Wyatt Campbell of Russell County caught his very first fish all by himself.

He caught it at Lake Cumberland while using one of my favorite lures, a swimbait, and he released it to be caught again another day.

Nice job.

Here we have seven year old Jack from Burlington, Kentucky.

He said fisheries biologist Jeff Crosby was right when he said Bullock Pen had some big fish.

Nice job.

With July coming to an end the kids only have a few more weeks before they have to go back to school.

Now is a great time to plan that fishing trip.

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.