What is illegal to catfish with in KY (Good Story)?

Ok here is the story

I have heard about this guy that had been catfishing the Ohio River and stocking his personal pond with his catch. Well every night that he would fish he would stop in the morning to weigh his catch at the local general store. But he wasnt just catching 5-10 pound cats the story is told that he had several 35+ catfish usuall 5 or 10 a night. For years he kept up the same rutine, Everyone would ask him what bait are you using, where are you fishing, and so on. He would always answer he was fishing with bluegill or chicken liver.. just the standard baits. well the story had gotten around to the local game warden who decided to follow this guy and find out what he is doing. It took the game warden almost a year to figure it out. The man was using week old puppys and fishing next to a large river dam. turns out the man had been breeding a bunch of dogs and using the pups. Well the story ends with the guy going to jail for a very long period of time for animal cruelty.

so my question is. I understand that using puppys to fish kind of falls under animal cruelty. but there are other things that might not i have been thinking that they sell live rats at the pet store for snake food. Would that be considered animal cruelty because you are vurtually doing the same thing as feeding a snake your just feeding a fish.

I am looking for unusuall baits for Paylakes, something that noone else has tryed to maybe pull in some monster cats.

sorry about the length i just wanted you to know the reasoning behind the question.

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