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I wish I would have taken a picture of a sight I saw in Northern Alberta at an outpost fishing lake. The lake is well known for LARGE pike up to 40lbs!! anyway... I saw a bald eagle begining to eat a pike that we estimated at 15 to 18lbs .... The eagle had the pike draped over a large boulder on the shore of an island.
Stories have been told of Bald Eagles DROWNING up there as when they hunt fish they dig their tallons into the fish and try to fly away with it.... what happens is often the fish is too large for the eagle to lift off, The bald eagle cannot let go of the fish because of the shape of their tallons, they need to be able to stand on the prey so that their their tallons can slip out ..... occassionally a larger pike, perhaps a 30 pounder or so, will drag the eagle under water and eventually drown it.
Those birds are brutal... up on Simcoe they are everywhere. Alot of the locals blame the decline in the perch population on them. if you ever fish up there you'll know what i mean!
Quote from http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/wildlife/factshe ... nts-e.html
The average cormorant weighs approximately 1.9 kg (4.2 lbs) and will eat about 25% of its weight in fish each day or about 0.48 kg (1.0 lbs). Most adult cormorants reside on the Great Lakes from about mid-April to late August or early September (about 135 days). During that time, one adult cormorant will eat about 65 kg (143 lbs) of fish.
The ministry should cull some of these birds. I've been around the St.Lawerence river for 25yrs and can tell you the cormorant populations seem to be at an all time high! They sit on any island where fishing is good, sometimes a good way to locate potentail hotspots. They not only eat a lot of fish but destroy vegatation on the islands they pick to hang out at. I caught one in Florida once fishing sheep's head off a dock. What a fight or should I say attempted flight after fighting him for 5 minutes he surfaced and tried to take flight. I thought I had a small shark on or something, scared the sh#t out of me when he surfaced I subdued him and my brother helped me get him off to a safe release. Then two older gentlmen came over and told me they routinely catch cormorants when fishing and instead of releasing them they club them and ring there necks, they said pelicans are one thing tourists love em and they eat a lot of fish also but cormorants are just ugly fish eating land destroying birds that nobody likes. I thought these gentlemen were being pretty harsh until I started paying attention to the cormorants in my area.
To finish my post, (I had issue with the internet)
One would think a cormorant that weights 4 lbs would be a snack for a large Pike or Muskie, as in the case of the eagle, would it be possible to catch one fishing? I have never caught a flying fish
plncrzy wrote:
Stories have been told of Bald Eagles DROWNING up there as when they hunt fish they dig their tallons into the fish and try to fly away with it.... what happens is often the fish is too large for the eagle to lift off, The bald eagle cannot let go of the fish because of the shape of their tallons, they need to be able to stand on the prey so that their their tallons can slip out ..... occassionally a larger pike, perhaps a 30 pounder or so, will drag the eagle under water and eventually drown it.
I remember seeing a photo somewhere several years back, taken by a diver in Georgian Bay, if I remember correctly. The underwater photo was a dead eagle, wings spread and talons locked into the back of a very large salmon, also dead. The photo was taken very deep, as I recall. The eagle's dinner was too damn big and it dragged him under and drowned him, the salmon perished from having an eagle stuck on his back.
The cormorant in the story is the great cormorant of Europe, not the double-crested cormorant we have here. The great cormorant is bigger and stockier than the double-crested, so it can eat bigger fish.
slushpuppy wrote:The cormorant in the story is the great cormorant of Europe, not the double-crested cormorant we have here. The great cormorant is bigger and stockier than the double-crested, so it can eat bigger fish.