Hate .....

I hear a new form of some kind of hate every day I swear , if it isn't this thing its that .
Then along comes me and a genuine real time not so new form of Hate ....
I Hate cormorants :yikes
and by all means ....
Feel free to join my Hate club :Rofl
out of 2 lakes and some fair numbers of crappie involved the last 2 days
I saw maybe one fish without at least one bite on it .
most were healed up wounds ,but some were fresh
some had multiple hits on them
them birds is BAD ....that ain't no joke :mad:

Here in my area we also have Anhingas, which some might mistakenly call cormorant. These birds however do not have the classic hooked bill of a cormorant but also possess a long skinny neck made for ringing.

Attachment 398022

Locals call them Water Turkey, but I’m not sure why. I imagine they probably taste like a foul greasy old rotten mud duck found dead by the road two days too late. As with most birds they likely are protected and should not be shot like one might do with snakes that are also protected. Which is exactly why I prefer a nice brush axe. Neighbors.

My birds also eat snakes and alligators and crawfish. Mostly though I imagine them swallowing trophy bass and croppie. They spear the fish and if small, swallow them on the surface, but when large, taken ashore to be pummeled to death against a tree branch, then swallowed.

Your fish seems to have a gouge in it as if a hooked bill creature lost it’s grip. I’d choose six shot to ensure penetration through those swim feathers.

cormorants gotta eat

Can kind of see the “water turkey” comment. Yea, everybody has got to eat - that’s what I tell my wife when we see a pile of dove feathers (and that’s all that is left!) from the Cooper Hawks we have in our area. They are pretty good hunters, but don’t always get a hit.
Bob

In Kansas fall and winter the state stocks certain areas with trout, the cormorants love them, they will surface with a trout and then swallow it. I understand the food chain and necessary species but if the cormorants disappeared their would be alot more fish.

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Originally Posted by keeferfish

cormorants gotta eat

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So do cockroaches and bedbugs LOL!

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You catch so many crappie that you can just return the injured ones to the water to heal. :Rofl

I’ve not much use for cormorants. They are a lot better fisherman than I am.

I hate comorants and geese.

Around here we have the Cormorants, but we also have problems with the Black Vulture population. Not sure why, but they seem to like the rubber door molding & windshield wiper blades on our vehicles. They don't actually consume any of it, and readily discard it once they've torn it off a vehicle. And that's not all they and the Turkey Vulture population are damaging. Due to increased & increasing numbers, they've taken to attacking live farm animals (new or recently born).

Saw a dead cormorant a while back, was thinking it was hit by a bass boat, then I saw something white by its bill. Upon a closer look, it had died trying to swallow a 13" crappie!

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i watched one battle with a real big crappie one day on the surface
the fish won the first round and escaped
the bird didnt give up and went after it again
the second round i watched in total amazement as it worked for a few minutes getting it down its throat !
the fish was in the 1.25 to 1.5 range
they are NOT good birds

Hate is a strong; but, still not strong enough to describe my feelings about cormorants. Jackson Lake in Millbrook, AL (near Montgomery) has hundreds and hundreds of the darn things.

I try to not overly dislike anything , but I have a real hard time trying not to dislike past strongly them big black water coyotes

Wow, that must be something to see. They sound like they must be relentless and pretty tough to take on fish of that size. “Black Water Coyotes” sounds about right.
Bob

they arn't much of a problem in my parts of MO in either of my home lakes but could see them being a pest down south. could see why a few folks could turn vigilante on them. seeing one ketch and kill a big crappie might put me over the edge and having to do some predator control

they migrate in from somewhere every winter with large flocks of pelicans , used to be rare to see them back when and now its the norm and growing .
heck they love to really ruin small waters , lakes that don't have much size get devastated by them .
saw them pulverizing a lake of about 10 acres this winter , man was it ugly .
federal law protecting that kind of carnage on someone's hard earned money just ain't right.
that impoundment and the fish cost someone a bunch of greenbacks to feed them birds .

I watched an Egret or Heron spear a slab crappie the other day. Dang, I might have caught it. It took it up on the bank and beat and stabbed it. then it took it back to the water and washed it several times before choking it down. Nature...don't just love it.

I hate the thought of eating a fish the feeds under a cormorant roost...:banghead I'll stick with crappie, thank you very much!:highfive

Opps

I wasn't really bothered by these things till OP posted and I got to researching about them. They only eat a lb of fish a day. They only stay for 90 days and then they migrate on. Those numbers sound small.

Some ecosystems(lakes) in Texas by those numbers lose 9 million lbs of fish during their stay. I'm mad too.

Hey Ketch take a look at these. They only relocate the birds to other lakes and it may not help you considering the area you cover at times. But it's a start.Attachment 398827

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when I did the math on several hundred on a small lake and the consumption levels ,it brought me to total understanding of why almost every fish i find in those spots has bite marks on it .
many years ago is when it started to bother me and when the numbers went to the moon on the birds it was obvious they needed to be under some sort of predator control program
they are truly a scourge and federally protected to boot
it always amazes me at the amount of "bleeding" heart programs that protect the far less than innocent .

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Originally Posted by catchNgrease

I wasn't really bothered by these things till OP posted and I got to researching about them. They only eat a lb of fish a day. They only stay for 90 days and then they migrate on. Those numbers sound small.

Some ecosystems(lakes) in Texas by those numbers lose 9 million lbs of fish during their stay. I'm mad too.

Hey Ketch take a look at these. They only relocate the birds to other lakes and it may not help you considering the area you cover at times. But it's a start.Attachment 398827

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hopefully someone sends me one of them , i bet they are fun to play with for sure