Pelicans!
 

On my favourite trout lake this morning and swarmed by pelicans. Every time I had fish on 3 or 4 pelicans would rush over to check out the situation. Don't know what they would do with an 18 or 19 inch trout but they sure were interested in the action. Even after I left the "hot" area and returned an hour later they came over to watch, just in case.

Pelicans
 

Check with Northwinds on this forum. He can tell you what a pelican will do. Is unreal how big a fish one of those things can choke down. A 20” trout is nothing for one of those buggers.

They will gladly eat your 19"er.
I watched one eat a grebe that had a minnow in it's beak

There is a video out there of a pelican eating a danged rabbit i think!
I have seen them at our place on Baptiste and they can choke down a pretty big Jack!
Cat

I was out st the Bow river last night. I was greeted by about a dozen pelicans, some ducks nd geese, and three beavers. I didn't get the chance to say hello to any fish though. I guess they were practicing social distancing too.

Better at your favourite lake than at my favourite lake. :)

Pelicans eat around four pounds of fish per day according to my research.
Along with the huge numbers of Cormorants and other flying fish eaters they must take a huge amount of the fish biomass.

The flying wolves of the water I guess.

On a pothole on Saturday and my boat mate's trout got dive bombed by an osprey only about 15ft from the boat. Came from behind us so we didn't see it and it startled the hell out of us. Didn't get the fish.

A little later same bird came down and smoked a loon that had stolen another anglers trout. He got that trout.

Pretty cool.

J

We had finished up surveying near Travers reservoir in the afternoon one autumn day walking back to the truck we noticed several large moving shadows on the ground near us , looking up was a group of pelicans gliding by. They look a lot like pterodactyls sp? , was a bit odd seeing them drift by silently , they are big .

The prairies were a lot different pre-farming , many more sloughs and potholes dotting the land. Farmers slowly nipped away at the edges until they gradually filled them in .

I've been trying, but can't find the info. I once read that Calgary has the most northern year round pelican population and it is directly related to the available food source the warm water effluent allows access too.

4lbs a day.... that's a hit on the biomass

And a cormorant eats 1.5 lbs. of fish a day. just around Lac La Biche there were over 36000 cormorants a few years ago. That's a few tons of fish and frogs a day.

What's the best way to prepare a pelican?

Stuffed with cormorant and slow roasted?

Deep fried?

Maybe rotisserie on the BBQ?


I'd guess lots of seasoning and spice to cut the fishy flavor.


Cool birds. Go fly away now.

M*#$^%*!&ers.

Flock off.

And ducks and seagulls and ...pigeons

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6sTUSnUgDXI


Herons

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nzCK7qrr4-w

used to watch groups of them herding up schools of perch in moose lake. They would always use the sun behind them to push them into 3 or 4 other birds waiting with their beaks open. They would gulp down a disoriented school of perch for minutes at a time they did it everyday the same bunch. Gotta wonder how many fish they killed over the course of a summer.

They all fly south for the winter. I think the cormorants do as well.

What I can’t figure out is why Alberta stocks the majority of it’s tiger trout in a lake that Is swarmed by pelicans and cormorants. From what I understand no one is really catching any there after they stocked 70000 in 2019.

The crane hunt is on ( why?) let's open season on Pelicans and cormorants. It will bring tens of dollars to our guides and outfitters and literally save thousands of stocked and native fish.

Problem solved.

:)

Pelicans
 

Excellent idea!! Let us shoot them with our coyote rifles too.

Rubber bullets?
:47b20s0::47b20s0:

cormorant
 

Ontario has finally opened season on cormorants this year what they need to do is add and bonus tag for pelicans

We released a healthy 99 cm pike and watched a pelican promptly scoop it up and fly away. It took about 200 yards for it to get airborne, but it did. A 19” trout is just a snack to a pelican.

They don't just eat fish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlhmWfpZQWQ

Sweet baby jesus!

friggin' feathered prehistoric Pteradactyl!

Yikes is right! The good news is they seem to disappear now so should not be a problem in the fall fishing.

I saw one grab a decent skipjack off a dock in Cabo, been wary of them ever since.