It's all meant to be a natural cycle. Fish breed up and start to stunt, cormorants breed up and wipe out all the small fish, then the cormorants starve allowing the fish to start to breed up again......
Unfortunately, we keep stocking the fish allowing the birds to keep their numbers high.
Would be interesting to see what one season of no stocking would do to their numbers.
In answer to the OQ, they eat lots! I once saw a cormorant eat a longtom (like a gar) that was about 16" long. It took it 20 minutes to get it down, then it went straight back to hunting.
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Cheers,
Craig
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