Birds take a bite out of trout fishing in UP

[djkimmel]

From the Detroit Free Press

Birds take a bite out of trout fishing in UP
By ERIC SHARP
Free Press Outdoors Writer

Earlier this month, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment planted 28,000 brown trout in the Ford River near Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula – right in front of about 500 hungry cormorants that dined for days on those $1 apiece fish.

The trout weighed two or three ounces each. A cormorant can eat easily a dozen a day. And brown trout are about as dumb as rocks.

Local anglers quickly figured out that a large percentage of those fish, paid for by angler's license fees, went down the gullets of big black birds that will use the energy from the trout to produce more cormorants this summer.

Needless to say, the fishermen didn't take it well. Read the complete article on Freep.com

[djkimmel]

A hot topic in Michigan that probably won't cool off any time soon. They are a natural part of the system. Should we control their numbers? And how much? Do we have the right to stop them from doing what comes natural for them?

[fowlmouth]

Why are there so many? I can't remember seeing as many as I do now. The cormorant population must be huge, they aren't hunted(legally ) so I assume USFW does not track their numbers. Is this a by-product of the goby explosion?

[djkimmel]

Those are all great questions. I don't know what would be considered normal or sustaining for them. I did recently see statistics on them but will have to track them down again. I wonder if they eat gobies? Have not seen any information on that.

[River Rat]

Those things are a pain in the rear around Peche Island and the light, I swear they try and "drop" on you and your boat.  And why would they discriminate against a gobie?  It's the perfect size...

[djkimmel]

I wonder if they are more interested in fish that swim up off the bottom verses smaller fish that stay very close to the bottom? Plus, they prefer to eat fairly large fish, much bigger than the average little goby. I will have to ask my friends at the MDNRE if they know of any stomach content studies from our part of the Great Lakes.

[River Rat]

Fair enough, sir.  I just guessed with the shear numbers that gobies can be found in one area that they would be an easy snack of sorts.

[djkimmel]

Well, we know the bass are eating them...

Wonder if the muskies on Lake St. Clair ever eat a cormorant??

[dashaver63]

It's not only the fish population that the commorants effect. They also kill off the trees they roost in. In Sandusky Bay, a rather large number of them began roosting in the trees on the island opposite the city launch where the BFL was launched from. In a matter of one summer, they killed off the trees on that island from their poop. I believe I heard a couple years ago Minnesota was tring to eradicate them by spraying their eggs with some kind of oil so they wouldn't hatch, and also plain out shooting them. They are a big nuisance and they can greatly damage an eco system that they get involved in.

[Bender]

I don't know if the state does anything about it, but here's a form to report them: www.dnr.state.mi.us/cormorantobs/
I reported them a couple times last year on Kent. They killed several trees and crap on everything. Last spring up north there were some locals doing some "harassing of birds". I think they were using a 12 gauge and I hope they weren't firing blanks but I don't know. 

[djkimmel]

I saw the Indians 'harass' a few cormorants on St. Clair one day a while ago with the 12 guage method.

I'm pretty sure the MDNRE does oil some of the eggs at the Charities if I remember right. And some place up north. They are trying to get permission to do more of that to control numbers of birds.

I see some at Lake Ovid now to at times. That's another place maybe a musky would eat one??

[motocross269]

Comarants are worse than seagulls...

Maybe we can take the Asian carp and the comorants and harness them as an alternate fuel source...

[djkimmel]

That's an idea...?