Commorants.......hmmm where to begin. There are a nuisance migratory bird that eat up to 50% their weight in fish each day that NYDEC just recently discovered (morons) can be up to a 10" bass! The average bird weighs about 12 lbs, that's 6 lbs a fish per bird, per day, and they estimate that there are anywhere from 10-12K of them on Champlain. That number is low. We'll use the 12k for our little exercise shall we? That's 72,000 lbs of forage and young bass and other game fish leaving Champlain DAILY! Or 36 tons! Over the course of 1 season say only 100 days.....yeah right, 3,600 tons or 7 million, 200 thousands pounds of fish......a problem??????? naaaaaaa! Guide on Erie were arrested after losing their business to the birds and banded together, went to a nesting island with cases of shells and 12 ga shotguns and "relieved" the ecosystem of about 400-500 of these birds. They have completely destroyed about a dozen islands on Champlain, now devoid of any vegetation. And DEC is JUST now deciding that they are a problem? By the time they decide what to do, it will be far too late. And oh yeah, the guides that were arrested....a week later DEC went out and greased a bunch of eggs anyway. Don't do as I do, do as I say! ERRRRRRRR!!!!! Tox, I don't try to hit them, ever hit a bird at 50+ mph? Could kill you literally! Hit a seagull once that I didn't see, scary! Didn't kill the bird but scared him and I real well. The cormmorants are also sight feeders that can dive up to 40+ feet deep and stay down for up to 2 minutes. Combine this with the increased visibility due to the introduction of zebra mussells and you get increased natural predation of commorants, in layman's terms.....a double whammie against the fish! What game fish they don't eat they make up for in that fish's forage like alewive, perch, etc. So if they don't eat walleye, they do eat the walleye's dinner! Totally screwing up the whole lake. There are tons of 2-5 lb smallies left but very few dinks. When the 4 and 5 lbers die off and it's time for those dinks to take their place in 5-6 years, there won't be any and the lake will suffer what many others do, a fish drought. That coupled with increased tourney pressure......well you get the idea, I could go on and on!
