Cheeky bird!

[tonytaylor]

Fished Tynemouth pier yesterday in the retired members match.
Something unusual occured. I was fishing next to Mick Styles when a comorant landed on the pier and tried to pinch a coalie off Micks trace.
He had just landed a double shot of the regulation 33cms coalies. The coalies were deeply hooked so Mick took one off and gave it to the cormorant. I didn't think it would take it, never mind be able to swallow it but it did both!
He then unhooked the other coalie and offered that one to the bird. Believe it or not it accepted that one too. It was so fat it couldn't take off and stood next to us for an hour. I have always found these birds to be shy and was amazed by what we saw.
Incidentally there were over a hundred coalies taken by the 15 anglers competing and out of that total only 6 were big enough to weigh in. I personally had over 30 and used a mountain of bait!
Only 1 codling was landed and the HSF was a 2lb coalie taken by Roy Wheaton.

[fishfinder]

ha ha sounds like a wise old bird to me tony ..very strange with all the small stuff in the tyne at the moment Ive had similar sessions on rock edges this year..as soon as your bait hits the water its rattlin away

[micky-quayle]

there used to be a tame cormorant on the south pier at sunderland about 15 - 20 years ago, we fed it on coalies and it was amazing the size of fish and number of fish it could pouch. it was there on and off for several years then just seemed to disappear, probably too friendly for its own good.

cormorants are very intelligent birds, watched a documentary some years ago where in china they are used to catch fish for fishermen. the fisherman the documentary was about travelled hundereds of miles across china when one of his birds was getting too old. he travelled all this way to collect a cormorant egg which he then incubated himself in a room with just him in then reared it spending several months in a room with just himself and the bird so that it would bond to him. it was then trained by him and was a very effective provider of fish for him.

unfortunately cormorants are now moving inland in large numbers and wiping out some course fisheries. in north yorkshire they moved onto the lake at castle howard and totally wiped the silver fish out which resulted in all the pike starving to death. very difficult to scare away from a water. the only way to get rid of them is a cull but it is very difficult to get permission to shoot them. one method (although illegal, and i'm not suggesting anyone do it) is to get a brick with nylon and treble hooks attached with a fish as bait and float it out on a small raft of wood, the cormorant takes the bait panics the brick falls off the wood and the bird drowns ! not nice but very effective without the sounds of gunfire to draw attention to it. at the end of the day it is mans fault that they are moving inland for food with us raping the sea of fish stocks.

[lemmylad]

well said micky. very informative.
Have you ever seen a doco about 'noodling' (catching catfish by hand)?