01-06-2025, 03:26 AM
(01-05-2025, 01:24 AM)BearLakeFishGuy Wrote: I'd rather have an osprey pick off a fish or two instead of a cormorant (or a flock of cormorants) that will clean out a stocked fishery in short order. The osprey will pick fish off the surface or slightly under it. Those are typically wounded fish or those that will not make it anyway. The comorants will dive and seek after fish in depths of nearly 100' of water! The osprey are majestic birds and add to the outdoor experience in my opinion and don't have huge flocks like cormorants either. There are quite a few nesting pairs of osprey around the Bear Lake area and I have also seen them at Porcupine and Newton. Your final question can only be answered by you, but I would think you'd be proud to say you have allowed UDWR (or whomever) to put in an osprey nesting platform. However, I'd ask that the agency you are dealing with give you the option to remove the platform if it is taken over by cormorants.
When I still had my winter home in St. George I used to fish (fly & bubble and release) the community pond that was two minutes from my house. The DWR would stock the ponds about every 10 days. The cormorants would eat so many of the stocked trout that they had a very hard time flying. It was comical to watch them. They would run around on top of the water flapping their wings trying to lift off. When they finally did they would circle the pond trying to gain altitude. The next day they would be back again only to stuff themselves all over again. I think they took more trout than the fishermen did.