Watching the birds

[ezfishn]

We always keep an eye out for Herons along the shoreline to help locate potential targets or diving seagulls out in open water. We have a bunch of these guys (Western Grebe) around here and lately have keyed in on them out in open water. There are times when there are hundreds of them mixed with some seagulls and we'll immediately head for them. They can dive probably 15-20ft and usually as soon as you approach them at a slower speed. We have been targeting them lately when other patterns are slow with some luck. We've caught them from 3-7lbs and usually gorged on bait. Depth has varied from shallow cranks at surface to 15'-25'

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These are huge bait balls being attacked from below and from the surface...LOL (image taken from a recording in Humviewer)

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[Chief Brody]

kewl

[CRAWFW]

Had a few of those on our local lake this fall. Migrating I’m sure.
Do these birds make an Elk or Caribou like sound?
I kept hearing it one day and thought maybe a deer but I’ve never heard anything like it around here.
When I finally left my spot I saw one of those birds or something similar about 1000 yards away and when I got within 50 yards it disappeared and popped back up about a minute later.
Saw a few two weeks earlier too but didn’t have binoculars to get a good look at them.

[Tyler82284]

We call them loons. They do not lie like the gulls sometimes do. If you see a loon diving, or even sitting still, you can bet there is bait close by.

[Keoweefishing]

Have a jigging spoon ready to go - cast it right in the middle of the diving birds! You can cast them a mile and don't spook the fish as easily that are under the bait/birds.

[ezfishn]

Had a few of those on our local lake this fall. Migrating I’m sure.
Do these birds make an Elk or Caribou like sound?
I kept hearing it one day and thought maybe a deer but I’ve never heard anything like it around here.
When I finally left my spot I saw one of those birds or something similar about 1000 yards away and when I got within 50 yards it disappeared and popped back up about a minute later.
Saw a few two weeks earlier too but didn’t have binoculars to get a good look at them.

These don't sound similar to an Elk but believe the Loons would come closer to sounding like that. Not a bird expert but there are probably several species of Grebes and may be found in other states.

[ntslam]

We call them loons. They do not lie like the gulls sometimes do. If you see a loon diving, or even sitting still, you can bet there is bait close by.

They are very reliable, fishing for stripers in the winter loons are almost a sure thing. With their ability to dive deep and stay under for several minutes makes them shad killers, find loons you'll find the stripers, hybrids, sand bass


Cool shots Wes, I am always hoping to see a loon on side imaging going into a school of shad

[ezfishn]

Still trying figure out those images...LOL Pretty sure those birds aren't diving that deep so I'm thinking that's a mixture of bait scattering and some bass. There's no stripers in that particular lake so most of the larger fish would be bass.

[Tarheel14]

These don't sound similar to an Elk but believe the Loons would come closer to sounding like that. Not a bird expert but there are probably several species of Grebes and may be found in other states.

Yup.......we have these here on Lake Mead and Mohave. They are bait stealers....I will be MORE closely watching for these this weekend.. Thanks for the tip.

[SLYDoggie]

We also have Loons and Seagulls on Tims Ford Lake in south central TN. I troll for Stripers and will frequently scout for Loons and Seagulls before deciding where to start. Loons are a sure fire indicator of bait fish in the area but Loons and frenzied diving gulls in combination is usually a good indicator of a school of Hybrids, Stripers, or both. I frequently troll through them and many times go through a large school herding the bait to the surface.

Definitely a wintertime phenomenon here. Loons mostly just winter in this area and not many are permanent residents.

[ezfishn]

This was kind of a new pattern for us because we usually associated stripers with the birds out on the open water because of the water depth in some of the reservoirs here. That particular lake doesn't have any stripers in it and some friends told us about the birds after they had caught a couple of LMB in the 7-9lb range using a jerk bait.

[Pat Dilling]

We have been watching them as fish finders for years. I believe they are capable of diving at least 50 feet. Lately we are seeing a smaller variety in great numbers. They are about 1/3 the size of the black & white Western Grebe. These little guys will definitely put you on bait. Would love to know how they locate baitfish.

[Capw]

When we're fishing the Cape Cod Canal and the birds start working...get ready!

[KCLOST]

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Around Kansas City, this is our master hunter. Man, they are all beautiful birds..