I am having problems with "Water-Turkey"(Anhinga) eating my fish again this winter. They dive under the water and catch fish.



After a few weekends of "scare-off-shots" they have become very skittish...in that pretty much as soon as they see me...they take-off.

Since I am only there on weekends I thought I would try a 6 foot blow-up doll hanging from a tree so it would have some movement in the wind...see if it has an impact.



ps: I hope no one can see my Amazon purchase history that shows a guy buying blow-up dolls!...lol

Are ya sure that's why you ordered it. Things that make you go hummmmm…. lol


Maybe this should go on the Pond Porn thread...

Ha Ha RS...I can assure you he's not my type

We were even looking at mannequins and mounting on dock...I told my wife what would the next door neighbor think when he takes walks around our place during the week when we aren't there if he saw a life size completely nude mannequin standing on our dock holding a fishing pole.

Ahiahiahi Zep, THEY arrived. Sooo bad.
I hope your inflatable "friend" will work.
Keep us updated please.

Zep I've thought about the same thing last week. I think they will work, if moved around the pond sometimes

Mark, keep swinging at them. We've had waves of singles and doubles rolling through here for the last few weeks. I can see the pond from my office window, and I've been going out 4-5 times a day to run them off.

Thanks guys...two weeks ago when we drove in on a Sat morning there were at least 60 water-turkey grouped on our largest pond. I had NEVER seen even half that amount in the water at our place. Kind of freaked me out how many fish that many birds could eat. They quickly were scared off by shotgun scare shots. Thankfully since we've only seen 1-3 at a time and usually none. I tip-toed outside early yesterday morning on the porch and as soon as the single water turkey spotted me he was airborne and outta there. I still fired a warning shot for good measure.

I found 85 or so of them on my pond a few yrs ago. As they flew off I counted them by doing 5-10-15 etc. I found 200+- TFS dead and floating along with two 14" Hsb. All of them had been driven back into a corner of the pond. I have been at war with them every year since.

Zep, if I had a blow up doll, I would buy or build some type of boat, something that does not have to be drained when it rained. or add a battery and bilge pump to a boat, set the doll in it and anchor it out in the middle of the pond. Wave action might keep it moving and maybe keep all the cormorants away. Sometimes they just don't want to leave and will fly from one end of the pond to the other end when disturbed. I now have something that will reach out and touch them.

I kinda hate to tempt fate, but so far the alligator head decoys seem to be working for me. One thing I did this year was put them in deeper water marking structure. Just a thought.

Hey Zep how's going your inflatable friend?