I need some help please.. Friday morning I thought that I saw some ducks on my pond swimming around. However on closer inspection, it helps to put your glasses on, it was three river otters. They looked so cute that I thought "I can live with some fish loss" Sunday I ran my feeder to check the fish and instead of boiling water I got just two fish to come up. I think that they have cleaned me out. 20 years of feeding, 1.5 lb. copper nose, and bass all gone. So I need a referral for an electro survey and new copper nose to start over. Bass to follow. I have one 1 acre pond and one 1/2 acre pond in Collin County, Texas. I am five miles East of Blue Ridge.
Bill Marsh wmarsh@connect.net

Could it be the fish are "spooked" now that the otters are around? I had no idea they were such voracious fish-eaters.

/c

I did the same thing you did first time I saw them in one of our farm ponds. They had wiped out the pond before I could get back and shoot them. THey had ate the fish and moved on. We sold that property, so not sure how long it took or if the pond recovered.

Bob Lusk
Overton Fisheries

So cute, and so detrimental.....

Is there a chance that weather changes turned your fish off from feeding?

When I found otters on my 2 acre pond they could not have been there more than a couple of days at the most because I walk down to the pond twice a day unless I am gone on a weekend. I shot one otter each day for 2 days in a row. Never have seen one since. But... my fish would hardly come to the feeder for about a solid week. They were very spooked. Slowly they came back and I still have thousands of 8 inch cnbg so they did not wipe out my pond.Billmarsh, maybe give them a few more days and throw more food out to them. Did you get rid of the otters? How long do you think they were in your pond??

I've had otters this fall and the previous. They didn't affect me the first time because I think because I had enough heavy cover that they could hide. The second time he was put to sleep forever.

I take otters very seriously as I don't fancy restocking or losing predators causing stunting.

I don't worry about fish ducks or green herons but otters, blue herons, and egrets are not allowed.