Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Beaver trapping = River Otter cought

Recently I was standing over the old beaver den where we caught one awhile back, in the ponds dam. When up pops the head of what I thought was a beaver. It quickly went back under the water. Well, we had a trap (330 conibar) already set for any beavers that might show up but this one popped his head up where no trap was set, another entrance tunnel. So I went and set up another trap. A couple of day later, checking the trap, I find a River Otter in the trap. About a 20+ pound Otter. I was caught totally surprised by the catch. I did not know River Otters would take up residence in a beavers den, but they will! I always looked at ponds as a place to fish or a place to duck hunt. I always considered myself to be a hunter and fisherman an outdoorsman so to speak. But I never thought of being a trapper, or a guy that grows fish. Just a guy that catches fish every now and then. Owning a pond for a little over two years now, I have seen a lot of things I did not expect to see. And growing a certain sized fish or a certain type fish is harder than I thought. I am a little guy in this whole pond scheme , Mother Nature, not so little in this pond world.

Otters want a place to sleep undisturbed from any predators, (coyotes and man) and a beaver house/den with a "vacancy" sign out front is perfect for them.

Congrats on catchin em!! Watch for the second one. He may be around like mine were...in pairs.

I have seen Otters use muskrat dens also. At one time I thought they were fun to watch, not anymore. I once watched two Otters eat 48 panfish in 45 minutes. Their bellies were dragging on the ice. I still like to watch them but not on my ponds eating my fish.

Flame, traps have been reset. I had no idea what I had in the trap other than I knew it was not a beaver because it had the wrong type of tail. I did not know we had river otters here. Never herd much about them, I thought otters were small maybe 6 lbs or so. I had to go to TP&W website to see what I had caught. And I thought I was an outdoorsman lol. I did worry about the fish eaten but this pond was or is loaded with cnbg due to multiple spawns for the last two years and low lmb numbers. The otter or otters may have helped me a little through thinning out some numbers. One thing I have noticed was during the Tp die off a few weeks ago, I saw some scat on the pier I did not recognize. It was almost all scales and I assumed at the time it was a GBH feeding out on the Tp. Scales looked to be Tp scales due to size and not cnbg sized. Now guessing that belonged to the River Otter. I never saw one in or on the pond and no partially eaten fish on the bank. Like I said earlier, when it popped its head up at the beaver bank tunnels, I thought it was a beaver. Ponds seem to be a Never Ending Learning thing.

Tracy, realizing that is a big step in pond management.

I forgot exactly how DD1 says it, but basically it's the more you learn, the less you found out you knew. Tons of truth in that statement.