To start, in my 2 acre pond I catch cnbg on every cast anytime of day, especially by my feeder and pontoon boat dock. 8am this morning I watched the feeder go off and thousands of fish feeding as usual. At noon I walked down to the pond just for fun and imediently saw big wakes near my pontoon boat. A moment later a commerant or water turkey flew up and landed in the deeper part of the pond. I watched him for about 20 minutes swimming and diving and saw him swallow at least 3 cnbg about 6-8 inch long. Made his neck bulge to twice its size. I was able to get him away from the pond. At 3:30 pm I decided to fish just to see what effect if any that bird had on the pond. This is only one hour before the evening feeder goes off. Fished for 30 minutes all around and even next to the pontoon and under the feeder area.....NOT A SINGLE BITE !!!That one bird must have totally spooked the whole pond even almost 4 hours later!! Did not expect that. Just thought I would share with others what I was able to observe. PITA bird

I hate those things....i had them often for awhile....thankfully the alligator decoy floating heads have kept them at bay at my place.....the alligator decoys don't seem to deter the herons much, but they have helped in my battle with the water-turkeys.

Amazon - Alligator Head Decoy

I believe the WT have scouts that go out looking for feeding spots(ponds and such). At my place there has to be some discouragement when one shows up or there will be others show up later. They can be stubborn sometimes and will fly from one part of the pond to another when pressured. Like Zep, I hate those birds. The only good thing I can think of is they might reduce numbers of fish in a pond that needs to be thinned. How in the world can they be on an endangered list? There are a lot of them in this part of the country. Dam birds!!

Tracy....i know it sounds kind of crazy....but the water turkey seem to almost have an attitude...i don't like the herons either....but the herons around my place are pretty skittish...the water turkey on the other hand act like they own the place...swimming along with their beak up in the air...like "screw you I'm gonna eat your fish whether you like it or not". I've been lucky though and don't see water turkey hardly ever since the gator decoys went in the water.

The foam gators I had in my pond work great on geese. They worked on the herons for a few days but then they came back daily. Except for a two week period when a snapping turtle got tangled in the anchor line and the gator swam around the pond for a couple weeks until the turtle freed itself. Herons didn't like swimming gators.

besides scaring off the water turkey, the gator decoys have a really funny entertainment value....I never warn guests about the gator decoys...some see they are decoys, but others...lol...I can't tell you how many times people have come running up to me excitedly saying "do you know there is an alligator in your pond?' The Colorado guys that erected the log cabin started snapping pics and calling their wives saying "these crazy Texans have gators in their pond". They looked over and we are laughing

I did a fish survey on a 7/8 acre pond that had 5 cormorants visiting it. 80% of the fish that I sampled showed signs that they escaped from the cormorants beak - scales missing, disturbed skin, etc.

So, it's not just the fish that they eat, but also what they almost eat too.

Just like if wolves or Mt. Lions move into an area, the prey make themselves scarce.

Zep, other than the laughing out loud when people holler out GATOR at your place, have you seen results when it comes to discouraging cormorants or other natures fisherman. I wonder if they might attract other gators? May not be anything to worry about at your place but it is always possible that a gator might show up at mine because of my close proximity to Caddo Lake where there are some REALLY BIG GATORS! Heck man, everything else show up at mine. Mt Lions and such!