Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Bald Eagles

I've seen footage of bald eagles catching fish. It looks like they catch them on the fly by reaching just below the surface to snatch them out of the water. I presume they were surface feeding trout. I've seen a lot of bald eagles, some times in groups of 6 or more feeding when I lived in northern OK. But they weren't feeding on what you might expect. They were feeding on winter kill cattle. Even turkey vultures keep their distance. A friend of mine recounted an observation of one killing a Canada goose. He claimed the eagle inverted and captured the goose from below.

There remains a possibility the LMB that the eagle was eating were in the process of dying at time the eagle captured them. It doesn't seem normal for bass that large to be spending extended periods of time near the surface. A bald eagle needs to spot a fish near the surface and the set up an approach to capture it. The fish needs to cooperate with this strategy in that it needs to remain near the surface long enough for the eagle to complete its attack. I've not observed bass spending a lot of time near the surface though perhaps basking for increasing temperature is a behavior that is common this time of year that would make healthy fish vulnerable or perhaps spawning in water shallow enough for the bald eagle hunting techniques.

I don't know, But we shouldn't overlook the possibility that the eagle was preying on sick or dying LMB near the end of life.