What a strange bird is the pelican

It’s beak can hold more than it’s belican.

White pelicans swarm to large freshwater lakes across the South in winter, and can become obvious beacons for anglers looking for shad schools, which also attract gamefish. (USFWS)

Pelicans are definitely strange birds, but they can be very helpful to anglers, particularly in winter when gamefish get hard to find. While saltwater anglers instinctively know this, freshwater anglers around the southeast can also take advantage of pelicans—the white variety that winters on inland lakes in many areas—as well as sea gulls, loons and cormorants to scope out winter action.

Water birds depend on finding fish to live, and that gets much tougher in winter as many fish species go deep and become harder to find and harder to catch.

Though most water birds feed primarily by sight, scientists are now learning that some species can actually smell out schools of bait and fish via the wisps of scent they emit at the surface. On lakes with lots of shad, birds that are usually considered coastal critters often show up far inland.

All the lakes in the Tennessee River chain are a case in point.

We had an unusually successful fall schooling season on my home lake, Guntersville, with an enormous shad spawn and sometimes acres of bass attacking them. But as the water cooled into late November and early December, the breaking fish got more and more scarce until they disappeared altogether.

That’s when the birds became our best friends on this big Tennessee River lake.

The lake attracts hundreds of white pelicans along with thousands of gulls, dozens of loons and pretty much countless cormorants every winter. Find the birds and you find the bait, and find the bait and you find the fish.

Only it’s not always that easy.

While there are lots of schools of threadfins, the bass are not nearly as widespread as they were when the water was 60 degrees instead of 42.

You can no longer find breaking fish—but you can see hunting birds for a half mile, and they don’t waste energy. Where there are circling gulls and diving loons, there are big schools of bait.

A variety of gull species also hang around shad schools in fresh water during winter, though they’re more common on the coast. (USFWS)

On warm afternoons, shad schools often ease nearer the surface, and individual shad will dart all the way to the top, grab a gulp of warm air and then dart back down to the mass. After a few dozen of them do this, the birds find them and you have an obvious marker for a likely spot to toss a lure.

Any shad type lure does the job. One of my favorites is the Steel Shad, but little tailspin baits similar to the historic Lil George, now out of production, include the Damiki Tail-Spinner, Bass Pro Shops Tail Spin and 6th Sense Gyro. All have a small lead body ahead of a spinner that slows their fall and spins all the way down.

These lures can by cast on the edges of the shad schools and worked in a pull and drop motion to draw the strikes.

For those who have forward scan sonar, bass often hang in midwater on the perimeter of the shad schools—3 or 4 large marks on the screen close together at depths of 8 to 15’ in many lakes. The usual FFS minnow, a soft plastic on a relatively small jig head, cast to these targets often draws the strike. Jerkbaits that run at midwater depths also do well.

Cormorants are the ultimate shad chasers, and sometimes swarm in large flocks diving on the bait schools. (Wikimedia)

One thing to be cautious of around loons and cormorants is that both these birds hunt by diving deep and swimming down their prey—get a good-looking shad imitation in front of them and you may be hooked up to feathers instead of scales.

I can report from personal experience, the cormorants particularly come up ready to fight. I still wear the scar on my left index finger from trying to dehook one about 10 years ago. Their hooked bill is like a sharp pair of scissors and they are very quick with it.

If you have to handle a hooked cormorant, the safe way is to put a cloth over the eyes and have a partner hold wings and feet while you remove the hook—otherwise, you may wind up worse off than the bird.

— Frank Sargeant
Frankmako1@gmail.com