Yes, I know it is nature at work but I am partially to blame I do believe. We feed the fish quite a bit so much in fact the fish see you walking along the bank and they come right up. The big cats will just eat right out of you hands.
Last month I started to notice a number of the fish were scarred up. Just figured it was one of the turtles. I went through my cameras from last month and I have a new bear, my guess is a juvenile as it is not a cub but it is not the big old boy that would come and be nosey when working around the house.
I did not put 2 and 2 together until I went down there today. I found a number of fish skeletons 5-10 from the pond and none of my fish were coming up to the bank anymore. They were keeping a pretty solid distance from the bank.
I don’t have any cameras along the pond as the trees are pretty sparse and the cameras would stick out like a sore thumb. Did not really want anyone snatching a camera and then going to try to find the rest of my cameras thinking of there is one there must be more that are hidden pretty well.
Luckily I just got a camera on sale this week and I put it up at the pond where the bear is most likely doing it’s fishing.
It’ll be a number of weeks before I can go down again so hopefully no one decides to steal the camera and go looking for my others.
Anything I can do to deter the bear from getting my fish aside from quite feeding them to attract them to the bank?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Black92LX,

I would think it'd be pretty easy to spot tracks around a pond if a bear has been anywhere near it, unless it's grass right to the water. Even then there should be clear sign. Are you seeing any scat? Rub marks? Broken vegetation?

Confront his ass!!! Let us know how that works out.

Coons?

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Confront his ass!!! Let us know how that works out.

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:
I would think it'd be pretty easy to spot tracks around a pond if a bear has been anywhere near it, unless it's grass right to the water. Even then there should be clear sign. Are you seeing any scat? Rub marks? Broken vegetation?

The bank is raised slightly with pretty thick grass and likely would not see any tracks. I walk the pond every time I am there collecting any trash and did not notice any scat or signs of the bear around the pond.
All I have is the pics of the bear on the backside, seeing the new scars on the fish, the fish no longer coming to the bank, and the skeletons a bit away from the bank.
I’d say the bear wandered to the pond and realized that the fish just come right up and he would swat at them. Grabbing the small ones easily to eat but the bigger cats not being as easy to grab got away but with a bit of damage.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Confront his ass!!! Let us know how that works out.

Nope, nope, and nope!!

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
I believe my bear is eating my fish, any deterrents?

Electric fish.

i like about any critter 'cept raccoons & bears.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Confront his ass!!! Let us know how that works out.

Big Bear Chase Me!

A bear isn't going to leave fish "skeletons"

Until solid documentation and a provided...... It sounds as if your fish scratcher and deboner is a Sasquatch. Sasquatch and even some Big Foot, will carefully debone a fish leaving telltale “skeletons”. The fish you see with scars or marks are in fact damaged because Sasquatch aren’t adept fishermen. They try to catch fish bare handed and their unkempt nails are causing the scarring on the fish. Big Foot are much more capable at fishing.
Yep, you’ve got a Sasquatch on your hands. Stay quiet as you approach the water if you hear splashing. If he catches you, you’ll wish he was a bear.

I liked the boxing video the best. Just man up and box that bear's lights out. A little beginning level MMA training could help too, since only humans are allowed to attend classes. That put s you one step, or paw, ahead.

Good luck with that. Hungry wildlife is hungry wildlife. A friend of mine shot a black bear who was raiding his honey bee hives. He eventually put a chain link fence around his hives.

Inner net says you have a otter.

I was thinking electric livestock fence, but then I remembered I know a guy who tried that. Bears kept raiding he bee hives, he surrounded them with shock fence and even that didn't work.

Black,
Don't you have something better to do?
A bear's gonna do what a bear's gonna do. He's gotta eat too, ya know? Sounds like the catfish have made adjustments.
Would be cool video though to see the bear catch one!

Let's see if I got this right. You have a pond and there are fish in this pond. One day you decided it would be cute to feed these fish, you fed them so much that they came to associate anything that walked along the shore as a source of food and swim up right next to shore looking for a handout. Now along comes a predator, a bear if you will, whose only crime is trying to survive by searching for food along the pond and it sees these fish swimming right along the shore thinking the bear is going to give them some food, but uses them for food instead.

Now, the bear is at fault and we need to get rid of the bear, when it was the human that caused all this problem in the first place. Keep yourself out of the equation and the fish will adjust to the situation in short order.

I think the bear is just sniffing whats already been eatin. The bones left behind is cuz its a otter. Look along the shore for their den. Kentucky trappers can take ten per day limit due to the population growth.

Those damned humans, just like all of those Disney films

^^^^^^^^ This - Yogi and Bobo make their own rules. There are lots of bears where we live - Don't mess with them.

We had a stocked pond on our property in the Horseheads NY area some years ago. The pond was quite stocked with a variety of fish until one day... suddenly we noticed the fish were vanishing.
The culprit for us turned out to be a huge Heron. I did some reading and they pretty much eat anything that would live in or near a pond/lake. An adult heron can easily consume more than 1 pound+ of fish per day.
Luckily, before anything explosive happened to the Heron (they are federally protected) we did the spinning foil pinfoils. I tried several different methods and none of them worked.
The pinfoils finally got rid of him.
I am told that putting a playing radio by the pond works as well.