I’ve had a lifelong love for ducks. I remember when I was 5 or 6, I’d walk down the 2 track road behind my house a mile or so to all of these small sloughs and ponds. I had a log book and I would log and sketch all the different species of ducks I observed.
I was born in Ennis MT but when I was in grade school my parents moved to northern North Dakota, the heart of the prairie pothole waterfowl giant. More ducks live and breed in this region, including Saskatchewan, than in any other place on the planet. Mallards, gadwalls, blue wing-teal, green wing teal, pintails, wigeons, and spoonbills were just a few of the species ducks I grew up watching, hunting and enjoying.
There is one exception to my love of ducks and this would be the hated, evil, sinister, day wrecking, sabotaging, plundering, fly fishing nemesis: the Common Merganser.
Common Mergansers bring death from above and below often on guided float trips. It isn’t just one bird, they hunt in huge packs. One day, on the Clark Fork, there was a flock of more than 100 or so. They get in these huge groups and splash, paddle, herd all small trout and minnows into shallow water as a team and decimate everything in their paths. There is no chance to catch a rising trout after this anarchy has taken place.
You might think I’m being to hard on this bird, we’ll I am NOT!! They don’t fly, they flap their feet as fast as they can like small paddles. They scurry across the water making so much noise and churning water that you can almost see trout racing out of harms way.
If I see a division of these monsters on a bank, I’ll totally avoid that bank and row to the other side of the river. Sometimes they see you and they will all paddle/fly/splash to the side you want to fish, leaving that bank in shambles, so sometimes you try to herd them away to the bank you don’t want to fish, this maneuver usually fails and they end up right where you don’t want them.
I’m not the only one who despises these fish eating vermin. I had an amazing waterfowl, upland dog for 13 years. He’d make blind retrieves, find cripples, hunt awesome. I’ve seen very few finer hunting dogs than my old dog Zeke. We don’t shoot ducks we can’t eat so as much as it pains me, I don’t target common mergansers.
If I had to choose between eating a dead sea gull or a dead merganser, the sea gull would probably be better to eat and would be my choice! I had a merganser come into my decoys on a low light morning. I stood up “Bang” nailed this bird, I thought it was not a shit duck, my dog Zeke bails out to retrieve like he’s done 1,000’s of times before. Zeke picks up the duck, swims a couple of feet, and drops it back in the river. “Zeke, dead bird” I command my dog but he refuses to pick up this animal, that to him is not a duck. I wade out, grab this thing and Zeke gives me a look that said, “That disgusting thing is not a duck, it has a long beak, smells weird, and I refuse to retrieve them”.
I agreed with Zeke and have not shot one since.
Many of my clients who aren’t aware of my prejudice, and don’t realize that these awful animals can cost them maybe dozens of trout opportunities in a day say stuff like “look at the pretty ducks.” I puke in my mouth a little and just say, “those are bad ducks, they eat trout, they can ruin a guides day and I hate them”. Later on if I’m feeling better and there aren’t any mergansers in sight, I’ll explain to my guests the difference between good ducks and bad ducks!!
Some of my guests will also ask if a duck can harm an adult trout and don’t under stand why a bigger fish would be afraid of said duck. I explain that trout are constantly being harassed and hunted by legitimate, worthy predators likes osprey and eagles. Wild trout don’t really have the option of looking up to decipher if what is trying to kill them is an eagle, or an awful fish duck!