Word...

[youshootmyguy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZMlJ4PzUNw&feature=related

[Macro]

A friend (FlaGator) and I watched this same thing go down at Barrett one day. It was after the season ended and we had the whole lake to ourselves. (We used to go in after the lake closed for fishing every year and clean up the fisherman trash.) We had just rolled around into Pine Creek when we saw it and cut the engine and sat and watched. An osprey nailed a bass quite a ways from the bank, out a hundred feet or more, and it was obviously bigger than it had thought but wasn't going to give it up. It tried and tried to get airborne, flapping it's wings and then barely getting clear of the water with the bass (and yes, it was a nice sized one! had to outweigh that bird easy) only to fall back into the water exausted and rest a bit and start all over. It did this several times each time getting closer to the bank, fiinally too tired to try the flying again but able to paddle some with it's wings towards shore (like the eagle).

When it finally got there, of course there's that mat of moss to deal with. As tired as it was it still fought to get that fish in. But struggling with that good size bass' weight, and who, BTW, had been fighting back the whole time, was wearing that bird out. When they got to the moss mat, the bass seemed to sense an end coming quickly, either the bird weakening or the moss giving it some leverage, or sensing the shore and death soon after, and it started fighting back more.

The bird had had it's talons buried into the shoulders of this bass the whole time but it just ran out of gas. Soon it was just sitting in the moss exhausted and the fish was just flapping to get away, splashing. It must have realised it was over because it suddenly just let go and the bass was gone, with some nasty talon wounds.

Quite a battle I'll never forget. Glad we happened on it. I have caught fish with some scratches that obviously came from such an encounter (though never as deep or bad as that fish must have swam away with) and have heard of people catching fish with like wounds.

There was a deer that lived near Auburn (I worked there when I lived in Nevada City) that a lot peoplle saw, with completely healed deep scars from a cougars claws from it's shoulders all the way to it's haunches. They called it "Lucky" (duh!)

[dirfter]

That is hysterical with the soundtrack man. I had the pleasure of watching osprey hunt in Shelter Cove when I lived in Humboldt. They methodically took turns bombing all kinds of fish. We always hooted and hollered for the ones that nailed toads.

[oOlie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVbNdMHr60&eurl=http://7.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube_videos.xml&nocache=0&up_prefs_version=

[oOlie]

is this really what flowby does for a living?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY5tM_U5VVw&NR=1