Sorry no pictures it all happened too fast.
Earlier this summer I told the story of an eagle picking up a surface lure that a young client was using. My season of odd bird stories is nearly complete after an osprey grabbed a bait that a young client was fishing the other day.
A little backstory on Saturday I was fishing one of the flats along the Saint George when an osprey made several unsuccessful attempts to grab one of our lures. I assumed that this was a young osprey hungry from learning to catch its own meals. A couple of days later I am fishing with a family about a mile from that first spot. I am busy telling a story or something like that when out of the corner of my eye I see a bird dive down pretty close to the boat. My first thought was to say look at that osprey catching lunch right near the boat. Wrong!
A second later the boy says I think I caught that osprey. Sure enough the osprey is fast to his lure. Fortunately, an osprey is small enough that we were able to reel it in to the boat. As it gets close it is clear that I am going to need to untangle the unhappy bird from the line. It is also clear that it has sharp talons and a fierce-looking beak. As you might expect it is also not at all happy. Luckily the dad was right over my shoulder and says, “if we only had a towel or something to put over the bird”. Brilliant idea; we grab the towel off of the console in the boat and use it to cover the bird’s head while I quickly unwrap the line from the feet.
I drop the bird and using the normal osprey technique of taking off from the water (a couple of strong wing flaps) flies off to look for an actual fish meal. All I can say now is what are the other bird is eyeing our lures?
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