Great Blue and 12" crappie

[SteveJ]

We went fishing Thursday morning and decided to not keep any fish that day as neither one of us wanted to clean fish, like Wayne ever cleans fish. I did halfway keep track of how many keepers we caught and it was about 30 give or take a few. But to my story, I caught a crappie about 12" maybe a little more and it had the hook a little deep but I tried to remove it as best I could and hope for the best. We moved on down the creek about 100' and heard a splash in the water and looked behind us and there was a Great Blue with that crappie in it's mouth, doesn't look like there is any way it can get it down to me but we will never know. It was trying to turn it around to get it head first and trying to swim away from the boat, don't think they can swim very well. We were drifting back towards it watch and I guess we got in it's zone because it took off, I didn't even think it could fly with that size fish but it did. I have noticed a lot of fly overs and set down for undersize fish this last couple of years, guess they are getting smart and lazy and letting us catch the fish for them. We also have a few eagles that stay here I guess because I see a lot of them take the throw-back too.

[J White]

Bet that was a mouthful for him. Seems like I heard something,
maybe the Louisianna board, about one (heron) helping himself
to a fish out of the open livewell?

Them things are BIG. Be bad if they start trying to take fish away
from you!

[speckfinder]

i've seen blues catch big crappie, you can see the profile of the fish as it goes down it's throat

[LBM]

Couple of years ago I was fishing a tree line and tossed a small crappie into the water below a herron sitting in a tree and it flew down and picked it up. I continued moving down the tree line and the bird continued to follow me down the tree line. I tossed a second small crappie but it was too close to the boat and the bird didn't want to come that close and missed the crappie. I continued working down the tree line trying to catch another small crappie to toss to the herron. The bird kept hanging around for about another 45 minutes and finally gave up and left after I was unable to get another fish to toss to it.