Submitted photo Pictured is Radlee Cooper of Cherry Township with a nice largemouth bass caught and released during a morning of recreational fishing on Ely Lake in northeastern Minnesota.

Before heading up to Minnesota’s Iron Range to see family over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, I had the amazing experience to watch a loon at close range track down and take a relatively large panfish from the school of sunnies I was casting to just off the dock on the south shore of Big Detroit Lake. Under the water the bird moved swiftly and adeptly, unlike how loons usually are, flapping and struggling to get airborne and then skittering to an ungraceful stop upon landing after flights that seem all too fast for the lazy warm days of summer they spend in the region. 


Twisting and taking after its prey like a fighter jet making impossible moves in some 1980s military movie, the bird pursued its target in amazing fashion, attempting to secure it in its pointy black beak. My fly line lay dormant at my feet as I watched the battle play out from my vantage point next to the pontoon lift. While the chase only covered a few yards, it felt like the black-and-white bird spent many minutes underwater and likely covered three times the distance than the confines of the small area that the game of cat-and-mouse was held in. 
While my efforts to connect with the panfish out in front of the shoreline structure and those used on the bass I’d pursue with my wife’s cousin’s kids on the waters up north exploited those fishes’ instinct to feed, the loon’s challenge was to overcome their instinct to flee. Certainly, any fish is capable of an extreme burst of speed, hard cornering turns, and other developed and inherited means of evasion when their survival depends on it.

However, one larger sunfish was unable to escape, and became not only the loon’s breakfast, but also the sacrificial lamb of the school below sparing the rest from any further early morning harassment by the bird now attempting to down its meal.


I was glad that my work to connect with my quarry over the weekend, and that of my fishing buddies, wasn’t nearly as challenging. While the loon used its masterful underwater maneuvers to fill its belly and stave off hunger or even mortality for another stretch, our efforts were ones of recreation, flipping flies and pitching tubes at fish we’d turn back to the water instead of eating. While both pursuits were purposeful, ours had little to do with ensuring survival, save for eliminating some stress and finding some fun outdoors which in my mind is part and parcel with a life well lived. That aside, we were pretend predators at best in comparison to the hard hunting loon. 


And that juxtaposition of predators — be it the loon, or us good natured fishermen out looking for a fun morning of catching up while catching a few fish — presented a moment of thought and perhaps showed how far we as humans have come as a species in just a few thousand years: from barely staying alive, to thriving to the point where we could throw our food back into the water. It also reminded me how wild predators truly exert effort to subdue their prey, be it wolves in pursuit of a deer, hawks hovering over the homes of wary prairie rodents, or even the loon dipping its head below the surface on lookout for a school of fish. The brief morning interaction, and my angling activities with family, gave me a new appreciation for the bird which via its haunting calls just before dawn had always been a hallmark of the lake I grew up on each summer, and respect for the work that goes into surviving on both ends of the food chain, no matter the predator in pursuit … in our outdoors.