I am noticing a lot of mergansers the past few years and am seeing them actually herd trout near me. I thought they were just minnows until I saw a little brown flopping. They usually take off and fly at mach 6, but when they have 6 inch trout in the area, they become reckless. They can eat up to about 1 pound of trout a day per bird.

I am not sure what the upper limit on size that they will take is, but I am guessing about 10". They will float promising stretches repeatedly all day and fish relentlessly. They can dive deep as well. A common merganser has a green head and white body. Believe that is just the male. Looks like a mallard, but these eat trout, and male mallard has darker body. Female has brown head.

They will put down fish obviously. If fish have lock jaw after a good day the day before, mergs may have been in the area recently.

Duck hunters do not like to eat these winged creatures because they can taste fishy if you prepare them poorly. Some of us should dust off those shotguns and harvest. I am not sure what you guys see on the limestone streams, but during the winter, with little human pressure, I think some of these streams might get a fair amount of mergs.

Soak in buttermilk over night and wrap in bacon to make tasty. They eat fish, so if your area has high PCBs or mercury, don't eat them.

Think about harvesting geese as well to clean up some parks a bit from their scat. Look for state parks that have hunting zones on small sections of water. Extended conservation goose runs until april 27 in certain areas. I think you need to buy an additional tag.

A goose is great for jerky and they can be well over 60 bucks a bird for a premium bird. Cut against or across grain of meat while partially frozen and dehydrate. Can be done with toothpicks in oven for higher temps to kill anything. Not many places offer goose jerky, but I could see it selling for 20 bucks a pounds or more.

Are mergansers actually categorized as game birds? (sorry, not a waterfowler here)

I haven't seen a lot of mergansers on the waters I frequent but I am seeing a lot more cormorants (not to mention a heckuva lot more blue herons). Many of the Susky bass guys around Harrisburg want to see reductions in cormorant populations. I'm not generally one who fears fish population losses from birds generally......but I have seen some local cases where it seemed to me (unscientifically) that these birds did reduce fish populations.

Common Mergansers have a daily limit of 5 per day, hooded is max 2.

Commorants are a huge problem for UK fly fishers. They call them the black death and they can not kill enough of them due to regulations. In Lake Ontario they were eating the smallmouth and someone killed 800 on a rookery illegally. I think there is an open season on them there now.

I am seeing more mergansers and bald eagles lately and yeah, just having them fly over the stream really puts the fish down. The geese are a pain, but they don't take the trout like the fishing ducks, herons, and mink.