Late in the dark of night a wolf stands alone, listening, on the shore of an island in the Ash River in northern Minnesota. A splash. The wolf darts into the water, corrals the fish toward shore, dunks her head under and pulls up a fat white sucker.
Video shows wolf fishing for spawning suckers in northern Minnesota
A trail camera set up by the Voyageurs Wolf Project shows that Minnesota’s wolves are taking advantage of the spring spawning run, in this case on the Ash River.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
May 23, 2024 at 4:43PM
The spring spawning run has begun for one the state’s most abundant fish, a time when white suckers leave their comfortable depths to swim up into the stony creeks and shallows to lay their eggs. And some of Minnesota’s more enterprising wolves, much like grizzly bears targeting salmon out West, are going to the rivers to feast.
The Ash River encounter was captured around 3 a.m. Sunday on a trail camera set up by Ian Smith, a research technician with the Voyageurs Wolf Project. The research project, which gets funding from state lottery profits, uses a web of trail cameras and GPS collars to study how Minnesota’s wolves behave, hunt and survive in the summer, when they’ve historically been most difficult to track. It’s the first time researchers with the project have been able to film a wolf pulling a fish out of the water.
“It shows how flexible their hunting strategies are,” said Thomas Gable, project lead.
Wolves will hunt in packs to chase, outlast and run down moose that are 10 to 20 times their size. They’ll sprint after deer alone. They can scavenge. And, as the video shows, they’ll sit like a cat in ambush throughout the early morning hours, waiting for a fish to rise.
The wolf in the video is collared and is part of a small pack that’s been in the area for years. It’s just her, her mate and a litter of three pups, Gable said.
GPS data shows that after catching the fish, she ran quickly back to her den — presumably to feed it to her pups — then returned to the same shoreline to keep fishing, Gable said.
The spawn lasts a few weeks and takes place almost entirely at night. In daylight the fish retreat to the safety of deeper waters.
Late spring and early summer can be lean times for Minnesota’s wolves. Fawns have grown up and are more difficult to catch. There’s no snow to slow prey. Wolf pups are a little bigger and require more food. When the spawning run ends in a week or two, the wolves start to rely more on berries, beaver and what deer they are able to chase down.
The governor said it may be 2027 or 2028 by the time the market catches up to demand.
