Gone Fishing: When Wolves
Turn to Aquatic Prey
By Maeve Rogers
​Outreach and Education Specialist
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Every May, Minnesota’s fishing opener draws anglers to the lakes. But humans are not the only ones relying on the season. Warm spring currents send white suckers into the shallow creeks of the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem to spawn. Under cover of darkness, wolves slip quietly into action. Long known as predators of ungulates like deer and moose, these wolves have discovered a new opportunity.
For the past 9 years, we have studied how wolves catch fish using GPS collars, trail cameras, and one GPS collar equipped with a GoPro camera. We even had one especially lucky in-person observation of wolves fishing!
Prior to our research, no one knew wolves hunted freshwater fish in places like Minnesota. But our research, which has spanned almost a decade, has demonstrated this unique “fishing” behavior is widespread across wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem and likely many other similar ecosystems.
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We first observed wolves ambushing suckers by chance in 2017. At the time, we assumed it might have been a fluke.
Trail camera video of spawning white sucker fish in a shallow creek within the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem. Wolf V094 was documented hunting right along with waterway, but evaded our cameras!
Wolves have broad diets, but we weren’t expecting them to hunt fish quite like this in our study area in Minnesota. Over time, however, the evidence began to mount, and it became increasingly apparent this was a common occurrence in the spring.
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White suckers are among Minnesota’s most abundant fish. Each spring they crowd into shallow streams and wetlands to spawn and lay eggs. Over several weeks in April and May, the water teems with splashing suckers. These fish are not prized game species, but their sheer numbers and slow movements make them easy prey. Anglers often overlook these fish, but wolves do not.
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In May 2018, we captured the first footage ever of wolves fishing along a creek, including one instance of a wolf hunting and catching several suckers. Little did we know at the time that we would collect much more footage of this behavior in the years to come.
Map of the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem (GVE; white line). Map includes Voyageurs National Park (black line), and creeks/ rivers (yellow lines) where wolves were recorded fishing in northern Minnesota, USA (Freund et al., 2023).
In addition to trail camera videos, GPS tracks from collared wolves have revealed individuals returning to the same streams each spring. When we visited the spots wolves spent time along these creeks, we found large amounts of fish remains—often just scales, all that’s left after a catch—amongst a plethora of wolf tracks in the muddy shoreline.
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As of last year, we had documented 15 collared wolves from six packs along with several uncollared wolves fishing on four different creeks and rivers. This GPS-collar data revealed that wolves revisited these favorite fishing spots for five years in a row; skipping only a year with extensive spring flooding.
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Wolves seem to have an ability to quickly cue into, and respond to this seasonal food source. By fishing, wolves tap a rich, low-risk food source during a lean time of the year, when energetic demands of pups are constantly increasing. Thus, the spring spawn, when countless sluggish fish move into shallow waterways under the moonlight, is a welcome bounty for wolves.
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Our research has also revealed the hunting tactics wolves use to catch suckers. Specifically, wolves use an ambush strategy, where they sit quietly at night on stream banks, logs, or beaver dams, often in total darkness. There, they wait patiently for fish to swim by before springing into action. Even a faint splash or a waving tail in the shallow water can quickly draw a wolf into action.
Fish remains discovered at a Lightfoot Pack den site. Multiple piles of fish scales were found around the den entrance and within 20 feet of the main den. Technicians collected the remains as biological samples and rare evidence of this unusual behavior.
This ambush-style fishing carries little risk, especially compared to hunting larger ungulates like deer. Chasing a fish cannot hurt the wolf the way a deer’s kick might. We’ve even documented the former breeding male of the Lightfoot Pack (V071) carrying fish back to the den, where hungry pups and the breeding female eagerly consumed the fresh meal.
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Beavers have played a surprisingly important role in shaping where wolves ambush fish. Beavers dam up streams and rivers, creating large barriers to suckers trying to move upstream to spawn. As a result, there are often large congregations of suckers in the shallow water directly below beaver dams on creeks and rivers…and wolves figure this out quickly.
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Wolves perch on or below beaver dams or adjacent logs, using the structures as strategic fishing platforms. These sites offer excellent visibility, minimal current, and an elevated vantage point—key advantages for ambush predation.
Spawning habitat for white suckers within a beaver-maintained stream. An old, partially breached beaver dam remains visible in the waterway, which extends upstream and connects to a newly maintained dam.
This pattern shows the fascinating complexity of boreal ecosystems: beavers dam up creeks and rivers, which congregates spawning fish that wolves then take advantage of. In other words, beavers indirectly contribute to the foraging success of their primary predator, wolves. It’s a striking example of how predators and ecosystem engineers can be both adversaries and unwitting collaborators within the same food web. ​
Wolf O4D, the former breeding female of the Windsong Pack, documented via trail camera video ambushing spawning white suckers along a section of the Ash River.
Drone image of a stream white suckers were documented spawning in during early May 2025. Wolf V094, the old breeding male of the Half-Moon Pack, was present at this stream for about two weeks fishing in early May.
White suckers attempting to spawn below a broken beaver dam, where pond water has flooded a section of grassy meadow. Each arrow indicates a visible fish, though more are likely concealed beneath the surface.
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For more information on the fishing behavior of wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem, check out these two peer-reviewed publications on this unique behavior:
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Gable et al. 2018. Do wolves hunt freshwater fish in spring as food source?
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Freund et al. 2023. The ethology of wolves foraging on freshwater fish in a boreal ecosystem