A Big Fish Story and a Hooded Merganser

I figured I had hit the mother lode of Hooded Mergansers yesterday when I came upon this group of six Hooded Mergansers; four males and two females! Not great numbers I know, but for me, being a person who usually finds only a pair now and then, I thought this was a treasure of a find! So I was satisfied with just photographing the group but as I stayed and watched I saw a little drama play out when I noticed that one of the males had caught a fish.
Hooded Mergansers are fish-eating ducks and so I was pretty happy to see one with a fish in its mouth (bill).

The fish didn't seem to have gone down with the first try so while the 'Hoodie' paused in its eating I was able to get a picture that showed the size of the fish in comparison to the Merganser. It looked like a pretty big fish!

Okay, now for another try! This picture above, although not the sharpest, does gives a pretty good indication that the fish appears to be quite wide. I wonder if perhaps it was a Sunfish? We used to catch them sometimes when we were kids, fishing with a stick pole and line. The fish we called 'Sunfish' were brownish or goldish in colour and were more oval than lengthy and wider rather than slender.

The Hooded Merganser still can't get the fish down and the tail of the fish seems to have flopped down over its bottom bill. This picture reminds me of a Seal as the merganser's wings look like flippers.

All of a sudden it seemed to be too much and the Merganser reared out of the water! It doesn't seem to be able to swallow the fish. As well as being quite wide, I wonder if the fish has sharp fins?

I would say this guy looks really exasperated!

And he decides to get rid of it! Below, although the picture is very poor if you look very carefully you can see the fish falling back into the water in front of the Merganser.

I think the moral of this story might be:

"If the job is too much of a challenge, don't bite off more than you can chew!"