I was scouting a place today on a small creek that has bank dens but no food pile in the water.what are these beaver going to eat as this creek will freeze over solid?

Probably young dumb one, would be my guess.

I've never seen a food cache in my 50+ years of beaver trapping.

winter feed beds are a ritual, here in my AO, " Dacks". Tut

beavers without a winter feedbed are generally easy to catch as they have to leave the water to eat even with a feed bed and thick enough ice they are fairly easy too trap

It’s January 15th and it hasn’t frozen over solid yet? Maybe they don’t care.
I’ve seen the feed pile jammed deep at the bottom, come freeze up, there was nothing sticking out but there was one or two making a go of it. There was one left in a ditch near my place that busted out of some thin ice where there was current and crawled out to sneak some poplar down under. He was left over from after the RM removed its dams. I say “was” because he’s in the fur bag now heading to the FHA depot this Saturday….lol

In Alaska, feed beds are common, even for bank dwellers.

Is there a lot of cat tails along you water source. Many times here if we have no lodge maybe a bank den somewhere. But usually fine one lone big male. When you catch him in the spring they are usually pretty skinny and plus find quite a few cat tail roots in the area he is caught.

Some use feed beds here and some use bank food cache. It’s a lot like a bank den but filled with food, almost always corn. Sometimes there are eating dens as well. They pull an ear of corn out of the cache and take it to eating den to eat. Eating den is usually between main den and food cache den.

Does the creek run through a corn field by chance?

No cat tails it's a very small creek maybe 6ft wide 3ft deep with 2 dams.cornfields on both sides of the creek which are chiseled very few trees along the banks it was pretty much froze over this morning when I checked it

I would bet they cut a cache of corn b4 harvest and have it tucked in a bank den.

The corn fields would definitely show sign of the beaver having been in the fields.

The bank should show sign for sure. Old trails leading up bank, should have corn stalks/leaves on them. Field is chiseled so wouldn’t be any sign left there.

Those ones are tough to flesh.

never seen a beaver, house or bank den that didn't have a food pile

The first season I set any traps beaver was 1973. There is only one colony that I ever saw that did not have a feed bed. Years ago there was a pond on the line that almost always had beaver. They must of lived off roots and Lilly pad plants. Never notice a feed bed. I believe from reading your excellent post. you mostly trap rivers.
Here when beaver set up a colony on a river they always tuck in a feed bed. Of course most often these rivers freeze up tight.

Mac

Them beavers in a corn field are worse then a woodchuck in a soybean field. Had a dam that was 50/50 corn stalks and sticks. The next year had beans inn that corn field and the beavers started eating them. I had to wack them.

Houndone, it could have just moved in recently....have seen a few migrants that have popped up out of no where....very little evidence of them existing.
Around my citified area, beaver sometimes show up in some weird places.

A day or so with ice and you should be able to see what’s going on around there if they’re still there

This

Waders, get in and find the bank holes, set 330's in front

if not too deep