This study examined cormorant fishing, called mandra, at Dojran Lake, north Macedonia, to elucidate their fishing techniques and reasons for contin-ued cormorant fishing at Dojran Lake in the former Yugoslavia. A field survey and comparative case study were used to investigate cormorant fishing tech-niques used at Dojran Lake at that time. Compared to cormorant fishing in China and Japan, that at Dojran Lake is characterized by fishing with large fixed shore nets, by sharing of roles among several fishers during fishing activities, and by the fishers’ catching of wild cormorants in the early winter and using them for the winter fishing season before releasing them the fol-lowing spring. Based on these findings, this study explored conditions enabling the sustained practice of cormorant fishing in the former Yugoslavia. Cormorant fishing at Dojran Lake depended on fishery resource abundance at the lake, the ability to capture wild cormorants reliably, the presence of fish-ers sufficient to maintain fishing, and the existence of a nearby culture of freshwater fish as food. This study also clarified why mandra at Dojran Lake ended after the collapse of Yugoslavia. Cormorant fishers in Dojran never bred cormorants because wild cormo-rants were captured easily in early winter, given that many cormorants over-winter at the lake. Therefore, Dojran fishers were able to release all the cor-morants after the fishing season. They did not need to keep and breed cormo-rants in artificial environments over several seasons. Although Japanese cor-morant fishers have never bred cormorants, Chinese cormorant fishers do. These different approaches to deployment of cormorants are explained by the relative ease of capturing wild cormorants. Those findings support this work-ing hypothesis involving the catch and release of cormorants at Dojran Lake.